Neerlandia Co-op
One day my husband was about to delete what he thought was junk mail when the word “Co-op” caught his eyes.
A fellow named “Jan” had heard from a couple in his community of Neerlandia that there was a hilarious song about a Co-op in a musical they had seen at Rosebud, Alberta. Jan ( “Yon”) went on to ask if Terry would drive the 1 3/4 hours out NW to their town to sing for 2 concerts ….including his Co-op song.
Jump ahead to the cold, winter day in which we prayed that the roads would be clear for our concerts. And….
Phew! They were and it was a beautiful drive over.
Driving through the town of Barrhead we happened to see the World’s Largest Blue Heron! So of course we had to take a photo of it for our collection….ha ha.
We found the town of Neerlandia and boy was it small. The Co-op was the biggest thing in town! See the photo of us with Jan below.
We also met ‘Steve’ who actually runs the store and in fact Steve was just one of the very nice people we met that day.
There was an actual stage set up in the middle of the store too with tables all around for customers to take a rest and enjoy the music. There were treats like homemade cookies and popcorn and plenty of coffee to go around as well.
The store was so huge! It had an ammo/guns store, a grocery store, restaurant, clothing area, toys, and you name it…. even ”Rubber boots for the whole family” (as Terry’s song says)…ha ha.
We started singing at 11 am and were joined by a “Co-op choir” for the refrain of Terry’s song and then the choir sang a couple of carols.
It was such a blast to watch the whole audience sing with Terry’s chorus to the Co-op song and at about noon we had a nice soup and sandwich at their restaurant and they refused to let us pay. (We actually gave our pay to the Neerlandia Food Bank so everyone felt pretty good that day!)
Then we did our second concert at one pm and it looked like the local newspaper might have wanted our photograph for that.
Ironically, Terry’s warmest boots had split the day before he actually shopped at the store before we left and he found some gorgeous, warm boots, the only pair in his size!
He was thrilled….but even MORE thrilled when Steve GAVE him the boots. What goes around comes around I guess. He needed it and he found it….at the Co-op!
We had another safe drive and stopped once to take a painting idea photo for me of an old car in the snow.
That night we went off to see the movie “Red One”…..we LOVED it.
What a great day!