Bonanza Valley Days grand parade and Babe Ruth baseball heading to state (VIDEOS)

As reported in the July 10 issue of the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper, Brooten Electric LLC was the grand marshal of the BVD grand parade on Sunday. Brooten Electric, LLC, is owned by two B-B-E graduates: Adam Imdieke (Class of 2001) and Adam Heinze (Class of 2013).

Here's a rough video on a hand-held camera of the Brooten Electric parade unit:


It was a simply outstanding day that we had to wrap up the BVD "Feeling Alive in 2025" yesterday. Day IV included a pancake feed, Catholic Mass, the grand parade and then the Miss Brooten pageant.

Here's another video from the grand parade in Brooten yesterday:


Unfortunately for me, I took over 1,000 pictures across the four days of Bonanza Valley Days. This will create a challenge to go through and pick the best ones for the printed newspaper! Yikes! You think I would learn?

After tonight, my daughter's fastpitch softball summer season is over. This will free up time for more sports blogging and to focus on the newspaper. We'll see how this week goes and what comes of the July 17 issue of the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper. Fingers crossed!

In sports news...
The B-B-E Babe Ruth (7th-8th grade) team qualified for their state tournament by winning the region tournament last weekend in Paynesville. This is a first for the program. They open state at Urbank at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday this week with pool play games. The state tournament playoffs run on Saturday. B-B-E's Kaden DeRoo, a 2024 graduate, is their coach.

So many trees down (VIDEO)

At approximately 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, the Bonanza Valley area got hit by a massive wind and rain storm.

I've lost count of how many trees I've seen snapped down in Brooten. It was wild. Highway 55 is still blocked with a downed power line as of 1:00 a.m.

On a brighter note, our family garden was battered but I believe it is salvageable for the most part. Other gardens in town did not fare as well.

Power on the newspaper's side of Main Street, Brooten has been out since about 11:30 p.m., and I was fortunate enough to get my computers set up at the Brooten Fire Hall so I can finish the newspaper on time! The wonders of modern technology has allowed me to stay on track! 

Speaking of technology...the city of Brooten has multiple downed power lines all over town. Unofficially, there are 15 downed power lines as of 3 a.m. that will cause severe injury or death for anyone who comes into contact with them at just the wrong time.

As of 7 a.m., a huge portion of Brooten has no power. I am happy to report that the Brooten Bakery and the KaDe Shack have power!!! THAT is very good news for our town as we attempt to clean up.

That's all for now. I will get video posted later this afternoon. Currently I am pushing through what they call an "All Nighter" and have not slept since Tuesday morning.

**By 2:30 p.m., the newspapers were delivered to the Brooten Post Office!!! Success!! This was a huge, huge success.

Here's a video from downtown Brooten as the eye of the storm hit:


The clean up that's taken place in Brooten today has been amazing to witness.

Miss Brooten royal court crowned for 2023-2024 (VIDEO LINK)

Here's the link to be able to watch the coronation program held today at the Brooten Pavilion: https://tinyurl.com/2skdu8db.

*Here's a short video from the Bonanza Valley Days Saturday night street dance held last night:


It's been a hell of a great weekend. That's just a fact! Also, it is never too early to start your plans to make BVD a huge success for next year! The dates for BVD 2024 are July 11, 12, 13 and 14.

I have much to get caught up on with the Elrosa Saints amateur baseball team (in a new blog post).

Digging out! (VIDEO)

We just had another interesting weekend in the Bonanza Valley...as you either experienced in person or heard from other sources...last Friday night, the Bonanza Valley area received over 6 inches of wet, heavy snow. This created many headaches the next morning for anyone who had to get anywhere (our family had to get to Junior Olympics volleyball in Sauk Centre)...

Below, city staff in Brooten are shown clearing snow from main street on Saturday morning:


Time to get back to writing. The next newspaper issue will be published in the next 24 hours.

More catching up: BVD photos

 It took weeks to get caught up with uploading Bonanza Valley Days photos, and I think I'm 95 percent of the way to the finish line on that project. Here's the master (short) link to view all non-sports related photo galleries at the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper website: https://bit.ly/3Qe2RTG.

The non-sports related Bonanza Valley Days photos that are uploaded total 1,095!!!

The basketball and baseball photo albums in the Summer 2022 sports folder has 101 pictures in it. That's a grand total of 1,196 pictures taken across those four days of BVD! And I think there's a few more pictures to get to from Saturday and Sunday.

Sparkle night at CHS Field in St. Paul (VIDEOS*)

I still haven't gotten my bearings straight from the past week. Tonight is the first night that I can sit down and actually collect my thoughts in at least a week. On Tuesday night, we traveled to CHS Field in St. Paul for Sparkle Night with the Miss Brooten royalty. All three Miss Brooten royalty are currently involved or were involved in multiple MSHSL-sponsored activities at B-B-E high school. Two of them, Jacey Tensen and Tiyana Schwinghammer, will be seniors this fall at B-B-E. Katelynn Uphus is a 2022 graduate and heading to UND in Grand Forks this fall.

Here's when we arrived at CHS Field!


Other video from that night is uploading and will be added at a future time. Today we were in Glenwood for a good portion of the day. The grand parade was held at 1 p.m., and the parade route was jam packed with people! Katelynn and Jacey are still there with the Little Miss Brooten royalty at the Waterama coronation ceremony along the shores of Lake Minnewaska by Lakeside Ballroom.

Tiyana had to miss the fun in Glenwood, as she had a big basketball tournament to participate in. Exciting: college scouts were on hand to watch her in action!!! Go Tiyana!!!

MONDAY updates:

*Here's a video where you can kind of see the Miss Brooten royalty walking around CHS Field last Tuesday:


It's a lower-quality video shot with a cell phone. My main videocamera died just moments after I entered the stadium. Bravo!

Here's a link to the Bonanza Valley Voice website, where you can watch live music that was played outside CHS Field in St. Paul as we arrived at the stadium: https://bit.ly/3zMG5wt.

Small world getting smaller (and BVD news)

What a small world getting smaller! One of the Bonanza Valley Days vendor show vendors is the dad of Taylor Thunstedt from New London-Spicer. Die-hard area basketball fans will remember her name, as she was one of the best girls' basketball players to ever play for New London-Spicer coach Mike Dreier. Thunstedt achieved 1,000 career points as a sophomore during the 2011-2012 season. By the time she graduated from NL-S in 2014, Thunstedt was the all-time leading scorer for Dreier's program. She went on to play Division I basketball at North Dakota State University in Fargo.

Why do I bring this up? Here's why: today I put 2 and 2 together and learned that Thunstedt is a police officer who works part-time for the Belgrade-Brooten police department. She was hired back in 2021, but I still haven't gotten around to writing stories on the newer officers hired by Chief Jansky. I'm actually embarrassed that I haven't been able to do that going back to last summer, when Officer Sorenson (hometown Starbuck) was hired by Chief Jansky. That's basically one example of about 100 of the cracks in my organization that I'm still trying to resolve. Thunstedt and other officers will be helping provide security at BVD events this weekend, and we want to give them a HUGE thank you in advance for what they do for us. And don't get me started on the anti-cop movement in this country. I'm as sick of that as anyone!!!

REMINDER: the Bonanza Valley Days Walk/Run will be held on Saturday, July 8 starting at 8:30 a.m. sharp at the parking lot by St. Donatus Catholic Church (corner of Roe Street and Eastern Avenue)...registration opens at 8 a.m. The course is a two-mile route marked on city streets. Eligible are all amateur walkers, bikers and runners. This is in support of the B-B-E Wrestling Club! The cost is just $15 per participant. Come out and get some great exercise while supporting one of our school's varsity teams!

That's all I've got for tonight. I'm exhausted and need a proper night's rest if I'm going to survive the next three days.

Water outage in Brooten

An unforseen mechanical problem during routine water tower maintenance in Brooten has led to an hours-long water outage across town. The issue arose around 10 a.m. today, and it appears that it will take at least a "couple more hours" until it's resolved, according to city staff.

At B-B-E, all activities have been cancelled for today at the elementary school, and the day care is closing as of 1 p.m. Families have been notified. **Updates to this issue will be posted in an online article at the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper website: http://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com. Stay tuned!

The number ONE...and the FAIR is underway!

And the incredible streak has finally ended. After I expected it to end last week, it instead ended this week as the B-B-E zip codes have their first COVID-19 case since June 17, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

Read all about it at the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper website = https://bit.ly/3CjUaRC.

**Thursday night update:
This week's and last week's Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper included the full Pope County Fair schedule. I was there this afternoon for a couple hours and enjoyed getting a glimpse of everything offered. Here's a link to The Voice newspaper website to see an archive video from 2019 at the fair, and you can also see the start of a photo gallery from pictures I got today = https://bit.ly/3jpbNH2.

Fire update (VIDEO)

The house fire in Brooten is being investigated by Xcel Energy and the Minnesota state fire marshal. Their reports will include incredible, bizarre timelines of what happened.

I know our B-B-E community will take care of them. We will move mountains for the Goodwin family. We all know that they would do anything for the school and our community, and the same goes in reverse. We love the Goodwins. They are the best people.

Here's the first video I recorded last night. It was just a couple minutes shy of 8 o'clock. Fire trucks continued rolling in after this.


I am happy to report that the Goodwin family is "in good spirits" and are as thankful as anyone that no one got hurt. They were very concerned about the fact that children could have been harmed by what took place. We are extremely lucky that no family is involved funeral planning. It could have easily gone very, very differently.

Unfortunately, and tragically, their house received extensive damage, and our entire B-B-E community is very, very sad about that. Their house was literally attacked by at least one power line. That's the simplest way to explain it. The house was under attack, and it happened quickly and in an unforgiving manner.

Whether you see the damage in person, or you see it just through my videos, please understand that this fire started on the roof and went down. It was very, very strange. Once it burned long enough on the roof, it was impossible to prevent it from burning what was under the roofline.

Once the roof started on fire, the Goodwins were unaware of what was taking place right outside. The wind was howling and gusting over 50 miles an hour. It's a situation of this: you hear a large explosion, or a boom, and your instincts tell you to stay inside. You stay in the safety and comforts of your own house. If trouble is brewing, you will be warned somehow, right? You don't go outside during a bad storm. You shelter in place, right?

In this case, a Good Samaritan warning came from a neighbor who told them to get out almost immediately after the roof started on fire. Even then, loose and live power line(s) were a threat to anyone outside the house. They were able to find shelter at a neighbor's place as the fire departments went to work. As I said last night, this was a three-alarm fire with Brooten, Belgrade and Elrosa responding. 

This was an extremely dangerous situation for nearly four hours until Xcel Energy finally disconnected the live, loose wire that had been glowing brightly next to a pine tree in the back alley.

Below, a video taken this afternoon:

A Brooten fire department member said it best today: "This shows how much you have to respect and fear the power of electricity." If a wire gets loose like it did last night, anything near it is a "sitting duck" and easy prey.

Just over eight years ago, I wrote on this sports blog about the incredibly tragic accidental death of Coach Rich Vos. He passed away on October 16, 2012. I think of that to put this into perspective. What happened last night was awful. I am just so glad we are not mourning the loss of life right now in Jaguar Country.

A shout out for local businesses

How about a shout out for our awesome, locally-owned business community!

Here's the website for The Local Pantry of Brooten. They have been a premier advertiser on the Bonanza Valley Voice website since 2016. http://www.thelocalpantry.net.

Currently, other recurring advertisers on the newspaper's website also include the Bonanza Valley State Bank of Brooten, Glacial Ridge Health System of Brooten/Glenwood/Starbuck as well as Central Square and Civic Center of Glenwood.

Integrity Home Investments of Brooten is also a premier sponsor of the newspaper website. They have one real estate listing posted at our classified section, and more will be added this week.

Open House in Brooten

A real estate open house is being held today in Brooten, hosted by Integrity Home Investments. You can read about it on page 9 of this week's Bonanza Valley Voice. It is also shown here at the Bonanza Valley Voice website: https://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com/story/2018/11/22/business/real-estate-open-house-in-brooten/750.html.


*Also, here's an advance press release on the 2018 Belgrade Santa Day:
https://bit.ly/2BMKthn. The web article features video and more!

Other updates on other local events will follow here after church. Thank you for your interest in what's going on across the Bonanza Valley area!

Where are you attending church today?

• Another item the Bonanza Valley Voice has been and will continue working on is rolling out Kensington Bank for our coverage area. Kensington Bank, formerly known as North American State Bank, has an open house coming up in both Elrosa (December 13) and Belgrade (December 14)...look for their large, color ad on the back page of the next two issues of the newspaper.

Area girls' basketball scores on Nov. 30 & Dec. 1:
Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta 67, MACCRAY 34 (Benson tournament finals)
Alexandria 59, DeLaSalle 49
Stewartville 71, Sauk Centre 67 OT
MACCRAY 61, Ogilvie 57
Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley 47, Ashby 11
Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg 55, Dawson-Boyd 42
Pierz 47, Braham 43
Minneota 61, Tracy-Milroy-Balaton 25
Lakeview 61, Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 57
Norwood-Young America 62, Maple Lake 26
MA/CA 60, Benson 43

Area boys' basketball scores on Nov. 30 & Dec. 1:
MACCRAY 72, Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley 54
BOLD 74, Yellow Medicine East 38
Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 81, Central MN Christian 75
Royalton 55, Holdingford 41
Litchfield 68, Maple Lake 52
Hancock 61, Parkers Prairie 59
Lac qui Parle Valley 68, West Central Area 60
Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta 64, Ortonville 57
Dawson-Boyd 80, Montevideo 39
Browerville 67, Bertha-Hewitt 50
Minnewaska Area 58, Redwood Valley 49

https://www.kensington.bank

(Video) West Lake Johanna worship

Here's a video from Sunday worship at West Lake Johanna Lutheran church on July 8:


If you want to read about Bonanza Valley Days, get a copy of this week's Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper (or last week's)...also, you can read more at this link: https://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com/story/2018/06/28/news/bonanza-valley-days-2018-something-for-everyone/655.html.

Busy day coming

Tomorrow is a big day for the Bonanza Valley Voice, as we are preparing to cover this exciting event at Big Grove Lutheran church:
http://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com/story/2017/07/13/news/big-grove-lutheran-150th-is-sunday/481.html.

Much has suffered in the newspaper in the past few weeks with coverage of this church celebration and also Bonanza Valley Days has consumed the majority of the resources of the newspaper's news and sports departments. Being able to be part of a church's 150th anniversary won't come along very often in my journalism career.

Bonanza Valley Days 2017!

Click on the poster to enlarge for best viewing of the schedule of events.

...and I wanted to re-post this on behalf of the Osakis Country Club golf course:
The Osakis Country Club had approximately $6000-7,000 in damages yesterday, July 2, around 12:30. A group of 5 men with 2-11 year old boys (approx) came out to golf. (The men were approximately 30-45 years old) They left one power cart in a swamp, another cart with a broken hood and many damaged items on the course. 2 of the men were dressed in "Scottish" looking golf attire with knickers, hats, etc. They were very noticeable. If anyone has information as to who these individuals might be, please call the clubhouse at 320-859-2140. The police are looking for them and a photo of them will be posted later today or tomorrow. Please share with EVERYONE!!!

Fatal accident

A two-car accident four miles south of Brooten resulted in one fatality on Wednesday afternoon, June  28. The Bonanza Valley Voice reported on the accident later in the evening while withholding information such as what type of vehicles were involved and identities of the drivers and one passenger.

Here is that web article with updates: http://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com/story/2017/06/22/news/lifelink-called-in-for-two-car-accident/463.html

Here's a GoFundMe link that the family of the deceased person has set up to take donations for a memorial: https://www.gofundme.com/memorial-fund-for-kassie-lyn-dillon

News organizations are continuing to withhold names of those involved in the accident until law enforcement sends out a press release with that information. Please pray for the three individuals involved in the accident as well as our local first responders. It was a very dark, dark day for all of them, especially of the family of the teenager who was killed.

Cabin Fever

STARTING TO GET A LITTLE CABIN FEVER!?

Come join the Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa Jaycees for a night of Bean Bags!

Saturday, February 18th at the Ka-De Shack in Brooten. Registration is at 5:30 p.m., while the tournament begins at 6 p.m. The cost is $10/person or $20/couple. Bring your own partner or be matched up with one. Payout is for first, second and third place! (It will be determined on the number of teams in the tournament.)

100 years

The Brooten Community Church invites the public to events they have on July 2 and July 3 (Saturday evening / Sunday morning & afternoon) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their church's founding. For those not familiar with that church, it was formerly known as the Brooten Christian Reformed church.

Details will be announced in the coming days and also in the June 30 issue of the Bonanza Valley Voice.

Oh by the way, tomorrow night (Friday) is the annual Stearns County League vs. County Line League All-Star game. Elrosa's Saints Field will be the host. A special "home run" derby prior to the game will start at 6:30 p.m., and the All-Star game is set to begin at 8:15 p.m.

That was fun!

It was a zoo today at the Brooten city park...dozens and dozens of area kids flocked to Brooten to enjoy the Brooten Commercial Club's Easter egg hunt and bike drawing.

Very, very, very, very very interesting

The total police budget for the city Brooten in calendar year 2006 was approximately $76,000. Of that amount, approximately $28,000 was budgeted for a contract for police coverage with officers of the Belgrade police department.

In 2006, the scheduled cost of the Brooten police department was approximately $46,000. That was busted up in October, however, as the powers-that-be chewed up former Chief Calvin Hanson during the month of September 2006.

At the same time, the city was attempting to find savings in the budget, use reserves and mix in tax increases to cover what was about a $118,000 deficit for the proposed 2007 budget.

By cutting the Brooten police department in the fall of 2006, the city was estimating they would save $18,000 on the local property tax levy.

The city of Brooten has gone over eight years now without its own police force.

##historymatters