Looking for Home in Vergas, Minnesota: Hometown W/O
Written: Oct 21 '03 (Updated Oct 21 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Small, clean, rural. Small town friendliness. Natural beauty in abundance. Lakes. Wildlife. No crime.
Cons: Little work available. Conservative. Some small town narrowness. Lack of social diversity.
The Bottom Line: There's no place like home but home is where the heart is.
|
|
|
| treeseed's Full Review: Vergas, Minnesota |
This is my contribution to proxam's Hometown Write-Off. I'm writing about my dream hometown, Vergas, Minnesota where I once made my home. I wasn't born there and I didn't grow up there, but I tried to adopt it so my sons could someday say they had a hometown. I didn't live there very long (two years) and I don't live there now. When I moved there I was searching for something like Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town and I picked a good place.
My sons were born in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin: paper mills, beer and cheese, Packer games, the usual national chain restaurants and retail establishments and lots of natural beauty that was mostly all bought up and owned by people that I was not in a position to know. We lived in apartments in all nine of the Fox Cities and we never did feel particularly at home. I'm still there and I still don't.
I was a widow with four boys under the age of ten and I got it in my head that if they weren't going to have a dad, they were darn well going to have a community. I wanted them to grow up in a place where everybody knew them and looked out for them, where they would be safe and where they could run and play and develop in a wholesome environment. I wanted them to have life-long friendships and to know every member of their senior class. I wanted them to know what was expected of them. I wanted them to know not just my lunatic fringe left-wing thinking, but to have choices. I really wanted them to have a home and a sense of belonging. I went to a different school every year from 1st grade through 12th. I knew what it was like to live the life of a tumble-weed and what I wanted for my boys was roots.
I had been to the small town of Vergas, Minnesota once to visit a friend whose very wealthy parents had a virtual mansion (to my eyes) on the shore of Spirit Lake. I fell permanently in love with Vergas. I used to dream about it all the time, so much so that I think I finally created my own reality, as the saying goes. My friend's parents didn't live there...It was their vacation home, dahling. They had sold their "lives of the rich and famous" pad by the time I actually did end up in Vergas.
I've long been a proponent of the "if you build it, they will come" school of thought, sometimes known as the "out of the frying pan and into the fire" school of thought. So, I loaded up the truck and I moved to...no not Beverly...VERGAS. With the help of a kindly realtor, I managed to find a place to live in Vergas and even though the rental house was a bit too rich for my pocketbook, I was determined to have a go at it. I was on Social Security survivor benefits but I needed a job, too, if I was going to afford it.
My beautiful little house was on a narrow triangle of land between two lakes, Big Spirit and Little Spirit. It had a barn and outbuildings, a pasture, and incredible views of both lakes. Big Spirit was crystal clear and clean with a sandy bottom and big cottonwoods lining its shores. It was four miles outside of town and private enough for skinny dipping in broad daylight. The bass and walleye fishing was superb and there were so many sunfish that they would swim around my legs when I was wading and give me little tickley love nibbles. You could hand-feed them with corn kernels. Little Spirit was shallow and had leeches so you couldn't swim there, but loons made their home there and their beautiful eerie calls enchanted me every night. Mergansers and great blue herons also called it home. Its shores were lined with tall pines and birches. There was a little island in the middle that you could paddle a canoe out to or walk out to in winter that was covered with tangles of bittersweet vines that glowed with red-orange berries in the autumn. Our nearest neighbor was a dairy farmer. We could have pets there. It was small boy paradise.
The population of Vergas at the time I moved there was 291 so we made it 296. This was in the mid-80s, but I visited Vergas recently and it doesn't look much different or like there are too many more folks than that living there now. It's about an hour and 45 minutes drive east of the Minnesota-North Dakota border and Fargo. Vergas kids get bussed to a larger town for school. There is a Methodist church, a Lutheran church, and an evangelical church in Vergas. There's a bank, a hardware store, a heating/plumbing business, a tavern, a curio shop, an antique shop, a small grocery store, a couple of restaurants, a fire station, a hair dresser's salon, a convenience/liquor store, a convenience/gas station, a used car dealership attached to the evangelical church, and a post office where everyone goes for their mail because there is no home delivery. There is one source of industry outside of farming or retail, a small factory that makes blown insulation from old newspapers. There is one black person, one Hispanic person adopted as an infant, no Asian or Native American people and 294 white people mostly with Nordic genealogy in Vergas. There is one paraplegic person, one transsexual person, one person with Downs Syndrome. There was one man with long hair. If there were any Catholics or Jews or Muslims or Pagans, I never saw one...not exactly what I'd call a diverse community.
What there is in Vergas is nice people, good basic, unpretentious people. They are mostly conservative in philosophy, church-goin' and community minded. When I moved there I was of the spiritual persuasion that embraced the compassionate, humble carpenter's brand of Christianity and I was interested in human services and outreach, especially with regard to hunger and healthcare issues. I knew instinctively that the churches were my foot in the door if I wanted to be accepted in Vergas, so I hooked up with the Methodists. Within a year I was the Sunday School superintendent, in the choir and a member of a weekly Bible study group and Weight Watchers group with five other women who were my closest friends. None of us needed that much religion or weight loss but it was our social life and we enjoyed it. I belonged to the Vergas chapter of the Lioness Club and I was a bake sale donatin', meatball supper attendin', hayride takin', Little League and PTA mom. I was on the boards of area Bread for the World and CROP Walk for the Hungry. I was getting the youth group at church interested in the Heifer Project. People knew me and they knew my kids. My kids had speaking parts in the Christmas pageants at school and church. I had been taken to the bosom of my little dream-town home.
Vergas is thankfully off the main track. It is slow and quiet and maybe a little behind the times and that's a good thing. If you're in trouble your friends will help you and you will have friends. There's not a real lot of privacy in small towns and Vergas is no different. Some of the Old Guard will always be suspicious of newcomers but they keep it pretty much to themselves. Generally Vergas folks are warm and big-hearted and generous. They're truly what you can call decent people but they swim in a pretty safe pond where their decency doesn't get tested too often.
The natural beauty of Vergas is breath-taking and makes it my suggestion for a perfect week-end getaway or family vacation spot. There is one really lovely bed and breakfast there called the Loghouse and Homestead on Spirit Lake. Check out their website: http://www.loghousebb.com. There are LOTS of resorts in the area and dozens and dozens of pristine little lakes. In the space of four miles between my house and town there are no less than six lakes with many more close by. Even with the resorts it does not have a touristy feel to it. The resorts are mostly on the primitive side and there is nothing like a crowd to be seen around Vergas except at the annual town festivals, Looney Daze and Dairy Days, the Maple Syrup Fest, the Lions Club Burger Fry or the Methodist Meatball Supper. Vergas has a big park on the shores of Long Lake, right down town at the end of Main Street, with a public beach and boat launch. They call it City Park and it is the home of a 20 foot tall replica of a loon, the Minnesota state bird. You can see him on the town's website at http://www.vergasmn.com. What I wouldn't give to throw my arms around that big ol' loon some days.
Vergas is beautiful in every season. It is outdoor sports heaven. The autumn colors are gorgeous, the summer lakes are sparkling and warm, the winters are blue-silver wonderlands of snowy pleasures and beauty, and the springs are yellow and purple with wildflowers and new green leaves.
You can see a moose or a grazing herd of deer, 40 strong. You can see bald eagles and red-tail hawks. Yellow headed black birds scold you from the marshes. Big graceful white pelicans fly in lazy Vs or bob quietly on misty morning lakes.
For my money, you just can't get any better than Vergas, Minnesota. Unfortunately, my money or the lack there of it is exactly why I had to leave Vergas. I did pretty well with some tricksy accounting skills trying to make ends meet. I got a job at the insulation plant to supplement my Social Security checks. I developed serious carpal tunnel syndrome in both my wrists and I couldn't continue working there. There were, quite literally, no other jobs to be had in Vergas. Families own the small businesses and employ family for the most part. The odd waitress or cashier jobs are held by the high school kids. Hardly any of the wives work outside the home and I didn't have a husband. My car went to hell and there was no money for a different one and when most of civilization is a good 15 or 20 miles away you do need a car. My youngest son's asthma was serious and expensive. So, I sadly found myself heading back down the Yellow Brick Road. The home town of my dreams, the best little community in lake country ended up not being my hometown after all. It will always hold a place in my heart but my destiny lay elsewhere. My kids turned out okay despite the lack of Vergas and I learned to make a home wherever we were. There's no place like home but home is where the heart is anyway.
If you want to experience a serene place filled with pastoral beauty and downhome simple values, friendly people and a leisurely pace...look no further. Vergas, Minnesota is Home Town, America.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
treeseed
|
|
Location: Little Chute, WI, USA
Reviews written: 165
Trusted by: 188 members
About Me:
"All good things are wild and free." _Thoreau
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.