Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

CHRIS JULIN: It's a school night and the Olsen kids are going to make some popcorn before they go to bed. Andy's eight. His sister, Dana, is 6. They're bounding around the kitchen in their pajamas. Dana ducks out of the room for a minute, comes clunking back. She's got a shiny stainless steel walker. It's a little kid version of something you expect to see at a retirement home.

She used the walker for a while after her pelvis got smashed. She still plays with it, sometimes, but she doesn't need it anymore. Her accident was back in July. That was a tough month for the Olsen's. First, their house burned. A few days later, one of the guys who'd come to repair the house ran over Dana with his van. Shelly Olsen says news about her daughter traveled fast.

SHELLY OLSEN: Everybody knew within probably two hours. Somebody went to the Dairy Queen. And they found out there and they went to their places. And I mean, it was at the car wash and it was at the school. And people were coming to the hospital in Moose Lake before we even got her in the helicopter to get her out of town.

CHRIS JULIN: Shelly Olsen's daughter spent a week in the hospital in Duluth. Every day, her room filled up with visitors from Moose Lake. Shelly Olsen says she's always liked living in Moose Lake, so is her husband, Paul. But they say the fire and their daughter's accident made them really think about some of the reasons they like it. More than a dozen firefighters work to save their house. The Olsen's knew most of them by their first names. One of the men offered to let them stay at his house. Shelly Olsen says she was overwhelmed by the generosity of the people in her town.

SHELLY OLSEN: I mean, we had complete strangers that heard about our situation send money, cards, gifts. And that might happen in Minneapolis. And I know there's wonderful people down there. I met lots of wonderful people when I lived down there. But I really think that a small town is almost like a big family. People do genuinely take care of one another.

CHRIS JULIN: Paul headed downtown in his pickup truck. He grew up in Bloomington. He moved to Moose Lake 16 years ago. He taught elementary school until this year. Now he's working for a local computer company. He talks about Moose Lake like he was born here.

PAUL OLSEN: This is the old pumice house. This is the small town. They say the pumice girls used to live there. Well, they did, but that was one that actually survived the 1918 fire. And that became the unofficial hospital right after the fire because it was one of the only biggest buildings left standing.

CHRIS JULIN: Paul Olsen waves to every driver he passes. He says his big city brother was visiting a while back. His brother asked him, do you know everybody in this town? He parks his truck outside the new City Hall. Downtown Moose Lake is one block long and one block wide.

PAUL OLSEN: Hi, Peggy. How are you?

PEGGY: Good.

CHRIS JULIN: Paul Olsen no more than puts his feet on the sidewalk, and he's in a conversation with a woman who's walking past. He says this is typical. When he goes to the grocery store, he sees dozens of people he knows. He says it's one of the best parts of living in a town with 2,000 people. Shelly Olsen agrees. She says it's wonderful, most of the time.

SHELLY OLSEN: There's a lot of people who, ourselves included, that know a lot about everybody else's business, whether you want to or not, because it's just the way a small town is. And if you do something that somebody considers out of line, it gets talked about. And I don't think anybody or very few people mean any harm in that, but because everybody knows everybody else--

PAUL OLSEN: But you can liken it to a family. I mean, it is. It's very much like a family. I mean, it's like knowing uncle Bob is kind of the flunky of the family. I mean, it can be very accepting. Even though you're different or you might have an odd way of doing things, people sort of, yeah, that's just the way he is. And they kind of laugh it off. The perfect way of saying this, though, is it's a blessing and a curse of a small town is that everybody kind of knows everything and everything about everybody.

CHRIS JULIN: The Olsen's say they miss out on some things because their town is so small. There isn't a lot of variety. There's only a handful of restaurants instead of 100. Shopping is pretty limited. There's one movie theater. But Paul Olsen says there's a surprising variety of people in Moose Lake. His kids know the elderly neighbors and talk to them at the grocery store. Paul says when he grew up in Bloomington, his parents were the oldest people he knew. Everyone in his neighborhood had similar houses and similar jobs. It's not that way in Moose Lake.

PAUL OLSEN: We have doctors that live in Moose Lake. We also have people that are living off food stamps, trying to make ends meet at whatever job they can do. And you know what, most people know the names of both of those people, and they're going to interact with both of those people.

CHRIS JULIN: Paul Olsen says that's a small town experience. It's not like that in the suburbs.

PAUL OLSEN: You're not going to see the food stamp person shopping at Byerly's more than likely. You're also probably not going to be living next to the neurosurgeon because she or he is probably going to have a house in a different part of the city. And so we get the opportunity of seeing a nice microcosm, I think, to some degree of America.

CHRIS JULIN: Shelly Olsen shakes her head in disagreement.

SHELLY OLSEN: Well, I'm doubting the diversity just on the cultural aspect. I mean, if you're looking for a bunch of Finns and Norwegians, Moose Lake is a place to come. They're great people. But there's not-- it's not like they're coming in droves to people of other cultures to live here.

There's not a lot of cultural diversity here, and it's something we're concerned about is future parents of a child from Colombia. It has crossed our mind that this child is definitely going to feel in the minority. I can't think of more than maybe a handful of kids in our elementary school that have something besides Scandinavian background.

CHRIS JULIN: Shelly and Paul Olsen are getting ready to go to Colombia to meet their new adopted child. They say the family will be making more trips to the Twin Cities. They want their new child to spend time with people who aren't of Scandinavian stock. They won't mind the drive. They already go to the city to visit the zoo or to hear a band or go to a football game.

They say it's OK to drive a couple hours once in a while for those things. They're happy that every day in Moose Lake they can take a walk on a quiet country road, or they can take their canoe for a paddle on the river in their backyard, or they can run down town without a second thought and get a free parking space. In Moose Lake, this is Chris Julin, Minnesota Public Radio.