E. collected golfball-sized hail from their yard, which emitted an eerie ice fog. The siding of their home took a beating, Chris reported. An insurance agent is coming to check out the damage in the morning.
E. showed off some stellar hail the Millers stashed in the freezer. We feel sure the insurance agent will be presented with same.
... went to a garage sale with Aunt Anna in Red Wing ...
... went zipping around Lake City on a longboard (well, Noah did) ...
... mugged for the camera (by the way, Noah calls this mustache-less beard style "The Abraham Lincoln") ...
... admired the lilacs on their land in Old Frontenac ...
... visited the Bill and Alverna Miller memorial bench in The Field in Old Frontenac ...
... wandered in the lovely green spring ...
... and, the next day, helped family friend Sabrina Rood and her proud son, A.J. Sinker, celebrate Brina's new master's degree in counseling psychology at Bethel University. Congrats, Brina!
Noah also registered for fall classes at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus and landed an apartment with three friends in Dinkytown, blocks from the U. And he has ... a job interview!
All in all, a pretty good weekend, so far.
Bill Hoffmeyer's photo of the recently tilled land shows only a small bare patch amid rows of cornstalks. The Hoffmeyers hope a fence or other markers will someday commemorate the children’s graves.
Plow disturbs family members' final rest
A county is investigating and a family is angry after a farmer tilled over graves of three distant but dear relatives in southern Minnesota.
By ABBY SIMONS Star Tribune staff writerFor Bill Hoffmeyer, it's an appropriate weekend to fight for family memories.
South of Wilbert, Minn., near Ceylon, the final resting places of three distant cousins who died in childhood more than a century ago were recently plowed over by a farmer expanding his corn field.
"You cannot disturb a cemetery, no matter where it is, and that's what this guy has done, he tore it up," said Hoffmeyer, 75, of Hampton, Minn. "They're still relatives of mine and I'm dumbfounded that somebody could do this or would do this."
The Martin County Sheriff's Office is now investigating whether the farmer acquired the proper permits before plowing over the remnants of the 19th-century cemetery on the site of what was once the German Evangelical Church.
Hoffmeyer's grandfather had helped found the church in 1895.
The graves of three young children who died between 1898 and 1903 remained when most of the cemetery was relocated when the church was moved to Ceylon in 1905. Until recently, their headstones remained as well.
Detective Matt Owens of the Martin County Sheriff's Office wouldn't release the name of the farmer, but confirmed that headstones had been removed from the small site, which measures about 60 by 100 feet. Owens said some of the headstones have since been replaced.
If proper permits and family permission for the tilling weren't arranged, the farmer could face charges of disturbing human remains, which range from gross misdemeanor to felony charges. A report will be forwarded to the Martin County attorney by the end of next week, Owens said.
Hoffmeyer first heard about the incident from a cousin who lives in Ceylon. Since then, family members across the country have scoured historical records and continued research on the ancestors whose bodies remained in the small plot. A photo of the recently tilled land shows only a small bare patch amid rows of stalks. The Hoffmeyers hope a fence or other markers will someday commemorate the children's graves.
"It's somebody's final resting place," Hoffmeyer said. "This is something that shouldn't happen."
Young Z. Broberg won this Black Hills spruce for his beautiful Arbor Day poster, which read, "Trees make the community better." Z. helped his dad, cousin Sam, plant and water the hardy little tree, which he named "Arbor." His poster won top honors at Pinewood Hills Elementary in Eagan, where he's a third-grader, then was submitted to the Eagan city contest, where it was among the top 10.
Z., center, posed with other winners and some strange characters. His poster is hanging in the Eagan Community Center.
Among his other talents is piano-playing. He excelled at his first recital, his proud papa reports.
Can't get enough of the Millers? Or, maybe, can't get away from the Millers? Either way, look in on the scrapblog editor's latest online project, a scrapblog about the Miller side of her heritage focused on Dad -- Uncle Bill Miller to you cousins and Brother to his North Carolina relatives -- and his twin sister, Arline "Cissie" Miller Edwards. Called www.brotherandcissie.blogspot.com/, it puts a lot of stuff from dusty old scrapbooks online so the young folks can easily find it someday when they're older and get interested in family stuff. The photo above is of Dad-Uncle-Brother at his grocery store in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1948, in between his World War II service and his re-enlisting in the Army for a long military career.
In addition to being an excellent destination for discovering murder victims (see post below), the Zumbro River in southeastern Minnesota is a fine spot for sucker fishing. Senior scrapblog correspondent, essayist and usually reliable uncle Elmer Sprick clears up some misconceptions about sucker fishing in a fine eassay at the scrapblog's auxiliary reading room site. Check it out, cousins.
The scrapblog editor, along with senior historical researcher E.W. Sprick and very senior adviser emeritus Anna Sprick Smith, spent Tuesday on the backroads of Wabasha County sleuthing out pretty vistas and Sprick roots. The deepest ones were at the old Sprick farm west of Theilman, Minn., which now belongs to the Clark family. Your correspondent gawked at the L-shaped farmhouse, bonded with the seven Clark daughters and their newborn farm animals, including this goat kid, so new to the world that it still had its umbilical cord attached.
In this photo of a beautiful table spread with delicious food and artistically folded napkins located just feet from two priceless blue plates, you may also notice some Spricks. Aunt Mavis cooked up a lovely dinner for the roots-hunters after their grueling day out on gravel roads. That's E.W. serving up brats and vegie burgers and Anna preparing to say grace, which, shockingly, was not in German. Alle Augen were warten on the food, it seems.
... which is off of Wabasha County Road 4 near Theilman, Minn. ...
... to this old farm, which will look familiar to you elders...
... and on this farm there is a windmill festooned with deer antlers...
... and a cow that had given birth just one hour before and was "mowing the grass," according to Farmer Clark, who said he'd "never mowed a lawn in his life; just let the cows do it," as ducks and chickens wandered nearby...
... and here is the old L-shaped farmhouse in which many of the cousins' parents were born and grew up.
It's very old and run down now, but still the beloved home of the Clark family, which includes seven daughters and lots of lovingly-cared-for animals.
Nearby, just outside West Albany, on a lovely hillside near a trout stream, sit the weathered remains of a barn and farmhouse once occupied by Uncle LeRoy and Aunt Vi Sprick, parents of cousin Leah.
Anna kibbutzed with Jenny Clark and her newborn goat kid.
Lillian and Hannah Clark brought out more newborn goats for us to admire. The kids followed the girls like puppies.
Sarah Clark brought out her pet chicken, which she keeps in the house. When the chicken lost its feet to frostbite, she resolved to raise it as a pet. It hobbles around on little stumps, seemingly unaware that it has no feet. The scrapblog editor had to jab E.W. in the ribs when he started to tell her how he used to decapitate chickens in his bucolic youth.
The footless chicken and the barn kittens are all pals.
Amanda Clark cradled a newborn lamb.
Some of the gracious Clark girls: Jenny, Amanda, Abigail, Lillian, and the littlest, lively Hannah, who confided to Aunt Anna that she, too, has often been assigned the last name "Banana." We wondered if, 70 years ago, the Sprick kids lived similar lives.
Elmer explained that tiny Theilman once had two churches and five bars. We had planned a stop at one of the latter, Eggenberger's Tavern, for historical reasons, but found it closed. Elmer peeked in the window, just to make sure the owners hadn't taken to hiding when they saw us coming.
Ghosts and history waft around the deserted and crumbling Theilman Opera House. After thoroughly discussing the slippery ethics and poor judgment of anyone who would trespass in such a place, Elmer and Pam found a cracked door and went right in. The old building's basement was piled high with extremely dusty wooden furniture and other odd items that it appeared no one had touched in half a century.
Those odd items included this melancholy stuffed bear's head, which perhaps was a clue in our next adventure ...
... which came when Elmer showed Pam and Anna the spot along the Zumbro River where Aunt Adelaide Sprick (later Detlefsen) and a canoeing companion came across the body of a man next to a floating log back in the 1930s. Newspaper gal Pam, intrigued by the situation and accustomed to quickly being told the ID, cause, manner, motive, suspect and disposition of homicides, interviewed E.W. for more info. It went something like this:
Pam: Victim ID?
E.W.: Well, it was a fella name of Heil.
Pam: Cause and manner of death??
E.W.: Well, someone did him in. A little hard to tell how, because he disappeared from his farm after going for a walk in the fall, and Adelaide ran into him in the spring, so things were pretty far along.
Pam: Motive???
E.W.: Well, reportedly he was a hard fella to get along with.
Pam: Suspect????
E.W.: Well, reports are it was someone from his family who was fed up with him.
Pam: Disposition?????
E.W.: Well, I guess it's what you would call a cold case.
Postscript: Later, Pam and E.W. did more research on Mr. Heil's untimely demise, locating his grave in Theilman (there's a photo of it on the Internet, for heaven's sake), chatting up some descendants of the parties involved and rooting around in an old book and the memories of certain elderly folks familiar with Theilman and its history. The upshot is, the unfortunate Mr. Heil may have been knocked off by his father-in-law. This sinister fellow was never charged, and so he's innocent in the eyes of the law, but we won't be having any picnics on his grave at midnight, we'll tell you that right now. We're sorry Aunt Adelaide had to be the one to stumble across his victim.
Dustin Feider, a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, designed and built this recycled-materials treehouse at the Gardner home next to my Old Frontenac, Minn., property. TV stations were coming by to film it as I weeded my wildflower beds this week, but some of the locals weren't too sure they liked it. Gordon Johnson, my faithful Frontenac mower, said, "What the hell is that thing up there?" I like it, though. Won't hurt Old Frontenac to have a little modern art hanging around.
The scrapblog editor and her pal Heather M., who shares her highly fashionable interests in forest flora, bird songs and rock 
collecting, went walking Thursday in the lovely Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, part of Minneapolis' Wirth Park, which may be the finest urban park in America. We were searching for early spring flowers, and found them in abundance -- hepatica, trout lilies, various kinds of trillium, anemone, bloodroot, skunk cabbage, marsh marigolds. Unfortun
ately, the scrapblog editor's memory gets worse all the time, and she kept getting their names mixed up. But no matter -- they are pretty no matter what you call them. Above, the lovely trout lily. At right, Somekinda Wort, at least that's what Heather called it. However, Heather knew the scientific names of things -- very cool! The scientific name for Heather is Flora Finda. The scientific name for the scrapblog editor is Iforgotta Thatone.
We bet none of you owns a finer outhouse than this one.
