This is a bit of a mecca for antiques in the area but it’s been a bit slower recently. Customers are getting older. This generation of kids don’t appreciate good wood, they don’t appreciate fine china, they don’t set a table. Not all of them, but very few. We’ve got people coming into town but it’s mostly older people. Or people that don’t want this type of history.

"Oh hey there Bob! Good to see you man, you remember my wife Amanda right?

Oh sure, sure. Since you were gone, I was married too! Got divorced though on account of religious reasons… She thought she was god and that turned me atheist!"

Of course, the audience had no idea, they thought it was just the script for the pageant. But that was how we got married. 

We were a town of 1000 people, counting kids, and we were impacted by 1.2 million people in the summer. So we went to the legislature and said, “You can fund our town, fund our police, fund everything, or you can let us do it.”

As a kid, we didn’t have too much time for fun. We had lots of chores, there were no child labor laws

We've got that asbestosis and all that. When that became public, everyone thought we were a dying town. But actually we’re not a dying town from that.

Those that get it, stay and try to hang on to every bit they can. 

There's 200 jobs available just here in our little town. I've had postings for work and I've had in the past month maybe 4 applications, maybe 4. There's no people to work.

"If you don't know what a prairie dog is, you’re not sticking s**t in me."

Doesn't matter if it's 7:00AM or 10 at night. They expect you to be there for them And I try to be. I try to answer every call.

The State of Minnesota sent me to watch making school specifically because I couldn't stand for long on account of my polio and surgeries. When I came out though I had a good sense of working with small things.

If you did something wrong, the whole neighborhood knew. It was well discussed and you didn't have to worry about the news getting home. 

Everybody gets in a little trouble at that age, but here in Paynesville, you knew before you got home if you were in trouble. And your parents knew too.

Her "we"s throughout our talk seemed strangely inconsistent, but there was a larger pattern that seemed to subconsciously reinforce her story of accidental Americanization. Her verbal choice of who to identify with tracked a clear and interesting path: Welsh Home - New Friends - American Community

I've always been that guy where people say "he's going to do great things" but I never really did those things. Everything has mostly been a "till I get a better job" gig and then I get complacent because I don't have that energy to find a new better job. As much as I say that though, I've never understood people that can't get themselves to do the work. Every single person I knew growing up was the hardest working mofo there was. There were no slackers. And so I may not have the ambition to go out and run for office or change the world but it instilled in me the value of work.  Whatever it is you’ve gotta do, you say yessir and you take care of it.

Things have been pretty great. Even the community I live in now, it's a mixed race community and all our kids get along and play. The parents get along and talk. It's great, I love it, it's very family oriented.

My goal had always been to have an orderly life, to live according to my conscience, and the Bible, and to have things be stable and orderly. That is what freedom means to me. The right to an orderly life according to Christian principles.

When I was growing up, we had a TV but there was only one thing ever to watch. You watched just one of 3 networks for your news. When you did your schoolwork you used encyclopedias, yearbooks, and the library. And that makes you the same.