Faribault

It rained steadily on Thursday as I drove down to Faribault. I got into town late but drove around a little to get my bearings. A former high school classmate had offered at my 40th reunion last summer to introduce me to the guys he regularly had coffee with. He assured me they had strong opinions they would be happy to share.

As mentioned earlier I took a photo of the historic Episcopal Cathedral of Our Merciful Savior in the twilight. Having grown up in another southern Minnesota town, Mankato, I found the historical plaque very interesting. When I moved to Mankato in my junior high years I was taken aback by a monument to the greatest mass execution in US. history which took place in the city during the Civil War. I wrote about it in one of my first columns in the Reader Weekly.

That calamity was moderated by President Lincoln who refused to let Minnesota settlers hang ten times as many Souix Indians. According to the historical marker it was the Anglican priest in Faribault, Henry Benjamin Whipple, who lobbied the harried president to cut those numbers down which the Great Emancipator did. Dick Cheney lovers would no doubt be appalled with such misplaced compassion.

After my early morning coffee break with the guys I got a tour of the City.(by the way, Its sunny. Its Saturday. I’ve got grandkids underfoot and a lawn to mow. I’m sure this post needs serious editing so if your reading this now my apologies. I’ll proof it later)

One hundred years ago Faribault was called “the Athens of the Prarie” according to my guide. The city originally had a great many schools and academies. It still does about a half a dozen of them not counting the public schools. Its nearby neighbor Northfield has two colleges whereas the Faribault educational scene is all pre-collegiate. The best known is the Shattuck Academy which until 1972 was a military school for boys. I had a friend from Mankato who escaped it to finish his schooling at Mankato High. After he told me ofh is disinclination to military life I started seeing Shattuck ads in the back of our National Geographic Magazines.

A fellow School Board member of mine, Bob Mars, also attended Shattuck.

The school was and is associated with the Episcopal Church. Today it has a very successful hockey program that I read about recently. It doesn’t participate in the Minnesota high school league. Instead it seems to have fielded a team in this year’s Winter Olympics. I took a picture of its field house on my trip to remind me what education is all about.

The first trip I recall taking to Faribault was with my Mother in the late 1970’s. That was with my wife on an equally rainy day. We were going to the local woolen mills to pick up wool for braided rugs which had caught my Mother’s imagination. She got my sister and wife making them too. We chose wool swatches of many colors and carted them home to tear into strips for the braiding.

At the time I was studying a book on edible mushrooms which my aunt and uncle had sent me for Christmas and I espied along the brimming drainage ditches an easily identifyable fundus called, I think, the shaggy mane. The shrooms were described as delicious. We took them home with our wool and I fried them up in butter and my whole family bravely ate em up. That was the beginning and end of my fungus gathering.

I love midwestern towns. I enjoyed my overnight visit to Montevideo too last year when I brought back a $100,000 bond to proceed with our suit against the Duluth School District and Johnson Controls.

Faribault, as my tour guide pointed out, isn’t quite as scenic as college town Northfield but it has its charms not the least of which were the lush green trees which have yet to fully leaf out in Duluth. It has the scenic Canon River flowing through town bounded by reservoirs and an old train depot. I may dine at it (its been converted into a restaurant) on another field trip soon but I dined elsewhere my first night. My server had recently graduated from the Faribault schools and while innocent of the politics outside of the classroom recommended lots of folks for me to introduce myself too.

Today, Faribault has a mish mash of major employers that keep it a relatively prosperous town for its 22,000 citizens. The many schools are part of this as well as a state medium security prison housing 2,000 inmates. I’d never seen so much razor wire in my life and it glinted brightly under a full sun.

The woolen mills, alas, are no more causing the last 75 workers to lose their employment about a year ago. A chamber of commerce official who did not have any great desire to talk with me told me that as we parted company.

The public library looks a bit like an old church. I tried, unsuccessfully, to save a little brown bat which was laying on the sidewalk outside the library. I’m afraid the staff was mortified to hear that such a creature barred the way to their inquisitive clientelle. I used to be the go-to guy to rid our old Mankato home of the critters. “They eat mosquitoes,” I told a librarian who gently explained that the beast showed signs of violence. They preferred to have a custodian deal with it rather than lend me some paper towels to pick it up. They didn’t want their patrons getting rabies. Very helpful folks in Faribault.

I came back with more stuff to study and lots of notes to transcribe. I left early to beat the rush hour in the Twin Cities. I didn’t want to fight the fishermen on the opener who were headed up I-35. That didn’t stop me from making a quick stop at my favorite wine shop to pick up a few cases of wine that I had ordered for the trip back. Ah, how I looked forward to some serious inebriation upon my return to Duluth. I’ll do just about anything to stay constructively channeled.

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