Nation's Center News, Buffalo,SD

The Internet is a great thing to have in retirement.  I will never tire of researching every little thing that piques my curiosity.  Cruising around, I decided to Google my hometown newspaper, The Nation's Center News,  and did an image search.  I was startled to see my own photo.  I was a bit  taken aback when I clicked on my photo.  Anonymous, one is not.


A classmate retired in our hometown; he spent 20 years teaching in Saudi Arabia and was in the Peace Corps prior to that. Now he upholds the community with Lion's Club projects, prodded the locals to beautify the town for our centennial celebration, is active in our church, and writes a column for the hometown paper.  His column has been a source of information about topics from the Mid-East, old cowboys, to the town dogs of his childhood.  They were my town dogs as well.  Kids in small towns know the dogs as well as the people, probably better.


Last week his News and Views column was a review of my latest book:   "One of my favorite Christmas presents this year came to my mail box a few days before Christmas and was totally unexpected.  It was a book edited by my old friend Willo Sacrison Boe...about Willo's great aunt."  He did not miss a thing.   "I once read that no book of non-fiction is ever written without the comfort, moral support, and tangible aid of others.  Willo fully acknowledges this and that is why the title page says "Edited by Willo B. Boe."


Thanks for your kind review, Delbert.

Harding County Homecoming

My small home town of Buffalo, South Dakota, celebrated its Centennial and an All School Reunion over Labor Day weekend. It was a homecoming in the best of ways. Spending time with friends from long ago and cousins that came back to my generation's start in life was heartwarming.

My high school friend, D, and I worked the registration table a couple of three hour shifts and got to see other students that came home for the occasion. What a great way to find out about all the activities during the four days and to greet travelers and those who were wise enough to stay and make their homes in Harding County.
A cousin who stayed operates the Tipperary Motel where we always stay. That in itself is a sort of a homecoming.

In the Rec Center basket ball court other cousins had set up the T-REX STAN replica that was found just south of my grandparent's homestead. In 1987, a cousin, Stan Sacrison found the pelvis weathering out of a sandy cliff 100 feet above the prairie.

Parties, pot lucks, parades, rodeos and the dedication of the newly designed city park were just a few of the activities that were offered. A couple of dear friends and I drove the 12 miles north in the Cave Hills to take a picture of the little Finnish Lutheran Church that my grandparents worked so hard in the early 1900's to build and establish. I was baptized, confirmed and attended this church until I went away to college. Early in my life this meant listening to the service in Finnish and about turn listening to it back to back in English. I loved being able to read the hymns in the Finnish hymn book.

He Who Must Be Obeyed had reproduced, prepared, and framed two of my dad's paintings, one for the Senior Center and the other joined the four already in the Museum. It was most pleasing to be able to honor my dad, who was the town blacksmith, in this manner.

Finnish Cousins Galore

This has been the warmest week, not only of the Fahrenheit kind, but also as in company of the warmest kind. This very day we had two sweet sisters that exchanged Finnish immigrant history with me. We reminisced about the elderly immigrant Finns that settled or homesteaded with our grandparents. Gone are the days when children dressed up and went visiting with their parents, to be seen and not heard. But always welcomed with the adults at the coffee table.

These two drove a long way to attend the two day professional bull riding event at Omaha's Quest Center; only girls that grew up on a ranch with rodeo stock, cowboys, and boots in their lives, would do such a thing.

Two days ago we entertained seven cousins and a friend at our own coffee table and later on at our dinner table. Every Finnish American is a long lost cousin of our hearts...but two of these actually were cousins. They gathered here from five states. There is is a whole lot of laughing with a group of retired women on a trip. The beautiful daisies were a gift from them!

But the big surprise was when I was contacted by a woman who I believe is truly a cousin, one who I never knew existed until I got the unexpected and delightful email query. Yes, I was a Buffalo, SD Sacrison. Her grandmother was a Finnish immigrant Kyro-Sacrison to Lead, SD.

It is Fahrenheit warm as well. The old fashioned lilacs in the planters are beginning to bloom. That makes me very happy.

December Wonder

December 21st. The invitation for Christmas Dinner has been extended. A son is able to come. We are grateful for his acceptance.

The last Advent Service was Wednesday. Hands full of Christmas cards and letters come in to our mail box daily. I marvel at the number of friends that send them to us. My people light up my life. The Nation's Center News came today. Weekly newspapers from small towns are almost like reading a letter with dozens of photos of high school sports and rodeos. People visit, get cars repaired, go to various meetings, hunt coyotes, have birthday parties and it all gets reported.

A former school mate writes of Christmas Programs in one of the many Harding County one room schools in the 40's. Another school mate writes with the easy knowledge of Prince Bandar, who was "born near Taif in 1950 to Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, son of the King at that time, and a dark-skinned servant girl that would be classified as a concubine rather than a wife." "Prince Sultan, Minister of Defense during my time in Saudi Arabia, came to my school for graduations and other formal situations."

Our small high school in the 'hinter land,' as one of my Augustana College professors referred to it, graduated students that became people of distinction. People with the core values that made them outstanding in their chosen professions; all from a community and neighbors that cared as much for them as their parents. These people are my people. I am fortunate to have been born and raised there; I am fortunate to be able to go back occasionally and breathe the petrichor and see the people.

The Christmas program story takes me to the Grand River Lutheran Church Christmas programs in the basement before the church was finished. I loved the darkened room, the shiny little red chairs we sat in waiting our turn to sing or recite our 'piece.' I loved my Sunday School teachers, but can't remember the pastors. Mothers dyed gauze material a light blue for the angels gowns and boys pushed and pinched in their bathrobes and jousted with their sheep hooks.

I use another breath taking photograph by the Finnish photographer, who is also a fine artist, I see, as I explore his various web sites. No, I can't read Finnish, so I miss out on descriptions and there are 181,000 hits, some for films, some for Master's Thesis in Public Law, too many to list.

Looking Through Blue Windows

It is always good to go home for Labor Day to see friends, classmates, cousins, and have breakfast on the Lion's Club with the other Old Timers. Once again we hung two prints of my dad's paintings. While we were at the Harding County Museum, a group of cousins and friends took over a table and had a good visit.

I need to go there for a few days to read old newspapers for a writing project I am attempting, the biography of my Great Aunt Elizabeth. But before that I have a stack of papers from Aunt Liz's sons to go through. They take me back to my own childhood as she lived in the same end of town as we did. Actually the entire northwest end of town had been originally in my great-grandparent's name and so consequently there settled my grandmother and two of her brothers and two of her sisters as well as my parents. I grew up with about 14 cousins, mostly boys.

Our strange little house had windows Mumu Haivala brought from the Lead/Deadwood area and were concave and turning blue with age. I loved them; they were wonderful windows. I just bet the glass was beveled.

It is good for the soul to go home.