Charles Town Chatter: 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 …