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Hubbel House. Again.

We think we first visited "The Hubbel House" in Mantorville, Minnesota about twenty-nine years ago.  On our way back from Decorah, Iowa, yesterday, we drove west from Rochester to have dinner there, again.

The Hubbel House remains as dark inside as it was then.  The restaurant was first opened in 1854, and has reluctantly conceded to electric lights or, perhaps more accurately, has conceded to reluctant electric lights. 

Unable to read the fine print on the menu, which is a very good one, I read the place mat, instead.  It features replicas of some of the guests of the restaurant and inn.  The list began with "W. W. Mayo", father of the doctors who founded Mayo Clinic in Rochester.  A third-generation Mayo is there, too:  Charles W. 

The name that caught my attention was "Ole Bull".  "My god," I said to Mari, "Ole Bull had dinner here!" 

Well, as you all know, since all of you are keenly interested in Norwegian violinists, Ole Bornemann Bull was a featured soloist with an orchestra at age nine, made a fortune, and lost it, not least by trying to found a colony for Norwegians in Pennsylvania on land that was not worth farming.  Poverty forced him back to playing his violin, again, and--apparently--to dinner at the Hubbel House.  There is a statue of Ole Bull in Loring Park, in Minneapolis.

The other names on the place mats were even more astounding:  Horace Greeley, U. S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Ringling North, Sid Luckman, the magician Harry Blackstone, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Mickey Mantle, Joe Garagiola, and more! 

Mantorville is less than a small town, but in the century-and-a-half the Hubbel House has been there, it has evidence for the threads that bind the nation together.  Four elegantly dressed prom nighters came in, demonstrating that the level of lighting was just about perfect.  I pointed at the perfectly-lighted menu, confident that it would have broiled walleye, and asked for another glass of chardonney. 

No one asked me to sign the guest book.  Again.

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