(soft music) - [Narrator] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by, The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calling) (electric music) - [Barbara] Cruising your way next, Off 90.

We visit a potter in Rochester.

We build a house with a Habitat for Humanity in Winona.

We look at the oldest grocery store in Rochester.

And we go tabletop gaming in Austin.

It's all just ahead, Off 90.

(electric music) (band music) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith.

Thanks for joining me on this trip, Off 90.

Chuck Smith likes the tactile feel of the clay he uses to make pottery.

For Chuck and his wife, Wendy, their day job is running a cleaning business but their passion is making pottery.

We take a spin around their studio in Rochester.

(soft music) - [Chuck] I think for me, it was the tactileness of the material.

The fact that you can mold it, shape it, you can take something liquid and it can harden up and then you can throw it through the fire and then it becomes something usable.

Hi, I'm Chuck Smith and I am a local potter here in Rochester, Minnesota.

I am a functional potter and I enjoy making mugs and bowls and bathroom wares and soap dishes and things like that for families to use in their home.

I started doing pottery three years ago.

I took a class here in a local studio in Rochester.

Once I took that first class, I was hooked.

- I remember asking him if he enjoyed it and he just lit up and he was like, "Oh my gosh!

Yes, I loved it".

- [Chuck] The one area that I like the most is the repetitiveness of making, throwing mugs on a wheel.

If I can sit down and crank out 10 or 12 mug forms in an hour that really like gets me going.

(soft music) And if I'm having a good day, I can relax and enjoy it.

And if I've had a bad day, I can get in there and I can just make a mess.

I'll just let my frustrations out on a piece of clay.

And so it's very therapeutic for me.

- [Wendy] We're totally inspired by nature.

So a lot of the colors Chuck uses are kinda like woods and water or the Northern lights.

We're both huge in the northern lights and have been lucky enough to see them up north many time.

Well, we have a large studio just south of Duluth.

We're set kind of in the woods on a country road.

And it's just really peaceful out there.

And we're extremely inspired by the outdoors and nature.

My favorite part, I would say is the interaction with the customer and seeing how they respond to your work.

Like, sometimes you can actually see someone's countenance change when they walk into your booth.

- I actually had someone and respond today.

They told me that they really enjoyed seeing my work and that just the color in it.

They could really feel like this like calming sense to them and that she just really enjoyed looking at my work.

- [Wendy] Maybe they're feeling kinda lousy or whatever but then as they start looking at your work you might see like a slight smile come on their face.

That kinda reminds you of why you do it.

- [Chuck] I was doing an art show and I had a gentleman come into my booth and we got talking about the color of my pottery and all that stuff.

And he said that he was color blind and I said, "Oh I'm color blind as well".

And then he had a pair of color blind corrective glasses.

And so he's like, "Do you want to try 'em?".

So, I stuck him on for like 10 seconds and I immediately, it just like changed my world.

I wasn't prepared for an emotional reaction but first time seeing my pottery and maybe able to see the greens and the reds and stuff and everything.

I just started crying.

It was amazing.

Those that have color blindness and they were to get a pair of glasses like that will probably tell you the same thing.

They can't describe.

It's just, it's life changing.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - Volunteers with the Habitat for Humanity give their time and sweat to help people get a decent and affordable home.

We joined a team, building a Habitat home in WInona and learn more about the group's mission.

(soft music) - Habitat for Humanity has the mission of seeking to put God's love into action.

We bring people together to build homes, communities and hope.

And I think our mission is really powerful because we start with bringing people together.

And so, it's volunteers who build the homes, it's volunteers who repair them and it's volunteers who provide the bulk of the labor and the ReStore.

And what we're doing is so much more than building and repairing a home.

When we come to a distressed community and remove a blighted home and build a brand new one in its place, the community comes out around us in gratitude and happiness to see their whole neighborhood revitalized.

As we are building community, we're also building hope for generations of future homeowners.

Habitat for Humanity serving Winona County really focuses our services here in the city of Winona, Goodview, Minnesota City.

And then also into the rural communities that comprise all of Winona County.

My role as director is a really fun one.

I get to talk with the community about what Habitat does.

I'm out there sharing the Habitat story.

And sometimes if I feel bold, I'll share my own.

I grew up in construction, listening to the table saw and the lathe as my lullaby while my dad worked in the basement.

And so that construction affinity and that relationship to home goes way back.

- I think most people have heard of Habitat but I don't think most people really understand the all encompassing program that it is.

- [Amanda] Habitat for Humanity in Winona is unique because we have a strong emphasis on repairs.

So, whereas most people think of Habitat for Humanity as an organization that builds homes.

We have a much higher level of activity in home repair.

So we have in A Brush with Kindness repairs program where we replace roofs, siding.

We do you weatherization and all kinds of things that help somebody who is struggling to afford maintenance on their home to keep it functional.

We have a critical home repair program where we deal with structural issues for homeowners.

And that can be like a destabilized porch that's falling off.

We can come and we can repair that.

And then this year we introduce an aging in place program.

And that's where we work specifically with people over age 65, or people living with disabilities to help them stay independent in their homes.

With Kyle, we have built a wheelchair ramp, so that he can get in and out of the house.

- [Kyle] Once I got that, it got my life back in order, really got out and I could go to Kwik Trip when I wanted.

I got a lot of freedom and that helped me so much of that, just mentally.

That inspired me, this ramp a lot, to do a lot more things with my life.

- [Amanda] Working with Kyle has been a really heartwarming experience for all of us.

We see Kyle really prizing his independence and we prize that with him too.

- [Kyle] Now I can have visitors and that have chairs.

I can get out.

- [Amanda] Volunteers are the heart and soul of Habitat for Humanity.

So we have volunteers from corporate partners, from church groups, from schools, the construction technologies program at Minnesota State College Southeast is a huge provider of volunteer labor.

- I also think that there are people who volunteering meets some of their needs because they're in a position to have time that maybe they never had before because of their employment.

And I think we have a lot of folks that are retired and so volunteering for Habitat as well as other organizations is fulfilling for them.

- [Kyle] Just the fact that they, you know, donate their time to do this for people is just tremendous.

It's gotta help 'em sleep at night.

I mean, it really does helping people like this and doing that for people that can't help themselves and don't have the family to help them.

I really appreciate it and God, I mean, I just want Habitat to be known to more people in my shoes.

- [Amanda] Melissa is a wonderful woman.

She has four kids living with her and Tony.

She's a wonderful giving woman and it's been a joy to work beside her as she built her family a house.

- I have been applying for Habitat homes for about 10 years.

So when I was accepted, it was a very special gift to myself and my family.

Just to have something to call our own is wonderful.

I have been renting for years and I just could never find one that was affordable and big enough for my family.

- [Amanda] The construction of this house has been a fraught process because we partnered with Melissa before COVID and then our financial stability was deeply shaken.

- [Melissa] I am excited to have our own house and I'm excited to help build.

- [Amanda] Each Habitat homeowner volunteers 325 hours of their precious time.

Once we were up and running it's been full steam ahead and we will close the sale and sell that home to her on January 17th.

The ReStore is the fundraising arm of Habitat for Humanity.

And there we sell gently used and new building materials and furniture.

So the proceeds of sale come back into the Habitat affiliate to help build and repair homes.

And we also have a great environmental impact.

- We live in a world or in a part of the world where so much is disposable and people get tired of this or that.

And they're gonna throw it in the dumpster when really it has a lot of life left in it and can really be exciting for someone else to have in their home.

- [Amanda] We opened in 2012.

And since that time we have kept 4 million pounds of reusable goods out of the landfill.

- [Melissa] I enjoy working the register at the ReStore and coming in contact with quite a few people from the community.

- My grandparents were immigrants and a real focus for them was the drive to own a home of their own.

And I think that that peace, that Habitat comes alongside of folks to make that dream come true really motivates me.

- [Amanda] We're proud to have built for people of all backgrounds.

We've served Southeast-Asian families, Latinx families and African-American and blended families as well as people from Caucasian backgrounds.

So here at Habitat, we love to be part of the community fabric and working with everyone who needs a safe place to live.

(upbeat music) - You could write a book about Silver Lake Foods in Rochester.

After 70 years, the city's oldest grocery store is also the only locally owned grocery store.

The current owner's pride themselves on offering the same personal service the store has been known for.

(slow music) - [Jason] The location of the store started out in 1953 with Roth's foods.

At some point in time, it was changed when hands went to an Erdman's grocery store for quite some time.

And after that it was Mr. P's and then Mr. D's and then Silver Lake Foods, sometime around 2001, I believe.

Hi, I'm Jason Oudal, owner of Silver Lake Foods in Rochester, Minnesota.

This place is stood.

It's the oldest grocery store in town, and it's the only full service grocery store that is owned locally.

- [Brian] It's more of like a family store.

I wanna say, laid back a little bit, compared to some of the chain stores.

Here we feel more relaxed.

I could talk to the boss anytime I want to.

And we have a lot of loyal customers.

We make a lot of friends.

My name is Brian Cooper.

I'm the store manager here at Silver Lake Foods.

I take care of most of the general operations at the store.

It's just a neighborhood store.

And I think people just like that atmosphere when they come in here.

They feel they can get around the store easy enough.

And we have a lot of people say, "You guys better not close 'cause we need you here".

I mean, this is a style of store that used to be popular in the fifties and the sixties.

And some people relate to that real well.

- [Jason] Not being a hometown store, not a chain store, is becoming a more unique thing nowadays.

The customers have been wonderful.

They're understanding, you know, when you don't have certain products because of how today's world is.

The customers are great.

- [Brian] And then just the service, the customers enjoy us.

They compliments on the employees and we have the ability to be an independent I can buy from anywhere.

So customers will ask, "Hey, could you get this?".

I say, let's just show me a UPC and stuff like that.

I'll see what I could do.

And I had a lot of people say, "Hey, you got stuff here that I can't get anywhere else".

And sometimes it's the older things, you know that used to be, you know, King Bing bars.

You know, do little things too, you know they'll jump the car for 'em.

You know, it's just those little things that add up to making them feel cared for here.

- [Jason] We do delivery service, you know right now it's only been a couple days a week, but.

Again it's the old fashioned way they call in.

You know, we have a lot of elderly people here that aren't up on the technology.

So they talk to somebody on the phone, give 'em their order.

We shop it, we deliver it.

Whatever you need, you just ask, if we don't offer, just ask.

They come here for our meat, primarily that's our biggest thing.

Still done the old fashioned way.

It's all cut here and full service, high quality Choice meats.

We make primarily everything here.

We're very, very price competitive and that we're able to do it fair amount cheaper than a lot of people.

And the qualities are the same.

- [Brian] A lot of changes.

It's been interesting to see the store remodeled.

Primarily, when Jason took over.

He's done a a huge amount of remodeling.

The corridor we have now, the flooring and recently last year or so, the outside reface, the lobby, those kind of things.

So that's been kinda exciting 'cause, you know, you're not gonna spend that money if you're not doing well.

And so, it helps us to feel like we're growing.

- [Jason] You know, it's been an exciting business to be in you know, and it's fun to put back into the business, has a lot of changes and with people's desires change and you have to adapt to 'em but you know, so it's never dull.

- [Brian] I'm proud for being here for the number of years I have.

I always say, I'm gonna write a book someday and each chapter will be about somebody or something.

But 50 years in the grocery business is, it's kind of hard to step away at some point.

(upbeat music) - Some of us have spent a lot of time indoors playing board games.

One couple in Austin has gone public with their love of games.

They began hosting gaming events called Austi-Con.

One goal is to provide a sense of community and help people make new friends.

- [Michael] The plan was actually, was gonna be, just a Warhammer tournament, but then things kinda changed with that.

And I called, well maybe let's go to a general hobby games convention.

And then when that happened, then it started looking, well actually we're probably gonna have more people than I was originally planning for this.

And yeah, it kinda got bigger than anticipated, quite quickly.

- Before we had kids, we went to a lot of board game conventions, just for fun with our group of friends.

And we would always talk about, you know, what do we like about it?

What would we do differently?

And now we have the opportunity to make it what we ideally want to see.

- [Michael] When I first started, I would hang out in Rochester a lot.

There was the Rochester Gaming Community over there, RGC.

And they actually held a convention over in Rochester for a few years.

And I was someone who helped organize that there ran tournaments for 'em and volunteered.

I was on the board of directors for that group for a little while too.

That's when I started Austi-Con.

Nancy at the visitors bureaus, knew that I went to some of these bigger events around and she was kinda like, "Is there a way to do something like that here?".

And I was like, "Oh yeah, I think there probably is".

So that's what she would need to do to help.

And she helped with, you know, liaison to the hotel and getting space and that worked out well.

And also when we moved to the armory.

She was helpful in building that relationship there.

And the last one was our fifth actual event.

And so the first one would've been like six years ago, because we skipped a year during the pandemic.

There's a lot of different things that go on at Austi-Con.

So if people come and have no prior gaming knowledge or anything, they can come and there's a lot of people that have, will be bringing their favorite games and have signed up to run them basically.

So if you wanna learn a new game, you can just sit down at a table and learn it with someone.

We also have a permanent library of games that are there.

So if you wanna just come check one of those out, those are always available for that.

We also have publishers that are trying to get like some buzz about their new games.

So they donate copies to the play to win library which is a library of games that if you play it during the weekend, one person's name is drawn on Sunday out of all the people who played it and they'll get take that copy home.

So those are kind of the main ways to get involved in playing games there.

So yeah, no one has to bring anything there.

There will be games there, but yeah, if you have games that you wanna bring and share with other people.

- It's just fun to see the joy it brings people.

Especially, I think at this last one, it was just fun.

You know, people were just so happy to be back together.

Some of them had not played any games in person, you know, for a long time.

And I know a lot of people that's something they really miss and that's kind of one of their main social outlets and for us too.

So, it was just so fun and you know, so many people just said, "We're so happy to be back here and thank you for having it.

And when is it gonna be again?".

And you know, it brings so much joy and it's just so fun to see people get together and make a new friend.

Or find that new game that they think is so much fun.

And just to see their excitement is really fun.

I think overall, we enjoy doing it together and I mean we are the main faces of Austi-Con.

We don't have any other staff.

We do have friends that help us out, but we are the ones who do everything really and we enjoy doing it together and we actually get along pretty well most of the time doing it.

Yeah, there's usually a few little stressful moments but I think it's a fun thing for us to do together, kinda brings us closer together most of the time.

- [Michael] When we started Austi-Con, we wanted to have a charity component too.

And Kate's the special ed world is, something's very dear to her and the Hormel Home's, autism camps.

She was director, founder of one of the camps.

So, that was something that, you know, she saw that there's a need for more funds.

They could do more things with some more funds for that.

So we're like, well, that would be perfect.

And actually, also I think does fit well in the gaming thing too, 'cause we do have attendees that are on this like autism spectrum and such.

- Yeah, I think we both have always just had a desire to really do.

Just create positive things in our community and you know, we wanted to just make it a place that you wanna be and that you wanna raise your family.

And Austin always has been that for us.

And we just wanted to contribute more things to the community that were positive.

And yeah, having the charity component, I think was just an important thing and gamers are amazingly generous.

They have surpassed my goal.

I think every year that I've had kind of just in my own mind of what I wanted.

They are yes, enormously generous.

And it that's another thing that I think is just great to see just how much they too care about contributing and doing something good for the community and yeah.

I think we have connected a lot of people, we've always hear that, every year, just different people will say, "I'm new here or I just love playing games but I really don't know anyone to play with.

And so thank you so much for this".

And I think that's- - Yeah, they find people they mesh with and start having a weekly group or whatever that they get together in Albert Lea, and you know, all the surrounding communities they can all meet and find people that they get along with and wanna continue gaming with.

So, it works out pretty nicely.

- I just look forward to Austi-Con every year, you know, just bringing people together and seeing those people that I know look forward to it.

And I think it started kind of as an experiment like, "Can we have a convention in Austin?".

And it's kind of become a thing that we really look forward to.

And as much work as it can be at times, it's just so worth it just to see how much joy it brings.

And I hope it's a good weekend for all the businesses in Austin, you know.

And I think it's a good thing for the community and I'm just really happy that we have been a part of that.

(upbeat music) - Flooding in Southern Minnesota and across the nation is not a recent development.

We look at one flood in Mankato, in this video from the Blue Earth County Historical Society.

- [Narrator 2] 1965 was a bad year for weather.

March had two back to back blizzards that dumped a combined 21 inches of snow, on top of the already several feet of snow on the ground.

And until this point, the weather had been colder with little snow melt.

The final storm ended on March 18th and the weather started to warm.

A heavy rainstorm came on April 6th, but with the ground still frozen, the water had nowhere to go.

The Minnesota River began to rise over the next few days to reach 29.1 feet on April 10th.

Through this time, school was closed and the community came together to help sandbag and assist those who had to leave their homes.

The flooding was so bad, many of the animals in the Sibley Park in Zoo perished.

It was another 11 days before the river was below flood levels.

And several months before things returned to normal in Mankato.

For more information on historical topics visit our website at blueearthcountyhistory.com.

- That's all for this episode.

Thanks for riding along.

See you next time, Off 90.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loons calling) (upbeat music)