May 16th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Many times, we end up taking a path quite by accident. My first career was drafting. I faked my way into that field, but it ended well. In fact, in 1965 drafting jobs were so plentiful that Marcia and I were able to take a four-week honeymoon, knowing that when I got back to Minnesota, I just had to walk into Strom Engineering, and they would send me out to Control Data or Univac “on contract”. In 1969 I became involved in the very first computerized drafting service bureau in the world, Norwood Engineering.
Norwood Engineering was founded by a salesman with Twin Cities Blue Printing, Dick Engebretson. He hired my boss, Ron Crew, at Control Data, who in turn hired me. Our plans included franchising service bureaus, so my title was Franchise Manager. We hired General Office Products to design and furnish our offices in Roseville as well as the one and only franchise that we sold to Bob Johnson in Seattle, Washington.
To make a long story short, the business failed, and I ended up as the last General Manager. I was 26 years old. I had to write a letter to about 14 companies explaining that Norwood Engineering had filed for bankruptcy, and we could not pay their bill. I did add my home phone number at that bottom of the letter.
Because of that letter, my third career was in the office furniture industry. Jim Helstrom, sales manager for General Office Products, received one of those letters and Jim called me. Of course he wanted his furniture back. I had to explain that the President of Norwood, Ron Crew, had taken a loan out at a bank and he had pledged the furniture as collateral. The bank took the furniture. GOP did not have “a position” on the goods sold. The terms of the sale were net 30 days. At the end of the conversation, Jim said, “Well if you ever need a job, let me know.”
I spent 22 years in the office furniture industry. Many years later I called Jim and thanked him for the awesome sales training that he had provided. After Jim passed, I spoke to his son, and he told me that his dad talked about that telephone conversation many times. Maybe this week would be a good week for you to call an old friend or mentor.
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” Vince Lombardi
May 9th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Today’s message was posted yesterday on my son Erik’s website. It has been used here with his permission. www.erikosberg.com
“Today would have been my mom’s 83rd birthday. My mom was a devout Catholic and a proud Democrat. There weren’t very many Masses she missed. Even if she was away from home, she would find a church to attend. She played the guitar and when I was in elementary school, she led a youth choir called the “Rainbow Children”. We would sing during Saturday evening masses. During my high school years, she would put Holy Water on my shoulders and knees before my wrestling matches or football games. She valued things like compassion and kindness. One time, she even pulled her car over on a busy bridge in St. Cloud to stop traffic and help a mother duck and her ducklings cross the road. With the new Pope being selected today, I imagine she would be filled with hope that he would lead with compassion and care for the sick and poor. Happy heavenly birthday mom. Your legacy lives on.”
“All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.” Winston Churchill
May 8th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
My Dad served in the Pacific during the second world war. His brother-in-law, my Uncle El, served there also. One of the photos that I had restored is a picture of Dad and Uncle El smoking cigars on an island after V-J Day. You can tell by the look on Dad’s face that the canteens did not have water in them. What are the odds that they ended up on the same island?
After the war Dad had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. One Saturday, Dad and Uncle El ended up having a few too many “beer and a bump” and they went into a recruiting station in Sauk Centre. Dad enlisted in the Army and a few years later our family ended up in Vienna, Austria. For some reason Uncle El didn’t have to go back in.
One of the items that Ma brought back from Vienna in 1953 was a very old statue. A warrior with a breast plate and a sword on his hip. In 1965 she had her neighbor Harold convert it into a lamp and gave it to Marcia and me as a wedding gift. It ended up broken and in three pieces in a box in the basement of The Parsonage in Upsala. Ickler Company in St. Cloud soldered it back together and through my connections at The Paramount Center for the Arts, I found a “bronzer” in Howard Lake, INNOCAST Execuline. They refinished it. The tip of the shaft and the feather on the cap are gold leaf.
When I was in Germany in 2019, I purchased a BMW model car to add to the collection of Vienna items which included a bronze monkey in a top hat. It was a 25th anniversary gift dated 1898-1923. The inscription, which is in German, states “What a monkey my lover is, like an illness or a fever”. Who gives such a gift?
“Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.” David McCullogh
April 25th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Last night I attended an event in the library at the Melrose High School. “Stearns United” invited my son Erik Osberg to join them for pizza and conversation about the current state of affairs. They had heard that Erik has chosen to run for the United States Congress representing Congressional District 7. CD7 consists of 37 counties along the western side of Minnesota.
I left my MPR tote bag at home and simply listened to the folks expressing their concerns about a variety of topics. True, there was a lot of gray hair, but there were a couple of young folks, one who has just been elected to the chair of a local political organization. Getting involved is the first step.
Erik did a great job, and he learned a lot. The election is not until November of 2026 so there are bound to be many more of these occasions. I was reminded of my own venture into politics. I chose to run for the city council in Coon Rapids in 1971. I was given slim chance to unseat the incumbent, but we did manage to pull it off. I do remember having to bring Erik to a similar gathering in the fall of 1972 when he was only three months old. Marcia and I were both to be there, and we could not find a babysitter. I suppose he may have been “imprinted”.
Tomorrow evening is the final concert performance for the season by the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra. Brad Lambrecht will be conducting “Symphony is Spain and Latin America” at Ritsche Auditorium on the campus of St. Cloud State University. Tickets are available at www.stcloudsymphony.com
Sunday afternoon at 4 you can enjoy “Take This Gift”, a performance by the Great River Chorale and GRC Treble Choir, directed by Mary Kay Geston. They will perform at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in St. Cloud. Tickets at www.greatriverchorale.org
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear”. Mark Twain
April 18th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
When the family moved from St. Louis Park to Upsala in October of 1956, one benefit to myself was that I got out of having to serve two weeks of “detention” at Park Junior High school. My rebellious nature had already kicked in. The Upsala school population was divided into “farm kids” and “town kids”. That fall I started hanging out with other “town kids”.
For some reason one of us decided to steal a gas cap off of a parked car. I am not sure which “genius” came up with this idea, but in any case, the prank turned into a project. Everyone in town was talking about it and I am sure that old man Miller printed a story in the local newspaper. In time one of the “gas cap gang” confessed to his parents and we all got busted.
Earl Metzger was the local policeman. He gathered us up and forced me to reveal the hiding place of the gunny sack full of gas caps. We had hidden it in a culvert. All of those who were missing their gas cap were told to come to Earl’s garage in Uptown Upsala and sort through the lineup of gas caps to claim theirs. We appeared in front of the Justice of The Peace in the backroom of the Upsala fire hall. Justice Bernard Lunder sentenced each one of us to “six months of church attendance”.
Many years later I would visit Bernard at the nursing home in Sauk Rapids and we would talk about the “separation of church and state”. He simply laughed and said he thought we would benefit from his sentence. Not all of us learned the lesson. The “Black Knights Car Club” was born a few years later. That lead to another crime spree.
“It is unwise to pay too much, but it’s also unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much, all you lose is a little money, but when you pay too little, you stand a chance of losing everything because the thing you bought is incapable of doing what you bought it to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It just can’t be done. So, when you deal with the low bidder, it is wise to put a little something aside to take care of the risk you run. And, if you do that, you can afford something better.” John Ruskin
April 11th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Growing up in Upsala I was a “town kid” not a “farm kid”, but I learned the joy of “tilling the soil” through gardening. I got into gardening by helping my bachelor brother-in-law Jackie with his garden.
The Upsala Swedish Mission Church parsonage was built in 1892 by members of the church. In the 50s the congregation built a new parsonage east of the original one and they sold the old parsonage to Mary Heisick, my wife Marcia’s grandmother. Marcia’s parents, Irene and John Rudie inherited the house from Grandma Mary in 1971, so they sold the farm and moved to town. Marcia’s brother Jackie was a bachelor blacksmith who had never moved away from home, so he got the upstairs bedroom.
Jackie got permission from the church to create a vegetable garden west of the old parsonage. Many years later Jackie was forced to garden with a Yamaha three-wheeler because of bad knees so I offered to help with the tilling only to get yelled at for running over some of the seedlings. Being a “town kid”, I didn’t know the difference between a weed and a seedling. Also, the rows that he had planted were not straight. The next spring I drove stakes in the soil exactly 36” apart and used heavy string to define the rows. I didn’t get yelled at that year.
In 1999 I bought the old parsonage from the estate of my mother-in-law, Irene Rudie, and started to garden in earnest. Most years I had lots of vegetables. My daughter bought the old parsonage from me a few years ago, so now she is the “master gardener”. We are not likely to get the Yukon Gold potatoes in by Good Friday, as the Farmer’s Almanac suggests, but maybe by May 2nd. There are few joys more delightful than eating freshly dug Yukon Gold potatoes baked or boiled, with real butter of course.
“Three-fourths of the people that you will meet tomorrow are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.” Dale Carnegie
April 4th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Tomorrow is Kaylin Marie Osberg’s 30th birthday. Kaylin is the oldest of my five grandchildren and life has not been the same since she came into this world. My daughter was a single mom, and she was working her way through St. Cloud State as a waitress at Trobec’s in St. Stephen. From the time she was a baby, Kaylin would spend most weekends with her bachelor grandfather in the old parsonage in Upsala. We did a lot of pancakes at the Uptown Café on Saturday mornings and a lot of washing her hair in the kitchen sink on Sunday mornings before church. During the washing of the hair, there was much wailing and thrashing about.
Getting her to fall asleep in her crib at night was not easy. It helped if I sang “It’s Summertime” over and over again while she struggled to stay awake. When she was about five years old, she finally said, “Grandpa, please stop singing that song!”.
Today, Kaylin is co-owner of a promotional products company, Zygoatian LLC. Their moto is “We will print on most anything”. If you need a T Shirt or coffee mug, give her a call. Simply go to www.zygoatian.com . But not this weekend, because her partner Jon booked a trip to California as a Christmas gift. Yesterday was Kaylin’s first time on an airplane. She will be back on Wednesday,
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
March 28th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
It was in 2001 that I first noticed an old man kind of shuffling towards Wimmer Hall where the studio of Minnesota Public Radio is located. His bib overalls were covered with saw dust. I stopped and introduced myself. I asked him what he did on campus, and he responded in a gruff voice, “My name is Brother Willie, and I work in the woodshop. I make a table and chair set for the little ones, haven’t you seen them?” Since I had a six-year-old granddaughter at the time, I asked him if he would make a set for me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are many orders ahead of yours, I don’t know if I will live long enough to make a set for you” I responded, “No problem, I will pray for you every day and I am sure that you will live long enough to make them.”
During the next few months, I visited Br. Willie in the woodshop many times. On one occasion I noticed a small wooden wagon filled with blocks. He made the blocks out of scraps of wood from oak trees harvested from the Abbey forest. I always left him with one of my calling cards and reminded him of my order for a table and chair set. One day the phone rang in my office on the third floor of Wimmer Hall, and it was Brother Willie. My table and chairs were finished.
Over the years I took delivery on two children’s table and chair sets plus 8 of the small wagons filled with blocks of many shapes and sizes. Years later old age made it necessary for Br. Wille to stop working in the woodshop, but he still would make his rounds going thru the garbage searching for aluminum cans. He donated the money from the cans to the poor.
At one time Brother Willie was the Monastery dairy herdsman, but he was best known for his role as the self-appointed night watchman on campus. The pub in Sexton Commons is named after him and George Maurer wrote a song named “The Brother Willie Shuffle”.
In 2005. my friend Dave Phipps drew a caricature of Brother Willie Shuffling, from which my granddaughter, Kaylin, has made a T shirt. Kaylin was the 6-year-old granddaughter who got the first table and chair set. The T shirts are available at the St. John’s Abbey Gift Shop in the Great Hall. The Gift Shop is open Monday thru Saturday from 10 until 2 and Sunday from 11:30 until noon.
“Success has nothing to do with what you gain for yourself. Success is what you do for others.” Brother Willie (William Jerome Borgerding, OSB) 1916-2009
March 21st, 2025 by Gary Osberg
The second of my five careers was in office furnishings. I started working as a sales rep for General Office Products in 1971. Roy Utne was part owner of General Office Products. Shortly after I started working there, Roy called me into his office and said: “Osberg, if you get a 10 and a 2 and a meaningful lunch, you will be falling off of your billfold.” It is not easy to get a 10 and a 2 and a meaningful lunch.
I did have a “10” yesterday at The Local Blend with my good friend Chris who runs the Avon Hills Folk School. They offer a host of workshops and events like their 2nd annual Avon Hills Maple Syrup Tasting, Pancake Feed & Social which will be held on Sunday April 27th starting at 9 in the morning at Milk & Honey Ciders southwest of St. Joseph. You can learn more at www.avonhillsfolkschool.org
“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.” Pearl S Buck.
March 20th, 2025 by Gary Osberg
Monday is Saint Patrick’s Day. The song “Oh Danny Boy” is a very popular Irish song. Malachy McCourt wrote a book titled “Danny Boy. “The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad”.
The tune, known as the “Londonderry Air”, originated in the northern most county of Ireland. The story goes that sometime in the 1600s, Rory Dall O’Cahan, a blind harpist, left a gig at a castle in the Valley of Roe and having had a little too much to drink, he fell asleep in the ditch alongside the road. He was awakened by the sound of fairies playing the most beautiful tune he had ever heard on his harp. He returned to the castle and proceeded to play the first rendition of what became known as the “Londonderry Air”.
Around 1850, Miss Jane Ross of Limavady, County Derry, heard a blind fiddler playing the tune and she wrote down the notes and the tune spread all over western world. Some say that Jimmy McCurry was that fiddler. Many folks tried to come up with words to the tune, including some of the best-known poets of the time, but none seemed to work.
Finally in 1913, an Englishman, Fred Weatherly, a teacher, and a lawyer, who had written nearly 1,500 songs in his life, was sent the tune by a sister-in-law who lived in America. Fred had recently lost his father and his only son. His sorrow is reflected in the words to what became known as “Oh Danny Boy”. Especially the second verse:
“And if ye come and all the flowers are dying. If I be dead as dead, I well may be. Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying and kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, and all my grave the warmer, sweeter be. For you will bend and tell me that you love me, and I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”
“Good judgment comes from experience and often experience comes from bad judgment.” Rita Mae Brown
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