This week I bought some pie and it made me think about how when I was a child I spent some of my formative time in Hinckley, Minnesota.
Hinckley is a truly small town sitting almost exactly half way between the Twin Cities and Duluth. It’s a little hamlet existing on the edge of a bit of agricultural land to the west and otherwise surrounded by woods with the iron range to the north.
I spent a fair bit of time there back in the late 80’s into the 90’s until my great-aunt, Bernace Sliver, passed away. She was my maternal grandmother’s maternal aunt.
We’d go up every year at least once in the summer for the annual Corn and Clover Carnival. This was called originally, I kid you not, the Korn and Klover Karnival. I can’t say for sure why they changed the name, but I have one theory I think is pretty strong given its initialism.
Regular visits were something my mother had done since she was very young as well. My great-aunt had lived in the area her entire life, a life spanning a pretty significant history in the region. She talked about knowing folks with living memory of the great Hinckley Fire. My grandmother grew up there as well, graduating from Hinckley high school in the 40s with a class of fewer than 25 people and fewer than one hundred kids in the entire K-12 school.
The place had such a Mayberry vibe, which was a show I’d watched plenty with my mother up to that point. I remember how often I would think about Mayberry when I was there as a kid.
Bernace’s place was at the northern edge of town just a couple blocks past the modest little Main Street. It was a very adorable and very old little white house on Lawler Street. The house was small.
There was an upstairs loft bedroom in which my mother and I would sleep, the stairs to which could better described as a ladder. They were so steep that they’d been long ago declared unsafe in the darkness. That’s how I learned about chamber pots as a kid. The room was dark. The little metal-framed bed fit against the only full-height wall, the roof line cutting steep walls on either side. The windows were dressed in laced linen curtains while the bed was covered with a handmade patchwork quilt.
It was a beautiful little turn of the century farmhouse. It had history and charm and lots of creaky, squeaky, hardwood surfaces.
The little house sat on a big city lot. I recall very clearly the old clothes line t-posts, the garden, and so very much rhubarb.
And pie.
Strawberry rhubarb pie.
I also remember sitting on the curb out front and banging on the strip caps with a hammer because I was tired of the slow and less than stellar shooting action of the cap gun I’d gotten. Maybe it was that the cap gun had broken or was prone to breaking. I honestly don’t recall exactly what sequence of events resulted in my hitting the caps on the curb this time. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d found myself playing with the little red strips with their gunpowder dots.
I’d gotten the caps from the little drug store just off the corner of Lawler Avenue and Main Street. It was a short little walk and they had all sorts of fun little toys. I could not legitimately tell you much else that this place stocked because I loved their little toy section and their comic book / magazine / book rack.
I remember going down and playing in “the crick” as my great-aunt and grandmother referred to it. I would spend my hours tromping around the wooded stream not too far from her house, hunting for crayfish and frogs, and swinging from branches.
Years later I would come to learn that “the crick” was the Grindstone River.
Honestly, it’s so easy to romanticize it now, but I am deeply nostalgic, regularly, for those easygoing summer days when I could run around Hinckley, such as it was, which wasn’t much. It was only a few blocks, but I loved the freedom to explore.
I have such fond and vivid memories meandering around those streets, though, and of watching the train lumber by along Old Highway 61 or on the other side of the high school.
There are so many little sensory memories that I have that I wish I could share. The joy of watching the little parade, the calm and quiet of this little town, the friendly neighborly people, the little nooks and crannies to explore.
The unbeatable flavor of sucking on a stalk of fresh cut rhubarb, the pucker of your lips from the bitter tang until you dip the stringy end back into your little cup of sugar. Sensations unlike any other.
I have to imagine now how it must have been to grow in such a place, somewhere with such a small population, so disconnected from the rest of the state. There are fewer than 2,000 people living there now, while there were fewer than 1,000 when I was a kid, and not even 700 when my grandmother was growing up.
I believe a fair number of those newer residents work for the Casino on the other side of the Interstate 35. Later in life I would stop on occasion at a fun little flea market that had grown up on that side as well, and maybe we’d grab food at one of the gas stations or fast food places that had cropped up over the years.
But Hinckley proper hasn’t changed much once you get away from the highway. It looks like it’s nearly the same town, structurally, even if Main Street seems to have a few more active businesses now than when I was a kid.
Along the interstate there I don’t recall if it was Tobie’s or another bakery near there but I will never forget the delicious bread we would get on our trips. I believe it was based on some kind of Native American recipe (or was typical American appropriation through claims of native connections) but it was delicious. It was a dark bread, like a rye, but it was lightly sweet with a crust rich with flavor.
I miss that bread immensely.
I am not really sure what my point here was except to reminisce about an amazing formative time, perhaps lightly lament a time and place that are now gone, and share a little bit of my storied past.
I can still picture my great-aunt’s kitchen in summer, sweltering and fragrant, her and my mother and grandmother working like a factory — that old oven like a blast furnace, pie after pie after pie.
Everything about her home was old, including that oven. The wood floors were loud, and you’d hear them at night settling, like some invisible person walking around, a few steps here and a few more there, at random, when everything else was quiet as the tomb. Or worse, when there was a train rolling by.
I would swear the house was haunted though I really do not recall any specific “paranormal” experiences. It was one of those houses that felt haunted in a benign sort of way. It had a haunted vibe. Like the house itself remembered everything and there was a lot to recall.
Now, though, it’s the memory of pie I’ll never have again that haunts me.