Mankato Magazine

Friday Night Lights Behind the scenes of an American tradition

also in this issue: Culinary hidden GEMS Get to know the FRIGHT folks Halloween FICTION by Colin Scharf

OCTOBER 2019

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FEATURE S OCTOBER 2019 Volume 14, Issue 10

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Friday Night Lights On fall Friday nights in southern Minnesota, it’s all about the pigskin. But there’s just as much fun happening off the field as there is on it.

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Culinary gems

Dark shadows ...

Sure, you could dine at the old standbys this month. But why would you when we’ve got this great list of hidden gems? From El Salvadoran cuisine to trusty ol’ burgers, your next great adventure awaits.

Sometimes, you just need a good scare. So we turn to noted horror fiction writer Colin Scharf to make us afraid of the dark, at least for a little while.

ABOUT THE COVER If it’s fall in Minnesota, then it’s time for FOOTBALL! Our cover photo this month was taken by Punter Jackson Forderer.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 3

DEPARTMENTS 6

From the Editor

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Faces & Places

12 This Day in History 13 Avant Guardians

Robert (Jake) Dickinson

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14 Beyond the Margin

Mankato exceptionalism

16 Familiar Faces

Eric Weiss & Jennifer Nielsen

24 Day Trip Destinations Wabasha Street Caves

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34 Deep Valley Book Festival 36 Wine

Funny words about wine

37 Beer

Familiar patch

38 That’s Life

On being a better person

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40 Garden Chat

Thoughts on buckthorn

42 Community Draws

Pageant and Singalong

43 Coming Attractions 44 From This Valley A trip to Alaska

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Coming in November We’ll feature young farmers.

507.625.6412 | SchmidtMankato.com MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 5

FROM THE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

By Robb Murray

OCTOBER 2019 • VOLUME 14, ISSUE 10 PUBLISHER Steve Jameson EDITOR Joe Spear ASSOCIATE Robb Murray EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS Bert Mattson Grace Brandt James Figy Jean Lundquist Kat Baumann Leigh Pomeroy Nell Musolf Pete Steiner

PHOTOGRAPHERS Pat Christman Jackson Forderer

PAGE DESIGNER Christina Sankey ADVERTISING Danny Creel SALES Joan Streit Jordan Greer-Friesz Josh Zimmerman Marianne Carlson Theresa Haefner ADVERTISING Barb Wass ASSISTANT ADVERTISING Sue Hammar DESIGNERS Christina Sankey CIRCULATION Justin Niles DIRECTOR

Mankato Magazine is published by The Free Press Media monthly at 418 South Second St., Mankato MN 56001.

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For editorial inquiries, call Robb Murray at 344-6386, or e-mail rmurray@mankatofreepress.com.

For advertising, call 344-6364, or e-mail advertising@mankatofreepress.com.

6 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Are you ready for some football?!

F

ootball is a curious thing.

What is it about this game — full of bone-crushing hits and long periods of inaction — that captivates so many of us during the fall?

It’s not a difficult question to answer.

When leaves begin to turn and temps dip a little, we yearn for places to gather. And what’s better than gathering with your community on a Friday at a place where youth are celebrated?

This month in Mankato Magazine, I took a stab at a story I’ve been wanting to write for several years, and you’ll find it a few pages in.

It’s called Friday Night Lights, a headline stolen from the film and television show of the same name.

Like those on-screen stories, we point our lens away from the field to reveal a world of life happening in the bleachers, under the bleachers, in the press box, on the sidelines, and in the hearts of everyone who makes that weekly pilgrimage to their local football field.

Among the gems I came across is 10-year-old William Barbknecht, who literally walked by me while proclaiming to his buddies that he cared little about the game and just wanted to hang out with his friends. We also found Mary Lee Androli, who needs absolutely no introduction in the city of Waterville.

In her 70s, Androli has been involved in every facet of game day.

She never misses one, and still keeps Ibuprofen and Band-Aids in her purse just in case. We spoke with cheerleaders, game announcers, trumpet players and hot dog sellers.

We hit up parents, fans and school officials. The resulting story, I think, gets to the heart of what is so special about Friday nights in southern Minnesota. The games are fun. But more importantly, they give us a

place to come together as a community.

This month’s issue also includes a journey around the region to some hidden culinary gems that might not be on your radar. From the El Salvadoran food at La Pupuseria in Owatonna to the famous burgers at Fairmont’s Channel Inn, we’re giving you enough fodder to fill your tummy and broaden your palate with stuff you’ve maybe never tried before.

In the mood for a good scare? We summoned the darker demons in writer Colin Scharf’s mind to bring you a creepy tale from the shadows.

Around here we love Halloween, and we love giving people reasons to not want to turn out the lights at night. Read … if you dare!

And speaking of frights, you don’t want to miss our Familiar Faces feature this month, which introduces you to the creators of the Northern Frights haunted attraction at the Garden City fairgrounds.

Northern Frights was recently named a top haunted attraction in Minnesota, so we plumbed the minds of the twisted individuals who come up with all the sick and demented scenes in the dozens of rooms at Northern Frights. You won’t be disappointed.

Finally, I’d draw your attention to our comic, Community Draws.

Artist Kat Baumann continues to impress with unique and fun takes on events that make this community shine, such as the upcoming singalong and pageant featuring the music of “Rocky Horror” and Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” album.

Robb Murray is associate editor of Mankato Magazine. Contact him at 344-6386 or rmurray@ mankatofreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @freepressRobb.

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FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

Blues on Belgrade

This annual blues music festival takes place in lower North Mankato.

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1. Dana and Arnie Arlt having a good time dancing to the live music.

2. Kids dance on stage as City Mouse play a live set.

3. Ron Arsenault, from City Mouse, playing the acoustic guitar and singing.

4. Crowds pack Belgrade Avenue, North Mankato, as Blues on Belgrade kicks off.

5. Pets had to stay hydrated, too.

6. Noah Kreft with his thumbs up enjoying his first time at Blues on Belgrade.

7. Drummer Donna Dahl smiles as she plays during the Tas Cru live set.

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FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

Alive After 5 This event brings live music and food vendors on Thursdays in late summer.

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1. Rhonda Johnson signing with the High & Mighty band.

2. R&B ground High & Mighty played a live set during the third Thursday of August.

3. David Suchoski playing the saxophone with the High & Mighty Band.

4. People enjoying live music and a sunny warm evening at the Alive After 5 event.

5. Freelance artist Malia Wiley paints a kitten.

6. Large crowds gathered to enjoy the live performance from the High & Mighty band.

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 9

FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

National Night Out

This event aims to promote unity among neighbors through block parties or other gatherings.

1. Taylor Rohrich having a good time playing with the diggers.

2. The Eagle Lake Fire Department made an appearance.

3. Signing Cowgirl, Lisa Murphy, plays her guitar and sings.

4. Families got to play with the ‘Parachute’ play section.

5. Bailey Rohrich throws a frisbee at the Frisbee Golf play area.

6. People watching a goldfish race at the event.

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FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

Fire Safety Day at Children’s Museum 1. Plastic fire hats were handed out to kids to get into the spirit of Fire Safety Day. 2. Smokey Bear made an appearance for the Fire Safety Day at the Children’s Museum.

3. Sparky the Fire Dog waves to children.

4. Justin Devens smiles for a photo inside a fire truck.

5. Lance DeJonge and his daughter Hadlee having fun with the water cannon.

6. John, a paramedic with the Ambulance Service of MAYO Clinic, shows kids the inside of an Ambulance.

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 11

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Superior Quality and Fast Printing!

Compiled by Jean Lundquist

Beer parlors serving minors, father claims Tuesday, Oct. 9, 1934 Paul Fleischman had a 15-year-old daughter in 1934 when he visited the Mankato City Council with a complaint about beer parlors in the city serving high school children. One evening, he told them, he counted between 12 and 18 teenage girls in one parlor, including one as young as 14. The problem was especially prevalent on evenings when there was music for dancing. Mayor Charles Mayer told him all proprietors would be told to keep minors out, but that with 90 such establishments, the police would not be able to monitor all of them. He applauded the help of citizens like Fleischman, and said, “We’ll tell them to tighten things up.”

Pool users top million Wednesday, Oct. 4, 1963 The pool at Mankato High School hosted its millionth swimmer in October 1963. The lucky family was the Vernon E. Bigham family of North Mankato.

Artcraft Photo awarded the family a camera in honor of the milestone.

Although close to 100,000 people used the pool in 1962, the city Recreation Council members expected usage to dwindle now that the pool at Mankato State College and the YMCA were also put into service in ’63. The pool opened in fall of 1951, when the high school was opened. Groups from as far away as St. James used to come to use the pool, but now, St. James had also opened an indoor pool.

Corporate Graphics

No water at Madison Lake Thursday, Oct. 8, 1959 A water pump motor in the city went defective early in the morning and was in Mankato being repaired while the residents of the city hoped there would be no fires. Water was expected to be restored the next day. Meanwhile, city residents were counting on well water from rural friends, and the Eagle Lake Fire Department for fire protection. School was dismissed for the day at both All Saints School and the public school. The trouble began late Wednesday night when a downspout leading from the pump to the mains came apart.

The resulting flood roared through the fire station and shorted out the pump.

Ed Langworthy to defend husking title next week Tuesday, Oct. 9, 1934 The eighth annual corn-husking contest was slated for the Isadore Veroeven farm east of Mankato near the Magley School house on Oct. 18. In the hotly competitive race, Ed Langworthy would be defending his 1933 title. Isadore Veroeven, who held the championship title for several years, was another hot contender. In all, eight contestants would be allowed to compete for the right to attend the state championship to be in Steele County, and then the national contest near Fairmont. Each contestant will have 80 minutes, and when the time is up, the husker with the largest load of corn will be chosen to represent Blue Earth County going forward.

Corporate Graphics 1750 Northway Drive North Mankato, MN 56003

800-729-7575 www.corpgraph.com

Scouts’ head haunter hones skills Wednesday, Oct. 28, 1977 By day, Harlan Schmidt was an engineer. But after hours, he was the brains and the “head haunter” behind the Scout Troop 76 haunted house for Halloween. Friday through Monday, the spooks and monsters haunted the second floor of the Minnegasco Building on South Front Street. The Scouts, led by scoutmaster Merrill Frydendall from Christ the King Lutheran Church, were in their fifth year of scaring people silly for a dollar a head. Schmidt warned that the house was too frightening for very small children “unless they have a really big Daddy.”

AVANT GUARDIANS

By Leticia Gonzales

R

A Dickinsonian experience

obert (Jake) Dickinson is burning the candle at both ends to excel as a painter in southern Minnesota.

Dickinson not only works full time as an overnight general maintenance worker at Minnesota State University, he is also a full-time student at the college in his last year to complete his bachelor’s in fine arts in painting.

While he has always had an interest in art, Dickinson said his journey in the art field has ebbed and flowed.

“I first went to college at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and I went there for about a year,” he said. “After that I stopped working on my artwork, thinking that being an artist was out of my reach.”

He soon found himself in New York City where he lived with a couple of working artists.

“One of them allowed me to tag along to the different vending shows and festivals she sells her art at. I learned a lot about marketing artwork from her.”

The past four years as a student has allowed Dickinson to become more involved in the art community.

He has exhibited work at MSU in the student gallery, at the Fillin’ Station coffee shop in downtown Mankato and in the Carnegie Art Center juried show.

Dickinson spends about 20 hours a week on his artwork with his main medium oil painting.

“I like the versatility and the color of oil paint,” he said.

“I also use ink and charcoal to substitute for black oil paint; this helps create more interesting areas of black.”

His inspiration is often derived from other works of art.

“I search through old photos, and then through the process of reproduction, I find the message that I want the painting to have,” he said.

The themes in his art also tend to fluctuate, depending on the mood.

“I like painting people. Generally when I do, the painting takes on certain emotional qualities such as loss or uplifting spirituality.”

He is preparing for an exhibition at the 410 Project, which runs Nov. 8-24.

“The show will feature three large full-body portrait paintings and nine smaller portraits paintings,” Dickinson said. “Each of the portrait paintings is of someone who has had a ‘great’ influence on modern day collective psyche. The show is about perception and the power of ideas, in general, a study of the occult or realms beyond normal human understanding.”

Some of those influencers include Grigori Rasputin, Aleister Crowley and Helena Blavatsky. As he prepares for his exhibition, Dickinson said he has been trying to refrain from overworking paintings to become more efficient.

“I only allow myself about 20 to 40 minutes to work on it, setting up a limited color scheme beforehand,” he said. “I did this project every day for about 150 days and I found a style had emerged that I liked. I am now trying to bring the style of these quick paintings to my larger works.”

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 13

BEYOND THE MARGIN

By Joe Spear

T

October brings winds of change

he winds grow stronger in October across the fields and through the woods of southern Minnesota.

The average wind speed in Blue Earth County in October is 14.6 mph at the Mankato Airport, according to the National Weather Service. That’s about 2 mph stronger than September and about 6 mph stronger than August. The prevailing winds often come from the southwest and from South Dakota.

Wind is often used as a metaphor in writing as in the song “Wind of Change” by the German rock/heavy metal band the Scorpions. The song from the 1990s references the freedom East Germans secured after the fall of the Berlin Wall and has 29 million views on YouTube (and 194 million plays on Spotify).

You might say people gravitate toward change, especially when it involves freedom.

Bob Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a kind of metaphor for how uncertain and arbitrary things can be. Dylan says answers to tough questions are “blowin in the wind,” leaving open the idea that the answers are out there but both easy and difficult to find.

It was an anthem for the Civil Rights movement.

I’m no expert on Native American culture, but it seems Mother Nature and her children the wind, rain and thunder figure largely into the peace and respect that characterizes the culture.

The answer to the question of the causes of Mankato exceptionalism seems as elusive as the wind.

It’s an exceptionalism that can be defined in observable events and people. But why it exists for a few miles on the banks of the Minnesota River remains a question that more than a few have pondered.

How people work together in Mankato is a phenomenon that has city leaders from Brainerd to Pipestone wondering how one place can have so much cooperation in a divided world. The Mankato area stands as a city on the move and a vibrant place to live.

The numbers of jobs, wages and other measures of prosperity are detailed in regular reports. Low crime, spiffy looking downtowns and well-groomed neighborhoods are part of the landscape. Stunning hills, valleys and prairies make up the countryside.

The culture supports the arts and entertainment from a world class university theater at Minnesota State University to top-notch Division I hockey. Art is embraced. Charity is a virtue, and empathy is a growth industry.

Mankato became the first Fair Trade city in Minnesota in 2011 and Loyola High School stands as the first Fair Trade high school.

The generosity of Mankato also exceeds the norm.

Donations to the United Way reach $2 million annually and continue to increase. That has been measured

by United Way nationally as a very high per capita

14 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

donation level.

The $10 million VINE senior center was built with significant community donations.

We have clubs that bolster the ranks of volunteerism. The downtown Kiwanis club that has been putting on its Holiday Lights display for several years raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities. It’s a lesser-known fact that its members also volunteer to read to immigrant children in the schools.

And a community is only as good as how it supports its youngest and most vulnerable members. For that we have the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota, an incredible amenity for a city this size.

We have organizations like VINE that support the aging population. The YMCA and groups like the Boys and Girls Club (now MY Place) keep youth involved in healthy activities.

The BackPack Food program makes sure kids don’t go hungry and has expanded across the region. The ECHO Food Shelf has long served an expanding need.

And while cultural diversity and cultural harmony remain goals instead of givens, the efforts at both are also remarkable with groups like the Mankato Diversity Council, which has been instrumental in starting those important conversations.

This goodness has impact. It shows up in the stories of hundreds of people who were going to stop for a school year in this city and ended up staying a lifetime.

As one of those disciples of Mankato, I find how the people address their history to be the most compelling.

When I look at the remarkable peace and kindness coming from the Native American community in the reconciliation that started in the 1970s, I wonder if all of Mankato could be the spiritual recipient of that aura.

I’m not a believer in mystical things, but it seems there may be some connections that transcend observable events or scientific evidence.

The reconciliation efforts have miraculously endured through times of racism, social movements, three major economic calamities and today’s returning racism.

Yet, every September, Native Americans, whose ancestors were unjustly killed in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, come back to celebrate their culture in the most unlikely of places. And they share that culture with hundreds whose ancestors banished them from their own land.

Last year, Mankato celebrated Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day for the first time. It’s another example of exceptionalism.

The celebration will be bigger and better this year.

There will be a Native American Blues band. There will be Native American food. There will be study and discussion of our unfiltered history here in Mankato

and the cultural devastation brought by the Dakota War. And in this highly educated community, there will be reflection.

The amount of forgiveness is overwhelming if one thinks about or studies it. Who would ever come back to a place where the genocide of their people was contemplated and made law by the Legislature.

The Dakota believe death is part of the journey, not an end, and that the deceased “walk on” to an afterlife that is free from pain and suffering. Perhaps the 38 are still with us in Mankato and in some way, shape or form, lead us to walk on to our exceptionalism.

The spirit of our indigenous people plays into the bounty of good that has descended on Mankato. And it won’t be long before the man who sings eloquently

about the power of the wind will be back here.

Bob Dylan, the first songwriter to ever win the Nobel Prize for literature, will be playing a few blocks from where the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature wrote about the flaws of Gopher Prairie.

It’s a remarkable coincidence. Another for Mankato.

Sinclair Lewis wrote “Main Street” as a criticism of small-town parochialism, and Dylan had his own view of that.

The winds of change are blowing, and that’s good for all of us.

Joe Spear is editor of Mankato Magazine.

Contact him at jspear@mankatofreepress.com or 344-6382. Follow on Twitter @jfspear.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 15

FAMILIAR FACES

A right-good FRIGHT! The Northern Frights haunted attraction in Garden City is gaining more fans, and getting scarier, every year

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Photos by xxx

NAMES:

Eric Weiss & Jennifer Nielsen OCCUPATIONS: Owner & Manager

HOMETOWNS:

Mason City IA, Mankato MN

FAVORITE SCARY MOVIE: “Saw” Movies, “The Conjuring”

16 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

elp, it’s that time of year again folks, the time when all brave southern Minnesotans must make a very important decision, one that could very well impact the course of the rest of their year. That choice: to go, or not go, to a haunted attraction during the Halloween season.

And folks, when it comes to haunted attractions, we’ve got one of the best here right now. Northern Frights, now in its third season at the historic and beautiful Blue Earth County Fairgrounds, was recently ranked the No. 2 haunted attraction in Minnesota by Minnesotahauntedhouses.com.

I’ve been there. It’s amazing. But don’t take my word for it. Read the reviews: • “We drove for about an hour and half to visit Northern Frights and we were not disappointed. In fact we were amazed at the things they have in the haunt. The set design of haunted houses were creepy and original.

Attention to details can’t be missed. My BF liked the phobia house. I am frightened by spiders, and that house had quite a few of them. Actors’ performance was topnotch. Worth the time and the drive.”

• “Love the setting, you feel like your in the middle of nowhere which adds to the scares! There is so much detail in all the rooms and the costumes and makeup are fantastic! I love that there are multiple attractions to go through. Great night out!”

• “We had heard good things about Northern Frights and decided to make the almost 2 hr drive to check it out. So glad we did, the location at an old Fairgrounds really set the mood. The Haunts were awesome and left us running out of every building. The 3-D one was super cool!!!”

We threw a few questions to owner Eric Weiss and manager Jen Nielsen.

Mankato Magazine: What made you decide to get into the haunted attraction game?

Eric Weiss & Jennifer Nielsen: I own another local business, Bid Kato Online Auctions and deal with business liquidation very frequently. Thru Bid Kato I had the opportunity to purchase the contents of an entire haunted attraction. I knew very little about it other than it was in two semi-trailers and a 40-foot shipping container. It was originally purchased with the intention of liquidating everything. That decision quickly changed as we started to unpack the trailers. There was so much cool stuff in the trailers which really piqued my interest in the industry.

I remember going to the haunted hayrides out at Meadowbrook stables and decided Mankato can’t go without a haunted attraction in the area. I had very little knowledge about operating a haunted attraction but knew I

could pull it off with my business background and technical knowledge. I found a very creative manager in Jennifer and we set out to build it together. Our first stop was the Transworld Halloween convention in St. Louis which was vital to building what we have today. After that, everything just fell into place.

MM: What’s been the most challenging part of scaring people?

EW&JN: Logistics. Most people just see the final product, but they never think about everything that goes into building it. We almost failed right out of the gate. We had a hard time finding a location that fit our needs. It was June of our first year before we reached out to the Blue Earth County Fairgrounds. It turned out to be a great setting and the fair board was very willing to work with us.

We had another big hurdle with meeting state fire codes.

Since there wasn’t a sprinkler system in the buildings, we had to have a fire crew onsite during open hours. Luckily the volunteer fire departments from surrounding cities stepped up to help us out. We can’t start building until after the County Fair so we have to set up everything you see out there in 8 weeks. Throw in hiring and training 80 actors, marketing, security and a number of other behindthe-scenes operations and it becomes quite a project. On top of that you have four weekends to make your revenue for the entire year. But it’s all worth it when you see people running out of the buildings laughing and screaming.

MM: Of all the things you’ve got on site, which are you most proud of?

EW&JN: Our Killer Clown 3D Attraction. It was a huge undertaking to build and design. Jen and her mom Trudy Nielsen spent most of our second summer painting in Jen’s garage. The visual effect of the 3D paint is absolutely mind blowing. To take something that looks flat and give it depth when you put on the 3D glasses is just amazing. It was so complicated to build we decided it was something we couldn’t tear down every year. The fair board was gracious enough to give us a building to use year-round so we could build it properly.

I am also super proud of our Management and Staff.

Our Tech Director Randy Steinberg creates 100% original soundtracks for ALL of the rooms, an absolutely huge undertaking. Britta Higginbotham, our staff coordinator, has a huge job with casting and wrangling all of the staff.

Elizabeth Wilson does unbelievable things as our makeup manager. She trains and teaches our younger makeup artists and art of FX Gore, and makes sure everyone is ready for showtime. Then of course there is our awesome staff, much of whom have been with us from the beginning.

We couldn’t do it without them, we may set the scene but, truly, they create the scares. They are the heart of Northern Frights. We are super proud of them.

MM: Psychologically speaking, why do you think people like to be scared?

EW&JN: I feel it varies for everyone. Some people love the adrenaline rush of getting scared. Others, like myself, just like to watch others get scared. It is entertainment to some and a rush for others. For a number of people it is overcoming their fears. We provide them an outlet to face their worst nightmares, which can help them with personal development in their own life. It can also be a bonding experience for groups or couples. Many guys feel like the hero protecting their girlfriend … and sometimes it’s the other way around.

One of my favorite moments from last year was watching

a group of two couples enter the Phobia’s attraction. All four of them entered through the claustrophobia tunnel, the next thing you know both men came running back out to the entrance. They had reached the sewer tunnel with Pennywise (the clown from the horror film “It”) and refused to go any further. They ditched the girls and came running back to the beginning saying they just couldn’t do it.

MM: Northern Frights was recently rated a top haunted attraction in Minnesota. What is it about Northern Frights that people love so much?

EW&JN: When we set out to build Northern Frights I said I will only do it if it is done right. I didn’t want the normal haunted house with the standard rooms and predictable “cheesy” scares. We set out to make our haunt unique from the start. Our main attraction is called Legends and many of the rooms are based off of Minnesota legends and stories. We have Paul Bunyan, Northern Lights, The Edmund Fitzgerald, Trapper, Devil’s Kettle and so many more all with Minnesota themes. I feel it is this originality that helps set us apart from the other Haunted Attractions in the State. Add in five other attractions with just as much creativity and you have a great experience for the night.

The setting at the Blue Earth County Fairgrounds, under the old-growth oaks in 100-year-old buildings adds to the experience.

MM: There’s another “It” movie out. Do pop culture icons like that ever influence decisions at Northern Frights?

EW&JN: Definitely. People relate to what is familiar to them. If you want to tap into their fears you have to know what is on their mind and how they think. Last year we built a sewer tunnel in the Phobia’s building with Pennywise.

The actor that played the part is a high school student at Mankato West. During his audition he did his Pennywise impression that was spot on and he really nailed the part.

Pennywise and the “It” movie were fresh in people’s minds, making that room one of the best scares in the building.

MM: As experts in the horror business, what in your opinions are the best horror films?

EW&JN: Movies that aren’t predictable. People have seen so many scary movies, you must find something new and something they don’t expect if you want a real scare.

Everyone knows what happens to the girl running away from the killer. She trips and falls and dies. I prefer films that tap into the psychological or supernatural scares, those that play on “true” stories as opposed to the blood and gut gross scares. Everyone has their own opinions on what scares them, which is one of our challenges each year.

MM: Give us your best pitch for why people should come to Northern Frights this year.

EW&JN: Northern Frights is southern Minnesota’s largest haunted attraction. We were recently voted the No. 2 Haunted Attraction in Minnesota by MinnesotaHauntedHouses.com. We have 6 unique attractions including Legends, Phobias, Killer Clowns in 3D, Gauntlet, Bloody Backwoods and Terror Tunnel.

Our wristbands give you unlimited access to the nightly attractions so you can get scared as many times as you want. We are kind of a hidden gem in the industry just outside of Mankato, you get the experience of one of the big cities’ haunts without the super long lines, and it’s in your own backyard!

Compiled by Robb Murray MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 17

The Mankato West student section.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS! Minnesota may be the state of hockey, but on those perfect fall Friday nights, it’s all about the gridiron

By Robb Murray

I

n Janesville, a 10-year-old kid in a football jersey stands under the bleachers of the football stadium and watches high school warm up before he races back to catch a pass thrown by a buddy. The parking lot is packed. Concession workers hand out hot dogs and brats like candy. Field lights come on. Trumpets and trombones warm up. Fans settle in on blankets and portable seat cushions. Somewhere on the field a leather ball is kicked and 22 players scramble for possession. It’s Janesville Vs. St. Clair, a classic Valley Conference matchup ...

In Mankato, two dudes dressed in “banana” 18 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

costumes are surrounded by the jumping, screaming, teeming, Hawaiian-shirt-clad denizens of the student section. The unofficial leaders of the section, they take the lead on the section’s traditional cheers and chants.

It’s a warm fall evening, and here comes the home team ready for action, hands clasped in unity as they rumble past — seniors up front — out to the gridiron. Kickoff is just moments away …

In Waterville, Mary Lee Androli settles in 45 minutes early. There is perhaps no one in town who has seen more Waterville football games than Androli. She attended Waterville High School. So did her late

husband. Her seven children all attended WHS. One of her son’s is on the coaching staff. Two grandkids are on the roster. Down the sideline, a cheerleading corps 20 strong and sporting brand new uniforms lines up in rows straight as arrows. And the town — seemingly all 1,800 of them — fills up the home side of the field. There are so many fans here the crowd spills around behind the end zones, a blanket of humanity wrapped around their football team.

Minnesota might be the state of hockey, but during fall — when tank tops give way to hoodies, trees transform into a symphony of color and Mother Nature gets ever stingier with her daylight — football reigns supreme, and all eyes turn to the Friday night lights.

Janesville-WaldorfPemberton Bulldogs Vs. St. Clair-Loyola Cyclones

Everything you need to know about Janesville High School, the community and the football team can be learned by talking to LeRoy Flitter and his son, Kolton.

LeRoy’s history in the Janesville school district was … not great.

Born with a developmental disability, Flitter saw some of the worst of how cruel kids can be. He recalled that, because of his disability, he’d need a teacher to read him the questions on his tests, an unorthodox test-taking routine that led some students to speculate that teachers were actually giving him the answers.

“When I was growing up, kids were constantly on me, and it got to me. They’d call me ‘retard,’” Flitter recalled.

His son’s journey through the Janesville school system, however, was much different. And much better. Kolton was born with autism. But instead of being called “retard,” he was given a chance to be a part of the football program.

Starting around fourth or fifth grade, coaches installed Kolton as the football team’s newest waterboy. And they allowed him to keep that job until he was 21, the year he graduated with honors from JWP. “If he was ever picked on,” LeRoy Flitter said, “the football players had his back.”

Kolton, wearing a JWP football

LeRoy Flitter and his son Kolton never miss a football game at JWP. Photo by Robb Murray jersey as he waited for the opening kickoff, was excited for the return of football at his alma mater.

“I like watching touchdowns happen,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I could be back at school with my friends.”

LeRoy said the way the team allowed his son to be part of the game meant a lot to him.

“Him being the waterboy … It made me proud,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe how good they treated him.”

Down the bleachers a bit, the JWP pep band was warming up. It was early in the season so attendance was a bit sparse; they had a one-man percussion section.

Plus, several band members were on the field. At a small school, kids tend to be involved in everything, so it’s a good problem to have. Still, a dozen or so musicians showed up, and that’s enough for a good National Anthem.

Adam Hille is the band director.

He’s only been here a couple of years, but he’s fully embracing the JWP Bulldogs’ particular brand of school spirit. He’s also done something that is somewhat unique to pep bands: he’s invited anyone from the community who can play an instrument to bring it along and sit it with the band.

One who took him up on that is teacher Kara Helgeson, a rookie science teacher at the high school.

She plays trumpet, and says she used to love being part of

Ortonville High School pep band.

“I was super excited about this opportunity,” she said. “I love pep band.”

The matchup against St. Clair was her first time participating, but she says she’ll most likely make pep band a regular occurrence. It’ll give her a chance to have some fun and show the students another side to their science teacher.

“So far it’s been really great,” she said. “Also, by doing this, the students will be able to relate to me in another way.”

Not everyone, though, is here to pay attention to the game. Like every high school football game, JWP has its share of kids who are here for many reasons, and the action on the field isn’t among them. In fact, if you would have been standing near the concession stand midway through the first half, you may have heard 10-yearold William Barbknecht, having just purchased a bottle of Mountain Dew, say this: “I don’t care about the game, I just came to play with my friends!”

Bingo.

But dude, why?

“I never get to play with them,” he said.

So, true to form, he busied himself by playing catch behind the bleachers, checking out the cheerleaders, and just basically running back and forth, having fun, not paying a lick of attention to the scoreboard or the game.

In other words, he was the typical Minnesota 10-year-old at a high school football game. Under the Friday night lights, you have the fun you came for.

Speaking of lights, the ones at JWP are just a few years old. The school district spent $4.2 million on this complex and it appears to have paid off. School board chair Kelly Heitkamp said the full parking lot is a new development. At the old place, that didn’t always happen.

Mankato West Scarlets Vs. Rochester John Marshall Rockets

Cam Stuve and Noah Makela are the best — and worst — dressed students at the game tonight.

They are the “bananas,” the students whose job it is to get the students fired up and to suck all the school spirit possible from every freshman, sophomore, junior and senior at the game. Because, at the end of the day, the louder and more

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 19

William Barbknecht, 10, loves football, but when he comes to the game, it’s the action behind the bleachers that’s more important to him. Photo by Robb Murray boisterous they are, the bigger impact they can have on the game.

Stuve and Makela really believe that a strong student section can impact the game’s outcome. So they’re going to do exactly what last year’s bananas told them to do.

“They told us to get hyped!”

Makela said.

Last year’s bananas also told them it would be a bad idea to miss a game.

“If you don’t go, you’re just a bad banana,” Makela said.

Truth be told, Makela is a “fill-in” banana. The previous year’s bananas chose Stuve and Stephen Schwartz, but Schwartz had a prior commitment and wasn’t able to make it to the first game of the year. Makela is his designated substitute.

Banana selection is a complicated process. There’s nothing official about it, but students say there is often lobbying or campaigning done to see who will be chosen to take up the mantle. In other cases, the banana line of succession is obvious and predetermined. A lot of it is based on friendships, though, so it helps to be in the “in” crowd. But more of it depends on school spirit and the ability to stand in front of the student section and lead chants of “LET’S GO SCARLETS!” Down the bleachers a ways, the pep band is set up and — wait, what? Where’s the band?

A quick text should answer this question.

Robb: Bruh where da band at?

Brady Krusemark: They’re not 20 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

there?!

Robb: You’re killin’ me.

Kruse: (Off the record comment.)

Robb: So seriously no band tonight?

Kruse: Correct. We start rehearsing next week.

Robb: I’m here writing about GameDay atmosphere and was really hoping for band.

Kruse: I’ll email everyone and see if they can make it down there real quick in the next 10 minutes.

Funny guy. So OK. No band. No dreamy prose about how good the West pep band is or exactly how much pep the pep band adds to the evening, which at West is a lot. Too bad we can’t get into it. You would have loved it. But alas ...

On the running track that encircles the field, West High School Principal Sherri Blasing is busy taking pictures of students.

With each touchdown — and there were a lot of them — a different pair of students descends from the bleachers and onto the track where they hoist Mankato West flags and run triumphantly down the length of the home-side bleachers. When they return to the gate, Blasing takes a quick pic. Some of those quick pics make their way to Twitter where Blasing has a solid student following.

“There is a tradition that the kids love to support each other,” Blasing says as she watches the students jump and scream and cheer because it’s now 42-zip. “I’ve seen kids go up and, you know, they’ll hear somebody swearing and they’ll go up themselves and say,

‘Nope, we don’t do that here.’”

Blasing said the game day atmosphere is something special at West.

“It’s just all about that school pride and the beginning of the year and kicking everything off and all the positive energy,” she said. “It kind of all comes out right here.”

By the way, West actually practices this game day stuff. At the beginning of the year the leaders of the Link Crew (a group that pairs freshmen with upperclassmen to help them adjust) as well as the pep band, the bananas and the girls’ version of bananas, the bibs, meet with all the freshmen and teach them about game day etiquette.

“They go through the National Anthem, they go through the school song then they practice some cheers with them and they just tell them what we’re about as Scarlets and that it’s about having a positive message and having fun.

The kids run that.

“I remember it was beautiful last year,” she continued. “I remember Hope Walz getting up and telling the freshmen, ‘We’re doing this because, when we were freshmen, we felt dumb because we didn’t know what was going on. We don’t want you to feel dumb. But if you do it’s OK, because we all felt dumb at one point.’”

Waterville-ElysianMorristown Buccaneers Vs. Lewiston-Altura Cardinals

Any complete telling of the story of Waterville football fandom must include, in some way, a chapter on Mary Lee Androli.

She’s got a great seat for every home game because she paid for it.

At a silent auction fundraiser for Waterville athletics, she paid a few hundred bucks to have four seats right under the press box riser.

There is probably no one who has seen more Waterville football games than Mary Lee. Now in her 70s, she’s got seven children and 17 grandchildren, each of whom went through the Waterville school system, and many of whom were on the field for the Buccaneers.

This season, she’s got two grandchildren on the roster.

To this day, she comes to each game prepared with a purse packed with bandages and Ibuprofen, and it’s not uncommon for a player to be dispatched to

Mary Lee for some grandmotherly care.

“The coach will usually say, ‘Go find where Mary Lee is, she’s probably got that,’” she said. “I really can’t wait for The Waterville-Elysian-Morristown pep band football season. plays before the start of a football game.

It’s really my favorite season this close to the action; there is no of the year. I would love it if it were track between the seats and field a lot longer than it is. I’d be just (as is the case at most high fine with that.” schools). Opposing teams don’t like Before she spent game days on a coming here, Atherton said, which prime bleacher seat, there was a adds to the mystique. The field has time when Mary Lee could be had some rough years where it’s found just outside the stadium less-than-ideal conditions had grounds serving hot soup, chili haters referring to it as “the cow dogs and barbecues out of a pasture.” camper to raise money for the Atherton said the answer to the booster club. That was back when question of what makes a game day she was a volunteer (sometimes as special in Waterville is really found the president) and was very actively in the mix of many factors. involved in, well, everything.

“Just high school football in “One time I made the football itself. Here we are on a beautiful players pull a plow in the night, smells like football, we have homecoming parade,” she recalled. the band out here playing — music “The coach wasn’t happy with me in general adds to the atmosphere. at all. But it was kind of cute in the You get school songs going, you parade to have a whole bunch of get the crowd into the game, you football players doing that for 15 get the student body pumped up. blocks around town.”

Cheerleaders, too. At most games During one particularly cold they’re right down on the season, Mary Lee fashioned hand sidelines.” warmers out of sewn sacks and Speaking of cheerleaders, no baked potatoes. She’d bring jugs of story about Friday Night Lights hot water and hand out hot cocoas would be complete without them. to players at halftime. Once, during And no cheerleading team in the the playoffs, the team arrived in St. region looks as sharp this year as Peter with the wrong jerseys and the Waterville team. Brand new so they sent Mary Lee back to uniforms. Twenty girls strong. And Waterville to get the right ones. people are noticing their spirit.

“I’m a go-to person,” she said.

Seanna Bartel is a senior We could go on for days about cheerleader. She joined for several Mary Lee. But we must move on. reasons, not the least of which is Just above Mary Lee, in the press the fact that the team is growing box, is Chad Atherton. He’s the and getting better. She played voice of Buccaneer games on the volleyball during her freshman radio. A former coach, he says he year, but gave it up after one year. discovered he’s kind of a natural Being a kid with a lot of school when it comes to announcing spirit, she attended athletic events football. and cheered on all the Waterville “I’m a non-typical radio teams. She decided to put her announcer,” he said. “I just kind of penchant for cheering to work and fly by the seat of my pants and joined the cheer team. So did 17 have fun doing it.” other girls. So now, in an era Atherton says the field itself in where many schools no longer Waterville is a major contributor to have cheer teams, Waterville’s is the game day atmosphere. It’s been actually growing. around for decades. State “After we had that big of a team championship runs have been born you honestly become like a family,” here. Proximity-wise, there are very Bartel said. “And we have 17 few fields where the fans can get

Top: Mary Lee Androli cheers the team on from her bleacher seats. Above: Waterville-ElysianMorristown cheerleaders hang out on the sidelines before the start of a football game in Waterville. Photos by Jackson Forderer seniors on the football team, so being able to be part of that is just awesome. You get to get close with the football players during the season, you get to make them locker tags and it’s just something that helps you get closer with everybody. Before we’d have teams of five or six girls, so now having 20 is amazing.”

When asked what she liked best about game days, Bartel gave a nearly perfect and positively on-the-nose rural Minnesota high school answer: “Seeing everybody in the stands getting so into it, and the parents, and having so many of us cheerleaders out here, and then afterward all of us plan to go to Perkins in Faribault, and we plan to go as a whole school, we sit there for an hour, football players, cheerleaders, fans, everything. It’s awesome.”

So that’s our look at Friday night lights, folks. Remember, a night of football in Minnesota is a gathering of the community. So head out to your local high school game. You’ll be glad you did.

MM

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 21

REFLECTIONS

By Pat Christman

22 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

I

n Minnesota, we celebrate every season. We skate and fish on frozen lakes to let the gods know they can’t break our spirit. In springtime, we sport shorts and tank tops as soon as the mercury creeps above 45. In summer, we pack in as much baseball, camping and patio happy hour-ing as possible. But autumn … that’s where we truly shine.

Few places on earth become as enchanting as the upper Midwest in autumn. An array of colors accompanies every drive through town, and the air becomes crisp reminder that changes are coming. Coffee cups in hand, we wear thick sweaters, watch football games and welcome that change with vigor.

Here’s Maya Angelou’s poem “Late October,” a perfect summation of the season: “Only lovers see the fall a signal end to endings a gruffish gesture alerting those who will not be alarmed that we begin to stop in order to begin again.”

MM MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 23

DAY TRIP DESTINATIONS: WABASHA STREET CAVES

By James Figy

The Wabasha Street caves are a must-see attraction.

Hidden History Tour the Wabasha Street Caves to learn about St. Paul’s buried past

T

ucked inside a bluff along the Mississippi River is a series of man-made caves full of stories. The Wabasha Street Caves contain some of St. Paul’s wildest history from the city’s founding through its period as a haven for gangsters of the 1920s and ’30s up to today.

Underground tours of the Wabasha Street Caves explore specific sections of the six parallel caves, connected by alcoves, that Donna Bremer owns along with her husband, Stephen. Some of the caves are completely unfinished, with damp sandstone walls.

A couple of them were renovated with stucco walls, chandeliers, a bar, stage and dance floor.

The Historic Cave Tour, which occurs at least three days per week year-round, highlights history from each era of the caves — from present day to prehistory.

“They were here before there was a state of Minnesota or a city of St. Paul so have an extensive history, including mushrooms and gangsters,” she said. “…There is always 24 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

something mystical about the underworld where you can experience complete darkness, unusual geology, lack of plant life and natural humidity.”

During a recent Historic Cave Tour, guide Blake Wanger said the caves contain 450 million years of geological history. But their story in St. Paul begins when they were first excavated in the mid-1800s to extract silica sand for the growing territory. This mineral was necessary to make glass for windows, bottles and other items crucial at the time.

Later on, several Frenchmen bought the caves to start a mushroom farm. The dank atmosphere made it the perfect place for a mushroom farm that operated in the caves until 1965. The brand — Lehman Farms — still exists today and sells pickled mushrooms and other goods throughout Minnesota.

In the 1920s, Josie and Bill Lehman, the daughter and son-in-law of one of the Frenchmen, renovated the caves

into one of St. Paul’s most elite, and infamous, clubs.

The Castle Royal restaurant was a place for wealthy, connected residents to dine, dance and listen to top musicians of the day, including big band leaders Tommy Dorsey and Cab Calloway. However, there were some less-than-upstanding regulars, too.

During that era, the presence of gangsters began to grow in the area. Wanger said there was a key reason for this. As a way to cut down on gangster-related crime, the St. Paul police made a proposal: The criminals would have a safe haven in the city, without any fear of being arrested, as long as they didn’t commit any crimes there.

“They went, ‘OK,’ and then they robbed Minneapolis,” said the tour guide, adding they just needed to speed back across the Mississippi River to be free from retribution.

Wanger underscored the connection between the city and gangsters by sharing a quote from Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, an associate of gang leaders “Doc” and “Ma” Barker: “If you were looking for a (gangster), … you usually thought of two places — prison or St. Paul.”

Castle Royal was no exception. During this era, people danced with John Dillinger at the restaurant, according to accounts from the club’s heyday. As can be expected, some notable, fatal crimes took place there as well, but those are best learned about on the tour.

In addition to the Historic Cave Tour, the caves are home to several others, including the spooky Lost Souls Tour that has numerous times throughout October leading up to Halloween. There are also many bus and walking tours throughout the year, such as the St. Paul Gangster Tour, Ghosts & Graves Tour and Bad-est Tour, as well as the Spirits & Shady Ladies adult walking tour that comes with a beverage.

“For bus tours, we do require reservations by calling us at 651-292-1220 and putting it on a credit card. The walking tours can be purchased 15 minutes before the tour at our location and we take cash only,” Bremer said, adding, “Service is suspect when you are in a cave.”

The caves still provide a great location for events as well. Swing dance nights take place every Thursday with a live band, and the facilities can be rented for wedding receptions and other events. It makes an unforgettable location, Bremer said. After all, she asked, “Where else can you go underground and celebrate where John Dillinger danced?”

IF YOU GO:

WABASHA STREET CAVES Historic Cave Tour When: 5 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m.

Saturday and Sunday year-round Admission: $9 Lost Souls Tour When: 12:30 p.m. Sunday year-round, with more dates and times in October Admission: $10 St. Paul Gangsters bus tour When: 12:00 p.m. Saturday year-round Admission: $30 Visit WabashaStreetCaves.com for more tours and information.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 25

Traxler’s Hunting Preserve offers some entrees you can’t get anywhere else, such as aligator or lion. File photo

Hidden culinary gems Sometimes we all need a little help adding spice to our dining-out lives. Here’s a handful of off-the-beaten-path stops you won’t regret.

By Grace Brandt

E

veryone has different tastes when it comes to food. Luckily, there’s something for everyone in the southern Minnesota area. You just need to know where to look. That means sometimes venturing outside Mankato to areas such as Amboy, Owatonna and Le Center, but the drive is worth it to sample delicious meals you can’t find anywhere else. Get off the beaten path and discover some of the culinary delights of these featured restaurants.

26 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Traxler’s Hunting Preserve

If you’re tired of the same ol’, same ol’ dinner staples, a restaurant in Le Center has got you covered. From September to March, Traxler’s Hunting Preserve offers “Wild Game Nights” every other Thursday, and the emphasis is definitely on “wild.”

Every Game Night menu offers patrons three options: the hunting preserve’s famous prime rib (always a best seller), bourbon chicken over rice and the “preserve platter.” That’s where the food gets

Pupuseria la Paz

weird. The platter features three different types of meat and is never the same twice. Past offerings have included mako shark, kangaroo, wild goat, wild sheep, moose, caribou, bear, elk, buffalo, alligator, stingray and even African lion.

“Everybody likes to go to places and try something different,” said Jeff Traxler, who has run the preserve for 31 years. “We definitely are different.”

Traxler opened his preserve in 1987, starting with a menu that was simply beer and pizza. But thanks to some talented chefs along the way, he eventually expanded to the wild menu available now.

Traxler said it’s surprisingly easy to obtain exotic meats from different meat and seafood suppliers.

Ranches in Texas supply quail, black buck and antelope, while a seafood company in Hawaii sent over live sharks for his crew to butcher and prepare. The lion came from a mission group that had received a donation from Traxler’s preserve. Of course, the preserve supplies the ducks, pheasants and partridges.

Besides the wild game offerings, the restaurant also serves desserts that are always made from scratch. In fact, everything from the dressings to the sauces to the soup is homemade.

The restaurant hosts these game night dinners from September to the end of March. Each event’s menu is posted on the preserve’s website a few weeks in advance, so people can know what to look forward to.

It’s a good thing, too, since people often need to make reservations early if they want a spot. Traxler said last year, the dinners were booked two weeks in advance the whole year.

“This thing has grown into a pretty exceptional dining destination for a lot of people,” he said. “The more people who come to it, the more they keep coming back.”

While most Minnesotans are familiar with the spicy flavorings of Mexican food thanks to an abundance of area restaurants — from La Terraza to Zanz — it’s trickier to find food from even farther south. You may have to venture all the way to Owatonna, but the trip is definitely worth it to visit Pupuseria la Paz, which features El Salvadorian food.

Opened in May 2015 by Elva Escobar, an El Salvadorian transplant, the restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside. But once you step inside, you’re hit with all the vivid colors and tantalizing scents of El Salvador. On one side of the intimate eating space (which only seats about 14), a bright flag displays a scene of women preparing pupusas. A short wall separates the tables from the kitchen, where meat sizzles on the grill.

The menu features a wide variety of dishes, but the most popular is definitely the pupusa. A cultural classic, the pupusa is a thick flatbread that’s made with cornmeal and stuffed with cheese, beans and pork. It’s accompanied by curtido, a spicy coleslaw made from cabbage, red peppers, carrots and a homemade oregano and vinegar dressing.

According to Elva Escobar’s daughter, Jackie Escobar, who has been working at the restaurant since last month, they probably serve about 300 pupusas every day.

“We sell (them) a lot,” she said with a laugh. “A lot of people who come, they always try that. I’ve never heard anything bad about them; (customers) always love them.”

Escobar said El Salvadorian food is different from Mexican food in that it isn’t as spicy. Meanwhile, pupusas feature bread that’s thicker than Mexican tortillas.

“It’s way different,” Escobar said. “In El Salvador, we don’t have tacos; we don’t have burritos. The flavor’s different.”

Other menu offerings include lengua (fried beef tongue), fried plantains, fried chicken seasoned with mustard, tilapia fish tacos, soups and tamales. People can also order sides of rice and beans, which are both popular.

Escobar said she’d recommend trying the fish tacos if people have already had their pupusas. The tilapia is cooked on the grill with some seasoning, and then they add a pico de gallo made of tomatoes, onions, cilantro and lemon.

But for her, it’s hard to choose the No. 1 menu item.

“Everything is my favorite,” she said.

She added that everything is prepared right at the restaurant, from the rice to the masa (a corn-based dough used for making the outside layers of pupusa).

Some foods are prepared about three days in advance, while others, such as the mozzarella for the pupusas, are made fresh every morning. In addition to Elva and Jackie Escobar, two other employees work at the restaurant.

Jackie Escobar said that people aren’t always sure what to think when they first walk into the restaurant, but they’re always won over by the end of their meal.

“A lot of people say, ‘I always pass by here and always want to try it, but I don’t know …’” she said. “I think because the outside looks really empty. But when they go inside, they love it. They love it because they say it feels like home, not like a restaurant.”

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 27

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Mankato | Amboy | Vernon Center | cimankato.com 28 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Amboy Cottage Café

Discerning eaters most likely are wise enough to stay away from most gas station food, but things are a little different at the Amboy Cottage Café.

The café was built as a gas station in 1928, moving a block over to its current location in 2000.

It seats about 30, with indoor and outdoor seating available, as well as a gazebo where two tables can be reserved. And while reservations aren’t necessary, they’re encouraged because the cozy place often fills up.

The café is run by owner Lisa Durkee, who saved the building from demolition and opened her restaurant in January 2001. Now, she offers a menu of made-fromscratch favorites such as soups, salads, sandwiches and meats. A garden outside provides herbs for the meals, while the backyard has a pear tree and elderberry bushes for pancake syrup. Other local meats, dairy and fresh produce are used whenever possible. Meals are served on antique plates. One thing you won’t find on the property, though, is a deep fryer.

Want to try a local staple? Order the Red Cow Burger, named for the story of how the city of Amboy came about in the 1870s. Farmers from Shelby Township wanted to raise money to construct a train station in town, and one local man had only one red cow with a broken horn to contribute. Now, the café features a statue of a red cow with one horn in its front yard, and a small percentage of each Red Cow sold is contributed to the Amboy Area Community Club.

The Cottage Cafe in Amboy is probably the cutest restaurant in the region. Food’s darn good, too. Photo by Robb Murray

Traxler’s Hunting Preserve

Channel Inn

Lots of restaurants like to say they’ve got the “best burger,” but there isn’t usually much to back up these bold claims. But for Channel Inn in Fairmont, they really do have the right to brag, considering their Channel Inn Special was featured as one of the “Most Divine Burgers” in the Midwest, in awardwinning author Jeff Hagen’s book, “Searching for the Holy Grill: The Most Divine Burgers in Minnesota, Wisconsin & Iowa..

The Channel Inn Special includes the Inn’s original burger, bacon, fried egg and cheese, and it’s a real crowd pleaser. But it’s just one of several burgers on the restaurant’s expansive menu, which also includes the Bleu Burger (with Canadian bacon, Swiss cheese and Bleu cheese), R-U-Nuts Burger

(with jalapeños, Pepper Jack cheese and BBQ sauce) and the S-S Combo (with sautéed green olives, mushrooms and Swiss cheese).

That’s not even getting into the Mahi Mahi fish strips, grilled chicken fillet, shrimp, breaded pork tenderloin and more.

Located on beautiful Hall Lake in Fairmont, the Channel Inn offers indoor and outdoor seating, along with live music most weekends in the summer. While the indoor atmosphere is definitely on the “bar” side of things, the outdoor atmosphere is second to none, with covered outdoor seating practically over the water, making it a favorite for friend groups and family outings alike.

(Note: The Channel Inn doesn’t accept credit cards, though there is an ATM on site.) MM

Where: 37699 Hunting Preserve Ln in Le Center When: Every other Thursday from September to March Phone: (507)-357-6940 Website: www.traxlers.com

Pupuseria la Paz

Where: 114 W Broadway St in Owatonna Phone: (507)-214-1236 Facebook: Pupuseria la Paz

Amboy Cottage Café

Where: 100 Maine Street East in Amboy Phone: 507-674-3123 Website: www.amboycottagecafe.com Email: cottagec@hickorytech.net, amboycottagecafe@gmail.com

Channel Inn

Where: 330 W Lair Rd in Fairmont Phone: (507) 238-9700 Facebook: Channel Inn MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 29

Mr.

Shadow

By Colin Scharf

W

ill we ever fully understand all the forces at work in this world? Terrible things happen and leave us like so much wreckage in the wake of a hurricane. All we have are questions like Why was my wife on that bridge when it collapsed? Why was my brother on the plane when it crashed? And why has a shadow person been haunting me my entire life?

You can toss out answers to these frightening questions — your wife was on the bridge because that’s the way home from work; your brother was flying home after visiting your parents in Phoenix — but when you start to examine the macrocosmic chain of events that led that particular person to be in that unique situation at that exact point in their life — why did she take the teaching job on that side of the bridge? Why did she go into teaching?

Why didn’t he wait til Thanksgiving to visit Mom and Dad? Why did Mom and Dad move to Phoenix in the first place? — you’ll go mad.

I hope that when bad things happen, they happen randomly. I hope that there’s no such thing as predestination. No such thing as curses.

Among them all, the most terrifying question is, perhaps, Why me?

■■■■ I was a toddler when Mr. Shadow first appeared.

It’s a third-person memory, me watching myself, which makes me wonder if it’s a memory, or something I invented. But there I am, standing in a crib, calling to our old cat. “Kitty, kitty,” I say, but without the t’s, so it sounds like “key-key, key-key.”

Kitty’s tongue flickers a shock of pink against her black fur.

“Key-key, key-key.”

Suddenly, her eyes bulge, pupils dilate. She arches her back, raises her hackles. She growls and hisses.

The camera of my memory pans around and reveals a dark blotch hanging like a monstrous bat in the bedroom corner. It’s darker than a shadow, denser, too. It’s a presence; something palpable.

I don’t remember screaming. I didn’t know, then, that I should be afraid.

■■■■ I never knew my father. As soon as I realized that other kids had dads, I started asking questions.

30 • OCTOBER 2019• •MANKATO MANKATO MAGAZINE MAGAZINE OCTOBER2019

“He left,” is all Mom would say.

Why? When? Where to? How? What was his name?

“I told you,” she’d say. “He left.”

I think I got my eyes from him. Mom’s are blue and big; mine are green and deep set. What else might’ve come from him? My long face, big nose, narrow chest? It’s hard to say.

Did Mr. Shadow come from my father, too?

■■■■ Another memory: I’m five, sitting in the corner of my bedroom, forehead pressed against the wall, carrying on a conversation with nobody.

“Who are you talking to?” This from my mother.

She’s in the doorway, watching.

I turn. “Mr. Shadow.”

“Mr. Shadow?”

“He’s nice.”

Under her breath, my mother says something that might be “He won’t be nice for long.” I’ve lost count of the replays of that particular memory. I do wonder how much my mother knew.

■■■■ When I was 9, Mom and I moved into the old Victorian on Mauston Street, this low-income dead end where it was always darker than anywhere else. Sure, there were woods behind the house, but the trees weren’t the only reason for the darkness.

The scrappy Colton brothers and their gang ran the street. The kids wore red bandanas, jumped BMX bikes over potholes, played football and fired pellet guns at birds, squirrels, passing cars. I wore glasses. I stuttered. I was an easy target, so I kept to myself, content to stay inside with my Ghostbusters and G.I. Joes.

Then Shirley showed up. Out of the blue, there she was, knocking on the door and asking if I wanted to check out Mauston Cemetery. I’d never seen her before: not with the Colton brothers or their gang; not on the school bus; not even wandering the dead end with a bicycle or jump rope in hand. I understood that Shirley was an outcast like me, except a little older, taller, and pale as garlic skin.

Mostly, she wanted to see the inside of our house.

She’d been fascinated with it her entire life. With its tall stained-glass windows, spires and lone

turret, the creepy black Victorian was the only house of its kind on that side of town. A strange pointy hat made of green tile topped the turret.

Everybody called it the witch’s house.

■■■■ I’ve often wondered why Mr. Shadow stopped being nice. For a while, the presence felt comforting. He spoke to me in strange, wordless vibrations; his voice entering my ears, passing through to my brain and spreading like music throughout my bloodstream. I remember seeing him floating above me during kindergarten naptime; hovering around the edges of the playground during recess; trailing outside the school bus window like some sort of macabre guardian angel.

And then at some point I found myself repeatedly rolling over in bed to see the window sliding up on its own; wetting my pants from the terror of a phantom sprouting up in mirrors; waking up being choked by cold, invisible hands.

My mother blamed Ghostbusters. She blamed Chucky, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees. It’s possible that my child mind had turned those terrors into some sort of psychosomatic boogeyman, but how do you explain the bruises?

■■■■ Shirley was obsessed with finding the witch’s grave. According to legend, the witch was buried in Mauston Cemetery. We made grave rubbings and collected moss samples from the stones. The witch’s epitaph, Shirley said, bore a goat’s head. There were 53 stones in Mauston Cemetery, many dating back to the early 1800s, though none bore the imprint of a goat.

Part of me wondered if we were looking in the wrong place.

■■■■ In mid-October of our first year on Mauston, the youngest Colton boy went missing. The three Colton brothers had been playing on the tire swing in their backyard when a wolf leapt from the woods and grabbed little Silas.

But this wasn’t just any old wolf: according to the surviving Colton boys, it stood six feet tall on two legs, with bloodshot eyes and a long, bloody snout full of yellowed teeth. Its fur grew in mangy patches, and the oldest Colton said he saw shreds of what might’ve been jeans clinging to its legs. A werewolf.

It’s true, something had been howling at night. I’d hear it in my bedroom. At the same time, though, people were worried about a weirdo driving around town in a windowless van. Other rumors circulated that the Colton brothers had accidentally killed their brother, and the family just buried the boy in the woods.

Whatever had happened that evening, little Silas Colton was gone, gone, gone.

■■■■ Other times, Mr. Shadow manifested in sound.

Scratchings, footsteps, a low humming. Once, in my twenties, when I’d hit a bad streak and was living out of my car, a choir of children singing in some indistinct Latinate roused me from sleep. Hymn-

like; Bach, maybe Beethoven. It was the secondmost beautiful music I’d ever heard. I peeked out the window, hoping to see a group of children outside, like maybe they’d come from a nearby church to save my poor soul. All I saw were fluorescent lights blazing above the blacktop sea of a Walmart parking lot.

The music shifted from a major to a minor key.

One by one, the invisible voices turned to shrieks. I pressed my hands over my ears, but still I heard them.

One night, at the witch’s house, I woke on the couch to the sound of dripping water. The sound was metallic, reverberant, all around me. I crept to the kitchen — the nearest source of water — and stood a few feet from the sink, watching for teardrops bubbling from the faucet. Outside the window behind the sink, bare trees raked emaciated fingers across the moon, clattering like bones in the wind.

No water dripped from the faucet. The basin wasn’t even wet. I checked the bathroom, too. Dry as a bone. I went to my bedroom. There, the dripping resumed.

■■■■ It took me a few months to realize that Shirley looked the same every time I saw her: a tattered plaid dress, black tights, scuffed saddle shoes, tangled red hair. She only came around when I was alone. I never visited her house. She never told me her last name. I really didn’t think much of it then.

■■■■ By my early 30s, the lifelong terror of Mr. Shadow had ruined me so much that I felt I didn’t have any choice left. Drugs and alcohol made me too vulnerable. Religion and meditation were too quiet. Therapists only asked about my father. My last option was to fight darkness with even more darkness.

There were a few years before that, though, when I thought I’d had him beat. I’d discovered that moving helped, so I’d save enough from working, for example, as a custodian at Newfields in Indianapolis to hit Pittsburgh and clean toilets at a Sheetz. It didn’t matter what I was doing, so long as I was free from Mr. Shadow.

Eventually, though, he’d find me. I’d wake from sleep with weight pressing on my chest, some invisible force working to splatter my heart. Other nights, the choking hands would return, and there I’d be, gagging on a cot in a homeless shelter, on a random person’s couch, beneath a bridge, on a rooftop. I knew about night terrors, sleep paralysis, sleep apnea. I may have even experienced those.

Still, I find it difficult to explain the bruises.

Eventually, I understood that Mr. Shadow would submerge me into his depths. I figured I’d earned the dignity of ending it on my own terms.

Eventually, one chilly autumn midnight, I ended up on the bridge passing over the gorge just outside the town where we’d lived in the witch’s house. Above me, vaporous clouds passed like apparitions across a dented moon. The same moon rippled in the rushing water of the river hundreds of feet beneath the bridge.

I imagined the glorious rush of cold air against MANKATO MAGAZINE •

OCTOBER 2019 • 31

my skin, my reflection growing larger in the waterreflected moon, a video of some lost astronaut sailing toward the surface of his new home. I wondered what would kill me — the impact? The cold? Drowning?

I imagined people on crashing planes, bracing for impact, endorphins rushing up to soothe the terror of imminent death, minds searching for the best memories, some lasting thoughts to carry them into the void. I’d read that bad memories outweigh the good, which would’ve made me even more hopeless, except that I didn’t really have any good memories.

In the water, some sliding darkness erased the reflected moon. Weight pressed on my chest. Mr. Shadow hovered overhead like a ghastly nightbird.

The incomprehensible words of his obscure language vibrated in my ear.

I understood his words on a cellular level. Go ahead, he said. Jump.

Far off in the surrounding forest, a wolf howled, and I felt that sound on the same cellular level. I knew the mournful cry belonged to little Silas Colton. I pictured him, then, deep in the forest, a beastly wolf-child gnawing a dead doe on a bed of bloodied pine needles. Steam rose from the slain deer’s viscera. The bloody wolf-child snapped back its mutated head and bayed a lament understood solely by those who’ve found themselves cowering before mirrors, horrified by the stranger mimicking their every movement. I knew that song by heart. It was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.

I swung over the guardrail. My shoes scuffed loose pebbles along the pavement and sent them off into the dark water below. I counted myself among those rocks, my soon-to-be-falling body just one more amount of mass hitting terminal velocity.

I closed my eyes. More pebbles crackled off the bridge. I pictured jumping, imagined myself a bird struck dead mid-flight and plummeting from air to earth. A brilliant portal opened beneath me, wrapped my entire being in a wash of gold. The wolf-child howled louder, masking Mr. Shadow’s wretched speech. For a moment, I felt on the verge of being born.

Familiar sounds pulled me out of the death dream: a loud engine idling; a truck door clunking open; a man clearing his throat; a voice speaking.

“You need a ride, son?”

The moon flickered like a bowl of white fire in the river below, just like it had been doing for millenia.

Behind me, a man stood backlit in a wash of headlights. He was mostly shadow. The light illuminated strips of silver in his hair. His face was long, body narrow.

He spoke again: “I’ll get you where you need to go.”

I swung back over the guardrail and into the passenger seat of his truck. We didn’t look at each other or speak another word. He slammed the truck in gear and drove, fully aware of my true destination. The truck’s headlights cut through spools of fog floating above the road. The dashboard glow cast the driver’s long face in a 32 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

pale, ghostly green. I did my best not to study him too closely.

The night world turned vein-blue as dawn broke, and the driver pulled up to the entrance of Mauston Street. Bullet holes riddled the yellow DEAD END sign. My silent chauffeur pulled over and I left his truck without a word. Faded missing child posters hung from Mauston’s leaning telephone poles.

Potholes resembled bomb craters. Dried jack-o’lanterns grimaced on front porches. Every house slouched toward the ground as if being swallowed.

The tire swing no longer hung in the Coltons’ front yard. Boards crisscrossed the windows. But what did I expect? It’s difficult to take a loss like that and stay in the same place. I wondered if anybody had ever dug up the yard to find little Silas’ bones.

The witch’s house stood in similar disrepair. Paint peeled eczemically from the siding. Broken windows, broken doors, a gaping hole in the green turret. So much for childhood memories. I circled the grounds, peered through cracked glass into the foyer, the living room, the study. I watched the faucet through the kitchen window. Somewhere, something dripped.

Children sang in the distance. I stepped out to the street and watched a gang of kids on bikes steer around potholes, slowing as they rode past me.

They all wore masks. One green toothy monster, a bloody-mouthed vampire, an alien, a witch, a werewolf. It was Halloween.

I staggered like a sleepwalker into Mauston Cemetery. Lichen coated the still-standing stones.

Many more lay broken on the earth. I peeled away the wet, grassy carpet from one stone and traced my finger through the epitaph, the cold stone sending me back decades in time. One word might’ve read Shirley. I saw myself with her, then, the two of us passing like specters among the stones.

And then there she was, my old friend Shirley, standing at the treeline. She hadn’t aged a day. She beckoned me into the woods. The forest floor crackled beneath our footsteps. She led me to a clearing where dead branches had been piled high, forming some sort of structure.

In the distance, something howled.

Shirley waited at the entrance to the structure. Realization poured over me like cold water: this was the witch’s tomb. I stepped inside, and there, in the shadowy center, hunched over on the earth, sat the witch, nothing more than a withered old woman in rags. She mumbled something, low, under her breath. I crouched, leaned in to hear. Her presence absorbed me, her voice swirled like the seas, a conch placed against my ear, each breath one more escaping ghost. She’d been waiting for me my Colin Scharf whole life. is a writer and musician I leaned close. I listened. living in Mankato.

MM

» C OME JU DGE

for Yourself.

GOLFERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD COME TO CHALLENGE THE JUDGE and the two other golf courses in Prattville at RTJ Capitol Hill. Bring your clubs and come take on Judge hole number 1, voted the favorite hole on the Trail. Complete your day in luxury at the Marriott and enjoy dining, firepits and guest rooms overlooking the Senator golf course. With the Marriott’s 20,000 square feet of meeting space, 96 guest rooms and luxurious Presidential Cottage combined with three world-class golf courses, business and pleasure can definitely interact in Prattville.

THE ROBERT TRENT JONES GOLF TRAIL AT CAPITOL HILL offers three magnificent 18-hole championship golf courses.

The Marriott Prattville is part of the Resort Collection on Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.

Visit www.rtjgolf.com or call 800.949.4444 to learn more.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 33

Celebrating Minnesota

Deep Valley October 5, 2019 Loose Moose Saloon & Conference Center Keynote Author

Jacqueline West

Jacqueline West is the author of the NYT-bestselling series The Books of Elsewhere, The Collectors, and more. www.jacquelinewest.com

2019 PARTICIPATING

AUTHORS & ILLUSTRATORS Derek Anderson Colleen Baldrica Krista Betcher Sara Biren Rebecca Brooks Kirsten Cronn-Mills J.D. Delzer Allen Eskens Gordon Fredrickson Jessie Fries Rhonda Gilliland

Kiersten Hall Rachael Hanel Kayla Harren Julie Holmes Jill Kalz Annabelle Lewis Jeffrey Matthews Marty Meyer-Gad Theresa Mieseler Rachel Moldstad Colin Mustful

Chris Norbury Janielle Nordell Amy Pendino Megan Cooley Peterson David Pichaske Katherine Quie Joy Riggs Julie Schrader Bryce Stenzel Deborah Stevens Judy Stoffel

Susan Stradiotto Joanne Carlson Swanson Jonathan Sweet Melody Taylor Maureen Toonkel Christopher Valen Jacqueline West Jason Willis

PUBLISHERS & LITERARY ORGANIZATIONS

Alban Lake Publishing Betsy-Tacy Society Blue Earth County Historical Society Blue Earth County Library Free Press Media League of Minnesota Poets

Minnesota Heritage Publishing Spoon River Poetry Press The Creative Company Wanda Gag House Association

Where readers and

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Prairie Lakes

Fun For All Ages!

34 • SEPTEMBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

For more information www.deepvalleybookfestival.com

Authors and Books

Book Festival 10am - 4pm

119 S Front St., Mankato FREE PARKING in the ramp

Allen Eskens is the bestselling author of The Life We Bury www.alleneskens.com

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Keynote Illustrator

Return appearance

Allen Eskens

MAIN STAGE

10:30 am

Behind the Scenes Author Panel Sara Biren, Rachael Hanel, Kayla Harren, Jill Kalz & Susan Stradiotto 11:30 am It’s a Mystery To Me Mystery Writers Panel Allen Eskens, Rhonda Gilliland, Kiersten Hall, Chris Norbury & Deborah Stevens 12:30 pm Minnesota Writes - MN Authors from the Past panel Wanda Gag, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Maud Hart Lovelace, & Laura Ingalls Wilder living history actors discuss “their” books.

1:00 pm The World is Yours presented by Derek Anderson 2:00 pm Deep Valley Young Writers & Artists Competition Awards 2:30 pm The Story Collector presented by Jacqueline West 3:30 pm Passport Drawing Prizes

CHILDREN’S CORNER 10:00 am

FREE books to the first 50 children Courtesy of Capstone and The Creative Company 10:30 am to 1:30 Making Faces face painting and balloon twisting Children’s storytimes and activities all day

authors meet

Derek Anderson Derek Anderson is the New York Times bestselling artist behind more than twenty-five books for children. www.derekanderson.net

FESTIVAL PARTNERS BECHS Corporate Graphics Radio Mankato KTOE KMSU Maud Hart Lovelace Society South Central College Meyer & Norland Lime Valley Advertising, Inc. In-kind – Capstone, SCSC, The Creative Company

Food and beverages available all day at the event!

FREE Parking SPONSORED BY:

Regional Art Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund

The Festival is FREE

The Free Press MEDIA

SUPPORTED BY

MANKATO MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 2019 • 35

For more information www.deepvalleybookfestival.com

Wine & Beer

WINES

By Leigh Pomeroy

SOUTHERN MN STYLE

F

A few funny words about wine

or something different, I wanted to lighten up the tone a bit, especially after last month’s serious look at the effects of climate change on wine. So, here are some of my favorite wine commentaries: W. C. Fields: “I cook with wine.

Sometimes I even add it to the food.”

William M. Weeks, Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon grower: “Red wine is what you drink. White wine is what you wash pickups with.”

Campbell Mattinson, Australian wine journalist: “If Gregory Peck was a grape, he would be Cabernet Sauvignon. Noble, suave, immensely charming and massively ageworthy, cabernet is the stallion of style that raises the standard for all around it. In fact, that’s just it with cabernet sauvignon; it’s the noblest of the noble grapes, the prince against which all kinds of manners and flavours and desires are compared ... A date with a great bottle of cabernet sauvignon is like a bedroom rendezvous with royalty.”

Peggy Noonan, American journalist: “My generation, faced as it grew up with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.”

André Tchelistcheff, dean of California winemaking: “God made Cabernet Sauvignon, whereas the devil made Pinot Noir.”

James Joyce, novelist, poet: “White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak.”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, British journalist and writer: “The American elite is almost beyond redemption ... Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong.

Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is

36 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

one great moral mush — sophistry washed down with Chardonnay.”

Sr. Mary Anonymous: “Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, ‘I must tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent.’

‘Thank God,’ said an elderly nun at the back. ‘I’m so tired of Chardonnay.’”

Italian proverb: “A cask of wine works more miracles than a church full of saints.”

Napoleon Bonaparte: “In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat you need it.”

Mark Twain: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”

Hester Browne, author: “Always keep a bottle of Champagne in the fridge for special occasions.

Sometimes, the special occasion is that you’ve got a bottle of Champagne in the fridge.”

Benjamin Franklin: “The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.”

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: “So as much as I would like to sip wine under the stars, it’s contraindicated in the instructions on operating telescopes.”

Joan Collins, actress: “Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.”

Groucho Marx: “I shall drink no wine before it’s time. OK, it’s time!”

Rose Kennedy: “I’m like old wine.

They don’t bring me out very often, but I’m well preserved.”

Samuel Johnson: “One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.”

Jack Handey, humorist: “Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink, I feel shame!

Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the vineyards

and all of their hopes and dreams.

If I didn’t drink this wine, they might be out of work, and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, ‘It is better that I drink this wine and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.’”

Henny Youngman, comedian: “A doctor says to a man, ‘You’re pregnant!’ The man says, ‘How does a man get pregnant?’ The doctor says, ‘The usual way: a little wine, a little dinner….’”

Dave Matthews, singer/ songwriter: “I like to think I’m a night person, because that’s my job, but now I’m a father of three. I’m trying to become more of a morning person. I don’t know if it will last. I have two choices, right? Either I’m bitter about getting up early, or I start drinking wine earlier and get to bed.”

Sung by Doris Day in the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Song written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans: When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be?

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”

Here’s what she said to me: “Que Syrah, Syrah, Whatever will be, will be; The future’s not ours to see. Que Syrah, Syrah, What will be, will be.”

(You may have thought the word was “sera” and not “Syrah”. Well, you can’t drink “sera”.)

Cheers!

Leigh Pomeroy is a Mankato-based writer and wine lover.

BEER

By Bert Mattson

T

Familiar Patch

his is the season to rediscover cool weather wardrobe staples. Sobering from summer’s distractions as I rummage around the closet, I’ll occasionally get that feeling like finding a long lost, tightly folded twenty in that odd little fifth jean pocket.

Sometimes it’s amusing to get fresh eyes on my tastes from last fall: a quilted down vest with distinctly ‘80s trimmings; one of those cotton-lined nylon coach’s jackets; a knit cap of the favored football squad, in the style of those issued annually in the late ‘70s by youth athletic programs, blocky lettering all around, yarn ball at the peak... suddenly, inexplicably, and irresistibly reminiscent of a version of On Top of Old Smokey which my childhood pals and I augmented with spaghetti and meatballs. Trailing this is an overwhelming urge to loiter around with those buddies, breathing steam, swapping threadbare insults, and bridging occasional silences with thoughtful sips. These are the strange slitherings of seasonal affective nostalgia. Some things won’t fade away, for better or worse. One of these is pumpkin beer.

When I get together with friends these days, it is often, at least in part, an impromptu beer swap. That’s just how commonplace the taste for craft beer has become.

Autumn is one of those times that different styles tend to creep into the conversation. It makes sense. The sports we follow change, our clothes change, the kind of foods we crave change, why shouldn’t the beer menu change as well? Somebody invariably touts a pumpkin beer. It’s a tricky play, as it can come off like excitement about an album or cable series that the crowd considers trite.

Diagnosed and declared terminal some years past, by the mysterious folks with the mystical means to forecast current craft beer trends, the pumpkin beer segment cracks indifferently on. And why not? One could hardly bump carts in an aisle this summer without wobbling a can of something “fruited,” where, in my opinion, great strides have been made at incorporating fruit and acidity without overpowering or distracting from the base style (note to discuss this summer surge retroactively). So perhaps, loathed as it may be in some circles, pumpkin beer deserves another iteration. Shelving my biases, I bought some.

Big or small...

CELEBRATE them ALL!

Voodoo Ranger Atomic Pumpkin ... my favorite early skate punk album —just kidding. New Belgium Brewing Company stuck Saigon cinnamon and habanero in this special release ale. It’s logical from a culinary vantage, an intelligent twist on pumpkin spice. It’s malty enough that I might try it with churro and unsweetened whipped cream.

Elysian Night Owl... man, this month wins on names.

Sounds like something T.V. Guide might have tricked me into staying up too late to see in the era of singular satellite stations. The flavor isn’t as sticky as the aroma sells.

Pumpkin spice, yes, without coming off as gratuitous.

Horizon hops for balance. No question, it’s a pumpkin beer in the old vein, but with plot.

If pumpkin is too kitschy, try Deschutes’ one-off, Slightly Exaggerated IPA.

Bert Mattson is a chef and writer based in St. Paul.

He is the manager of the iconic Mickey’s Diner. bertsbackburner.com

MAKE GREAT MOMENTS

Locally Owned & Operated

HOURS: Mon.-Sat. 8am-10pm • Sunday 11am-6pm Mankato 201 Victory Dr. (507) 625-2420

North Mankato 1755 Commerce Dr. (507) 387-2634

St. Peter 100 N. Minnesota Ave. (507) 934-8964

MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 37

THAT’S LIFE

By Nell Musolf

How the National Enquirer

made me a better person M y grandmother was one smart cookie. Or perhaps shrewd might be a better word to describe her. Grandma had the uncanny knack to be able to size people up in one glance and nine times out of 10 her summation was right on the money. I recall one time when someone new moved into the apartment next to hers and appeared shortly afterward to borrow her broom. She loaned it to him but after he was gone she announced it was the last item he’d be borrowing from her because he was clearly a freeloader.

“You just met him. How can you know that?” I asked.

My grandmother smiled. “He had five people helping him move and the only thing I saw him carry in was his portable television set.”

She was right, of course. During the entire time that particular neighbor lived next door to her, he showed up on her doorstep at least three times a week to borrow something. Grandma usually lent it to him but always with a strong reminder to bring it back.

How did a woman with a third grade education get to be such a great judge of human nature? Simple. She was a devout devotee of the National Enquirer, the newspaper 38 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

sold at grocery store checkout counters everywhere. The Enquirer was full of not only “news” but human interest items too, such as how to read someone’s personality by the kind of soda they drink or how they wear their hair.

Laugh, clown, laugh, but my grandmother learned a lot from reading the Enquirer.

Although not a reader (Grandma claimed to have read one book in its entirety—“Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”), she consumed the National Enquirer each week and consequently was a whole lot savvier than many college professors if not for the depth of her knowledge certainly for its breadth. She was a regular walking encyclopedia filled with “facts” about the stars, especially Sonny, Cher and Liberace, and could tell you without a moment’s hesitation how Elvis really died and who was truly mourning his departure.

But not only did she learn many fascinating Hollywood (or Hollyweird as the Enquirer liked to call it) tidbits, she also learned a lot of practical advice that sticks in my mind to this day. For example, did you know walking barefoot for at least half an hour of every 24 results in a higher degree of happiness? Neither did I until my grandmother

ordered me to take my shoes off whenever I visited. (I was happier, although that might have had a lot to do with her color television and endless supply of potato chips more than my bare feet.)

Of course, some of the articles were above my head, such as the ones offering marital advice on how to handle your husband’s moods (cook his favorite meal) or how to prevent wrinkles — advice that meant nothing to me when I was 14 but would make mighty interesting reading now. How I wish my grandmother had left me her old tabloids instead of her flatware.

While I didn’t believe every single word the Enquirer printed, I believed enough of them to make reading them at my grandmother’s apartment every week a very pleasant ritual. It was a habit I maintained up until the early 1990s, a time when all magazines and newspapers seemed to go shockingly downhill in quality while prices went uphill just as shockingly.

I no longer read the National Enquirer other than old ones I pick up at garage sales and antique stores (you know you’re officially old when you find a National Enquirer published the week you graduated from high school at an antique store). I’ve reached an age where I don’t care about celebrity gossip because I don’t know who any of the new celebrities are and I’m not sure if the Enquirer still has how-to spice up your marriage, lose your middle, or become a millionaire articles.

But I have to say I believe not only am I a more educated person because of the National Enquirer, I’m also much more well-rounded thanks to an entire scrapbook of celebrity recipes ranging from Hoyt Axton’s stuffed pork chops to Kathie Lee Gifford’s sister’s sweet potato casserole. Life, in those days, was not only entertaining, it was delicious.

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GARDEN CHAT

By Jean Lundquist

I

The only good buckthorn is dead buckthorn

’m pretty sure that even if I live to be 100, and stay able-bodied, I will never be able to eradicate all the buckthorn from my yard. How I turned a blind eye to it for so long, I will never understand. Since last summer I have dedicated myself to taking out at least six buckthorns out every day. I haven’t made a dent.

As the leaves start to turn and fall now, buckthorn stays green much later. When you see it in your yard, it is easily recognizable late into the year for this reason. Feel free to have at it. Be sure to paint the stumps with brush and vine killer to keep it gone.

Some friends say fall is the best time to cut it because it stays dead better. Others say spring is the time. I say any time’s the right time, with perhaps the exception of winter.

I have another friend who makes furniture with it, liking it because it is so pliable. I invited her to come and get 40 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

all she can use from my yard, but I guess the reason she chose the hobby is because she has her own ready supply.

I now have another weed to hate that’s right up there at the top of the list with purslane.

Buckthorn is not just an incredibly invasive plant, it also is the over-winter home for soybean aphids. Let’s get this stuff cut down before someone has the bright idea to bring in more Asian lady beetles or some such similar remedy.

■■■■ If you haven’t planted your fall bulbs, time’s a-wasting.

Time is ripe for planting tulips, daffodils, crocus and other early spring flowers. It’s also time for putting in your garlic.

I’m planting a lot less garlic this year, and I’m using some of last year’s crop to plant it. I find I always have too much garlic, and I’ve run out of people to give it to. Still,

it’s nice to have the garlic scapes to eat in the spring. I think scapes are the main reason I plant garlic at all.

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■■ ■ ■ Since Oct. 15 is the likely first frost date each fall, it’s also safe to give up on any late season tomatoes, peppers and other veggies, and go ahead and take out the garden. I’ve always waited until the last possible moment, hoping for more produce.

I will still wait as long as possible to pick the few green beans that weren’t eaten by varmints, but it always makes me sad to go out after the first frost and see so much brown in the garden so quickly. So it’s coming out earlier this year.

The herb basil is the most temperature sensitive plant I grow.

It is my bellwether. When it gets burned by frost, the garden will come out. Except, maybe, for the green beans.

Of course, with my shiny new greenhouse, I’ll drag some tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in their bags in there. I expect it will extend the season by quite a bit— if I remember to water them.

Although I spent quite a bit of time in my greenhouse this summer, listening to the rain on the roof, evicting tiny toads from among the rocks, and just enjoying it, I have not yet put any plants in it.

This fall, and maybe winter, and certainly next spring I will make use of it as a greenhouse, as well as a spot for relaxation and meditation and listening to rain on the roof.

I’m not very handy with tools or plan-reading, which is why I hired professionals to put together my DIY (Do It Yourself) greenhouse kit. But if you are, or know someone who is, I am having some windows replaced at the end of this month. I’m told they’d be great for someone else’s DIY greenhouse.

If someone can use them, let me know before the window installers come by. I’ll need a $50 deposit, which I will give back when the windows are picked up. I also once saw a really nice chicken coop made from reclaimed windows.

Email me at GardenChatKato@ gmail.com

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Jean Lundquist is a Master Gardener who lives near Good Thunder. gardenchatkato@gmail.com

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 41

COMMUNITY DRAWS

By Kat Baumann

42 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

COMING ATTRACTIONS: OCTOBER 1

Chicago Doors open at 7 p.m., show starts at 8 p.m. — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2016 inductees to perform in the Grand Hall — Tickets range in price from $55-$125 — Visit the civic center box office or ticketmaster.com.

1-20

Harvest Festival at the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota Hours and activities vary by day — Visit cmsouthernmn.org for info on Tractor Alley, Grain Bin Safety, Owls in Minnesota, 4H Week, cider making and more — Free for members, $8 per visit for nonmembers.

5

Deep Valley Book Festival 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Loose Moose Saloon Conference Center — Dozens of authors and illustrators including headliner Jacqueline West, author of “The Books of Elsewhere,” “The Collectors,” and “Digging Up Danger”— Meet and mingle with authors, attend workshops, listen to panel discussions — Free and open to the public.

5

Morgan Creek Vineyards Oktoberfest and Annual GrapeStomp 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at Morgan Creek Vineyards, rural New Ulm — Voted Best Fall Event in Southern Minnesota by Explore Minnesota Magazine; competitive grape stomping, revelry and live music — $10 to get in, $25 entrance fee for grape stomping; wine tasting experience available for $20.

6

Shinedown with Papa Roach, Asking Alexandria and Savage After Midnight Doors open at 5:30 p.m., show starts at 6:15 — Four award-winning hard rock bands all on one bill in the arena. Tickets range in price from $29.50-$75 — Visit the civic center box office or ticketmaster.com.

10

Cody Johnson Doors open at 6:30 p.m., show starts at 7:30 p.m. — Award-winning country musician will appear in the arena with guests Clare Dunn and Jobe Fortner — Tickets range in price from $32-$102. Visit the civic center box office or ticketmaster.com.

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10

Cirque Du Crave 6-9 p.m. at the Capitol Room in St. Peter — Enjoy a culinary competition featuring dishes prepared by local restaurants, mix and mingle under the big top, and be wowed by circus entertainers and sideshow. This is a fundraiser for Feeding Our Communities Partners — Admission is $75, visit feedingourcommunitiespartners.org for more info.

12

Haunted Library 8-11 p.m. at the North Mankato Taylor Library — Enter if you dare — This is a free event for all ages.

24

Bob Dylan and his Band Doors open at 7 p.m., show starts at 8 p.m — Legendary Minnesota-born music artist Bob Dylan’s only stop in Minnesota this year will be in Mankato. Tickets range in price from $49.50 to $89.50. Visit the civic center box office or ticketmaster.com.

24-25

Ghosts from the Past 6-9 p.m. at the Blue Earth County Historical Society History Center — Meet some interesting characters from the past in this year’s Ghosts from the Past. Costumed characters will portray real life people with stories that seem too good to be true. Hear their tales and decide for yourself if you believe them or not — Tickets are $10 for adults, $7 for BECHS Members, $5 for children 5-17.

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 43

FROM THIS VALLEY

By Pete Steiner

To Dwell in Goldilocks Land M

y wife Jeanne and I returned recently from a 12-day trip to Alaska. As first-time visitors, we kept asking, “Why did it take so long to do this?”

The unrelenting beauty and jaw-dropping grandeur of our largest state (it dwarfs Texas, and seven Minnesotas could fit inside its boundaries) led to continuous “Wow!” moments. From a clear view of North America’s tallest mountain, Denali (only about 30 percent of visitors actually see it because it’s usually shrouded in clouds and fog), to seeing glaciers and grizzlies and fjords and moose and humpback whales, it was a bounty of breathless beauty.

Yet, only 600,000 people call Alaska home; if Mankato were transported wholesale to Alaska, we would be the second-largest city (Anchorage has 300,000 residents). Of course, in summer, the population swells with temporary workers for the tourist industry.

So is it the long winter darkness that discourages fulltime residency? (Anchorage gets about five-and-a-half hours of daylight on Dec. 21, Fairbanks only four!) Or maybe it’s the remoteness: the capitol, Juneau, cannot be accessed by land. You either have to fly in or come by boat. Or possibly it’s earthquakes, the tectonic plates colliding that thrust up those great mountains. Quakes are more common in Alaska than in California: approximately 30,000 a year, although only about six of those register at the destructive 6.0 or higher level. Still, as in California, there’s always the threat of the Big One: the 9.2 Good Friday quake of 1964 that included Anchorage, was the second-largest in recorded world history.

Maybe danger is the price of beauty: California, plagued recently by wildfires more than earthquakes, pays the price. I lived in Monterey for a year at the Army Language Institute in 1970. We’d travel down to Big Sur, marveling at beauty equal to Alaska’s. But I felt the jolt from one minor 3.2 earthquake and decided (being an insurance man’s son) the risk was too great: there’s nowhere to go in an earthquake! (Still, I should have bought a bungalow back then in Pacific Grove; I would have gotten about a 500% return on investment.)

Now, if you are like the tens of millions of Americans who want to live near the coast, the price you pay is 44 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

having to evacuate your home about every other year when the next big hurricane comes along. More of those folks should just regularly board up their coastal residences and come to Minnesota for say, five months a year, from June through October — that is, be reverse snowbirds — AND pay our sales and property taxes! You have to admit, our stretch of super late-summer weather was hard to beat! Which brings me to my pitch for living in Minnesota.

Several months back, I spoke to the annual meeting of a savings and loan institution, talking about my long history here and why I think our town has only gotten better.

The listeners were folks who mostly agree: Mankato is a great place to live. But to many who are not from here or who have never visited, it’s a tougher sell. The first thing anyone mentions is The Cold. Unfortunately, that’s how we’re defined. (It actually is colder here than in many cities in Alaska; Alaska is warming faster than much of the rest of the country, and in fact, the thawing of the permafrost is a major concern.)

People don’t say, oh it’s so GREEN in Minnesota, or the Great River Road along the Mississippi is so spectacular, or Duluth is one of the coolest places on earth. No, they say, it’s really cold there, isn’t it? So I say, yeah, it’s cold.

Still, I’d rather deal with a few months of cold than say, the Arizona heat for five months, or the Houston heat and humidity for half the year. Nevertheless, it’s a challenge to say, Explore Minnesota.

Those of us who do choose to call Mankato home find it’s a place surrounded by lovely river valleys, a place that works, with lots of good jobs, a diverse economy, plenty of entertainment opportunities, smart, practical people (with a university and several colleges), and traffic that’s not much of a problem (okay, in the summer, it can be hard to find a street that doesn’t have a detour!) Sure, the trade war and tariffs have undercut one of our pillar industries, soybeans. And there’s too many empty big box stores. But all in all, it’s not too hot here, not too cold.

No, it’s just about right. And Goldilocks would feel right at home.

Longtime radio guy Pete Steiner is now a free lance writer in Mankato.

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2019 • 45

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46 • OCTOBER 2019 • MANKATO MAGAZINE