Published: May 02, 2008 11:28 am            

Back Roads: Wayside prayer

Originally published in the May 2, 2008, print edition.

It’s easy to rapidly drive by the 15-foot-tall cross on Todd County Road 14 near Browerville and not pay much attention.

During the drought of 1988, though, people didn’t drive by so fast. By the end of July it hadn’t rained since Easter. Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit were common. Only the oldest remembered another time when the leaves fell from the trees in mid-summer.

When the leaves fell the people went to the shrine that their ancestors built. Farm families congregated in the evening after chores were done. They parked their cars and pick-ups on the narrow road bordered by fields of withered corn. The blazing yellow sun lay on the horizon’s edge as they walked to the cross. There they knelt and prayed quietly in the parched and gathering dusk.

The shrine was built in the 1880s for exactly that sort of outdoor worship. Settlers from Poland, Alsace-Lorraine and Germany came to the area in the 1870s. Old people now believe that those families first worshiped in their homes. Later, when more families arrived and the small homes became crowded, people took Sunday worship outside during mild weather.

It was for that, some believe, the shrine was built. Others say it was because it was halfway between the magnificent churches in Browerville and the farms to the west. In those days people walked, or rode buggies, into town to go to church. Talking in church was strictly forbidden. So, on many a fine spring, summer or fall Sunday, families agreed to meet for a picnic at the shrine before returning home for evening chores.

In those days youngsters crossed themselves when they walked past the shrine and men tipped their hats. Now most folks are in too much of a hurry for such formalities, but people in the neighborhood continue to care for the shrine.

The Becker family, as they have done for decades, mows the lawn and keeps the area free of garbage. This spring, when the power company cuts down the spruce trees that Mary and Robert Hadash planted in 1974, Mary and John Gagnon, who also live near the shrine, will replace them with cedar trees. And the nuns from Sacred Heart Novitiate in Browerville make a regular walking pilgrimage to the shrine.

These people keep the shrine ready for the next time the people of the land need to get especially close to their God.

        

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