Traveling to Waseca
When you’re in Waseca, what do you do? Do you do like a lot of us who left town a long time ago – drive down the street where we lived and check out our old house (or houses), drive around our old neighborhoods, drive past our friends’ houses, drive around the lakes, cruise main street and marvel at the changes, sit in a restaurant or bar and wonder if you know the other people there but don’t recognize them, take a few pictures of the old house(s) and familiar haunts? An old neighborhood friend of mine recently sent me some photos he took on his most recent trip home: a couple of his old house, a couple of Trowbridge Park including one of the band stand; and one of the Clear Lake beach and bathhouse. How do those fit in your Waseca memories?
The photos of the house reminded me of fond memories of the neighborhood and the people who lived there, of collecting chestnuts and acorns from the trees in their yard, of shining for nightcrawlers on warm summer evenings, of playing “Olly Olly Oxen, All in Free” in the yard, of playing in their old barn, of sledding down what seemed a huge hill in Trowbridge Park, of making lanyards during the summer parks program near the Trowbridge Park band stand, of swimming almost every summer day at Clear Lake beach. Speaking of lanyards, if you ever made a lanyard for your mother you may enjoy Billy Collins’ poem, ‘The Lanyard’.