WannaskaWriter

Memories of a Great Sister     Ginger was almost 19 years old when I was born. The story was that my mother’s pregnancy didn’t show until very late and rumors had begun that I was actually Ginger’s child.     Ginger’s fondness for me fostered her sense of humor, for just as certain individuals take peculiar glee in tying strings onto a cat’s tail, putting scotch tape on their feet or annoying them with laser lights, Ginger began propping me up on sofas and in chairs, and dressing me in girl’s clothes, Puerto Rican straw hats and big sunglasses then photographing me for family photo albums and to show her friends. Thank goodness there was no YouTube or FaceBook at that time.     I just have to seriously doubt that neither my mother or father, nor Ann Marie or Sandra, took all those pictures of me naked or sitting on the potty chair, so the person I long suspected was, of course, Ginger. It was always Ginger.     Ginger appears t...

I sped west toward home along Roseau County Road 8, listening to CBC late-night radio’s, “As It Happens” feature provided by NPR. Driving ahead of my headlights, a dim view at best, I saw what I thought was a small animal’s body lying in my lane. I swerved into the vacant eastbound lane to avoid hitting what I thought was a dead skunk, yet in passing, saw it wasn’t a skunk. What was it? I slowed the car, stopped and reversed. Peering into my side mirrors I steered the car backwards using the solid white line on my left and the yellow dashes of the center line, illuminated by my backup lights, on my right. I backed-up beyond the carcass, returning gradually into the westbound lane. Stopping, I drove forward until my headlights shone on a feathered lifeless body. “Maybe a hawk.” I thought aloud, walking toward it, “But this late at night? Hawks wouldn’t be out now.”   Nudging it with my boot, I saw its feathered-toes and clenched talons, and a partially-extended, short, powerful-loo...

"Mrs. Vegan" Spying its maroon and gold coloration wedged fortuitously between the gumball machine and Erxdman’s partition, and smiling his best Bank smile as she edged timidly past, Mac Furlong deftly snatched the fletching from the Uptown Bank carpet as would a heron snatch a minnow from a stream, his long right leg swept behind him as counterbalance, his long left arm and fingers stretched beyond his camouflage shirt cuffs, just as frail Lillian Vegan, from Wanasaka, Minnesota’s longest-serving rural community elementary school teacher, cautiously exited the Bank near the ATM machine. Furlong’s off-set leg, protruding out as he had thrust it, the heavy-lugged sole of his Merrell® hiking boot, fairly snarling as it was, punctuated poor Mrs. Vegan’s cane with whose owner he had just previously shared an animated conversation about a grammatical error he had made in one of his deer hunting stories, that was to be published in a wonderfully-wrought local magazine called The Ra...

I've deleted several posts today including all the Sven & Ula fictional series stories. One of the fictional characters vaguely resembled a living person who took offense, and requested I remove the character from the stories. After writing an email to a friend today about my dilemma, I outlined my relationship with this person and in doing so realized I am indeed in error of its characterization. I recognized my motivation, benign as it was, and decided the right thing to do was trash the whole series until I can do a rewrite without that character existing. It is possible, not easy, but possible... I'll just have to use my imagination. --WW

   "Walking the Pembina Trail," with Jackie Helms, Tom Thronsedt, and Orlin Ostby's family: his wife, Amanda, their 15 year old son Christopher and 12 year old daughter Catherine for the better part of 400 miles in the sweltering heat and winds of July and August 2008 from Pembina, ND to St. Paul, MN in commemoration of Minnesota's 150th birthday--then have it 'suddenly' end sort of leaves me with an empty feeling, although we accomplished what we set out to do.  I wondered about this end-of-trail syndrome. Taking the opportunity, I asked two women who participated in the Sesquicentennial wagon train that traveled from Cannon Falls, Minnesota to the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul in May of 2008 about it. They had said the trip had been a good one but they were glad it was over so they could get back to real beds and hot showers. They had walked for five days and covered 150 miles... What would we think after 50 some days and 400 miles?      Reviewing the ...

Off The Beaten Path         I had long felt I was a country boy in a city boy's body. After learning I wasn't going to be drafted for Vietnam, in 1971, I took the opportunity to purchase my uncle Martin Davidson's farm that was for sale in Roseau County, Minnesota. This 160 acre farm of dense woodland and flowing water resides in a township named after my great grandfather on my mother's side named Louis Palm, a Swedish immigrant, the first settler in the area.     Owned by my mother's younger sister and her husband, this farm was my favorite place to visit all the summers we came north to see her mother, sister, brothers and cousins throughout my childhood. This farm and the surrounding community embodied the mystery of natural timberland, open fields, creeks and rivers, and wild animals I would never see in Iowa including black bears and timber wolves; one of the best things I remember treasuring about it was that there were so few people t...

  That's where we live, appreciably far off the beaten path the rest of the 21st century takes. Having returned from another walk with the Orlin Ostby family of Gatzke, Minnesota who are reenacting in part, a 420 mile walk along portions of the Pembina Trail with ox and two-wheeled cart undertaken by Delmar Hagen in 1958 for Minnesota's 100th birthday, for Minnesota's 150th birthday this year, I return home thankful to live out of everyone else's way. Oofdah for traffic! Where is everyone going all in a rush? Four dollar a gallon gasoline hasn't stopped them all...   It may be dull here in comparison to all the hubbub of the urban areas but it's always been my great retreat, this opportunity to step out of the mainstream, to savor silence (though I admit, in increasingly rarer moments even around here), to acknowledge the seeming closeness of the Milky Way overhead after I get home from work, witness the northern lights, recognize the melody of a meadow lark or ...