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STOCKTON, Minn. — Home is where the heart is, so the idiom goes.
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Rose Benke, 76, left, and her mother, Ellen Berry, 100, sit in the living room of Berry’s Stockton home recently. Benke and her husband, Kenny, are staying with her mom, just down the street from their condemned home, while they wait for government buyout money. The Benkes plan to buy a modular home with the money and place it on higher ground in a newer Stockton subdivision.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
It rings true for the Jonsgaard family, who have rebuilt a new elevated home at their creekside location.
Many Stockton residents, including the Jonsgaards, have chosen to stay despite the devastation in the often-flooded bedroom community of 682. So have others in communities hit by the floods.
But the imminent risk of flooding again and again without better watershed management has Stockton residents questioning if heart really will still be where the home is.
City leaders are unsure how many of the 26 homeowners expecting some sort of government buyout — a chunk of whom moved out during the wait — will come back. It’s bound to leave some noticeable gaps in the already small town.
A handful of Stockton residents hightailed it out of town after the harrowing experience and the mucky aftermath.
“I think it will be hit by another flood,” said Steve Palmquist, a former Stockton resident whose home mortgage foreclosed while he waited for a buyout. “They should just mow it down.”
Rose Benke doesn’t blame anyone for leaving. Days after the flood, the 76-year-old was saying she wanted out of Stockton, too. She’d been flooded out for the third time in two different homes and had enough.
But as floodwaters receded and winter turned to spring, the pull of home tugged on Benke’s heart.
She’s called Stockton home since moving there at 17 with her now 100-year-old mother, Ellen Berry. Benke’s grandparents lived there, and it’s where she chose to settle down with husband, Kenny, and raise six children.
Brenda Jonsgaard and her husband, Vernon, also found Stockton to be a great place to raise their two kids and two dogs. The rolling hills, the quietness and the down-home country folk make it the only place worth calling home, she said.
Stockton is like that TV show “Cheers,” where everybody knows your name, residents say. If it’s raining, you don’t have to walk long before someone stops, Jonsgaard said.
But staying won’t be easy, and many still face hardships and discouragements, Benke said. She checks the mailbox every day for word on when the buyout on her home will come through. Until then, the Benkes live kitty-corner to their boarded up ranch-style home.
“None of us have a really positive attitude,” Benke said. “We want to be here, but we’re scared every time it rains. Like a basin we are, it all drains into us.”
Bonnie and Roger Oldham, who rode on the roof of their home that ended up over railroad tracks, said their situation has gotten more desperate with each passing day. Family health emergencies have complicated it further. The Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer has made Bonnie nostalgic for her old home, her old things.
“I think it got the best of me,” 53-year-old Bonnie said. “I don’t know what I want anymore. I did. I was bound and determined to do my best to stay … but I fought for 10 months and am about to give it up. They can have it all.”
Someone called the Oldham trailer and asked if they could donate them a box of Kleenex to soak up all their tears, Bonnie said. Many in Stockton have overheard people say flood victims will end up better off than before, Benke said, but that’s not true for most.
A full buyout of the Benke home will offer the tax value of the house plus 20 percent. That will come to about $121,000. The Benkes could qualify for a new mortgage despite their fixed social security income, which also happened to disqualify them for some state and federal aid.
The Benkes put $5,000 down on a modular home they plan to place on higher ground in a newer Stockton subdivision. It’s a simple but nice home, Benke said.
“We pretty much have to get what we get to move on,” she said. “I’d like to get on with my life.”
The condemned Benke family home still sits empty and rots in mold, mildew and mud. Benke helped her husband build the house in 1944. It was where Benke learned how to use a staple gun and install insulation.
She thought of all the fun Christmases celebrated by the tree in the living room. Her famous cookies and applesauce made in her kitchen. The six kids she raised in the house. A lifetime of work, love, sweat and tears went into the house, she said.
Despite knowing its fate involves a forklift, Benke still takes care of the lawn. She can’t stand to see the weeds.
“I look at it like it’s human,” Rose said. “It’s been through an awful lot, and it still stands there. I go over to my house every day. I don’t go into the house. I can’t do it. I just get sad looking at it.”
Benke and many other Stockton residents who’ve chosen to stay put have faith their town will emerge stronger. Not in numbers and not in wealth, but in heart.
cricket wrote on Aug 30, 2008 12:40 PM: