Rural America

The farm life and local highways. Commuting and communicating.

Jesus on the West Bank of Minneapolis

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

There it was, there it still is. A two story mural depicting Jesus with his hands open to all who would come to Him At the intersection called Seven Corners, visible plainly from Washington Avenue. It was the building housing Souls Harbor.

That mural was painted there some time ago, it was there when I was working at the New Riverside Cafe back in the very early 70’s. Several columns in Gator’s Grace Notes have been printed in various newspapers about those times. ‘40 Acres of Musicians’ is one of them.

Seven corners refers to a major intersection that signals the end of Washington Ave and Cedar Ave and an on ramp to the freeway, Highway 35. Perfect spot really. “And there shall be a highway and a Road and it shall be called the Highway of holiness” That quote is found In The Bible, Isiah 35. As an aside to this story, I am going to use that verse as the title of my upcoming book.

I was a hippy at this time and I was happy. Living in an apartment on Cedar Avenue a few blocks away, 605 ½ Cedar. It was a hot spot of the musicians in the city as was the New Riverside Cafe, referred by the in crowd that worked there as simply “ The Cafe” Pronounced as ‘the Kafe’ by these in the know and we who staffed it. Ground zero for me, fresh out of the Navy and growing my beard and hair as fast as possible.

Lots of bean sprouts and other veggies on the menu as the Cafe was vegetarian. Cheaper and better for you and the neighborhood. The favorite menu item was soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. We fed the neighborhood, most of it pretty poor folks. I would give the soup for free to many of those people and and when they asked for the sandwich I would offer bread, good bread and explain to them that this was what we had to do for free food. For quite a time there were no prices for food there and a price for the world class music in the big room, overlooking Riverside Avenue.

The entire neighborhood is now Somali and the business’ there all have NE African names, but the people are pretty friendly. The buildings are still the same but none of them have old hippies staffing them. The free store, Cafe Extempore, Durable goods, Dinsaur Motors, and Bellvile and Hoffman’s guitar shop are all gone. As am I. I miss it sometimes and think about walking around the old place just to get the new flavor. (If I figure out the menu of the west bank restaurants) who can tell? We will trade stories!

We worked a miracle in urban development then. Stopping the development of Heller and Segal’s dream of “A new town in town’ A rent strike and political rally’s and the help of the local Anglican Diocese was the protest plan. A lot of publicity in the Tribune and it worked. At least most of the west bank that was left stayed undeveloped into high rises. Since the West Bank was so close to the Mississippi, it housed a lot of northern European immigrants in the early days before us. It was known as ‘Snus boulevard’. Chewing tobacco and sidewalks as spittoons was the Scandinavian way of nicotine consumption.

The movement of America’s Revival, the Jesus movement was in full swing. Almost everyone who worked at the Cafe’ were not interested in Jesus. Hippies were more into mantras and Eastern versions of wisdom. The impetus for the very low or non existent food prices came from Father Teska, an Episcopal priest that helped fund the whole adventure.

(His diocese was very helpful for me later on.)

We were all clueless to creation and our Creator. I became aware that my only faith was in me and as a result, I was not really satisfied with my life. It took a few decades before I understood what that mural of Christ was telling me.

The diocese helped with the legal issues I was in with the military after discharge. I was still living on the West Bank, but I left the Cafe to work for the Burlington Northern as a track worker. My first job with them was shoveling ballast for a section surfacing a hump yard. It was more physical than the work of a cafe worker. I survived and thrived. Real money then, over 6 dollars and hour! After a summer of that I got pretty jacked and confident in manual labor. It was like military comrades. Joking and sharing hard work.

I shoveled ballast for months and noticed that the guys moving the tracks just hung onto their lining bars while I shoveled constantly. Ballast to be thundered under the ties by a massive surfacing machine. I worked right next to it. I asked one of the men how do the lining bar men get assigned that position? “First one to the work site gets their choice of tools”.

The next day when I stepped off the old school bus that took us to the work face, I yawned and stretched and then burst into running and grabbed a lining bar. Lots of kidding about that for all of us. New guy wises up. I did a good part of a year on surfacing gang and then I listened to my old veteran friend, Bruce, who lived in NW Wisconsin and he bluntly told me to ‘get out of there and buy a house a half mile away from his. I got a GI loan and bought the house. I had no idea what I was getting into, it’s not like buying a truck. (more of Bruce and I in the “motorcycle diary” series.

Living rural, 75 miles away was different than the west bank and it took some getting used to. I then began commuting to a section crew that was in Dinky Town, just across the river from the west bank!

A few visits to an old friend from the cafe, Raplh WhItcoff at the Durable Goods store got me a nice new Josnereds 80 chainsaw that really helped me with the firewood production. I can’t run it now but can still lift it up. My gandy dancer muscles had no problem back in those days. It’s all right, It will break your wrist to start it, when it will start. My son, Soren, recently restored the old 80 and it is an amazing saw for it’s era. Determination to start is still the key. 80 cc’s of engine is enough for a small motorcycle.

Fifty years later, we still heat with firewood in our parlor stove and Soren does most of the acquiring and splitting the wood. I stack and split kindling. I do remember how to swing wood hand mauls and have a good time doing so. Keeping my oar in as the saying goes.

Our property has increased in value after paying off the GI loan. Paradise in it’s own rolling hills valley with a private beaver lake and a prayer cabin overlooking it. 30 acres of peaceful country life. It was twenty six thousand five hundred dollars when I bought it. I now have a beautiful wife, two boys and indeed, blessings that just came. I found Jesus was right beside me my whole life and eventually surrendered my being and soul to Him. It took a while, I can be pretty dull and unobservant sometimes.

As I quote Monty Python at times: “Well, I got better” It’s pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator

Inconvenience Store

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

They seem to be popping up everywhere. In the garden even, inconvenient plants with pretty blue flowers that creep along the ground and invade your strawberry beds and choke out those tender flowers that are usually in the middle of the garden.

You know them, we all do and it’s very inconvenient to remove them and all their offshoots.The dandelions that are relatives and show up at the same time. Akin to the neighbors that come over a lot and want to borrow your chainsaw so they can break it for you.

You are supposed to love those people, really, it’s the actual words of our leader and the man who was God on this planet. A very difficult thing to do. To love these people. Well, he did tell us about the weeds and the good crops but People are not weeds, but often they feel like them unless I am one on the highway. Causing other hurrying ones to point their long leaves at me they grow faster on by me.

I began to wonder about a store that sold all inconvenient things. They too are everywhere and are popping up like dandelions in your neighborhood.

Outside of town and very prominent, lots of them now. They sell many things you really don’t need but it is inexpensive (another word with the prefix of ‘In’) Before you even enter, there is a machine that dispenses movies you won’t enjoy. Monsters destroying things like cities or the world. Heroic men that survive danger to kill the inconvenient people in their lives.

Inside the store (which has an odor of soap you would never buy or use) are things to buy that are not easily obtained without driving a great distance from your small town. Left handed chewing gum and cross threaded light bulbs. A plethora of baked goods that have labels not quite big enough to list poison ingredients and taste bad. Bread that squashes when you grab it.

Clothing that will not fit and as mentioned before a whole aisle of soaps that you would not even want to put in your car for the drive home. The list goes on, but it is convenient to get these things because those stores are close by, Everywhere. They all look the same and are lit like airport runways as another convenient light source for their neighboring homes.

The list is long. Alarm clocks that always slow down ten minutes so your job becomes inconvenient for human resource departments. The help all have respiratory problems, as to be expected. Most of them do know where everything is by aisle and within them. I try to imagine myself, just out of high school in a small town and working the cash register nights. I remember my first job when I was in high school and it was a breeze compared to this work.

Our world is filled with inconvenient things, troublesome things but as an old friend sang, “old and in the way, they will never care about you because your old and in the way” We are not dandelions and we are precious, every one of us. I know this now because my Savior tells me so. He made me and you and loves us all and our creator bought us at a very great price. Not Very convenient to everyone and valued no matter where we are on the shelf of life. It’s pretty good. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator.

Christmas Feast

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

First published 2011 when there was deep snow on the ground

There it was, indeed a table set for family and a few friends as well. The exquisite food, paid for by a relative in advance. A wise and generous relative, gone on a Christmas day past. Loved and missed at the table now.

The family, gathered in our home, every Christmas Eve to eat well and satisfy the gathering with exotic things. Brie, Lingonberry jam, Home baked bread out of the farm’s wheat. Tasty nuggets of chocolate treats and cookies made once a year. Treats, some pulled from the larder that are saved for this time. Some from Julie’s work at Valley Sweets in St.Croix Falls.

There is a Christmas ham in the crock pot that simmered all day and filled the house with it’s savory smells. Appetites were honed and sharpened as the winter of winters was preparing another snow storm. Already the new sidewalk was drifted half over from the bitter sleething of fine snow. The wind had not abated much from the night and the drive home from a delightful worship service was fraught with drifts on the rural highway. Narrow triangles of show, now created by the dry snow the county plows had just cleared that day.

It is perhaps the only time that snow is seen as beautiful and appropriate. The old images of sleighs to visit. Pulled by a team of Percheron horses. The blankets and even a few hot bricks tucked in to be heated up again for the ride home. Wood cook stoves and wood or coal parlor stoves that worked pretty well at heating a home. No worry about the pipes freezing because there were none. We have a painting of a sleigh heading for a church but the horse looks fake somehow in mid stride. Tough to convey motion in a painting. I think maybe a slight brush stroke of snow behind an upraised hoof would have done the job. Art critic.

Candle light services with luminaries out in the snow to entice and welcome. Classic songs to be sung, you know the ones. Everyone has them memorized. The big round wood stove in the corner (should be in the middle of the aisle thinks the same art critic) We all have these memories of times past before we were born. Stories passed down by past generations that had to walk miles uphill in heavy snow. To school as well as church.

Another image that I have is the short peace in the midst trench warfare in France. Soldiers apprehensive and then hearing the opposing army singing Silent Night in German. Slowly rising up from the trenches and walking towards one another, perhaps with a bit of whiskey or brandy to share. Impossible to contemplate with the guns and cannons silent the enemies meeting on no man’s land. Men’s vision to be truthful. The Man full of grace and truth who someday will come for you. This is the reason the fear was pushed aside. We have all been afraid a long long time, but Papa is here and He will take the fear away.

There is impossible joy in the midst of the world’s battle for many things. Power, possessions, and dominance.

We all know the story, even those of us who think the story of Christmas is only about being rewarded because we have not been naughty. We think we are on the ‘better be good’ part of the perceived equation. It’s not any of those things. The reason that Christmas has the impact year after year is because the story is true and the good news is impossible to explain with only words. It is indeed a feast. It is felt and it is known by all men. It is joy and the present of good news that cannot be earned. It is indeed a Christmas present that must be opened by everyone that sees it and know what it is. The only present that still surprises with astonishment. Every time. It’s pretty good. The feast of life with Jesus Norm Peterson / Jack Gator

Prairie Life Near the Twin Cities

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was subtle and it was a destroyer of families. Work for the men in tall buildings, not within walking distance.

The new city age of commuting, milk men down the alleys and trolley cars. The fifties, when I was single digits old. It was subtle and the beginning of an ending. The most important thing of all disappeared. Intimacy.

The way things used to be, such a common phrase indicating nostalgia for the ‘good old days’. It is much more than that. my father worked as a fireman and Mom eventually worked downtown as a secretary for the public schools. Gone was grandpa’s little farm and both families living close by to one another. A neighbor near the farm complained that Dad was supposed to live in the city to be a fireman. The move to the city was inevitable and plans were made to buy a nice house in the north side of Minneapolis. The country life was comfortable for me. The creek down the hill offered fishing and adventure. Life was the smell of good earth.

“Hey kids, tomorrow we get out the rock boat and get the rocks out of the main field.” Groans from both me and my sister but with memories of Grandma’s supper with the fresh doughnut holes with chicken dumplings and real mashed potatoes. The ‘boat’ moved slowly and Freddie, my friend nearby, joined the ‘party.’ There was always a bit of humor that came forth too. “Hey, that rock looks just like Mr. Mosher!” Grandpa laughing from the old International also saying that’s not the way to speak of him! Guilty as charged, but still snickering when we looked at each other. Working the land together as Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in her newspaper columns.

Not long after those halcyon days of laughter and sharing in the good times and difficult or even sad times, it ended. Gone,the best days of my life. The fire department was a good job for Dad. Secure income.

They moved into the city as Dad continued working for the fire department, and to afford the nice city house, Mom had to work and leave us alone at the new home. A lot. The one room school house a mile away was not the way things were done in the city. There weren’t any potato fields or big vegetable gardens either. The biggest loss was the absence of parents when they were needed. Not being available at home when bad things happened. I was lost in the waves of change. Waking up at Bunyan’s Vanity Fair. The cute girl next door was a forbidden friend for Jack. She went to the ‘wrong’ church.

Make your own lunch and wait after school for Mom or Dad. Alone in the house. No more family games and no neighbors or relatives coming by. The big church downtown and bullies at the neighborhood school were incomprehensible. No one seemed to care about children at home or at the next door neighbors. Gone were the sights of a broken piece of equipment on a neighbors field. “I going to go over to Rick’s place and see what we can do” sorts of things. Day cares started up and everything had a price. From workers of the soil to wage earners surviving in toil. Children did not understand this. In a child’s eye it was abandonment and loss.

And so it goes as progress turns into regress for the new price of hearth and home. Our home now had a fireplace in the living room but it was never lit. The big coal furnace in the basement provided the heat but the hearth never provided a family room’s comfort. Now the gathering of family was the flicker of the black and white television set and intimacy was knowing the names of the characters on the screen. Big life became substitute life and families losses were significant. Children became actors in the play of city life. Do well at school and play with the strangers and you make friends if you don’t cry. First grade in the big city.

Gone the instantaneous comfort of a mother’s loving touch, the guiding hand of a Grandfather as the soil turned rich under the plow and disk. Love for neighbors seen and demonstrating love for everyone. Gone was “It’s been a good day, let’s read that book! Who knows where we left off?” Instead, lonely days. Akin to a room of the house suddenly disappearing. But dad and Grandpa were good carpenters and rebuilt some of the loss.

But Dad and Grandpa were not seen during the day and Grandpa and Grandma still lived in Golden Valley. I withdrew into myself and began to embrace short wave radio after a few years in grade school. I got my ham radio license just before going into 7th grade. I then had communications with total strangers around the country that were as lonely as I was. But dad and Grandpa were good carpenters and rebuilt some of the loss with me observing the new wood shop in our basement and Grandpa teaching dad and later, dad teaching me. I still have some of the old tools and a wood tool carrier from them. Now my youngest son has some of those tools on a special shelf in his wood shop here on the farm.

There is another carpenter that will restore all our loss’. He is the best restoration worker in the world. Jesus, He will make all things new. A perfect man with wood in the shop and wood on the cross. It’s pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe

Sproul Plaza in the Genteel World

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

Some of you older folks may remember the ‘free speech’ movement in Berkeley back in the 60’s.
There were all sorts of speakers ‘for the people’ declaring the freedom to say anything they wanted to and thus, enabling everyone to do the same.


Mario Savio, Jerry Rubin and others were up there on the steps at the college,ripping up the air with
megaphones and every filthy word they could muster up. The lizard was let out of the cage and it really
still belongs in there today. I have noticed things that are acceptable nowadays that were not so a short
time ago. Movies, literature and people on some sort of insane voyage seem to be heard and amazingly, understood and endorsed by many. It seems as though Allen Ginsburg and his ‘man/boy’ agenda has been given a new look and found politically correct this time around.


It appears that insanity and the collapse of thinking is here. Turning our children into the opposite sex
and actually having people in Washington unable to define the difference between a man and a woman.
That sort of thing happens in fantasy movies. Usually it is some sort of super power that appears in those
kind of films.

Now, the super power is saying things that are not real and people that hear these things
believe them. These new believers get angry when those of us see absurdity spoken and written. Easily
seen if you haven’t drunk the cool aid. Feminine personal products available in men’s public toilets just in
case they are needed. Men competing in Women’s sports events because they have changed their
names to female and wear clothing to match.


Our country is on a acid trip that Timothy Leary stated would be so cool if LSD was put in all the water
we drink. Conspiracy theories abound. Free injection needles for drug addicts. Creating ‘safe zones’ for
rioters we now call disenfranchised and troubled youth. Shootings every night by criminals that ‘we
created’ because of our racist history (which is being re-written by George Orwell’s ministry of truth)

Now we have criminals from other countries who just drifted in to enjoy the home of no savings and the land of free stuff. It is insane and we wait to awaken again in the morning to unlock the doors and peer out down the driveway to see it is still calm. Even here in rural American farmland.


I experienced the tip of that iceberg a few years ago at night. I was at a public reading by a university
professor with many endorsements and accolades from the usual foundations and politically correct
intellectuals. Books for sale too. Autographed as soon as the cash was given. An author that I worked alongside decades ago in a local food co-op we put together. It’s still there. I was eager to see her again and reminisce.


It was Sproul plaza again. This time without the megaphone. A totally inadequate sound system and
refreshments for those of us who need those sorts of things. It was put on by a government funded
institution, the St. Croix Falls Library. We were out in the delightful perfect summer evening on a plaza. Nice chairs and very friendly people.


A lot of them were friends too. The main speaker, my old friend, was reading a book of her own and it began to segue into language that is now free to use. Language of bar habitués in questionable parts of cities.


The small gathering of intellectuals began to titter and appreciatively express their delight in the continual use of curse words and the denigration of our Lord. As though He was the cause of sorrows and arbitrary wrong doing. “Is He safe? Of course not, He’s a lion but He’s good” A.


The lemonade and grapes and crackers were leaving traces to follow the crowd along. It was a
courtesy by the staff to comfort us and prepare us for the endorsing of the cool-aid of the times. How
exciting to hear an endorsed intellectual (with the mandatory book signing afterwards) speak those words
that we all want to speak casually. Polite society is not ready for that yet. It was sad for me to experience such drivel and ‘worldliness’ from an old friend.

Before I left, I asked why she used so many F bombs and added I was offended. She replied, “I was just reading a book!” That disconnect was incomprehensible. She wasn’t reading an old Ginsberg book, she wrote this one and she owns it.

I had brought some of my columns for Sharon, my friend and fellow author, to enjoy later but I tucked them back into my journal and left. It was not very good. I was sad. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator

A. C.S. Lewis. ‘The lion, the witch and the wardrobe.

Mail Call

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

Catching attention is that announcement over the 1MC (That is the speaker system throughout a Navy Ship)

Mail call! Overseas, it was a light moment, usually news from home. Packages of cookies and such were obvious and demanded attention from one’s division. Hopefully a large box. After doing a few tours in a war zone, it was a welcome diversion. Mail was found aft, at the Mess deck by the ship’s Gedunk.

Being on watch 24 hours with 12 hours to sleep was a bit uncomfortable. The mail call was a pleasant relief besides Folgers coffee or Mid rats on the mess deck.

We all do it, walking out now to the box at the end of the driveway to see what’s there. On Tuesdays when the trash is also in it’s container there, it’s an easier job to not have to clutch the rolling trash can and the mail at the same time. You can tell what to toss in the empty can. Sometimes, it’s the whole days mail with all the ‘Special offer just for you!’

Every one on a rural route knows the drill with the flag up to signal there is outgoing mail in the box. Country folk nowadays usually skip doing that flag thing. It used to be convenient, but now there are a very small minority who have a calling to inspect boxes late at night with flags up.

There is almost a romance with the mail. It is something our government really got right to establish the Postal Service. Our language has responded with phrases and words particular to our mail. Special Delivery, Tracking, Return to Sender, Postage Due, Return address’, Zip codes and the inevitable, Junk Mail (spam for Gmail)

There was a rumor afoot that messenger and email type communication would completely eliminate mail. At first, paper mail was called ‘snail mail’ but electronic mail is easily lost and addresses are tricky too.

A few years back, I was told to walk a bicycle trail and then cross the highway to find a treasure. One of those gentle commands that cannot be ignored. He told me to keep my eyes open!

Or course, I thought of treasure of some sort. Nothing but trash and discarded cigarette butts. Not even field stripped. (ask a vet about that phrase) Then He told me to cross the highway, leave the trail. A nice ditch next to a golf course came into view.

There was old mail in the ditch. Dozens of envelopes. I opened one and it was from Korea from a local soldier asking about the crops and the tractors and things like that. Keeping in touch and letting the folks know he was thinking of them, their dad, a soldier overseas. There was a broken cedar box in the midst of the scattered white envelopes. The last name on the envelopes address’ was familiar and it was a name of a girl we had in the Kinship program

We called the number of the last name and the local town. It indeed was that girl and when we told her what I had found, she excitedly said; “There was a break in at my grandfathers house not long ago!” It was a flash of understanding that the thieves opened the box in their getaway vehicle and seeing the old letters, tossed the box out the car window. We bundled up the letters and gave them back to the family and it was very good to do so. There was the return of precious memories.

Personal mail, ah, that is the treasure at our mailboxes! It even surpasses envelopes with checks to cash. A real letter that shows a friend that cares enough to gather ink and pen and encourage us immediately when we see the return address. We all get Email and that has no impact as a folded piece of promised love from an old friend. I get those letters often when I need them.

So, what have we always had that is faster and never has any junk mail or spam with it? We have a passel of love letters from a very dear friend which bear re-reading and we have the incredible permission to answer those letters with just..thoughts. Spoken alone or with friends or just found behind our eyes. The only requirement to receive those letters is to understand them and if needed, ask for clarification with our response. To hear and read and feel our hearts move to get closer to the writer and speaker to our very core.

It’s time now to read and understand and respond to the best correspondent that is and always will be. You know his address. Jesus. Among His many names is ‘The Word” He’s waiting for you to read his letters. Pay attention, it is very important that we do so. Think seriously about those spoken and writtern special letters from your best friend and devour them with joy. Send a response with all your heart, mind, soul and spirit. He is delighted to hear from us, especially you.

It’s pretty good. Norm / Jack