Hear it's cold back in Minnesota. I don't miss that.I do miss the roar of the space heater inside the heavy wooden door at the Plains Cafe every time I went in there for lunch. I miss the clink and clank of the steaming plates of hot beef sandwiches smothered in mashed potatoes and rich, hot gravy that Hattie set in the window between the kitchen and the dining area. I miss the crowded dining room with customers comfortably clad in warm plaid flannel shirts and suspendered woolen pants.
People may nut understand why I remember that place after all the bad things I endured there. I guess it's easy to think that the Great Masking of 1989 revealed the dark underbelly of that iconic scene, that somehow life in Jefferson was secretly evil, waiting to explode in the events of that week in March. In retrospect, that's garbage.
In every town, every community, there is good and evil, the Word and the Earth Man. However, if there is one thing I learned from the events of that spring, it is that good dominates...if you let it. Life before 1989 was, at times, confusing and lonely. There was stress, anger, depression, and often sadness. Yet there was also happiness, love, and rejoicing.
And since? Immeasurable blessings – family, professional success, peace, and security in the acceptance that Knowledge is fleeting, Wonder is unerring, and Being is all.
The blessings are more than enough to compensate for the memories of a cold Minnesota fall.
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