Three Days At Green Lake

It's kind of hard to believe now, what with corporate farming and even 'family farms' encompassing multiple sections of fertile farm land.  It wasn't always that way.

The farm I grew up on was rented land, 80 acres with some ramshackle (I say ramshackle 'cause it's much more romantic that 'rundown') farm buildings, all of which now belong to history and memories.  To be fair, most of the farmers I grew up around had more than 80 acre places (My Dad was also a feed grinder, a tale for another time)...yep, most of them lived on a sprawling 160 acres ( a quarter is what we called it) and a few have a half section.  Anyone with more than that was a 'big farmer'.

Oh, we had a herd of animals alright.  If memory serves correctly (and these days, it sometimes doesn't) we milked anywhere from 8-10 cows, had a dozen hogs, a few calves and through the years an assortment of chickens, sheep, goats, cats, dogs and whatever else might meander onto the 'Marv and Henrietta' estate.

And then there was the summer vacations.

Since we had to find someone to do the chores (I'll bet Ivan and Jerry Evink remember milking our cows!) around the farm, they would be short.  But it would be fun.

Three days, two nights at Green Lake 'up north' by Spicer, Minnesota.  Back in those days, most of the folks around where I lived went 'up north' for vacation.  Of course, at seven or eight years old, I didn't realize that there was a whole lot more 'up north' to Minnesota past Spicer and Willmar.  As far as I was concerned, we must be pert near Canada!

We didn't spend a lot of money, as I recall we'd bring food along, sandwiches and the like.  And of course, fry up the huge fish we caught.  Yes, I'm sure we must have caught a lot of huge fish.

Interesting....now that I look back, those vacations to Green Lake for a couple days weren't really about fishing at all.  They were all about family.

I'm glad now, all this half-century later, that we didn't go to Disney Land, didn't go to Florida or anywhere else in the world.  Nope.  I wouldn't trade a trip around the world for those couple days each summer at Green Lake.  In this old man's memory, Green Lake was the greatest place in the world.

And I'm sure we caught a lot of fish.  A lot of really big fish.