I recently took a trip to see the Andrew J. Volstead House museum with Big Carl, a mountain of a man who formerly taught cultural anthropology. Carl drove and offered me the daily crossword puzzle, suggesting we could work on it together. He's pretty good at it and was guessing words before I had even given the entire clue. This leads me to two conclusions. Either he's very brilliant, or he did the crossword puzzle earlier that morning and then picked up a fresh newspaper in order to impress me. Either way, neither of us was smart enough to work the New York Times puzzle. Forget it.
Our first stop in Granite Falls was on the east end of town for lunch at The Grinder Coffee House. The Grinder not only serves fabulous soup, sandwiches, coffee and dessert, but it also offers a vintage setting with a large window looking out on a granite outcropping with birds, squirrels and an occasional fat cat to watch. It looks good, smells good, sounds good, and feels good at the Grinder.
Our next stop was at the brand new Granite Falls City Hall where my good friend, Bill Lavin the city manager, gave us a tour. (That's my best friend, Cindy, proudly showing me the building earlier this year before it was occupied.) Bill and I squeezed Big Carl into Bill's car and he showed us the flood mitigation work that has been completed on the city in response to two life-changing floods that took place in the last couple of decades.
After that, Carl and I headed to the Andrew J. Volstead House museum just a few blocks away. For those who haven't heard of Mr. Volstead, here's a brief background.
Volstead, a well-respected Norwegian lawyer, held several local offices in Minnesota before serving (1903-23) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and chaired the Judiciary Committee which oversaw passage of the Volstead Act, the 18th amendment to the Constitution establishing Prohibition.
The community of Granite Falls is very proud of Volstead, but downplays his connection to prohibition. Instead, this river town highlights the Capper-Volstead Act, signed into law on February 18, 1922, by President Warren Harding. Referred to as the “Magna Carta” of cooperatives in the agricultural industry, the Capper-Volstead Act allows farmers to work collectively to process and market their produce. Under earlier anti-trust laws, those collaborative actions may otherwise have been prohibited.
We headed down into the Minnesota River valley, following the Scenic Byway to the Joseph R. Brown memorial in order for me to take a couple of photographs. It's the strangest thing. We got lost on the way and ended up taking a more scenic route than planned.
We managed to locate the foundation which marks the twelve room house Brown had built for his family and which suffered extensive damage during the U.S. Dakota Conflict of 1862, and I snapped a couple of shots. And then, on the way back to highway 212, we got lost again. I don't see how that is even possible, but it happened. My excuse is that I was trying to figure out that damnable New York Times crossword puzzle.
I can't be expected to do everything.
