Central Cafe in Lester Prairie

The Central Cafe in Lester Prairie, MN with high tin-covered ceilings, big-old high back booths, each with a mirror on it's wall end. Why?(You can speculate why.)

Good farm-inspired menu, down-to-earth employees, the aroma of fresh bakery coming from the kitchen, and, you have to love'em mismatched old dining room chairs around each table in the open center area.

Nana and I love these simple, plainspoken towns and experiences. It's life in the North Central U.S. After our lunch we toured the old hardware store next door and bought just a couple of small things.

This is Peter's Pumpkins, a vegetable stand we stumbled onto while sightseeing the western Twin Cities towns. We weren't looking for pumpkins, but their sweet corn was perhaps the best I've ever had anywhere. Great tomatoes too. Such a good experience that we went back and bought more stuff a couple weeks later.

Turns out that the owner of this vegetable stand is the aunt of one of college-aged hikers who strayed over their border into Iran, where they are still detained by Iranian authorities for trespassing.

I don't recall ever having been to downtown Chaska before this visit, so I was very pleasantly surprised by it's early 1900's charm, including a sweet little pavillion, and lots of well-cared for hanging plants along the walkways.

Shady and restful center of Chaska, MN

Comments

Vivi said…

Fun pictures - glad to know you and nana are exploring out and about!

July 14, 2010 at 8:11 AM

The Gentle Smith Matriarch

We met in 1966 when she was 18 and I was 22. We began dating soon afterward, and as I recall never disagreed on much. Our childhood homes were 3000 miles apart and we loved Minnesota and each other, so we got engaged in July 67, married in December and moved into a house with a teenage foster daughter. This was followed by , Daughter 1 the following September, Daughter 2 three years later, Daughter 3, a year and a half later, ..and eventually Son, 3 years later. There were also about 15 different short-term teen-foster boys in those years. The gentle matriarch has worked her whole life, hard. I went to college nights for a few years, she worked outside the home part-time while the kids were growing. She spent frugally, loved lavishly, and has always cared first and foremost about her family. She is a gentle giant who has brought love, fun, discipline, imagination, good food, and artistic, creative homemaking to our big family....and as I write this she's preparing for Easter Dinner...

Red fiche- table with impatiens

It's an odd practice, in a way, but one I've come to like: you set a piece of old indoor furniture outside, and just let it weather, ......forever. I grew up in New England,where there were a lot of roadside antique (or junk) stores, which converted to fruit and vegetable stands in the growing season, or Christmasy craft stores and maple syrup places in winter. At any rate, I'm accustomed to indoor furniture outdoors, and since Nana likes it, everybody's on board at our house. She's selective, however, and requires that the pieces have some interesting, enduring quality. In the case of this red table, it served it's first 30 years as a sturdy table for fiche at Bethel College. When BC became BU, the fiche lost out to digital media, and the sturdy table hitched a ride 45 miles south to our Lakeville back yard, where it is now learning to give itself to a new audience of human admirers, plus a few daddy long-leg spiders, and a specimen or two of summer-sno...

I was invited back to Paragon for a day of fun

On a gorgeous August 13 morning, Sandie picked me up at home so that I could tour the new Paragon office and hang out with lots of great work friends for lunch on a river cruise aboard the Mississippi Queen. Jesper and Bill Lunch was a banquet of fine food, drinks, and desserts, which we enjoyed while leisurely cruising the vital Mississippi, including a couple of the locks, and a great view of the Stone Arch Bridge near downtown Minneapolis. Martin met me with a huge cucumber, which made it seem just like the old days for me. Paragon occupies a bright new suite with terrific views in all directions. Mid- morning I got called into Martin's office. When I stepped in, there were already people there, and they presented me with a handsomely-framed collage capturing many of my fondest days with this extraordinary collection of work-friends. I am a blessed and lucky man!

PTCPapa

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