Friendship has never been a thing that comes easily to me, as it does not to most people of Finnish descent. In the Great White North, where Upper Michigan and northern Wisconsin yearn for each other across the gulf of the mighty River Montreal, you are a tourist if you were not born in the log farmhouse your great-grandfather built in 1900, or very near it.

 

I get a sense of that around here, too. Since we moved to Big Lake, my wife and I have met a lot of people who have deep country roots, many of whom were born in, or lived in, that house their great-grandfather built in 1900.  I always hope we don’t seem like city folk to them (I certainly am not, though She Who Must Be Obeyed is a Chicago product), or, worse still, “cabin people.”

 

When the Citizen advertisement appeared, like a bolt from the blue, it was an utterly unexpected opportunity to put my rusty reporting skills to a new test.  Editor/Publisher Gary Meyers pulled the trigger on my application, and away we went. Virgin territory, I knew nobody or not a thing about what went on around here.  Some might say that hasn’t changed much, but I beg to differ.  I know lots of people.

 

My boss at the paper has always been Idonna Hunter, our production manager.  I got the impression right away that she sensed she might have a live one here, and we got along right from the start. That has not always been true in my relationship with authority figures, but this woman has some mad skills when it comes to the subtle application of pressure in guiding clueless writers in the required direction.

 

She still has a photo of Kiki, Warrior Princess on her office credenza. Kiki was our little female Samoyed dog, who we nursed through an epic battle with cancer that finally took her life, and that photo both comforts and catches me every time I walk into her office.  The other constant there is a little china leprechaun that I brought her back from Dublin who is holding a sign that reads “What a Load of Blarney!”  Those little touches have power.

 

I knew she was thinking about retiring, and had mentioned the possibility several times over the past couple of years, but it was still a shock when she made the announcement a couple of weeks ago.  She has, I know, been yearning to spend more time with family, and there is a lengthy list of things she would like to see and do sooner rather than later.

 

And we are fine with that, at the paper, no really, we are.  We’ll get by, we’ll muddle through, and after all, the show must go on. And no man (or woman) is an island. 

 

Of course, there is that wonderful sense she had of knowing just about everybody in the area, and just what they needed, and those many years of newspaper experience that allowed her to just solve stuff without drama, like catching those critical misspellings of the names of the high and the mighty about to go to print with an extra vowel or consonant.  But, really, don’t worry about us, we’ll “git ‘er done!”

 

I have many fond and one very favorite memory of my time working with Idonna that I’m going to share it now. There was a combination birthday party for Idonna’s mother, and a reunion of the Olson clan  that was held in the new town hall in Santiago Township. As I was out that way anyway on an unrelated matter, I said I would swing by to take some photos.

 

In spite of having lived in Minnesota for more than 20 years, I never realized there could be so many Olsons in one place. There was a lavish birthday cake, more food than the law allows, a “fashion parade” and a hilarious “Ole and Lena” routine featuring Bryan Olson, as “straight arrow” a gentleman as you will ever find in civilian life, but one also with excellent comic timing.  

 

It was an amazing party, and so full of Olsons that you had to take your cake outside so you had room to eat it. I kept waiting for somebody to ask me for my identification, but, of course nobody did, even though they knew I was an outlander. Minnesota nice?  I’ll say.

 

We had a nifty send-off for her at Nix the other night, with Mr. Publisher Meyer and the newsroom crew from the Citizen in attendance. We signed some cards, told some stories and shared a great meal, but it still doesn’t seem real to me. I suppose it will on Monday.

 

I once worked at Honeywell Defense Systems in Edina, a secure government-regulated facility that required a clearance badge to enter or exit. Since we could not all leave through the secure portal at the same time, whenever somebody well-liked was exiting the division, it was traditional that their workmates would stand along the walls of the long hallway leading to the guard station and sing an old cowboy song as they made their way out into the world. What was it?

 

“Happy Trails.”