Little yellow plane offers new perspectiveon life in Rock CountyThe only thing prettier than autumn’s brilliant colors is to enjoy autumn’s brilliant colors from the back seat of a single-engine plane.Dave Paquette invited me last week on a brief air tour of Rock County in his restored 1947 L-Plane.Once used for reconnaissance missions in the Korean War, the plane was designed for visibility, and those wrap-around windows offered a spectacular view of my familiar world from a brand-new perspective.I loved the ride, but I called it "work," because the Star Herald camera captured the trip for our digital archives.From the air, the city presented itself in neatly arranged streets, with an overall appearance of well-kept homes and tidy yards.The bird’s-eye view of the new housing additions revealed a flurry of building activity and a shrinking number of vacant, available lots for sale.The sprawling Luverne School district campus could be seen in its entirety, from the tennis courts northeast of the high school to the ball diamonds west of the elementary school. It’s an impressive setup that’s well-paired with quality curriculum delivered within.The developing new Sioux Valley Hospital and Clinic showed a graceful design of architecture and landscape that promises a well-packaged facility for medical services. As the little yellow plane continued past town, the scenery was breathtaking. It wasn’t Grand Canyon breathtaking, but to see "home" presented in such a pretty format was breathtaking to me.Fields of partially harvested crops checker-boarded the landscape between grassy waterways and green pastures. A combine below us munched away at a cornfield, methodically transforming the textured, 3-D block to flat, barren ground.The Rock River flowed lazily through the center of the county flanked by multi-colored trees, winding past quaint farmyards and acreages.The Blue Mounds cliff line sported tiny white dots that turned out to be rock climbers, and a prairie burn along the lower dam sent billowing smoke up toward us in the sky.By the end of the flight, I’d learned we do indeed live in a beautiful part of the country and Luverne is one of the prettiest small cities I’ve ever seen.Thanks for the ride, Dave. Now I know why you spend so much time flying … I left my worries on the ground for a while that day and returned with a better perspective (literally) on things.Get well soon, CaroleMany of our readers know Carole Achterhof as a syndicated columnist and public speaker, but she’s also a Luverne native and former Star Herald editor.So, I’m sharing an e-mail note she attached to her column submission this week: "According to the doctors at Mayo, I truly have ‘something on my mind,’ and a golf-ball-sized benign brain tumor will be removed on Wednesday, Oct. 20, at St. Mary’s in Rochester," she wrote."The prognosis is bright, and I will resume writing columns as soon as humanly possible."She’s already submitted columns for Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, then she’s planning a two- or three-week break.
