Immediately after returning home from my aunt’s house, I packed up Kipp and we made our way, on lightly snow-drifted roads, through blindingly-white southeastern Minnesota farm country, to the city of Owatonna.
We hadn’t been on a mommy-son trip since going to Madrid, 2 ½ years ago and while Owatonna is not a great capitol city of Europe, it has its charms too, chief of which was a Holiday Inn with Serengeti Water Park.
There is also in Owatonna, of all things, an Orphanage Museum—the only museum of its kind in the nation. From 1886-1945 the State School at Owatonna was the third largest orphanage in the United States. Some 5,000 children passed through its doors, eventually to be adopted, fostered out, or indentured (!) to local farmers. And they were the lucky ones. A poignant little cemetery, of about 190 graves (average age of death: 4 years) stands behind the place commemorating those who never found homes.
The museum really was fascinating; we stumbled across it by chance and our visit just happened to coincide with a book about an orphan that we’ve been reading at bedtime. I won’t go into the history; you can read more about it here, if you’re curious. What struck me most was that all the children, in this completely self-sufficient institution, were put to work:
It is believed labor, no matter how dreary the task, or how paltry the remuneration, is good for the children. Each child, no matter the age, should be part of some "worth-while, demanding activity" each day.
Also, in the museum, there were two, not one, but two, long, flat wood radiator brushes on display--apparently a favorite disciplinary tool of the matrons. Kipp was impressed by them and so was I. I wondered where I could get one. Not for Kipp's bottom, but for my six radiators, which have only been cleaned somewhat ineffectually since we moved in.
The orphanage was phased out in 1945, then turned into a school for the mentally disabled. Having read Michael D'Antonio's book, The State Boys Rebellion, about a Massachusetts state institution for the "feebleminded", I can't believe that was a happier chapter in the Owatonna school's history. In fact, I saw nothing about these years in the orphanage museum.
We did not leave feeling sad or depressed. On our way out, we drove through the sprawling grounds of the former orphanage which now house Owatonna city offices, a center for the arts, and offices for various social and recreational programs that help parents take care of their own children, and themselves.T he world, at least in this instance, seems to have changed so much for the better.
9:45:15 AM 
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