Jul 01 2011

Hidden in Plain View

Dateline: Plainview, MN , pop. 3408,

The Heart of the Greenwood Prairie

Saturday, June 25, 2011
Country Breakfast on the Farm
Location: Little Valley Dairy
Donny & Holly Thompson, owners

Rochester is in the rear view mirror as we drift eastward through bucolic Olmsted County, a county without a lake, not a single one, in a state with the motto: Land of 10,000 Lakes. Planning to neither fish nor swim today, as investigative journalists our objective is a 5 dollar pancake, cheese, sausage breakfast, on a “reported” dairy farm, with “supposedly” 182 Holsteins☀, 1 crossbred, and 1 Brown Swiss who are “speculated” to produce 27,000 pounds of milk a year.

This is an obvious undercover scam, because we all know milk comes from a refrigerated wall at Trader Joe’s®, produced in plastic milk cartons, free of rBST, @ $1.99/half gallon, between the 2% Greek yogurt to the left and the organic brown eggs on the right.

However, we arrive at the Little Valley Dairy on CR 10 NE, nearly 4 miles south of Plainview, along with 100’s of families who have been duped by this sign:

Time: 6:30 am – 11:30 a.m.
Details: Enjoy a pancake breakfast.
Sponsor: Rochester Ag Committee, Olmsted County Farm Bureau Federation

Do these people look like someone you might trust ?

Tents, tables, vintage tractors, modern combines, milk parlor, barns, hay, more hay, cows, more cows, and celebrities;

“Victor”, the suspicious official mascot of the Minnesota Vikings attempting a ‘field goal’. Behind the facade of this uniform, the now retired Brett Favre, who, has at last found a real job. He still knows how to make a “pass”.

L- Mutant corn on the cob; R-Undercover agent

Donny Thompson in profile, Hollywood material for “Survivor-Dairy Farm”, a series coming to you soon

In spite of all the misconception, the people watching and the breakfast were both delicious. Armed with a full tummy we learned that:

and except for a Dairy Queen, no one can consume 7 gallons of ice cream in a single day.

The sights, sounds, and the aroma combine to make this the most memorable Saturday morning ever.

Thank heavens for holsteins, John Deere, and little girls

¤Holstein- a black and white milk producing hybrid between a buffalo and a dalmatian, with four, very large, ice cream dispensers.

We came away, convinced, that the photo below is true, that milk subsidies are essential, calcium builds strong bones, and running a 970 acre dairy farm is fun, demanding, and at times, very dangerous, and the debt we owe Donny and Holly Thompson defies translation into words.

p.s. These two “tired” imps tried to convince this investigator that hamburger comes from feeder cattle and NOT McDonald’s, so I am off on a new assignment:

ooo❍❍❍OOO are you really Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC ???

insightout©2011

Jun 24 2011

Festival Shopping

Dateline: Pine Island, Minnesota

As newcomers to southeast MN, our curiosity is piqued by local summer ‘festival’ events, those special moments that allow direct contact with local culture, so last weekend, as you might anticipate, we stayed home and gave consideration to a sexual encounter. Wait, wait, of course that’s not true, because this IS a family blog, but the point is you’ve got to get out and live a little, NOT outlive and get a little.

With the anticipation of two dogs in heat, we head north from Rochester, 20 miles, to attend the Pine Island Cheesefest. The weekend prior we had hit the jackpot visiting the Lanesboro Rhubarb Festival and thought this might be another winner, and from here forward, the day slowly turned downhill, like sasquatch in snowshoes attempting an escape from the beef jerky papparazzi.

It’s 10 AM, a Saturday morning, and the town, Pine Island is nearly deserted.

Jack and Chas stop in the local park to take “manly relief”

Flood stage, 24Sept2010,

Lynn takes note of the high water mark, easily five feet above the ladies room floor.

And nearby, on the outdoor patio of the Pine Island Cheese Company, Jack perches on the picnic table quietly anticipating a cheesey treat.

Beautiful building, locked, and nearly empty

Walking into town we take note of the ‘arts and crafts’ fair, in the auditorium of the middle school. Lynn ventures in, and then out, in less than ten minutes……”old ladies, card tables, garage sale castoffs, cheap trinkets from China, and not from the generals of Tao, the active and holistic conception of nature, but rather, the Dollar General store”.

The main street is closed to traffic by diligent civil patrol officers, swollen with importance and backup; orange barrels, do not cross tape, one whistle, and wooden horse barricades. The street is lined with food vendors, prepared it seems for an invasion of famished Sumo wrestlers….deep fried Oreo cookies, Indian Fry Bread, Funnel Cakes, Elephant ears, and 96 oz servings of iced slurpees. No cheese of any kind. Three hours here for ‘snacking’ + three hours in a tanning bed and you could go home looking like OPrah™.

If you happen to schedule this outing, the Pine Island Cheesefest for 2012, note the following:

there is no cheese
very few pine trees
no island

And should one of your companions be of the female persuasion, make sure she has a bathing suit to swim into the restroom. The only water in sight is the north branch of the middle fork on the Zumbro River, whose sole function is to flood the ladies room in the park every fall, where it is said, No Man is an Island. So the summary of this blog is very much like the Seinfeld theme, a show about nothing. Pine Island provided us a proper balance to Lanesboro, and we left feeling we were batting .500, good in any league.

We head eastward on MN 60, to and thru Mazeppa, presumably named after Zeppa’s mother, and a two hour drive drifting through the Richard Dorer Memorial Hardwood Forest, > 1,000,000 acres of forest-savanna transition, so serene and peaceful that we are back up to batting a thousand.

Reminiscent of the Allan Funt production mantra of the 1950s…..sometimes, when you least expect it, “smile, you’re on Candid Camera”, this glorious ride had all three of us, me, Jack, and Lynn, grinning from ear-to-ear.

Now pass me another one of those Oreos.

Feb 11 2011

Life as paperboys

Subtitle: “Show and Tell in a Storage Facility” is not a plot for the great American novel, unless your medication profile requires adjustment, but read on.

In the early 60’s, two young midwestern men, unknown to one another, struck out on divergent pathways. Both in the long shadow of Chicago’s urban torture, one interrupted his college pursuit to work as a brakeman on the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, then a Loyola education, and later as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune. In his wake, service in Viet Nam, a best seller, and an international reputation as the author of a dozen popular novels.

The other man, through seven years of work/study in a parallel universe, became a rivet bucker for Allied Structural Steel, a bridge maker in Hammond, IN. No longer draft-worthy because of age, he drifted in and out of college, modest success at Butler, to an obscure 30+ year career as a community pharmacist.

Now both ~ 70 y/o geezers, these two were brought together, fatefully, by the ethereal mix of quail hunting, vintage Mercedes-Benz, the world of publishing, and Airstream trailers. What’s the puerile buzzword, Go Figure,?

Today, from our womb in the bosom of the Patagonia mountains, Phil and I are headed north to Tucson in one of my favorite old cars, a plain vanilla 1965, 220SE four door Finback sedan. Although lacking the panache of a coupe or a roadster, it shares the same drivetrain and runs like a finely tuned Swiss watch. Until we ran out of gas headed into the south east side. We weren’t planning on picking up chicks, so twelve gallons of 87 octane quickly resolved our adventure in motoring.

Rakish retro fins, comparable to an eleven y/o in a training bra

The purpose of our trip, to introduce Phil C. and be lectured by prominent editor and publisher, Rich L. The four hours were very productive as Rich led Phil through the nuances of vintage and modern airstreaming, complete with demos of two units. No one, let me repeat, no one does it better.

L-R, Rich L., Phil C., “But wait, wait, there’s more”

After a leisurely lunch ( the virgin, Phil, had never dined at Chipotle ) we bid our good-byes to Emma and Eleanor. I was able to scam four (4) of E & E’s rainy day brownies, a genuine coup that made the day a tasty and resounding success.

L-R, at the Tucson estate, Chas S., Phil C., Rich L.

Shared enthusiasm for a joint project brought us together, although Rich is barely the age of the oldest sons of Phil and me. The return trip home to our hideaways near the border was equally delightful, as the two of us unwound our lives, the work, the wives, the families, the era we survived, like intertwined strands of amino acid in a DNA molecule. But the most fun: reliving those thrilling days of yesteryear when we both got up at 5 AM, freezing our sorry asses off, schlepping the Chicago Tribune as newsboys. Hi-Yo Silver.