Column: Pat Mulso, Preserving the Past

My family started arriving on Friday afternoon, July 8, and by midnight we had 11 tucked in for the night and the others arrived around noon on Saturday. It was a great weekend, relaxed, with lots of good food, some family games and lots of memories and laughs to fill our hearts with joy. I had mittens made for each of the females in the family out of sweaters that were our mothers’ and now each of her daughters, daughter-in-laws, granddaughters and great-granddaughters will have a keepsake of our mom. I am still working on an idea of something to make for the guys as a memory of Mom, maybe by next year. We all remembered as children when we were stringing popcorn and cranberries to decorate the Christmas tree that our brother Larry kept eating the popcorn! Another memory that we all recalled was being in the church’s Christmas Eve program and having to memorize our parts. At the end of the service we each received a brown paper sack that had an orange and a box of hard tack candy with one piece of chocolate candy in the bottom of the box. When we got home from church on Christmas Eve we had our family Christmas. We all agreed we to hold Christmas on Christmas Eve because Mom and Dad didn’t want to be up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning.

The date was set for next year, and will be at my youngest sisters’ home in Dresden, Ohio. Her theme is going to be family trivia, with questions like who took a bath with their cowboy boots on or who got caught kissing in the closet? It should be an interesting game!

The museum will be serving food at the farmers market from 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday. Please join us to help raise money for museum programs.

Thank you to everyone who came to the American Legion on July 15 for our annual Swiss steak fundraiser. It was a huge success! We had supplemental funding from Thrivent Financial, Albert Lea Chapter No. 31179. This money is being used to purchase new computers for the museum library.

The museum will be open extended hours during the Freeborn County Fair and admission to the museum is free for all fair attendees. The museum and village will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. The gate by the village church will open at noon. We hope many of you will take advantage of this opportunity to see the museum and village. We plan to have the area for the new addition to the museum marked off with signs telling you what will be located in various parts of the new addition.

FCHM will be hosting a four-hour defensive driving refresher class from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 9. The cost is $19 per participant and you must pre-register. This class is needed every three years to continue receiving a discount on your auto insurance premium.

Save the date, our annual “Echoes from the Past…A Journey into History” will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 17 at Graceland Cemetery. The rain location is the museum, 1031 Bridge Avenue, Albert Lea.

We have a few seats available on our historical bus tour scheduled for Aug. 18. Join us for a journey back in time as we visit locations in Iowa for a very interesting day. Lunch and admissions are included in the cost of the tour. You must pre-register for the bus trip by stopping by the museum or calling us at 507-373-8003 by Aug. 10. The cost is $50 for FCHM members and $55 for non-members. The bus departs the museum at 8:30 a.m. and returns between 4 and 4:30 p.m.

Pat Mulso is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum in Albert Lea.