Mom just might be getting a little more attention on Mother’s Day this year in Minnesota. And, she no doubt deserves every bit of it!

You see, this year’s late-staying winter might just have a dampening effect on the Minnesota fishing “opener.” As I write these lines a week before the traditional weekend when anglers of all ages head for their favorite lake, there still is a hard lid of ice on some of our larger lakes. The DNR has even warned anglers not to park their boat trailers on the ice!

I wrote my first column about 54 years ago. I would have been 12 years old. I guess you couldn’t really call it a column. Better to call it a “letter to the editor.”

But, it was an exercise in writing and a lesson learned that I still remember.  

I sent that note to the Wallaces Farmer magazine. Wallaces Farmer was about the only magazine we received out in corn country. I just checked and it is still in business, no doubt changed a bit from the time before the Internet and instant news. I forget how often we received the magazine, but I think it was once a month.

Back in 1998 I wrote a column that actually won a “Best Columnist” award from the Minnesota Newspaper Association. Although I never have written this column to win anything, it is always nice to know that at least someone found my writing to be worth reading. 

The following column was written in reverence to the lowly corn cob. A piece of the past.

“God Loved The Lowly Corn Cob”

As the snow slowly retreats from my dog’s kennel and the robins try to find their way north through the latest snowstorm, as there have been threats to do away with the groundhog and snowplows in the northland begin to gather rust, this is the time.

Yes, the time has come for this former farm boy and heavy construction machine operator to utter his annual (and I must say looked-forward-to-by-many) Minnesota Twins baseball forecast for 2013.