We moved the Minnesota in Jan or Feb of 1976. Karen and I went down a few weeks before we actually moved and did some home hunting. We got ahold of a real estate person and told them we wanted a house.
We didn’t have a lot of trouble selling the house in New Jersey, so I think we had some equity to work with in the purchase of the house in Minnesota. Don’t remember who bought the New Jersey house (maybe the people that were living in it), but I don’t think we ever had to go back there. We didn’t have a lot of money but we did have a little to put down on the new house.
I’m not sure if we even shopped in Rochester. I do remember going out to the west of Rochester to Dodge Center. We looked at an old house there and seriously considered it for a time. We also looked in Kasson and Byron and then the real estate guy took us east to Eyota. He showed us the house on Madison Ave. Well, this house was much nicer than some of the others we had seen. The main thing that made up my mind, however, was, I knew I would be working at IBM in Rochester. I reasoned that if we bought a house on the west side of town (like Dodge Center), then I would have the sun in my eyes while both driving into work in the morning and driving home again at night. So, we decided to buy on the east side and bought the Eyota house.
We were to learn later that Dodge Center was a really weird town. It’s the only town I know of, where when the church sent missionaries to it, they “shook the dust off of their feet” when they left the town. I think that is the expresson. It means, essentially, we are leaving this town and will not attempt to do missionary work in this town for the time being. It kind of means that the town is possessed. If you have heard of the movie “Sybil”. It’s about a woman who had 26 different personalities and ended up spending most of her life in a mental institution. Well, Sybil is based on a true story and the woman who was Sybil lived in Dodge Center, MN. I think we made the right choice moving to Eyota.
Dad