Whan that April with his showres sooteThe droughte of March hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veine in swich licour,Of which vertu engendred

The opening game of the 1965-66 basketball season of the Northfield High School Raiders was to be played on the court of a new

“Masquerade Ball! Easter Monday, April 7, 1890, at the Opera House. Tickets $1, gallery 50¢ with the privilege of dancing after 11 o’clock. Everybody

Northfielders reading Reed Whittemore’s memoir Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet (Dryad Press, 2007) may have an irresistible urge to start with Chapter

I wrote two paragraphs about Henry Talford Budd, known as “Tal,” in my third Historic Happenings column in April of 2007. I was writing about events

Researching historic happenings can be time-consuming. It can also be as easy as “googling” a  topic on a computer. Occasionally, it is a matter of

As I drove into the driveway of the hilltop home of Bryan Moon outside of Cannon Falls, I saw the first whimsical touch of

No doubt fans of football at St. Olaf looked enviously across the Cannon River during the first two decades of the 20th century when

“It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…Schiller!” On Nov. 10, 1962, a Carleton football game versus Lawrence was interrupted by a strange sight. A

  Margaret Evans served Carleton College from 1874 to 1908. A friend described her as being a “tall, slender, dark-eyed woman whose keen eyes

With a menacing stare and a big ax, Smoke Shop proprietor Stanley “Tiny” Johnson stood beside two men locked into the “Jesse James Days

What would have been on the covers of the February Entertainment Guides had they been around in the 19th century? In 1892, we may have

Northfield, a temperance town? Well, sort of… “No intoxicating drinks shall be sold or in any manner furnished as a beverage on said premises.”

The upset victory of tiny Appalachian State over mighty Michigan in football this season has reminded me of two David and Goliath-type games played

L.K. (Larry) Hanson, creator of a popular St. Olaf comic strip in the ’60s and long-time StarTribune illustrator and writer, came to Northfield recently to talk

In July of 2011 an open house was held at the Archer House River Inn to show off a $1.1 million renovation of the

Question: Who Are Northfield’s Quiz Show Aces? This year the Academy Award for Best Picture went to “Slumdog Millionaire,” the story of a teen

“No matter where you go in the United States, it has been said, you will find someone who knows that Jesse James raided a

It’s been a good year for New York City artist Ward Sutton, St. Olaf Class of 1989. Four of his cartoons were published in the New

When I lived in New York and told anyone that my alma mater was St. Olaf, more often than not the response was, “Oh,

It isn’t often that Minneapolis’ major newspaper, the Associated Press and the CBS Morning News carry the results of a campaign for a college

I have occasionally been asked, “When will there be a book of your columns?” Now I have an answer: A book with the catchy

Dundas residents got an early glimpse of the precocious talent of 3-year-old Marilyn Sellars when, in the middle of a Sunday sermon at the

“We were built and now stand on the shoulders of Giants.” This was the shared sentiment of the St. Olaf College Department of Art

The year 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of St. Olaf College’s first music organization, a group once led by F. Melius Christiansen. No, it

“Anyone who thinks Northfield is not a good show town should have seen the hundreds of people who could not get into the opera

“Old Bill” Schilling would have loved this August Historic Happenings column. That is because I am going to tell you a lot about his contributions to