Winner of the All Roads Lead to Wannaska Competition

Hello and welcome to an adventurous Saturday from South Hero, Vermont here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is June 3rd.

Folks, We have a winner for the All Roads Lead to Wannaska Writing Contest-Opportunity-Celebration! This entry captured both my heart and the Wannaskaland spirit. I look forward to taking Ms. Myrtle Turnquist to the Fickle Pickle. Enjoy!

Kittson County 13
by Myrtle Moose Turnquist

I lived in Kittson County for the first 18 years of my life. Within the stone walls of the historic St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Donaldson, I learned to pray. In the nearby town of Stephen, in Mrs. Benson’s living room, I practiced piano. I graduated from high school in Kennedy, a town 60 miles west of Wannaska, Minnesota. All roads may lead to Wannaska, but Kittson County 13 carries me home. 

During my growing up years, the blue pentagon-shaped sign, Kittson County 13, marked the gravel road leading home. The small one-story white house sat near the road, past the evergreen windbreak and apart from the barn, several grain bins, and other scattered farm building.

How did I end up near Wannaskaland?  Long before I became part of the family, my grandfather moved near Donaldson to farm the gumbo, as they called it.  The heavy rich soil and short growing season in the northland supported wheat, barley, alfalfa for cows and sheep, and a garden filled with everything from beans to rhubarb. My dad followed in the family footsteps into farming and built a house two miles from the nearest highway on Kittson County 13. My six siblings and I grew up in that small 3 bedroom house on the farmstead.

I can’t imagine a way, even on the richest farmland in Kittson County, the seven of us could have scraped up a living to survive and raise families on that farm. Only one of my brothers stayed. The rest of us wandered.  Some of us dabbled in farming elsewhere, but none of us stuck with it like my brother did.  

When I was young, Dad entertained nearly every type of four-legged farm animal. When his small milking business no longer made sense, Dad tried beef cows and sheep.  He stuck with sheep longer than anything else. I loved laying baby lambs under the heat lamp while the mother ewe jammed herself into the lambing pen. I lugged pop bottles filled with milk and topped with black nipples to feed pet lambs who had lost their mothers. I helped paint matching red numbers on ewe and lamb backs so we could identify mother and baby when they were turned out with the rest of the flock. When off lamb duty, I learned to ride my hand-me-down bike and rode many miles on Kittson County 13.

Kennedy hosted all students, Kindergarten through high school, in one building.  Students were divided into two hallways, one for elementary and another for the rest. Middle school felt as non-existent as its hallway with confused memories and growing pains.  At the end of middle school, the county nurse told me I have scoliosis, curvature of the spine requiring a brace.  I became a freak in a back brace, a metal collar connected to metal bars attached to a plastic girdle around my waist. I continued life as normal, but occasionally I was reminded that I could not move like everyone else. Riding my brother’s snow mobile across the road (you guessed it, Kittson County 13), I cruised down the ditch.  As the snowmobile slanted to the angle of the ditch, I fell off like a glass tipping over.  The way I remember it, everyone accepted my freakdom and I continued as part of the community.  My small class of 21 students represented at least three races, innumerable nationalities, families of all income levels, and one freak in a brace. No big deal.

Free from the brace during my junior year, high school opened possibilities for me. I received the crown at homecoming and presented the valedictorian speech at graduation.  I sat on top of my world. Parking (as high school students living in the middle of nowhere often do) on Kittson County 13, I viewed the Milky Way and northern lights. But all this wonder would not keep me home.  

I wandered outside of the protection of Kittson County 13 and the community that accepted a kid who made sheep part of the family, an awkward youth with a brace on her back, and finally a young woman blossoming into her own flower. I left Kittson County to study at university and enjoy a career where I traveled to many corners of the earth. I confidently moved through life knowing Kittson County 13 followed me everywhere.

Even though the roads I’m traveling will not lead me home, that northland near Wannaskaland will forever occupy my heart, will be who I am. The barn burned down a few years ago and now the farmhouse sits unoccupied. I sometimes imagine my back, freed from that brace so long ago, painted with a red number 13 like one of my lambs. Without the buildings, the animals, or my family waiting for me, the gravel road, Kittson County 13, with its Milky Way and northern lights, will always mean home to me.

 

Photo posted with permission from Megan Sugden at www.kittsoncountyskies. com