Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

A little over a week ago we drove to the Twin Cities to pick up our youngest granddaughter, Zoey, to bring to Glenwood for a week of “grandparent camp.”

Going down we ran into a construction project on I94 near the County 75 exit by St. Joseph. It wasn’t that bad but we thought it might be easier on the return trip to take MN 23 to Paynesville then come up MN55 to Glenwood on the return trip.

We didn’t get too far on MN23 before we found the road to be closed at Richmond for a bridge replacement over the Sauk River. That wasn’t the only road closure at Richmond, an accident blocked the westbound lanes on the edge of town so we slipped into town on a back road.

The detour was a pretty drive through through St. Martin, Spring Hill and more. We thought the detour would take MN4 south to MN55 but that would have taken us back south unnecessarily so we continued west on Stearns County roads to Elrosa, then north on MN71 to CR22 which took us through Padua and Grove Lake. Then we slipped down to Sedan and got on MN55 there.

It was a pretty drive through the rolling hills. I was surprised that the crops looked as well as they did, some of those rainstorms that appeared to head south of Glenwood must have unloaded there.

It didn’t turn out to save us any time and it added about 10 miles to what the freeway-MN28 route would have taken but it was a welcome change.

Besides we didn’t have the irritation of North Dakota drivers, eager to get home apparently, roaring past us at 85-90 miles per hour on I94. I’ve often through that if the state gets in budget trouble again cracking down on those Dakota speeders could make a big dent in whatever hole there was.

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Waterama draws a lot of people so it was fun for us to see Dale and Annette Gasser with some family members here having dinner at Lakeside.

Dale was the new football coach and athletic director when I started at the Tribune as a sportswriter in August 1973. He was in his second year and had some players who did well for him and Glenwood High School the next few years.

He left Glenwood a few years later and spent quite a few years in Colorado Springs and then spent his last working years as a school superintendent in Sartell.

While he was in Glenwood son Tom was born. Tom, now 46, was in the financial business and decided he wanted to get into something more personally rewarding so he went into teaching. He has been at Brandon Evansville for a couple of years and is moving to Wheaton this fall.

The Gassers retired to Colorado Springs after living in Sartell because most of their children are in that area.

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Granddaughter Zoey lives with her family in Onalaska, WI. She’s headed into seventh grade and is the youngest in her family. She introduced me to Farkle many years ago and we never get together without a few games.

Farkle is a dice game where you score based on different combinations of dice on a shake of six dice. Four of a kind, for example is worth 1000 points. Three fours would be 400. You play to 10,000.

I’m not sure what it is about Zoey but she comes up with some major shakes in just about every game we have played. I’m never surprised when she picks up 2,000 to 4,000 points in a single turn.

In our first go-around last week I think she beat me by 4,000 points. The next round I rallied and managed to hit 10,000 before she did for a win. But those wins are few and far between. Maybe she was just being nice to old grandpa!