Heading Home from Minnesota

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The last of the celebrations was a breakfast given by Sid’s parents. The teachers and graduate students were traveling later in the day, and the locals were going to take down the tent and decorations at the farm, so it was not a lengthy meal. We sat at the dining table with Eddie’s mother and sister, Eric, Eric’s daughter, and his father-in-law. The FIL asked about Eric’s dad, so John told the story about Haakon’s boarding the Queen Mary during World War II. It’s an amusing story, which everyone enjoyed.

If you don’t know these people, it won’t help to have their names listed.

We were among the first to leave. Thom and Barbara headed to Maryland, and we were going to see cousin Peter and Debi in Illinois. We drove together for a few hours before they pressed on and we stopped for lunch.

The next day John told Debi and Peter about our going to church on Sunday. John and Peter share the grandfather who was the pastor there 100 years ago. There was only one cousin who was not aware of our going to that church, because he lives in Norway. I’m sure Kirsten and Eric will share with their brother.

Peter, John, and Debi

Since we were in Illinois, we decided to drive through the town where our pastor grew up. He refers to Mulberry Grove in his sermons from time to time, so we knew it was a very small community. It was a little town that time passed by. I thought it was something like Mayberry, NC, a fictional town we knew from television. John pointed out that Mayberry had a barber shop and a police station, which we did not see in Mulberry Grove.

I texted Pastor M before we got to his town, and he replied after we left. I sent a photo of the post office as we rode down the highway. He wrote back, “I grew up one block from the post office right next to the old elementary school.”

I asked, “This one?”

Boarded up school in Mulberry Grove, IL

That was the one. His home was across the street from the school. He went on to say, “On the corner of the street was an old stop sign for 30 or 40 years, and in the back of it was a dime that I lost when I dropped it down the slot as I waited for the ice cream cone truck to stop.”

We felt sorry for the little boy who lost his ice cream money, but we laughed, because it’s the kind of story he tells so well.

We made it to Tennessee and will be home tomorrow.

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

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25 thoughts on “Heading Home from Minnesota”

        1. North Carolina is short and very wide. We are 20 miles from the Tennessee border, so you can’t get much further from the coast than here.

          It’s perfectly fine for you to forget where I live. Let’s hope I don’t forget!

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  8. I am so glad to read in the comments that you are far from the coast. I loved the photo of the old school thought seeing those beautiful old buildings boarded up does make me kind of sad. It always makes me wonder what all those kids who attended are doing now.

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      1. I am a weather worrier – we get done with one weather event and my mind is onto the next weather event … I’m already dwelling on the 7 major snowstorms and one or two Polar Vortex events the Almanac says we’ll deal with and it’s still Summer. Sigh.

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