Sentimental Journey, Part II

My Second Home in Winona

The Original Wooden Bar

We stayed with our friends Lynn and Ken at their newly refurbished guest pad, which used to be the Granary of an old farm.  They live in the old farmhouse, which is really cool, and we had the granary consisting of two bedrooms and two bathrooms that we shared with Brent and Kari who drove down from Minneapolis to spend some time with everyone.  The six of us sat around drinking wine and catching up and then we had a picnic that Brent and Kari had brought along for dinner.  It was a wonderful way to ease back into Winona.  Earlier in the day, shortly after arriving, we drove around town to get our bearings, since I hadn’t been back in twenty-five years.  There had been a little bar where I would hang out called the Hei and Low, short for Heineken and Löwenbrau, and much to my pleasant surprise was still there, still looked the same (but cleaner!) and still had the same old wooden bar. It brought back lots of very happy memories. This was the great equalizer bar where a few of us from the college would mingle with lots of good folks from town. It was the spot where Colin would learn to play pool, shoot horseshoes, and play Pong. There were always a lot of kids there and they were always well taken care of by management.  We met Brent and Kari after that at a bowling alley/bar and had a beer, admired Brent’s vintage Porsche and then drove up to Saint Mary’s College - now University - to look at what had changed since Brent and I both worked there (he for one year in the mid-1970s and I for 11 years, up until 1983 when Cindy and I moved to Germany).

The next day we drove out to Briarwood, my former home.  As you would expect, much has changed in the past twenty-five years. Lots of new housing on what had been a flood plain, and also new mini-factories and offices on what had been swampland.  However, once we pulled into the narrow private lane and passed over the little bridge, it felt like everything was exactly the same as it had been the day I left.  Briarwood had been the carriage house for the immense twin mansions that had been built for two sisters in 1912.  The houses were mirror images of each other connected by an arcade.  The carriage house that I owned has three huge double doors that slide open to an enormous amount of internal space.  I used to say that I had a six-car garage with a house attached.  Actually, during Christmas breaks, the wealthy kids from Latin America who were attending St. Mary’s would park their Corvettes, Thunderbirds, Camaros and other muscle cars in the garage. One year we packed in fourteen of them, still leaving room for the 1969 VW bus that was my sole source of transportation.  When the college kids returned after the break they always had bottles of good rum, great food and other little goodies from their countries so it was a very good exchange system.

From the outside, everything looked the same, except I noticed they had a new roof, a new bay window in what had been the living room, and the windows all looked like they had been replaced with good quality combos.  We were greeted warmly by Rex and Mary and then given the grand tour.  All of the homes in that area are special and all of them have had special people living in them.  Aside from the big houses, there really were only four other dwellings so everyone was friends with everyone else. We all respected the history of these houses and we were all cognizant of the fact that we were simply stewards of these homes, just passing through, and always aware of our responsibility to keep things to the highest standards.  Well my friends, Mary and Rex have done that in spades!

The room that I had added in 1976 looked much like it did when I left, but they had replaced the fireplace with a new gas insert and new mantel that looked like it had been there from day one. They took great care to winterize the five stained glass windows that I had commissioned from Peter Shortridge, who we saw the next day. Peter served as the general contractor for the building of the porch and he took responsibility for transforming my verbal hopes into visual reality.  The set of two windows facing south are of a summer sunrise and winter moonrise over the bluff outside our home. The three windows facing East are for the three kids.  Moving from left to right:

Valley was the small young blue bird - we were trying for a peacock - surrounded by lovely bright flowers and grasses.

Colin was the ship tossed about the sea with the sun just peaking out after the storm.

Megan was the yin-yang being held in the embrace of a lotus flower floating in a pond with two stars above.

To be continued …

The Back of Briarwood

The Door

Will It FIT??

Dr. Brent Supervising

The Porch Fireplace

Winter Moonrise/Summer Sunrise 

The Windows for the kids

Sentimental Journey

Sentimental Journey, Part One

For a variety of reasons, we were on the road a lot in August.  First was a visit to my brother Kevin and his wife Maureen in Connecticut, where we spent a lovely few days wandering around the waterfront, visiting my parents’ memorial bench overlooking Long Island Sound, and eating lots of fried clams and scallops. 

Shortly after our arrival back here we received an email from our dear friend Jean Knutzen telling us that the good folks who had purchased my home in Winona, MN some twenty-five years ago had recently done some remodeling.  The big, big heavy oak door that had my name carved in it was available for me to come and get if I still wanted it.  This door was part of a building project in 1976 where I added an enclosed porch to the house and it was all done by hand using local wood, stones and craftsmen.  We confirmed the generous offer of the door with Rex and Mary, the current owners of Briarwood, got the measurements, constructed a template to see if it would fit into the Explorer, and set off for Winona.

We decided that Cleveland would be a good stopping off point and we planned on spending two days there to visit the city, especially the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We should have planned for a longer visit since we really enjoyed the city itself, the waterfront, and the restaurant scene.  We stayed in a Hyatt that was built inside a great arcade and I’ll attach some photos.  We spent almost an entire day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a beautiful new building on the edge of Lake Erie.  We had a ball wandering around the exhibits, listening to lots of great music and watching engaging videos, all of which brought back lots of memories.  When we finally went outside, we were treated to live music from the US Coast Guard Dixieland Band, and man could they play. And then, to our great astonishment and surprise, we were overflown by two of the Blue Angels F-18s, about 100 feet above us!  Wow, was that cool and very loud.  They were scheduled to appear at the Air Show in two days and had arrived early to practice so we got to watch some amazing performances of exquisite precision flying, some with two jets and others with six jets.  For those of you that have never seen them or if you just want a good dose of pure adrenalin, check this out.

We left Cleveland happy as clams and maintained our excitement of the journey until we hit the outer edge of Chicago where we inched along for four long hours of frustration, heat, and magnificent examples of horrid driving.  Whereas we had thought we would pull into Beloit Wisconsin by four o’clock, allowing us to decompress and wander around, we didn’t make it until seven and we were spent.  We had planned on going to a real Wisconsin Supper Club but opted for the restaurant in the hotel, which was satisfactory.  The next morning we wandered around the town which had a huge farmer’s market, enjoyed the river walk, and had a wonderful espresso in a shop that specialized in cheese and coffee (an odd mix but they did both well!)  Our next stop was Winona which was a lovely drive except for a  stretch of about six miles that just crawled, all on account of folks slowing up to look at a dead deer on the side of the road.  Doesn’t take much to entertain folks from Wisconsin.