Tag: Main Street

A Wonderful Life

On Sunday (Dec. 29), Kathleen’s daughter, Kristin, came to visit. Until she arrived, it felt as if something was missing from our holiday season. We spend some time every Christmas with her and her husband, Kevin, and this move to Wisconsin threatened a long-running streak. Unfortunately, Kevin was ill, so she flew in alone. We made the best of it, however, had a great time, watched a lot of football, and Kristin was able to spend some quality time with her niece and nephew.

The grandkids were a big part of the reason we moved up here, so being with them on the holidays was especially rewarding. On Christmas morning, I was terribly sick, but Kathleen pulled on her bathrobe and drove down the street to watch them open presents. Later that afternoon, I rallied long enough to spend an hour with them while we exchanged our presents. Six-year-old Lucas is probably at the peak of the childlike wonder I associate with Christmas. You could give that kid an empty shoebox, and he would squeal with delight, saying, “How did you know this is what I wanted! My old shoebox has a rip in it, so this is perfect!” We also played a spirited game of Pictionary with the kids. Abigail (nine years old) is quite good at drawing and guessing. What Lucas lacks in artistic talent, he makes up for with enthusiasm and creative thought. The night we played the game, we had had the kids staying with us for the day while their parents were at work. We also had our contractor over for an hour or two while we selected fixtures, etc. for a bathroom remodeling job. While we were upstairs looking at faucets and tile, the kids were downstairs watching Christmas movies and gorging on a stash of Halloween candy they had left at our house. When we went to dinner, perhaps inspired by Wil Farrell’s Elf character, they had pancakes and waffles smothered in syrup, ice cream, and whipped cream. In short, by the time we played the game, they were experiencing the mother of all sugar highs. We told Luke to just yell out the answer when he thought he recognized the picture, but he took it to extremes, racing through a stream-of-consciousness list of items that had us holding our sides with laughter. At one point, Abigail started by drawing a straight line or two. Lucas began spewing guesses at a rapid rate, sounding something like, “Hercules! A sunny day! A bicycle! Garfield the Cat! A tree!” The kids were still wired and bouncing off of the walls when we made a strategic exit. That’s the beauty of being grandparents.

Now to the title of this entry. On Monday, we took Kristin to the Nutty Squirrel to experience the Meat Raffle. The Gators were playing in a bowl game, so we had beer, football, and the chance of winning frozen meat—it was the best of all possible worlds. Almost immediately, I won something for the first time. I selected a T-bone steak that weighed in at over one-and-a-half pounds. A short while later, Kathleen was called and she selected another T-bone. Now the only suspense centered on Kristin.

It had been a day of constant snowfall. I had shoveled our driveway every time a new 3 inches or so of fresh snow came down—three times in all. Then, before we left for the bar, I had to shovel again to remove the 2-feet-deep pile of the while stuff that had been plowed up in front of our drive. Because of all of the snow, the crowd at the Squirrel was thin. Thus, we thought Kristin had a good chance of winning meat of her own. Just then, we saw a familiar face walking toward our table (You have to love the way this happens in a small town). Our son Ben had been next door at Freeman’s Drug Store. Freeman’s is an old-fashioned, mom-and-pop drug store reminiscent of Gower’s store at which a young George Bailey worked in It’s a Wonderful Life. Ben had been picking up a prescription next door when he happened to glance into the window at the Nutty Squirrel and saw our festive group celebrating our meat winnings. He joined us for a beer. Then Kristin’s name was called. She selected a 7 ½ pound pork roast that had been eschewed by the college students who were probably mystified about how to cook such a massive piece of meat.

By this point, all of us were winners on a number of levels, so we headed for the door with ten pounds of frozen meat. At we walked out onto Main Street, the snow was still falling heavily. The fluffy white powder was illuminated by the Christmas lights still decorating the trees up and down the town’s primary road. I swear I could see George Bailey running down the street yelling in a scratchy, Jimmy Stewart voice, “Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old building and loan!” I felt like the richest man in town.

It was a magical moment and a fitting end to a great and eventful 2019 for us. I hope everyone has a wonderful 2020.

Raincoats and Tiaras: A River Falls Homecoming

As a small town, River Falls has a number of festivals, parades, and other events that provide continuity with the past and a sense of community for the present. In mid-October each year, they hold the homecoming weekend for the University of Wisconsin at River Falls and it is a region-wide affair.  Homecoming parades used to be a staple for, not just small-towns, but for every suburb and big-city neighborhood in America.  We were happy to see that River Falls continues this tradition even as it has disappeared in many other communities.

We had the grandkids for the weekend while Ben and Amber were out of town for a wedding. Homecoming weekend provided all of the entertainment we would need. On Friday night, the college showed the recent live-action re-make of the 1992 Disney cartoon, Aladdin. They also invited anyone in town to attend for free. We thought this would be perfect for both Abigail, age 9, and Lucas, age 6. The film was good, although less engaging than the original with Robin Williams as the genie, and the kids had a ball. I doubt that Lucas got all of the jokes, but he laughed whenever the audience did and added his own distinctive, infectious giggle when something tickled him. The students who hosted the event and handed out free popcorn were friendly, helpful, and welcoming. So far, I have seen none of the Town-versus-Gown tension that exists in many college towns. It may well occur, but it appears that the students and townspeople here seem to mix and mingle in an easy manner without conflict. Many of our favorite waitresses and bartenders have been students from UWRF, and we have found them in variably to be bright, outgoing, and helpful.

On Saturday morning, the kids were enticed to cease watching Garfield cartoons for a while by the promise of candy being tossed to the crowd by marchers in the parade. They brought plastic pumpkin containers with which to carry their anticipated bounty. The morning was cool (45-50 degrees) with light rain falling, but a two-block stretch of Main Street was already filled twenty minutes before the parade. Main Street in the downtown area is a wide thoroughfare with one lane in each direction and a median in the middle with benches, trees, and bike racks. Parallel parking is available for free on each side of the street, as well as on each side of the median.  The street was blocked off for the parade. Unable to find a good spot to stand along the storefronts, we picked a location across the street on the median. As it turned out, this was a fortuitous decision, as Abigail and Lucas were the only children in the immediate area.

While waiting for the parade to begin, I noticed something else about River Falls: little kids don’t mind the cold. Adults talk about the weather all the time and speculate about the coming winter. Kids like Abigail and Lucas, however, love the snow and the cold. On Christmas vacation two years ago, the temperature was below zero, and the kids had a house full of new toys. All they wanted to do, though, was go outside and play. In the summer, Amber has to force them to go out, and she sets a timer for 30 minutes, encouraging them to do something—anything—that will get them out of the house for a while. So, as the adults shivered under umbrellas and waited for the parade, a bunch of kids were in the middle of the street dancing and playing in the puddles of water. It was heartening to see children in spontaneous play without toys or electronic devices.

Finally, we heard some commotion: the parade was beginning. A Scottish bagpipe unit came first. A relative of mine—one I don’t recall ever meeting—won a bagpipe scholarship to Maclester College in nearby St. Paul, so perhaps there were a lot of Scots who settled in the area along with all of the Scandinavians and Germans. The pipers were followed by the middle-school marching band. This band was impressively large for such a small town. After that, we saw a group of middle-aged men (or older) riding in tiny go-carts with fezzes carefully protected by specially made plastic coverings. These, I knew, were Shriners. They drove their undersized vehicles in figure eights and other interlocking formations for a few minutes before moving on. Then came . . . another Shriners group from another town nearby. Then another. And another.  They came on miniature motorcycles, small cars, and other minute modes of transportation. They came on Harleys and firetrucks. There must have been 8 or 10 groups of Shriners from Wisconsin and Minnesota. I know that the Shriners are a fraternal group that raises money for Children’s hospitals and burn units. Aside from that, the clubs seem to be an excuse for middle-aged men (or older) to re-live their childhoods by riding around on cars and bikes better suited to young kids. And, somehow, I’ll bet beer is involved. That all sounds fine to me, and the show was entertaining, but our grandkids were growing impatient and wondering when the candy would arrive.

Finally, the girls’ soccer team from UWRF came down the street. Some were crammed into a pick-up truck, but others walked alongside or behind the truck tossing candy to the kids. This was the moment for which Lucas and Abigail had been waiting. After the soccer team came the volleyball girls and the track and cross-country team and the golf team. Every squad except the football team (which was probably getting ready for the game) was represented. There were cheerleaders and dance squads as well. And each group brought candy and plenty of it. About then, we noticed that Abigail and Lucas were the only kids in our area. The college kids invariably spotted them, came over, and put a handful of candy in their plastic pumpkins. It didn’t hurt that Lucas’s luminous yellow sweatshirt shone like a beacon of light on the gloomy day. Several people mentioned the brightness of his shirt.

The sports teams were followed by some monstrous, J. I. Case tractors representing various agricultural groups. These things had to be 10 feet high with double wheels all around. Truly impressive. Finally, the homecoming court arrived, but it wasn’t what we expected. I guess we thought it would be girls all dolled up, with beautiful gowns and half-a-pound of make-up. Instead, the girls wore practical, jeans-and-sweater outfits, sometimes covered by a clear raincoat. Make-up, which would run in the rain, was also absent, and, indeed, unnecessary on girls that young. The homecoming queen was easy to pick out because of the tiara on her head. The choice of clothing pointed out another difference that we have noticed between River Falls and Nashville. These people dress pragmatically, for the weather, rather than trying to impress anyone with their ensemble. After the college court, the homecoming queens and courts from several other local high schools followed. My guess is that many of the schools are from towns too small to have a parade of their own, so they consolidate them into the one at River Falls. The common link was that they all dressed in that same, unpretentious way, with raincoats and tiaras.

As we walked back to our car after the parade, the kids struggled to carry their bulging pumpkins and noted that they had hauled in more candy than they had all night last Halloween.  Kathleen and I anticipated a sugar-high that would have them bouncing off of the walls at mid-night. As we got in the car, Abigail, who generally, at best, grudgingly tolerates her younger brother, said, “Next year, Lucas, you have to make sure you wear that sweatshirt again!”

Day 3: Small-Town Life

September 16, 2019

After arriving in town on the weekend, we set aside Monday to do some of the other things we had to do to prepare to move into our new home. As veterans of many moves in the past, we figured that we would be waiting in long lines most of the morning, accomplish one or two things, and limp home at lunch beaten down by mindless bureaucrats. That’s the way it had always been in the past. This was different. First of all, virtually all of the businesses in town are situated on Main Street, a thoroughfare that bisects the entire town and covers perhaps a mile or a mile and a half or two miles. For my entire life, I’ve wanted to live somewhere in which I could walk to breakfast. Now I have that. It turned out that everything we needed in River Falls was within a few blocks of each other.

We had breakfast at the South Fork Café and, at 9:00 walked a block down Main Street to The First National Bank of River Falls. We thought we might have to wait, because we had no appointment. The woman with whom we had worked in the past and who had set up our account on the phone saw us walk in, however, and came to greet us with a big smile and a hug. She spoke in the cheerful, sing-song manner of speech common up here (“How ya doin’ guys?”) and turned us over to a woman who helped us get checks and debit cards. Done by 9:20.

Our next stop was city hall, a half-block off of Main, to put the utilities in our name and find out how all of that worked. It turned out that electricity, water, garbage collection, and recycling was all on one account and one bill. We were done in five minutes, and they directed us to the gas company. I was beginning to like this town.

In our longest trip of the morning, we drove about four blocks over to 2nd Street, one block off of Main. We explained that we weren’t even sure if our home needed gas or if it was all electric. The clerk turned to her computer and prepared to type in our address, but when we told her what it was, she said, “Yep; you have gas.” Didn’t need to look it up; she knew most of the addresses in town and whether or not they had access to gas power. My affection for small towns was growing.

At the post office, also on 2nd Street, we explained that we were staying at our son’s house temporarily, until our closing on September 30. We were having our Nashville mail forwarded there and wanted the delivery man to know so that he would not be confused by the new names at that address. She jotted this info on a post-it note and said, “Yep, yep; I’ll let him know.” No forms to fill out, no computer entries, a post-it note!

Back on Main Street, we found the State Farm office, and walked in, stepping over a sleeping dog just inside the door. We soon discovered that most River Falls businesses seem to have a policy that says, “No appointment, no problem.” In minutes we were in an office with a young woman explaining that we needed to change our address and some other things on our policy. When we gave her our new address, she smiled and said, “I just hung up the phone after talking to John, the previous owner of that condo.” Small world, small town.

In short, we finished all of our business, had time to go shopping (the grocery store was on Main Street—where else?), and returned home by 11:00.

I think I’m going to love small town life.