September 21, 2023 – 60th Wedding Anniversary

A trip into the past (A follow up to “Our 60th Anniversary”)

So, September 21^st dawned again.  It was, again, a beautiful fall day.  We had our morning tea and did our usual reading to each other, some poetry, some history, some nature writing and then took care of some morning work.  At 11 o’clock we got ready for our anniversary lunch.  On a website called “Only in Minnesota”, we have found this place, called the Fisher’s Club built in the 1930’s, in Avon, Minnesota on the shore of Middle Spunk Lake, that served sunfish.

I might also mention that it was near the Lake Wobegon Trail of Garrison Keillor fame.  This area was where he grew up.

Avon was very familiar to me since it was one of the towns my family went past on the way to and from St. Cloud from Melrose, where I grew up in Stearns County.

In Melrose during my preteen years, I spent a lot of time fishing either in the Sauk River or at Big Birch Lake, a few miles from Melrose.  My fishing was mostly for pan fish, that was crappies in the river or sunfish in the lake.  I grew up not only catching sunfish, but also cleaning and preparing them for meals.  You would know how special sunfish are if you ever have had them fresh from the lake.

So, back to reality.  As we traveled south toward Avon, through the winding back roads, we began to see more fall color.  Always a delight.

We drove along winding roads, past farms and barns, corn and cattails.

It was like moving back in time to our earlier years growing up in Minnesota.  There were small towns, and as we got to Stearns County we saw the ubiquitous Catholic church with its steeple, in each town.  (Stearns County was very heavily Catholic and Melrose was mostly German Catholic.)

We had a wonderful outdoor lunch near the shores of Middle Spunk Lake, which was very peaceful at this time of year.  I had sunfish, which were delicious.

After that we took the same back roads back to Baxter.

It was a wonderful and magical day, different than the one 60 years ago, but special in its own way partially because it was nice to be comfortable with each other and add yet another experience to our memories.

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P.S. We had another surprise when we got home.  There was a wooded area next to our house that was full of windfall, several very large trees whose branches had covered much of our patio after a storm several years ago.  This area is owned by a neighbor.  We had cleaned up our patio, but the remaining half fallen trees were quite a mess and clearly visible from our bedroom windows.

We had talked to those neighbors about a clean-up, and they had agreed to help foot the bill, but neither of us had gotten around to doing anything during the summer.

But upon our return from our lunch in Avon, we saw that all the fallen trees had been removed. Much to our surprise.  That by itself was a wonderful 60^th anniversary gift, although I am quite sure our neighbors had no idea about how special that date was.