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Hanson's Plumbing & Heating Blog

Morning Emotions at the Store

May 12, 2017

He was my first customer this morning.  I can’t say I knew him, but I knew from his accent that he came from the Pelican Rapids area. “Have you got a tank for my pump then?” I try to get to the shop by 7:30 now that I’ve retired instead of before 7 a.m. when […]

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Listening and Sharing Across the Counter

March 16, 2017

He was not a regular customer.  He’d probably stop in only two or three times a year.  I didn’t think that unusual because it was obvious he didn’t have much need to buy anything and I felt he probably had to struggle to make ends meet.  He was retired, lived with his wife in a […]

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The Swede

September 20, 2016

From my early years, I can remember my dad loading my brother and myself into his ’25 Chevrolet and on a Sunday afternoon, driving out east of Pelican Rapids to visit the “newcomers.” My memory tells me they had come from the “old country,” struggling families in little shacks, trying to take root on an […]

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A Life of Singing

September 20, 2016

There was a wood fire going in the basement furnace and another one that had been stoked up in the kitchen range. The floor-to-ceiling register between the downstairs kitchen and the upstairs bedroom, where my brother and I were nestling in, radiated the warmth from the fires below, as well as the music that radiated […]

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Rail Road Memories

September 20, 2016

We had a guy in our town who walked the tracks every day. I’d watch Otto stand on the corner by Fankhanel’s Pool Hall, look at the Model “A” drive by, probably watch Ferdinand Manke pull into town with his team of horses, and then head down the half-block to the Soo Line Depot. Some […]

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