April 17th, 2026 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 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 gas caps. We had hidden them in a gunny sack 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 on his desk to claim theirs. We appeared in front of the Justice of The Peace in the backroom of the Upsala City fire hall. Justice Bernard Lunder sentenced each one of us to “six months of church attendance”.
Many years later I would visit Bernard at a 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 punishment. 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 may not be too late to get a ticket to see “Hadestown Teen Edition” performed by the St. John’s Prep Theatre in the Stephen B Humphrey Auditorium on the campus of St. John’s University. I saw it last night and it was wonderful. www.sjprep.net.
“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 17th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
This is a video I shot from the dock many years ago. You can tell that my grandson is excited about his buddy catching a fish. https://youtu.be/xwfn8dLz0XU?si=4_tLxdFU4CGPSnd3
Willie is already a Master Angler through the Minnesota Fishing Museum & Hall of Fame in Little Falls. Every April the Museum offers an opportunity to meet with members of the Hall of Fame at a “Night with the Pros”
at LeBlanc’s Rice Creek Hunting Recreation and Event Center east of Little Falls. In 2023 and 2024 my son Erik was the auctioneer.
Last year, I had to fill in for Erik as the auctioneer. There were many great items to bid on and in the interest of raising as much money as possible, I always started the bidding at $200. No one bid on a “Half Day fishing with Randin Olson”, so I ended up being the high bidder for that item. It turns out that I saved $100 since the going rate is $300. Not only did I save some money, but it was also Randin that took me to a secret lake in Ottertail County and helped me to land a 28′ Walleye. (photo attached)
This year the event is next Friday, the 17th of April. Simply go to the Minnesota Fishing Museum & Hall of Fame website to purchase your tickets. www.mnfishingmuseum.com
There is a very special event at the Abbey Church tomorrow afternoon. Vocalessence will be accompanied by Organ Virtuoso Greg Zelek at 4pm. Tickets are at www.saintjohnsabbey.org
The Isidore String Quartet is also in town. Go to www.chambermusicstcloud.org for information on concerts this weekend.
“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of that which is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.” John Buchan
April 10th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
Sunday will be Kaylin Marie Osberg’s 31st 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 worked her way through St. Cloud State University 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” repeatedly 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 . Zygoatian LLC is one of the sponsors of the St. John’s Prep Theatre production of “Hadestown Teen Edition”. The show opens on Friday April 10th in the Stephen B Humphrey Auditorium on the campus of St. John’s University. Information and tickets are available at www.sjprep.net
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
April 10th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
This is a video I shot from the dock many years ago. You can tell that my grandson is excited about his buddy catching a fish. https://youtu.be/xwfn8dLz0XU?si=4_tLxdFU4CGPSnd3
Willie is already a Master Angler through the Minnesota Fishing Museum & Hall of Fame in Little Falls. Every April the Museum offers an opportunity to meet with members of the Hall of Fame at a “Night with the Pros”
at LeBlanc’s Rice Creek Hunting Recreation and Event Center east of Little Falls. In 2023 and 2024 my son Erik was the auctioneer.
Last year, I had to fill in for Erik as the auctioneer. There were many great items to bid on and in the interest of raising as much money as possible, I always started the bidding at $200. No one bid on a “Half Day fishing with Randin Olson”, so I ended up being the high bidder for that item. It turns out that I saved $100 since the going rate is $300. Not only did I save some money, but it was also Randin that took me to a secret lake in Ottertail County and helped me to land a 28′ Walleye. (photo attached)
This year the event is next Friday, the 17th of April. Simply go to the Minnesota Fishing Museum & Hall of Fame website to purchase your tickets. www.mnfishingmuseum.com
There is a very special event at the Abbey Church tomorrow afternoon. Vocalessence will be accompanied by Organ Virtuoso Greg Zelek at 4pm. Tickets are at www.saintjohnsabbey.org
The Isidore String Quartet is also in town. Go to www.chambermusicstcloud.org for information on concerts this weekend.
“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of that which is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.” John Buchan
March 27th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
Many years ago, I attended a Waite Park Chamber event hosted by MinnWest Bank. The speaker was Jill with Express Employment Professionals. Her opening statement concluded that, on average, we will each have three careers and 27 jobs in our lifetime. At first, it sounded like a bit much, but then I started counting. My three careers were drafting, office furniture/equipment sales and now nearly 27 years helping folks to “get the word” out on Minnesota Public Radio. I did have more than 20 jobs.
My first job was working at Ramlo Grocery in Upsala, (my grandparents owned the store) for fifty cents an hour. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school I worked for my step-grandfather, Francis Johnson, as a house painter in Little Falls. As I mentioned in a previous note, in 1962 I got into the drafting field thanks to my sister’s friend, Barry Larson. I worked my way up from being a draftsman on the Polaris project at Honeywell to being a manager with the very first computerized drafting service bureau in the U.S., Norwood Engineering.
We were way ahead of our time and after a rough first few months, I was laid off on the day of my daughters first birthday. The two founders had been the sales force, and they had been let go by the Board of Directors. Two guys that I had hired made up the entire production crew. They went on strike. Every day we would go to the office and negotiate for my return and then we would buy a 12 pack of beer and go to the lake for lunch. After a few weeks, the new President agreed to take me back. Since we no longer had anyone in sales, I became the sales force.
One of the two guys who went on strike for me was Eckart “Butch” Herter. Butch took me aside to tell me that my handshake sucked and that, if I was planning on being a salesman, I had better read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. He was right on. He died way too young of cancer. The other friend just retired from running a movie theater in Hutchinson. In 1972, he and his wife were chosen as God parents for my son Erik. I owe both Red and Butch big time. The selling career has been very, very good to me.
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours”. Henry David Thoreau
March 20th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
Today is the first day of spring. Signs of spring have not been abundant. I have not seen a robin yet, nor an earth worm. The ice is still on all the lakes around St. John’s. But hope springs eternal.
My drafting career ended in the early seventies. 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. 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 appointment and a meaningful lunch. Ever since covid, getting a face-to-face appointment is much harder. If I do my job right, I meet three new people every month. This month I made my goal.
When you come to my “celebration of life” at the Paramount Center for the Arts, there will be a grey ring binder on a table in the lobby. Inside of that ring binder you will find a list of the 24 companies that I have worked for since 1961 and 44 calling cards. The first calling card has only my name: Gary Michael Osberg. Every graduate of Upsala High School class of 1961 got a box of calling cards to send along with the invitations to the graduation ceremony. The last 8 cards are all from Minnesota Public Radio. Titles changed, logos changed and we used to have a fax machine.
Tonight, at 7:30, the Beo String Quartet is performing at the Paramount Center for the Arts in downtown St Cloud. Tickets are available at www.paramountarts.org I have two tickets in row G for the performance for the first person to reply to this email. I will leave them at the will call window for you.
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” Emily Dickinson
March 13th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
Tuesday 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
March 6th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
In the spring of 2000, I visited MPR’s classical music station, KWRV 91.9, in Sun Valley, Idaho for the first time. When I made my second trip in the fall of 2000, I decided to drive to Bozeman, Montana and visit my Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie. Uncle Bill was my wife Marcia’s mother’s half- brother. They both had the same mother, but different fathers. I had met Aunt Maggie when Marcia and I went to California on our honeymoon in 1965. Aunt Maggie told stories about a Native American ghost that would sit on the end of her bad and visit with her.
Going to visit Aunt Maggie and Uncle Bill became an annual event. Each year I heard more marvelous stories, and I learned to love those wonderful people. Knowing that Marcia and I were divorced, Maggie would introduce me as her nephew from Minnesota and add: “I got him in the divorce”. Uncle Bill died in 2008. It has been nine years since Aunt Maggie died. She and her husband Bill Heisick both grew up in Bozeman. Here is just one of the many stories that Aunt Maggie told me.
Bill served in the Pacific during World War II. When he came home from the war, he and his mother traveled to LA to visit some friends. One day a fellow named Ivan popped in to see his friend Tommy who happened to be playing bridge with Bill and his mother Mary. Ivan asked, “Who owns the car outside with the Montana license plates?”. Uncle Bill spoke up. Ivan told Bill “My girlfriend, Maggie Caven, lives in Bozeman. Please greet Maggie for me when you get back home”.
When Bill got back to Bozeman, he phoned Maggie and asked her to go to a movie. Maggie mistook Bill for his older brother Bob who she had once met in high school. She accepted the date, and she was very disappointed when she found out that Bob had been killed in the war. Bill had gone to a private school, and she did not know him. She was quite sure that Bill, who was a couple of years younger than she, was not her kind of fellow. Bill was very handsome. In fact, he could have doubled for Clark Gable. Maggie was sure that like most handsome men, he would prove to be full of himself. She tried to call it off, but Bill was persistent, and they were married in Tucson, Arizona on April 12, 1949. They were a very happy couple. They lived in Van Nuys, CA and retired to a small ranch outside of Bozeman in 1984. She would introduce Bill as “Her S.O.B., Sweet Old Bill”. I am not sure what happened to Ivan, but he shared too much information with a stranger, and it cost him dearly.
“When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us”. Alexander Graham Bell
February 27th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
My cousin Tom would have been 79 years old today. He was not a “Norwegian Bachelor Farmer”, he was a “Norwegian Bachelor House Painter”. When I lived in Upsala, I owned a house that was built in 1892 as the Swedish Mission Church parsonage. Most of the siding is original cedar and if you keep it painted; it will last for a long, long time. Tom was my designated painter. For many years, Tom lived with his parents in a house across the church cemetery. His father, Duke, had died in 2002 and his mother Lee, Auntie to me, died 11 years later, so in 2019 Tom was living alone.
Living alone has a few disadvantages, one of which is, if you fall and can’t get up, it may be a while before someone finds you. After a few days of not being able to get Tom on his cell phone, cousin Mike went to check on Tom one Sunday. Mike called upstairs and Tom answered weakly. At St. Cloud Hospital it was discovered that he had a brain tumor that had caused a seizure that put him on the floor in his upstairs bedroom. When I got to his hospital room on Monday , he had the three nurses rolling in the aisle. His personality had been affected by the tumor, and he would not stop talking, calling the nurse whose name was Sara, “Sister Sara”. Tom remembered that name from a Clint Eastwood movie.
Because I live in St. Joseph, I usually was the first to visit him. One Wednesday when I got there he was barely breathing. I put my hand on his chest and said, “Hold on Tom, your sister and brothers are on their way”. We were sure that he would be dying soon. The next day he opened his eyes and mumbled a greeting to his brother John. When I got there on Friday morning, he was wide awake and when the nurse heard me talking to him, she came in and asked Tom if he was hungry. Tom asked for ice cream. I told him that we all had given up on him and explained that as I understood it, if he chose to live, he would be facing some serious surgery with a high risk.
Tom usual dry sense of humor had returned. He said: “I have never died before; I don’t know how to do it”. Tom decided to have the surgeries. He had a baseball sized tumor removed two days later. Tom looked rough, but he chose to fight, and we were all hoping for the best. Tom died in Mother of Mercy in Albany later that same month. We miss him.
“I have never died before; I don’t know how to do it”. Tom Hagstrom
February 20th, 2026 by Gary Osberg
You just need to find your authentic swing!” Advice from Bagger Vance, a character in the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, released in 2000 and directed by Robert Redford. Doing well at the game of golf is akin to doing well at the game of life. I am here doing what I do, loving what I do, to a large degree because of luck. Being in the right place at the right time.
I had no idea what I was “going to be when I grew up”. My two quarters at the U of M in 1961/62 were a disaster. I once signed up for the “Phillips 66 Gas Station Management Program”. Those of us in the program wore company uniforms but I don’t remember having to wear “the cap”. They taught us how to properly check the oil and wash the windshield while keeping an eye on the gas pump.
One day in 1962, my sister’s boyfriend Barry Larson asked me if I had any skill with “drafting”. He had a side job that he needed help with. I was living with my mother recovering from a back operation and I told him yes (which was a fib), and I got the job. When he came to pick up the finished work, he was not happy. “Don’t you know the difference between an object line and a dimension line?” Clearly, I did not.
I bought an instruction book on “Drafting” and did the work over again. I ended up working as an Engineer Aid on the Polaris project at Honeywell and I even designed a part for a gyro used in the missile. I was given a tie clasp with a submarine on the face of it. I probably still have that instruction book in a box somewhere. When I left that job in 1965 to go back to college, they gave me a very nice compass set and a briefcase to carry my books.
Over the last 64 years I have had twenty-three jobs, in three different industries, drafting, office equipment and radio. I started my radio career on the third floor of Wimmer Hall on the campus of St. John’s University on October 28,1999. It is hard to believe that soon, it will be 27 years working with Minnesota Public Radio.
St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra is presenting “Storytime”, with music from Peter and the Wolf and Hansel and Gretel, tomorrow afternoon at 3 in Ritsche Auditorium at St. Cloud State University.
CSB/SJU Fine Arts Programming is presenting “Rhythmically Speaking’s” performance of “Reppin”, a jazz dance group tomorrow night at Benedicta Arts Center.
“Wisdom is what is left over after we’ve run out of personal opinions.” Cullen Hightower
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