Historical Columns

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of the late Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member, in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota” (Reprinted with permission of the author.)I wanted that job badly the summer I was 18. Just out of high school and naïve as the back forty, I look…

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member, in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota” (Reprinted by permission of the author.)The first part of this story (Aug. 27, 2009, issue of the Tri-County News) left Elizabeth at a church youth-group outing, a night-time wiener roast…

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member, in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota” (Reprinted with permission of the author.)Part IThe flames of a bonfire flickering through the trees on the other side of the Mill Pond Dam made my heart beat faster as…

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member, in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota” (Reprinted with permission of the author.)Note: Gramma Coopie was my paternal grandmother; Muddy, my mother; Bailey or Daddy, my father; Nana, my maternal grandmother; Frederic, Jack and Peggy, my siblings.…

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member, in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota” (Reprinted with permission of the author.)“It roared away from us and we chased it. It made a big swing in the farmer’s pasture and came roaring back and we ran…

By Elizabeth Cooper MikeFrom the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member in her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota.” (Reprinted with permission of the author.)It was an old, black Model-T Ford, with no side curtains, three diamond-shaped pedals on the floor, adjustable windshield, and a gas tank under the…

You can take the boy from the farm, but you can’t take the farm from the boy was true of my dad, Lynn, born in 1918 in the Kimball area.Lafe and Pearl Stanley’s farm, where Lynn and brother Dean grew up, was across from where the Kuseske’s farm is today. As was the case in…

From the pen of the late Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member and her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota,” reprinted with permission of the author.We hesitated at the fence line wondering if we should crawl through the barbed wire and begin our search for the pink lady slippers we knew…

From the pen of Elizabeth Cooper Mike, Kimball Historical Society member and her book “The Girl From Stickney Hill, Kimball Prairie, Minnesota.” (Reprinted with permission of the author.) It was a long ago spring of rubber ice on a Minnesota farm. The winter had been long and hard. Ice-bound lakes and ponds stayed frozen solid…

By Duane D. Stanley ©2009 I often refer to my roots in Kimball. They include genealogical roots of considerable depth. But my Kimball roots also impact my way of thinking and the values that I hold, including my tie to my hometown. Without the specific experiences of ’58-’59, I would no doubt be another of…