- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

(bright music) Coming up next "Off 90", the original Happy Chef Restaurant in Mankato, the Cold War in Minnesota, Leuthold's Clothing Store in Albert Lea, and a glass sculptor in Monona.

It's all just ahead "Off 90".

(bright music) (bright music continues) (upbeat music) - Right now, we're sitting at a Happy Chef Restaurant in Mankato, Minnesota, right on US Highway 169.

We are the first and last Happy Chef Restaurant.

The founders are the Frederick family.

There were four brothers who were all involved in the process of founding Happy Chef back in 1963.

The ownership was operating was around 60 restaurants, and there were around 48 Happy Chefs.

So all over the Upper Midwest.

Yeah, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska.

(upbeat music continues) - I started working here in 1963, and worked '63 and '64.

I grew up on a farm and I got tired of working for nothing, so I figured I'd go get, and I asked my dad to buy me a car and he wouldn't buy it, so I said, "Well, I'm gonna go get a job."

And he just said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, sure you will."

Well, the next day, I came down and applied and I started working the day after.

I started out as a dishwasher at 75 cents an hour, and shortly after that, I became a cook and I cooked here.

I got along with everybody, I mean, you know, it was fun for me.

The work wasn't even work, I didn't consider it work.

The Frederick brothers also had a restaurant called Brett's Grill, and I worked down there also.

- I think the Fredericks were great.

I worked at the Owatonna Happy Chef for 38 years and I started when, on Tuesdays, we had coffee for a nickel.

- Denny was hired by Sal Frederick right out of Mankato State University back in 1967.

He gave him a job up in Minneapolis to run a restaurant.

It was one of the poorest ran restaurants, Denny turned it around, made it a big money maker for him.

As the time proceeded on, then Denny was given a job of food director for a while, and then he moved into the director of operations.

From there then, he opened up all 50 restaurants throughout from McPherson, Kansas and then in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Iowa.

- [Interviewer] And he was a manager of those, all those?

- Yep.

- He was the district manager.

- As the kids got older, when they reached the age of 14 and they were automatically thrown in the Happy Chef North to work.

(laughs) - So not only a family restaurant, but family ran.

(both chuckling) Yeah, me personally, it's kind of where I grew up.

Like Sue was the manager here at the North location in the East, and she was like another mom to me.

- I think a lot of the customers had fun watching me back behind the kitchen cooking, and Denny's trying to tell me how to cook, which I told him to get out of my kitchen a few times.

I think people enjoyed having us knowing that we were all a family down here, working in the family restaurant.

We were here for every holiday, working, we planned our family events around our hours here at the Chef.

(upbeat music continues) - The iconic statue that was built in 1968, originally he spoke with a button, so you pressed a button and he spoke.

He didn't talk for many decades, you know, for about 20, 25 years, he didn't talk, you know, and just malfunctioned and they never got him fixed.

But then, getting him fixed was a priority.

(happy music) You know, and having those ties to the community goes a real long way, you know, and as long as you keep that in mind, you keep the community in mind, you provide good food, good service, and then people will keep on coming back.

(happy music continues) I think that being around since 1963, you know, we have that longevity, which I think is a testament to the Mankato community and the community as a whole, the area.

So it's important, I feel that, as the current business owner, to make sure that it still remains some ways, shape or form the Happy Chef that they remember.

As long as they can come in and they can still get their coffee, they can still get their, you know, their omelet, hopefully that allows them to, you know, to feel that nostalgia and keep coming back, and where the world can change, but hopefully they can still come into Happy Chef and, you know, they still feel that locally owned small business atmosphere.

- So it worked out really well.

Made a lot of good lasting friends at Happy Chef.

I really enjoyed my job.

I liked it, I really liked it.

(chuckles) (happy music continues) (bright music) - [Announcer] Let us face without panic, the reality of our times, the fact that atom bombs may someday be dropped on our cities.

(siren blaring) (tense music) - I had gotten interested in some of the Cold War infrastructure that was in the Twin Cities, and I was interested in what parts were still around and what parts were still visible.

And the Nike missile sites came up over the course of my research and I thought it'd be a good subject for a column.

(tense music continues) (rocket blasting) So we are in St. Boni, and we are near Missile Park, which is where there is a marker to the Nike missile base that had been located very near here during the earliest parts of the Cold War.

In the early days of the Cold War, if a nuclear war was to break out between the Soviet Union and the United States, nuclear weapons would have to be delivered the old fashioned way, you would have to get 'em in a plane and fly 'em over the North Pole and actually fly over the cities that you were going to bomb.

When the defense schemes were being put together in the 1950s, one of the earliest missile defense plans was to actually place these Nike missile bases on the perimeter of major American cities so that if the Soviet bombers got over the North Pole and they hadn't been shot down over that or over Canada, the last resort was you would have to have these missiles come outta the ground and shoot the planes down very close to their final targets.

(bright music) - Handle yourself right and you've got a good chance of coming through.

Do the wrong things and you've got a future like an ice cube in a hot toddy.

- During the early part of the 1950s, this was a period when the US government was telling everybody that it's possible to survive nuclear war.

- Learn and live.

- If we got word ahead of time, we could protect ourselves.

But in order to get that word, to know that the Soviets were coming for us, we had to have a system in place.

One of those systems was a pretty extensive radar system across the United States, but there were holes in it, so there needed to be sort of a backup.

What they created were the Ground Observer Corps, which are basically civilian volunteers who would go up, usually on the roofs of buildings, into bell towers, wherever, with their binoculars and just scan the skies, looking for Soviet aircraft on their way to their targets.

It appeared to me that Minnesota was probably at the top, or at the very least near the top of the per capita volunteering that was done for the GOC, the Ground Observer Corps.

- [Announcer] With the knowledge of the first atomic explosions to guide us, our chances for survival will be far better than those of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

- Many school districts across the country developed preparedness pamphlets and guidelines for what to do in the event of an emergency, and the emergency was the possibility of an atomic attack.

And that was true here too in Minnesota, where a manual was developed to train children and their families what children should do to protect themselves.

- [Announcer] Yes, the knowledge is ours and preparation can mean survival for you.

(bomb banging) - Starting in about 1953 after the Soviet hydrogen bomb test, the new emphasis was evacuating the cities and to get ready for that, the US government started scheduling these annual test runs, basically where they would act as if the Soviets were attacking us.

The fact of the matter was even if we're able to evacuate thousands of people out of the Twin Cities metro area, there's still gonna be thousands more who aren't gonna make it.

- [Narrator] The Soviet Missile Development Program reveals that it introduces a new dimension to surprise and forces us to reassess our own strategic position and reevaluate the Soviet's ability to deal a crippling blow.

- In 1957, the Soviets tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

So now we know the Soviets have this technology that theoretically you put a bomb on top of one of these missiles, it can get to the United States, it can get to Minnesota in a matter of minutes, instead of taking several hours for a bomber to get from the Soviet Union to wherever it was going.

And so, the government started concentrating instead on creating what they called fallout shelters.

- [Announcer] The shelter markings on the buildings in our cities and towns are symbols of an ever-expanding civil defense effort.

(tense music continues) (siren blaring) - So more and more Americans just started rejecting this idea that civil defense has any real role to play in keeping ourselves safe.

And what happened was, in Minnesota and other states, the civil defense agencies sort of converted to think about natural disasters, instead of these manmade, let's throw bombs at each other, disasters.

- You know, "If you see a blast, dive under your table," if you see a blast, it's too late, you know?

And that was pretty obvious to everybody.

And so, civil defense measures were, on one level, useless, and on another level, terrifying.

So I think their two alleged purposes to protect people and ease fears did exactly the opposite.

- The kind of setup like this where you would have bombers flying over and dropping nuclear weapons and being shot down by missiles, you know, 30 minutes outside the Twin Cities is certainly a part of the past.

The Cold War is over obviously, but, you know, the threat of a nuclear annihilation is not a part of history, that is a part of the present that we live in.

And so, I think anything that reminds people that, hey, this isn't just history, this is something that is still going on in some form, is an important thing for people to keep in mind.

(tense music continues) (bright music) - Leutholds began in Kasson, Minnesota back in 1878, it became a corporation of stores, they were dotted all over the place at one time.

And, in 1992, there were 12 stores left at that time.

They asked my wife and I to come to Albert Lea to run this store.

So we did, and we were here for two years and they decided to dissolve the corporation, but they offered this location to my wife and I to purchase with the name.

Of course, we wanted the name 'cause it already had been here since 1917.

So we just wanted to take it forward, which was quite convenient for us.

I didn't care if my name was up there 'cause people associated the Leuthold and quality clothing for years.

(bright music continues) We were located downtown originally.

They moved out here, I believe, in 1988 into the North Bridge Mall.

So the store was here when we came here back in 1992, we were in a different location at that time.

We moved over here about 18 years ago to this bay, it was very warm, with a lot of wood and it fits our theme of how we like to merchandise very well.

I've been doing this, this year, I've been doing this for 50 years.

I started when I was 16 in my hometown store and I became involved with the Leuthold Corporation back in 1986, actually.

And I worked in the New Woollham Leuthold store for six years before we came here.

(bright music continues) They started with the one store, then they decided to start venturing out into smaller other communities.

They'd bring in somebody to run the store, and if they did well, they offered them a partnership.

That's where it was a partnership of stores over the years, and like I said, they were dotted all over the place at one time.

A lot of the smaller communities, that was the store in those smaller towns and people were very loyal back then to their hometown stores and that's why they became so successful.

And as time went on, of course, people became more mobile, they wanted to travel.

And so, a lot of the smaller Leuthold stores just didn't make it.

Luckily, this store was still here when they asked us to come run it back in 1992 and be able to purchase the store with the name.

(bright music continues) Well, I had a very nice clothing store in my hometown that I grew up in that my mom always shopped at.

So when I became of age to find a part-time job, I went up there one day and asked.

And so, I was a typical 16-year-old, I cleaned the toilets, I cleaned the floors, I did the trash, I started out in the back room.

Slowly, my boss at that time asked me to dress a little nicer to work the floor.

I liked it, I went to college and continued to work part-time.

And then he offered me a full-time position, so I took it and was there for a few years until the Leuthold group contacted me to come work for them.

And that's why I went to the store in New Woollham.

(bright music continues) This was an ad that was done in 1953 celebrating Leuthold's 75th anniversary, and the stores were on the sides, and what year they came in existence are listed on there.

And so, they were dotted all over the place at one time.

And that's the original store in Kasson, Minnesota back in 1878.

There's one of the Leuthold stores still in existence, it's in Cresco, Iowa.

Roy, the manager/owner of that store, as he was part of the Leuthold group, like my wife and I were, and so he purchased his location in Cresco, my wife and I purchased this one in Albert Lea, and those are the last two that are still going.

(bright music continues) Right now, I've been doing this for many, many years, right now, I get the biggest kick out of the young guys that wanna come in 'cause they wanna dress up right now.

And it's so rewarding for me to see that come back around, that they care how they look.

And we have the slim fit suits that they look so good in right now and they wanna dress up and look nice, so that's my biggest kick and reward out of my business right now.

But it's not just that, over the years, we have a lot of customers that come in that become friends.

They'll just come in and talk to us.

They don't often come in just to buy something.

They just want to talk to us.

(pleasant music) Leutholds has been a staple in this community for so many years.

We'll work with different organizations, sometimes we'll donate things just to help people out.

I had a call from a school just the other day who has a special needs person that doesn't have a lot of money asking me if I would help them with their prom outfit.

I said, "Yes, I will do that."

Yeah, so we will do things like that that sometimes people, and I told the gal, "You can put it as anonymous, you don't have to tell people that it came from Leutholds, I don't need to have that."

But, yes, we will help different organizations out and do little things that I really don't care if I get credit for it, I just want it to be out there that they are being taken care of and helped in a certain way.

(pleasant music continues) Well, what I get a lot of satisfaction out of, I'll get a lot of people that'll come back to Albert Lea 'cause they maybe grew up around here or hadn't been back for years, and they'll start telling me stories about how they grew up and maybe they got their first suit downtown from Leutholds, and so they wanna share all these stories with us about how many years ago this was and that it's so good that you're still here, and that's rewarding for us that people wanna come back and share stories with us, 'cause it's been, we're 107 years old this year and that's rewarding for us that we've been able to take it this, you know, this far.

And I still like what I do, I could retire, but what would I do?

I'd go crazy, so I enjoy working with people, that's my reward is helping people with their needs and my wife is as good or better than I am at this.

I'm fortunate that she's my partner in this and we can work together and it's been a marvelous life.

(upbeat music) (intriguing music) - I've had an interest in glass for a long time, and my mother had a very small collection of paperweights that I used to look at when I was a child.

And I think I've been very fascinated by looking into things and seeing little tiny environments inside of an object.

(intriguing music continues) My name is Cathy Richardson, and I am a glass artist working in Winona, Minnesota.

(gentle music) My mother was a florist and grew orchids and a lot of different types of flowers.

I grew up in Virginia where there were a lot of woods, so I'm attracted to woodland pond scenes.

I was trained as a geologist.

I have a master's in PhD in geology, and I was technically a geochemist, which meant I studied the chemistry of rocks and minerals.

(gentle music continues) The paperweight I will be making is a lamp-worked, vacuum-encased paperweight.

(bright music) When I make paperweights, I first work at the torch and I sculpt a lot of very tiny objects.

I think the most exciting part of it is once you get enough of these small objects on the hot plate, then you can start really being creative.

(bright music continues) I take the original ideas from a variety of sources.

Once I have this idea, I have to learn how to create that in glass, and I do that by taking glass rods and sculpting over a very small flame.

(bright music continues) I'm manipulating those rods into frogs, salamanders, coral, jellyfish, flowers, leaves.

Those objects are then put together into a composition, and then that composition is put into a chamber, which is just a cylinder that it goes into.

Then I encase that in crystal clear glass and use a process called vacuum encasing, which means that the hot glass goes down over those tiny objects and is pulled down with a vacuum, and then the paperweight is shaped and formed into a sphere.

(bright music continues) There are only a handful of people in the world that make lamp-worked, vacuum-encased paperweights.

(interesting music) It takes me anywhere from four to 12 hours of work at the torch to make the small sculptures that go inside.

And then, it usually takes about an hour to an hour and a quarter to make the paperweight.

It's not uncommon to have a piece of coral break, an octopus tentacle break, or a leaf or a petal fracture or crack or break.

That's why I check carefully after we've done the encasing process to see whether it's been successful.

(interesting music continues) Everything I do is magnified.

The paperweight has a curved surface, it magnifies everything I do.

So I make things that are very, very tiny and they look a lot larger when you see them in the paperweight.

That means that I have to be very careful if I make mistakes, the mistakes are magnified.

So if something doesn't work, I just simply throw it away and start again because you do not make good art by magnifying mistakes.

(interesting music continues) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.