The extended Riggs clan gathered on Sunday for a joyous occasion – a surprise party celebrating the 40th wedding anniversary of my aunt Dana and uncle Bill.

Dana is my dad’s sister.  I was 3 1/2 years old when she got married, and I don’t remember much about her wedding, except that one of the bridesmaids was particularly kind to me, and she wore a groovy dress.

I hadn’t realized until Sunday, when I asked my dad some questions about the wedding, that he had walked down the aisle with Dana.  Their father, Ronald, had died three years earlier, before I was old enough to really know him.  My grandmother Eleanor was there, though, looking happy in her pale pink dress (the skirt of which, I might add, was longer than mine, but still above the knee).

St. Cloud’s Barden Park hosted its last municipal band concert of the summer last night.  I wish I could have attended.  A jazz combo of high school and college students, directed by John Herdan, was scheduled to play at 6:30 p.m., followed by the St. Cloud Municipal Band.

When I wrote last month about how my great-grandfather’s Grand Forks band played at the 1909 North Dakota State Fair (see the blog post No Fair!), I knew I was missing something.  I knew that G. Oliver had at least one other connection to the North Dakota State Fair, but I couldn’t recall what it was.

The answer came to me last week, when I was researching my post about Fairmont, and ran across the name of C.S. Putnam.
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My friend Laurel and I spent most of Wednesday in Fairmont, a town in southern Minnesota that’s about 12 miles from the Iowa border.  Laurel is a Fairmont native, and she graciously volunteered to be my personal tour guide as I conducted research for a travel article I’m writing for the Star Tribune.

I knew that music and culture were important to the town’s growth a century ago, so I kept my eyes and ears open to possible connections between Fairmont and my musical great-grandfather, G.
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