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I just got back from a funeral in Central Minnesota yesterday.
Flew in on short notice from Montana (direct flight, thank you).
Rented a car and spent Thursday night with some college friends...he played baseball for the Gophers and we remembered many stories. Her sisters sang a song at their reception from the movie White Christmas (one of my wife's favorites)..."Sisters" (the one that Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye copied with the big blue feathers)...except the girls changed the words of course.
Went to my Uncle's funeral near Pierz...been a while since I'd been to the little town just south of there that both my parents grew up. The funeral, for my uncle...he was the last of all the siblings of that family that were stalwarts of that community. I had gotten a hand-written letter literally one month earlier from him...he was still making plans for spring turkey hunting, the fishing opener and reconnecting with his deer hunting buddies. He was 86.
Lots of memories in that church where I had attended so many weddings (and funerals) of extended family members. It wasn't my home town where I grew up, but rather where both my parents came from.
But after the funeral lunch and visits with old family friends and many cousins were done, I followed a couple of cousins up to the family lake compound near Nisswa, less than an hour away from their home place. They were opening the cabins up for the summer, getting water turned on, docks out and such.
I forgot how nice the Minnesota lake country is. The little taverns and resorts on these lakes.
The fishing and hunting culture. The summers spent "cabining" with young kids...now grandkids instead of brothers and sisters. Another generation.
As I drove back yesterday on a bluebird morning through Brainerd and down to MSP airport, I was reflecting that while I love the mountains, yeah, I could probably live in the lake country of central or Northern Minnesota.
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