Nick Reiher: It’s Been a Long Road with Many a Winding Turn

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Nick Reiher

I vividly recall my first trip to see Tammy’s folks in southern Minnesota.
We had been dating just a couple months (and didn’t know yet we would be married within a year). She still was living and working in Ottawa, so we headed out from there in her manual transmission Ford Escort, armed with sandwiches, pop and Snicker bars.
As we headed west into the dusk, I started getting a little, ah, anxious. I never had been west of U.S. 51. I don’t think Interstate 39 was even there yet.
My uneasiness grew as we got into Iowa. There wasn’t much “there” … there. Reared in Chicago and living in Woodridge at that point, I was used to more “there.”
I had fun reading some of the town signs along 80 – What Cheer still stands out. That’s when we were driving all the way to Interstate 35 to head north. I would soon learn I-35 would become the bane of my existence, mostly in the winter.
But at that point, I didn’t know I would be driving there several times just in that next winter, including one that had us holed up in a hotel overnight. And we had to be up early the next morning to make it to Tammy’s wedding shower around noon.
As we headed north on 35, we got off at the Blairsburg exit, where, I swear, there was a truck stop called Boondocks. It closed a few years back, but it was a great picture then, and for the kids, which I didn’t know then we would have within the next few years.
One of those kids is now a doctor of psychology at the University of Iowa Medical Center near Coralville, which is where I got food poisoning on one of those return trips a few months later.
When we finally got to Tammy’s hometown, we had to “cruise main,” which meant driving the few blocks of the prime drag in the town of 500 or so at that time. It’s less now since the canning factory closed down. But Bud’s Café, which is now Tom’s, still is there, serving great burgers and manhole cover-sized pancakes.
We drove up to her parents’ house, a nice big two-story frame job on the “south side” of town. It was late, but her parents still were up. Her father noticed the beginnings of a beard, which I had started because Tammy loves them.
The brush-cut, clean-shaven guy who would become my father-in-law by the next spring was not impressed. Probably still isn’t.
As I was still getting used to all this, the family was excited to be heading to “the lake” the next day. Since there are reportedly 10,000 of them in the state (actually, more, I believe), I wasn’t sure which.
That would be my first visit to Lake Francis, where the folks had a camp spot that, at that point, was a trailer, a pickup camper and a couple tents. We got me my first out-of-towner fishing license, and headed out on the lake.
My future sister-in-law Lori Dee, who was intent on putting me through tests, overt and otherwise, was disappointed I could, or would, bait my own hook. We caught bunch of sunnys and bluegill, and had a great “shore lunch,” and also brought a bunch home to freeze.
After dinner – or as they called it, supper – we sat around the campfire and talked. The whole family was there: Tammy’s brothers, Dan and Paul; and her sister, Linda, who was pregnant with her daughter, due a few weeks sooner than my niece that October.
I was relatively new to campfires. It smelled heavenly, and the fire was mesmerizing. They still are for me, even with the backyard chiminea.
Last week, the four of us went up to see the folks, who now live in Austin, Minnesota, home of Hormel and the Spam Museum. Andy took off work from his job at D’Arcy, and we drove up on Tammy’s birthday.
The next day, instead of a campfire, we sat around a couple tables in their new apartment, smaller but more manageable than that big ol’ house. Gramma still makes some mean pancakes, and later, for the gang, she fixed some great ribs. That woman can cook.
It’s different now, of course. Everyone is older and has their own lives. The second set of grandchildren are making their own way now. And there are great-grandchildren.
The fishing is scarce now, and we go to Paul’s or Dan’s now for campfires. Hard to believe it’s been 35 years I’ve been going up there.
What memories though. I hope this next generation has as many of them as we’ve all had.
Just not the ones driving on 35 or 80.

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