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LA CRESCENT, Minnesota — After a three-hour drive from St. Paul and Minneapolis, mostly along the banks of the Mississippi River, the famous river in the United States and arguably in the world for its countless dams, we finally arrived in La Crescent, the home of apples. Indeed, no wonder the town is called the Apple Capital of Minnesota. It may interest you to note that before I was shown the big billboard with the inscription of the Apple Capital of Minnesota, as another name of La Crescent, I had told myself 30 minutes after my arrival in the town, that this city needs to be named U.S. City of Apples. I drew this conclusion immediately after my host family, Dave Frie and his wife, Millie Frie and their daughter, Regina, had drove me through some eye-pleasing streets, which have apple-plantations, such as South and North Ridge and North Elm Street to catch a glimpse of the town.
Wrong perception
I set off from Minneapolis on Saturday, Aug. 3, to begin a week-long fraternity with my Midwest Media and Farm hosts as part of my four-month fellowship course with the World Press Institute (WPI) at Macalester College; I had little information about La Crescent (sorry, Apple City) but there was this preconceived notion about how the town would look. Having spent one month in the U.S. with eight other journalists drawn from all parts of the world by the WPI fellowship, I did not in anyway underrate anything or take anything for granted. But then the big question was what would La Crescent be like?
So it was more than relief when we finally pulled up at the city around 4:35 pm that Saturday evening. The old saying that “never live by perception or an assumption,” is as true as Minnesota’s Saturday evening longer summer daylight. I got it all wrong about what I assumed La Crescent would be like. As we took off from 407 South Second Street, at Crucifixion’s Summer Fun Fest, where we spent a few minutes with my host introducing me to a few of their church members, and headed toward the North Ridge end of town, I realized I was in a different town altogether. The question of what did I see in La Crescent that seemed to be extraordinary, continued to linger, I would try my best to outline the wonders of the town. This is a city which has apple farms planted in between residential houses at the north end of town. As if this wonderful apple plantation decoration or combination if you like, was not enough, La Crescent is almost confined by bluffs from the southern part of the town to the northern end, except the western end. While the city can be said to be lying in the coulee region (valley), another fascinating thing that might interest you is the great River Mississippi.
Readers, if you think I have finished outlining all the descriptions of the town, then you haven’t heard anything yet. What about the evergreen tropical-like forest that covers the bluff with its evergreen leaves? What about messy waters covered by green weeds along both sides of the road that leads into the Mississippi? Should we not mention the confluence, of the two or three rivers at La Crosse, in Wisconsin State, which is less than a five-minute drive from La Crescent? Have you forgotten Pine Creek Golf Course where both men and women frizzle their muscles and skills for supremacy?
I may sound boring by outlining some of these things, but that is typical with human beings.You never appreciate what you have until you lose it, goes the old saying. With all this classic beautiful landscape and manicured green grasses in front of “mansions” from the downtown, where you have the banks, travel agency, offices, Houston County News and stores, where I prefer to call the heart of the town is just a simple and lovely place to be. To add more meat into the soup, houses are springing up around the top of the North Ridge part of the bluff, where it is almost effortless to see most of the big cities in Wisconsin State. After we drove through almost all the major streets and some corners of the town, I need nobody to give me a tutorial that La Crescent is one of the most decent and well-structured cities to have happened to Minnesota and U.S. as a whole.
I doff my hat to those grandfathers and mothers who first set their foot in the area and conceived a plan to put up a foundation and build their houses here. If the 21st Century is noted for the technological advancement that has turned the whole world into a global village, the builders of La Crescent some hundreds of years ago can also be described as men and women with vision. As I look around the bluffs, and coulees, I remember two towns in my home country of Ghana, in West Africa. I wish La Crescent was my home town, Nanchanba No. 1, a suburb of Tatale in the northern region of Ghana. Nkwakwa, in the eastern region, the town of my former editor, Ebn Kese-Antwi a.k.a. Stebiko, is surrounded by bluffs like La Crescent. As we drove from one end of the town to another, the conclusion I drew was that Minnesota is not just a state but it is a State of States in U.S.
What shall I say, about the wonderful and compassionate reception I enjoyed from my host, Frie family? How shall I describe the entire staff of the newspaper, particularly Paul, that wonderful young reporter, for the love and kindness they demonstrated to me? I would be ungrateful if I forget Mary Beth Smith and Jean Geier of Polka Mass-ters fame, who entertained us in our Sunday worship in Catholic Church with their polka Mass, and later doled out two of their spirit-filled gospel music cassettes album as a gift to me.
In fact, it is an open secret that the people of Ghana are noted for their hospitality, but the people of La Crescent are just simply marvelous and unstoppable in their sacrifice. Have you ever given a sacrifice in your life? You should have been there last Saturday to witness how a postal carrier, for the first time in 30 years, shaved his head as a sacrifice that yielded $1,000 to support the development of Crucifixion Elementary School.
Words cannot describe what I saw. I hope the residents of the Town (La Crescent Township) would put their feet down and come out with a new zoning map to add more excellent collections to the Apple City of U.S.A.
Dominic Jale, a reporter with The Ghanaian Chronicle, in Accra, Ghana, visited La Crescent, Minnesota, August 2-7. He is visiting newspapers across the United States to learn first-hand about our First-Amendment rights and a free press.
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Notebook
By Dominic Jale, WPI '02