WESTBROOK, Minnesota (STPNS) -- Sunday afternoon the Columnist Al Batt, who  is featured every week on this page, was the speaker at the Cottonwood County Historical Society meeting.

    If you are a frequent visitor to this page and his column you have a vast knowledge of Hartland, Minnesota. Batt writes a humorous view based on his life and growing up in Heartland.

    When I saw that he was going  to be at the meeting I jumped at the chance to meet the person I have admired for many years.



    I must say he talks much like he writes in his columns. It is a genuine down home type of writing and speaking loaded with good humor and wit. Folks from the rural midwest around my age, younger or older, can appreciate his  20-20 vision of what it was like growing up on a farm near a small community. Of course he continues to keep a dialog of characters from heartland throughout his weekly compositions.

    At the meeting he kept the audience in constant laughter as he dropped his sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle witticism about himself and his family and friends. (I assume they are still friends.)

    He spoke for a good half hour until the batteries went dead in the wireless mike he was using. He said he only had a couple more minutes to go, while they replaced the batteries. He then commented, “this is the first time I have used a mike with a governor on it!”

    Of course he could hardly get by without talking about Lutefisk. He asked the audience how many people ate Lutefisk? About a dozen or so people raised their hands. Then he asked how many liked it? About five or six raised their hands.

    He went on to say you can tell about a person by what they put on Lutefisk.

    “If a person slathers it up with butter, he’s Norwegian, if he slathers it up with cream he’s a Swede, if it’s covered with sand it’s a cat!” he said.

    Needless to say it was a fun and funny  afternoon presentation.

Have a good week and do good!