Time for him to fly

Noah, fresh-faced and red-bearded, is 18 and ready to leave home. We're heading out now for Duluth, and UMD. The scrapblog editor will return Monday night to her empty nest.

A Texas cousin lands a fine fish

It comes as a bit of a shock to know there are more lakes, and maybe even more fish, in Texas than Minnesota. There was one less fish there last week after it was landed by Kelly Turner, daughter of cousin Sandy Kirkwood Turner. That's quite a large one she pulled out of Lake Nacogdoches. Sandy and Kelly will be visiting Minnesota Oct. 6-16. Hope to see them then!

Very cool car, very cool cousin

The 1979 Chevy El Camino belongs to LaMont (Monty) Leiser, the very cool son of cousin Cyndi and grandson of Elmer and Mavis Sprick. Monty is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Ah, 1979 -- we remember it well. Monty, who wasn't born yet then, can find lots of photos from 1979 in the bowels of this here scrapblog if he's interested.

Would you buy a Christmas tree from this guy?

Uncle Joe, spiffy in a saffron windbreaker, apparently had visions of making some moola by selling Christmas trees out of Ten Oaks north of Lake City. So far as we know, he didn't get rich doing so. Later, when Uncle Bill was Goodhue County auditor, he borrowed the specs and wore them when he asked the Goodhue County Board for a raise. He got the raise. Cousins, let's try that with our bosses!!

First day of school

In honor of the first day of school approaching, here are a few first-day-of-school photos from the Miller family archives. The first is from cousin Chris' first day of kindergarten in West Germany in about 1963. The second was taken in about 1968, when Pam was in seventh grade, Chris was in fifth and Chats in second in Lake City, Minn. The third would have been about 1969, when Pam was in eighth grade and Chats in third. Note young Alfie greeting Pam and Chats. The scrapblog editor would like to point out that in those days, she made all her own clothes, including the jumper and culottes she's wearing in these photos. That's hard for even her to believe, but it's true.

Lyme disease? What's Lyme disease?

Cousins Sam and Joe communed with a deer at a North Shore petting farm in the 1970s. Joe, a master bow-and-arrow hunter, appeared quietly amused at the unrealistic safety, and sad confinement, of this deer and his fellows.

Snow day

Cousin Dan fell over and cousin Sam ate snow in this 1970s photo taken in the Millers' Old Frontenac driveway. They probably were under the influence of the rambunctious Miller kids at the time, because usually they'd pose nicely.

A Sprick in the parade

Uncle LeRoy's spiffy yellow truck was a prominent fixture in Lake City Water-Ski Days parades in the 1950s.

The schoolhouse in Oak Center, Minn.

Somewhere in this faded old slide is the scrapblog editor, who attended part of first grade in the one-room schoolhouse in Oak Center, Minn. This was during the time that the Aunt Alverna and the Miller kids were living with Aunt Adelaide and Uncle Norm in Oak Center as they prepared to join Uncle Bill in West Germany. The scrapblog editor faintly recalls that there were six grades housed in the one room; each had its own row, with just five or so kids in each grade.

The enigmatic red mushroom-o'-certain-death

While living in Germany, the Millers became obsessed with the deadly white-spotted red mushroom and all representations thereof. Why? Only Alverna could tell us, and she's sadly unavailable for consultation. Here are two of many photos that refer to the lethal fungi. One is of the 'room itself, taken in the fairy-tale-like forest near Ansbach, West Germany. The second is a truly unpleasant-looking ride at the Frankfurt Zoo. Just get us down, please, Dad! We'll be good, we promise! Alverna always told us never to take a bite of the pretty mushroom because death would be instant and horrible beyond imagining. However, we seem to recall Chris sampling it without blinking an eye, a keen disappointment to his sisters at the time. When we Googled this European mushroom, we found that it's in the family Aminitaceae and is a "powerful psychodelic delirium" fungi. Aha! That explains everything.

Alfie's very best friend

Cousin Chats was either trying to keep her beloved Alfie's ears warm or shielding him from some Miller yakkety-yak in this slide from the early 1970s.

Little cousins on the swings

Cousins Pam and Patty-Lou played on the swings in Lake City in this 1957 photo. The park where they played is still there, and the cousins and their kids have all been there many times.

Florence, long ago

Aunt Florence's early and brief marriage to Bill Rafferty didn't work out, but cousin Patty Pepin was one happy outcome. We believe this old slide is from the early 1950s.

Well, his sign IS Aquarius

During his childhood, cousin Chris fell or jumped into scores of lakes, rivers and cricks. The more dressed up he was, the more likely he was to take a spectacular plunge, usually right in the middle of a visit by some important guests his parents were trying to impress, such as a U.S. Army colonel or key county commissioner. Here he prepared to jump fully dressed into the drink during a mid-1960s vacation in Austria with the Millers' friends Erwin, Ruth and Tomas Menje. Looks like Tomas was about to jump in, too. Note cousin Chatsie in the cool shades, nonchalantly trying to look like a tourist unassociated with this bunch. We've always liked this photo of cousin Chris in a boat being rowed by Uncle Bill, foreground. We have a strong memory of Chris falling into this German lake too, but cannot remember its name.

Pam's older friend

The scrapblog editor spent much of Wednesday visiting old friend Laurie Hertzel at her lovely book- and dog-filled home in St. Paul, yakking, hiking, eating and drinking, entertainments Pam and Laurie have been pursuing together for oh, 30 years now. Laurie's endearing combination of high creativity and great common sense only gets richer as she gets older. By the way, it's important to note that Laurie is two weeks older than Pam, and always will be. Forgot the camera, so here's a photo of Laurie from 1992; on the back it says "Me and Mel in Dingle, Ireland." Laurie looks just the same, which is more than we can say for Mel. Her excellent husband, Doug, is better-looking (and better-behaved) than Mel, anyway.

A genuine German cousin

When the Augustins and Spricks high-tailed it out of Deutschland in the mid-1800s, they left some relatives behind. (We can't help but wonder if those good folks would have come along if they'd known what was to come in the land of Luther, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Goethe.) Aunt Alverna and others tracked down a few remote relatives after The War, including our favorite, young Britta Augustin. Here Britta visited with Mavis and Alverna. Britta used to visit a lot, but then she met Larry, an American fellow who played "Ach Du Lieber Augustin" on the accordion, and we haven't seen much of her since. So here's a shout-out to Britta, who we hear is one of the scrapblog's international readers. Hallo, Britta! Come visit! Grandma Sprick used to tell tales of anti-German sentiment in Minnesota during World Wars I and II. Ironic, given that young American Spricks and Augustins were busy taking on shrapnel in Europe, but that's how things go when emotions run high during wartime. We thought of that recently when we saw "Sweetland," a movie about a young German woman who emigrates to Minnesota. The scrapblog's cinema reviewer highly recommends "Sweetland," the only film she's seen that features an L-shaped farmhouse, visible at left in a still shot from the movie. Meanwhile, a friend of cousin Chats recently traced the Miller side of the scrapblog editor's family all the way back to a 1700s kilt-wearing Scottish clan called the McFarlanes. (We digress momentarily here to picture, perhaps more vividly than is absolutely necessary for purely historical purposes, Mel Gibson in "Braveheart.") No doubt you other cousins have some interesting genealogy on your non-Sprick sides, too. And the adopted cousins have that, too, of course. In the end, if you go back far enough, we're all blood cousins.

A genealogy field trip

The scrapblog editor, who often finds the present bewildering, has a soft spot for the past, especially for little stories that illuminate the humanity and vulnerabilities of those who have gone before us. It's strangely endearing to learn of them. She also has inherited the love our grandma, Maria Augustin Sprick, and her mom, Alverna Sprick Miller, had for long drives in the country, especially when the country is the beautiful back roads of Goodhue and Wabasha counties west of Hwy. 61. Today she kidnapped Aunt Anna in Red Wing and Uncle Joe in Lake City, who probably had a lot better things to do but were too polite to say so (an endearing Sprick family trait), and drove them way up into blufftop farm country in search of ancestral cemeteries and pretty vistas. They found some ancestors in two tiny pioneer cemeteries in an area called Belvidere Mills, in Belvidere Township in Goodhue County. These cemeteries are beautiful, set on deep green hillsides off gravel roads far from any towns. In late August, the wind whistles through the big oaks and cedars and rustling cornstalks and tall prairie grasses, and the deer and foxes and meadowlarks and crickets go intensely about their business. Even if you're not looking for old relatives' graves, we highly recommend this drive, especially for us urban cousins who don't see a lot of L-shaped farmhouses or 8-foot native buffalo grass on our cul-de-sacs. The area is pretty much exactly the way it was in 1850 (don't tell Jesse Ventura or Hale Irwin, please). We drove west on Hwy. 63, then north on Wabasha County Rd. 15, which turns into Goodhue County Rd. 9, then went north through some serious boondocks on 280th Avenue and west on 370th Street (rustic roads that don't resemble urban avenues or streets in any way), and from there, I couldn't tell you where we went, frankly -- it was this cornfield, that oak stand, this crick, that hayfield, though we end up exactly where we wanted to be, another Sprick family trait. Our first stop was at a well-kept old graveyard on a windswept emerald-green hillside across from St. Peter's Church. There we found the graves of Henrich (1853-1938) and Anna Augustin (1863-1909), Grandma Sprick's parents, as well as a very old, ornate, melancholy headstone for their little Johann, who died in 1894 at age 2. Then we wandered a couple more miles on a gravel road (Betcher Trail, I think it was) until we found Belvidere Union Cemetery, an even older cemetery on a hillside where there used to be a church but now is nothing but graves, trees and cornfields. There we found headstones for Frederick (1848-1920) and Adelheid Sprick (1848-1878), Claus' parents; Margaret Sprick (1863-1951), Fred's second wife, and two Sprick boys, Christ, who died in 1894 at age 10, and Alfred, who is unmentioned in the cemetery's list and in Alverna's family history, perhaps because he only lived one year, dying in 1901. The scrapblog editor noted that both cemeteries hold way too many babies and children who died in 1894-95, which not coincidentally were years in which diphtheria, a horrific and highly contagious disease, ran amok. (Thank goodness, middle-aged cousins, that we live in the era of modern vaccines rather than in 1895; we've winced as our robust babies screeched through their DPT (diphtheria-pertussis (whooping cough)-tetanus) vaccines, but we've never had to sit stricken in a rural parlor where a little coffin sat propped on two wooden chairs, bearing the unbearable. Google "diphtheria" sometime to see what we've missed.) If you're interested in genealogy, you'll find a treasure trove online. You can find info about the Spricks and Augustins all over the Web, including at the Minnesota Historical Society site, the Goodhue County Historical Society site and several other eclectic ones like this one about Belvidere Union Cemetery established by history buffs. You can read the engravings on the tombstones pictured much more easily if you click on a photo to make it much larger. Joe and Anna are especially great companions for cemetery field trips. Anna knew half of the people buried in the places, some of whom, quite frankly, she misses more than others, and Joe cleverly unlatched ancient gates and unearthed the tombstones of babies dead for more than 100 years. The conversation was fetching, too. Here's a sample: Anna: "What did you just find, there, Joe?" Joe: "Well, I believe we've just unearthed Christ's tomb." (That would be Christ Sprick, age 10, dead of the diphtheria in 1894.) Anna: "That fellow over there [pointing to a grave], he had 18 children." Joe: "He just couldn't be satisfied with 17, not that guy. Nope. Had to be 18." The Hebrews 13:14 Bible verse in German on the Augustins' grave translates thusly: "For here have we no abiding city, but we seek one to come." Much as we love Manhattan and Minneapolis, we hope heaven has some countryside exactly like that these cemeteries are set in. It seems pretty heavenlike to us.

A gallery of priceless blue plates

The scrapblog editor visited Aunt Anna today in Red Wing, Minn., where she was gratified to see precious, oops, we mean "PRICELESS!" (as per Aunt Alverna's immortal pronouncement) blue plates proudly hanging in Anna's immaculate little kitchen. Each depicts tender scenes of baby animals, Christmas warmth and charming rural life, except for the one Anna's pointing to with her cane, which depicted the Little Mermaid looking forlorn and cold in Copenhagen harbor. Anna, a former globetrotter, was saying that the actual Little Mermaid surprised her by being -- well, so little. Anna also confessed that when she sought to dust the precious blue plates recently, one broke and she had to toss it, effectively reducing her eventual estate by a few hundred thousand dollars, we calculated. (Cousin Dan has informed us that a blue plate attracts only a few bucks on e-Bay, but he's just being a killjoy.) One of the stops on our day's agenda was the Alverna and Bill memorial park bench on the northeast corner of the Old Frontenac field. Check it out, cousins. There you can reminisce over tender memories, such as Alverna cross-country skiing in her kukumall hat on frosty winter evenings and Bill cheerfully setting the entire place on fire on hazy summer ones. We are glad to report that Anna is doing well, walking very, very carefully with a cane or walker. She is petite and lovely as always, and sends her love to all the cousins.

Experience the fair right here!

Can't make it to the fair this year? Take a virtual Midway ride right here with Noah, his girlfriend, Tara, and her little sister, Tracy. (Turn on the sound to hear the distinctive cacophony of the Midway.) The three of them are at left center in this video, which is the first we've figured out how to post on the scrapblog.

Never too long at the fair

Pam, Noah, Tara and Tara's little sister, Tracy, spent the whoooooole day at the Minnesota State Fair. It featured the usual treats, one after another -- the Miracle of Birth Center, cheese curds (note to selves -- next time, don't put the Miracle of Birth Center and cheese curds so close together), goats, ducks, chickens, bunnies, sheep, horses, cattle, pigs, mini-donuts, way too many Midway rides and shooting games (Pam and Noah, who are experts at fair games, won four large stuffed animals and one football in short order), root beer floats, the big slide, a parade featuring the University of Minnesota marching band and some extremely snappy-looking Royal Canadian Mounties, large vegetables, frozen apple cider, prize-winning Christmas trees (those last two things are always a treat in steamy August), bee demonstrations, crop art (including a tribute to Lillian Colton, the crop artist who passed away earlier this year), politicians (Obama pins were going much faster than any of the other candidates', if that's any kind of harbinger), people in oink hats gravely regarding very cool art in the Fine Arts building, Juanita's vegetarian fajitas (a healthy oasis) and much, much more. There were a million people there, all of them appearing to be having a great time. People-watching was primo. The crush and push of humanity and the general amiable live-and-let-live air make the fair kind of like Manhattan, Pam thought, but nothing else does. It's definitely a Minnesota thing. On the nice free bus ride back to the Huron Boulevard parking lot, we almost fell asleep. We took naps when we got home. The fair will do that to ya. This is a big week for Noah, who is leaving for UMD, accompanied by an entourage that includes his mom, dad, stepmom and Johnson grandparents. So the fair had special resonance, as will everything this pivotal week.

Family photos so good we ought to charge you to see them

The scrapbook editor, after a hard night at work in her new job of bossing reporters around as they try to find out who shot whom and why (if there's room, we'll also include what, when and where), couldn't be more pleased to come home in the middle of the night and find an e-mail bearing such priceless photos as these. We are so glad Uncle Elmer-Joe got a new scanner! He wrote that these photos don't need to be posted, he just thought the scrapblog editor might enjoy seeing them, but there's zero chance that the scrapblog editor would get photos like these and NOT post them. They were taken in 1979 at Joe and Mavis' 30th wedding anniversary celebration at their home in Eau Claire, Wis. Many Spricks are present, as well as some folks we don't recognize, who may be LaMonts, from Mavis' side. We love the Sprick aunties' clearly fresh, perfectly round hairdos, the kids chortling in the window, the 1970s fashions, little Tanya in a Superman shirt, and cousin Davy and his cousin Bobby LaMont tossing Sarah soon-to-be-Sprick around in the back row. Click on the photo to make it large enough to see individual faces. As for the second photo, we have no explanation, but we couldn't be happier to share it with the world.

The Spricks' very own gong show

Cousin Sammy presided over a gong show at the Stump-in in September 1978 (note garbage-can-cover gong at upper right). We remember little about this except that the talent was beyond belief and the judges could be bought off for almost any food item. We think a typical Stump-in would have made a great TV reality show.

Mavis' wild side

Aunt Mavis is a lady through and through, with sophisticated urban savvy and the Sprick family's very best manners, but she also knows what to do in the wilderness. In the top photo, she hiked through the Bridger Wilderness in August 1981 (note the use of a ski pole as a steadier -- "brrrrillliant," as they say on Monty Python). In the bottom one, she hobnobbed with Uncle Bill at Waldesruh in June 1977. As Uncle Joe writes, "Thoreau would have been proud of them. There were no 'facilities,' just porcupines, mosquitoes and wood ticks." A typical Sprick familiy vacation, then.

Mo's good deed

Our very own Mo, who looks soooo tough here in her New York ghettostyle hat but is sweet as an angel, got her hair cut this week. Mo had long, thick, blond hair. She'd been growing it a while because she wanted to donate it to cancer patients who've lost their hair. It's just like Mo, whose heart is large and generous and loving, to think like that.

August birthdays: Uncle Joe is 80 today!!

A certain week in August has always been party week in the Sprick family. We picture the old farmhouse ablaze with candles, awash with cake. That's because three of our venerated aunts and uncles have birthdays in this week. Aunt Marion was born on Aug. 21, 1922. Uncle Joe was born on Aug. 22, 1927, which makes his birthday TODAY. Aunt Annette was born on Aug. 23, 1914. If you're doing your math -- OK, we know you're not, because Spricks don't do much math, so we'll do it for you -- you can see that Uncle Joe is THE BIG EIGHT-OH this week. Happy Birthday, dear Joe! Aunt Marion, who passed away in 1987, would have been 85 this week. And Annette, who died in 2002, would have been 93.

The loves of cousin Dave

Cousin Dave, formerly known as Lamar No. 1, matured pretty fast once he fell in love. First he fell in love with a Camaro. Then he fell in love with Sarah Heisler. You could tell he was serious about Sarah because he let her sit in the loveseat in the doughnut tree at Waldesruh. Lord knows where the Camaro is, but Sarah was a keeper, to put it mildly.