Outside Looking In

Every now and again when I peruse the back issues of the Mascot, a story idea pops up.
A story from 1945 caught my eye and left me reflecting on this Little Boy Blue nursery rhyme:
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where is that boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under a haystack, fast asleep.
Will you wake him? Oh no, not I,
For if I do, he'll surely cry.
It seems that a farmer two miles east of Porter, George Kindelberger, lost seven of his cows in a corn field in August of 1945.
When Kindelberger was attempting to steer his cows to a pasture, they suddenly took off running "like demons", as described neighbors witnessing the event, to a corn field belonging to a neighbor, Lawrence Kloos.
Surprisingly, the cows remained in Kloos' corn field for over a week. Kindelberger figured the cows would come out on their own, but they remained in the corn field. Kindelberger and a few friends and neighbors then were able to remove the small herd out of the corn and headed them toward the pasture.
En route to the pasture, the cows spotted an 80-acre corn field belonging to Winnifred Swedzinski and "high-tailed" it to that field. For over two weeks, Kindelberger was unable to entice them out of the rows of cornstalks.
Many farmers were unable to figure out how the cows survived nearly a month in the two corn fields without an ample supply of water.
Joe Hoffman, a farmer who lived nearby, reported that he had two heifers and a steer join Kindelberger's seven strays in the corn field.
In early September, around 100 farmers and friends gathered at the Swedzinski corn field to chase the cows out. The farmers chased the cows for several hours, but were only able to lasso a rope around the neck of one exhausted cow and placed him in a truck where it was taken to the pasture.
As reported in the Mascot story, the men giving chase said the cows ran at the sight of man, much like a deer, and would dash up and down the rows of corn, evading all efforts to corner them and drive them out.
It took the farmers two more days to finally get all the cows out of the field and brought to the pasture.
That whole story sounded a little "corny" to me. But sometimes when you're in search of a story, you have to "milk" it for all its worth when you finally find one.

Acts of kindness
Minneota has always been a community known for giving, sharing and helping others. Even though I wasn't raised there, nor do I live there, the people have gone above and beyond to make me feel welcome.
After I wrote a column about my collection of Abraham Lincoln paraphernalia, I was given several Lincoln items by Mascot readers. While I've been painting and fixing up the Mascot office recently, readers have come in and given me things like a loaf of homemade bread, honey, baseball magazines, a face mask and thank you cards.
I don't want to mention names for fear that I will leave someone out. I am not advertising for people to continue this trend, rather, I am expressing my appreciation for the generosity often displayed among in and around the Minneota area.
The generosity is not confined to a particular age group either. A few weeks ago, I took a photo of four-year-old Luna Olson sitting on top of a tractor with her great grandmother, Linda Hennen, during the scaled-down Harvest Festival in Porter.
A week later, while I was at the Farmers Market in Minneota, I felt a tug on the back of my pants leg. I turned around to see a smiling Luna with a large bag of Cheetos that was nearly as big as she is. With her orange-stained fingers, she held out a large cheese puff for me to take.
Luna's wide smile as I took a bite and thanked her was the best gift of all.

Headline grabbers
We are beginning to add famous front-page headlines from newspapers over the years to the front of our office counter.
There are currently 15 famous headline affixed to the front counter. We have such headlines as "Man lands on moon", "Nixon resigns", "Kennedy killed in Dallas", "U.S. under attack" (9/11), "Dewey defeats Truman" and more.
Stop in and take a look and let us know if there is a headline you would like to see.