Going Home

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my hometown ..." - Garrison Keillor, opening his weekly radio monologue about the goings-on in his mythical hometown in Minnesota

By Paulette Tobin

I spent a few days in our hometown of Eureka last week, but unlike Lake Woebegone it wasn't particularly quiet. The Long Lake Bar and Cafe, where we went Friday for fried chicken night, was certainly lively. I also got in on the season's first snowfall and the Luther League potluck and came within a few feet of becoming part of the Eureka High School homecoming parade. That's quite a bit of excitement for me.

Despite the snow, which fell Sunday morning and didn't stick around long, Eureka looked wonderful to me. All the leaves and foliage were turning red and gold and brown. Some gardens were still showing beautiful mums and many yards were being decorated with scarecrows, pumpkins and corn stalks. At the Sunrise apartments where Mom lives the apple trees were hanging full of fruit and the ladies were busy harvesting them and making pies and other good things and cleaning up the wormy wasted ones on the ground. Mom had already torn everything out of her vegetable garden but one morning she and I pulled out the last of her beautiful marigolds and cannas and hauled her potted spikes out to my sister-in-law, who said Mom could over-winter them in her basement. In downtown Eureka the newly remodeled and expanded Great Plains Bank looks very nice with its taupe-colored stucco walls and freshened up brick. The bank now encompasses the building that used to be the Rexall Drug Store back in the 1970s.

 
Many people were still talking about Schmeckfest, which was a big hit this year and brought many, many visitors to town and almost too much activity to take it all in. And next week the pace will pick up again with the opening of pheasant season Oct. 16 and the annual hunter's steak fry at the ambulance building. I've been told that at last year's
steak fry they ran out of plates towards the end and people started eating steak out of their hands. I'm guessing everybody had a prettygood time.

The morning Mom and I cleaned up the garden was the morning we had planned to go shopping in Aberdeen but we turned on the radio during breakfast and were amazed to hear that part of South Dakota was experiencing a pretty good snowstorm. On Oct. 1, for heaven's sake! We weren't sure how far north it was going to come, but we decided to stay home. After we got back from taking the plants to Gerry and Patty's farm we went to the Luncheonette for grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese button soup, which was incredibly good. We also had big slices of Hilda Jung's rhubarb pie, the old-fashioned kind with a double crust and rhubarb filling baked full of cream and sugar. It was heavenly. Hilda's been baking pies for the Luncheonette since she and her husband, Bill, had the place when we were kids and is still at it now that her son and daughter-in-law, Bob and Connie, are running it. I don't know how old Hilda is but cooking and baking must suit her because she looks darn good. I told Mom if I lived in Eureka I would never cook again because there are just too many good places to eat.

As we prepared to leave the waitress reminded us that the Homecoming parade was going to start at 12:30 so we decided to stick around for that. It was kind of a cold and overcast afternoon and Main Street was empty until about five minutes before parade time when suddenly a crowd formed. I talked to Neal and Connie Woehlhaff, whose two youngest girls were in the parade. Connie, who is administrator out there, said there were eight empty beds at the nursing home, which is quite unusual as they often have a waiting list. Neal was working on a building project but hoped to take the afternoon off so he could see the football game.

As always the parade was led by the American Legion Color Guard followed by the Eureka High School marching band which looked and sounded great. Then came the royalty float, and that was a little strange because the girls were dressed up (one of them was wearing a backless formal) and the guys were wearing jeans, coats and stocking caps. Oh well. I lived through the 70s, the era of double-knit polyester, who am I to critique teen fashion today? The Bowdle band also marched in the parade, because Eureka and Bowdle co-op for football, and those musicians did a great job too. The homecoming theme was "Shampoos" so there were lots of pretty and clever floats with slogans like "We AGREE to a victory" and "We'll bury the Pirates up to their HEAD AND SHOULDERS." Here's how we almost became part of the parade. Mom and I had made a date to visit Great-aunt Katherine and it was time to head over to her place. We thought we had time to leave our parking place on Main Street after the parade passed by the first time and before it doubled back to make its second trip through downtown. Well, we cut it awfully close. I pulled my van out on the street about a car length and a half ahead of the American Legion color guard. That night we went to Long Lake for supper. I was surprised to see more than a dozen cars parked in front of the bar and cafe. Inside the place hasn't changed much from what I remembered, except that the current owners have cut a door through into what used to be the Long Lake grocery store and have set up tables in there to accommodate more diners. The place was pretty busy and we ran into lots of people we knew. We had red beers with our dinner and afterwards Mom's cousins, Quentin and Arlene Wolff, invited us over to see the new Lutheran Church the folks in Long Lake have built to replace the church destroyed by fire last spring. The new church is lovely and should serve their congregation and community very well. It will be dedicated Oct. 17.

The next day we made it to Aberdeen where I ran into the former Robin Neuharth, who graduated from EHS in 1975 and now lives on a farm near Ipswich and works at the school, where she is business manager, teaches a couple of classes and advises the cheerleaders. Robin said she and her husband have three children, a senior, a 15-year-old and an 8-year-old. She is just as friendly and pretty as I remembered and it was great visiting with her. She said she doesn't get to Eureka much anymore. Her father, Harold, died 21 years ago. After that her mother moved to Aberdeen and later married a man from Ipswich and now lives six miles down the road from Robin. Robin's sister, Patsy, lives in Sioux Falls. Robin said it isn't easy making a living on the farm these days but she and her husband enjoy country living. They are going to be featured in the upcoming issue of "Farm and Ranch" magazine. Sunday morning was Mission Festival at Zion Lutheran Church and this year the speaker was Pastor Nadine Lehr, an Ashley, N.D., native and graduate of Yale Divinity School who now works for Lutheran World Relief. Afterwards we had lunch at the Luther League potluck and then I headed home.

I like October but it leads to that slippery slope that is November and then to winter, which I don't mind telling you I dread more every year. So an autumn visit to Eureka - spending time with Mom, visiting Gerry and Patty and my aunts and uncles and cousins, worshiping at dear old Zion, and seeing old friends like Neal and Connie and Deb and Steve Oster, Vicki Lapka, Larry Kauk and so many more - well, it's like a tonic to me. I drove back to Grand Forks Sunday afternoon listening to Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion." As always, he closed his show with that familiar line: "And that's the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are handsome and all the children are above average." And though I'd heard it a hundred times, I still got a kick out of it. Meanwhile I was wondering how I could work in one more trip home before the snow started flying.