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Meeting the people was great. I was driving along and came across a man and his son raking
cut hay and straightening furrows. I liked the feel of the scene, so I pulled over and
began setting up my view camera. After several shots, the guy came over and asked me what
this was all about. I told him all about working on a story with Garrison Keillor and
trying to find any reality in this Lake Wobegon mythology. “You’re kidding!” he said.
“I rented Garrison his house when he first came out here 25 years ago. He lived out
behind our place.”
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There were a number of evenings when things got awfully quiet in the small towns, so some
of the nights sitting in a small motel room were very long. Being away from family and
friends for long periods of time sometimes gets difficult for me, as I’m sure it does for
most photographers on the road.
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Heading down a back road in the middle of winter, I spotted two guys standing on a frozen
pond with a chain saw. Well, I saw that movie Fargo, and—for a fleeting
second—wondered if I should move along. But my curiosity got the best of me, so I
stopped the car and trudged down the hill half up to my knees in snow.
It turned out they were cutting holes in the ice and looking for leeches and small fish.
“What for?” I asked.
’to see if the pond is good for bait fish come spring,” said the younger man
who, with his father’s help, surveys ponds in the winter. That’s what I love about
central Minnesota.
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