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The smell of the Fireman’s Corn Roast called eight-year-old Mona and her friend from their play. “Let’s go eat,” said Mona, anxious to bite into the hot buttered corn. The two girls ran as fast as they could to the firestation yard. The man at the entrance gate told her, “I’m sorry, young lady, you can’t eat with | ||||||||||
Mona Satre pauses en route to Sturgess, SD. | ||||||||||
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us. Your dad isn’t a fireman.” “Ok-a-y,” she said, choking back the tears. “I’ll see you later,” she said to her friend. It hurt to be excluded, but it distressed her even more that her dad was so different from the rest of the dads in this small, rural Minnesota Norwegian community. He hadn’t joined any community organizations and refused to attend gatherings of any kind. She knew it would do no good to complain when she got home since he had made it clear, time after time, he wasn’t about to sit around and chit-chat with people when he could be working on more interesting things such as restoring old artifacts for the museum he wanted to build. She longed for a father who was “normal.” Being left out or showing up without him was not her idea what a family should be. Even though Mona didn’t have the kind of dad she thought she wanted, his desire to build a museum from scratch impressed her. She also enjoyed the stories he shared at the kitchen table about philosophers, theologians, outstanding ordinary people, and leaders. However, it was hard to deal with the embarrassment when one old contraption after another for the museum found its way into the back yard for everyone to see. Mona probably could have learned to live comfortably with her dad if it hadn’t been for the men in town who harassed and ridiculed him. Their daily teasing and taunting of him angered her to the bone. She begged him to move to a bigger town where nobody would know them. He just quietly shook his head and said, “I could never leave this place.” When she asked her mother why her dad couldn’t pack up and move, she was shocked by the answer. | ||
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