On June 3rd, 1990, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev came to Minnesota. At the time, he had begun to reform the failing Communist system. He was one of the most significant figures of the Twentieth Century. His visit to Minnesota received international attention. It was an unseasonably cold, blustery day.

I wrote this then. Earl Kruger has since passed away. Earl was a real person. The Kretschmers occasionally show up in my column. They are real to me. Paul and Julia have since grown. Bart quit farrowing and put up a finishing barn for Schwartz Farms. Katherine battled with her novel for a few years and switched to writing poetry.

He was a little confused by the turn at St. Peter, but otherwise found his way to Sleepy Eye alright. Besides, there was no hurry. For one day, Mikhail Gorbachev wasn’t going to let schedulers rule his life.

The old Mustang that his advance team had purchased for $300 was a treat to drive after riding in big honking limos all week. The muffler was rusting out, but that steady rumbling felt oddly liberating.

Gorbachev had surreptitiously flown to Minneapolis on a commercial flight from Washington early Sunday, disguised as a regular guy. It was about 11 a.m. when the president of the Soviet Union rolled into a quiet Sleepy Eye. A dreadful northwest wind had evacuated the streets except for church traffic. He really didn’t know how big this “Sleepy Eye” was when the dart he’d tossed hit square on the “E.”

That was the funny part of it. All those analysts were trying to figure out “Why Minnesota?” Gorbachev just wanted to see something on his trip to America besides large halls and offices. So, his staff got a map of the United States, ripped off the coasts, and blacked out the big cities. He threw the dart. “E.” Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

He was nervous every time they used the Gorbachev double. But it was necessary for his sanity sometimes. Government and business leaders never listened anyway, never really heard a word he said. So why not use a stand-in? The double was up in the Cities that Sunday with reporters chasing him around.

Especially Fidel Castro. Gorbachev could have recited soccer scores to him, and Castro would have just kept talking. He always sent the double to meet him now. Castro would go nuts if he knew he was lecturing a welder from Leningrad. The welder was having a ball though. A little makeup, and he got to be president for a few hours.

Gorbachev’s first stop was at Hardee’s for a coffee. The Mustang’s heater was about as good as its muffler; some coffee might warm him.

The Russian embassy had given him a Trojan seed cap that he wore along with a plaid jacket and work pants. A three-month crash course in English left him with an accent, but he could get by. In Washington, he had spoken Russian. That gave him time to think during the translation. Now he was anxious to try his English.

He sat down next to Earl Kruger. Earl was looking out at a robin struggling in the wind. “Good morning,” said Gorbachev.

Earl turned away from the window. “Good morning. Say, do you suppose robins look for worms in a wind like this, or do they just wait till it dies down?”

It was a good question, and the two talked it over.

“So what brings you to town?” asked Earl. Gorbachev had prepared a story about going to see relatives in South Dakota.

“So you’re from east of here?”

The Soviet president grinned. “Yes, east of here.”

“I hear it’s so wet by Rochester some of the corn’s not in,” said Earl.

And so the conversation went: birds, weather, crops. After a while Earl told Gorbachev about his idea to plant apple trees all through the region. How 4-H clubs could plant and care for them. How they could use the parks and empty lots in town. How Sleepy Eye could be “The Apple Town.” Make it Buttered Corn and Apple Pie Day.

Gorbachev loved apples. He remembered an idea like that from when he was a young agriculture official. Sadly, it got buried by some bureaucrat. The two men talked apple trees for half an hour.

When it was close to noon, Earl had to go home for dinner with Delores. Gorbachev walked to the rusty Mustang. When he got in, he made a note to mention Earl the next time he met George Bush. Suggest him for the Interior Department or something. Somewhere they could use good ideas.

Next, he drove west on Highway 14, into the wind, under the low, gray sky. He turned south on a gravel road wanting to see farms. He had liked the plan for him and Governor Perpich to visit a dairy farm outside of the Cities. But his double could wade through the cameras and rabid reporters.

As he got near the Cottonwood River, he drove past the Kretschmer place. It looked as good as any, and he pulled the Mustang over to the side. He got out and walked up the curvy driveway, holding his seed cap in the gusts, past the cottonwood tree with blown off sticks beneath it, up to the brick home.

He knocked on the wood screen door. Six-year-old Julia came to the door, “Hi!”

“Hello, how are you little girl?”

“I’m painting see all those newspapers on the wall and the table I’m painting everyone I know and we’ll put it up on the wall if it fits I know a lot of people.” Julia spoke in torrents.

Julia talked faster than anyone could listen. Gorbachev thought, “Now here’s American vitality!” His English instructor hadn’t quite prepared him for Julia.

“Is your mother or father home? I need some gas.”

“Mom’s writing and I can’t bug her for 36 more minutes Dad’s in a pig pen Paul’s watching basketball he always watches sports it’s so dumb.”

After hearing about Julia’s kittens and her last day of kindergarten, Gorbachev found himself going down to an old shed to find Julia’s dad. Bart Kretschmer was kneeling in straw in a make-shift pen, wet and pig-dirty. He was trying to nail a board up despite the affections of about twenty young gilts.

“Hello,” announced the visitor. “Can I help?”

“Oh hello. No. I deserve this,” muttered Bart, half talking to himself. “‘Breed extra gilts,’ I told myself. ‘I’ll just put them in my workshop and open the south door and fence in a lot for them,’ I said. I should have known it would rain for the first time in four years and turn it into a mudhole. I should have known they would find my tools so darned interesting that they’d break the fence down on a weekly basis. No, I deserve this.”

Gorbachev ended up holding boards for Bart and even came up with a different corner scheme to strengthen it. As they worked, they talked about pigs.

“What’s crazy, is these are $60 market hogs I’ve kept back. Probably just to farrow 200 pigs that I’ll sell into a $40 market.”

This was almost as good as apple trees. Gorbachev was giddy thinking about the faces of glazed over politicians and businessmen he was missing. “So why’d you keep them?” he asked.

Bart grew sober for a minute. “I need extra pigs for November’s land payment. I had some bad farrowing last fall, some ungodly virus. Then a tractor overhaul, and Paul’s braces. If hog prices don’t stay up, we’ll come up short. By the way, how do you know so much about pigs, Mr. Gorbachev?”

The president’s jaw dropped.

“Your English isn’t that good. Besides, there ain’t been a Trojan company for years. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. You helped me with the fence. It’s the least I can do.”

Gorbachev smiled. “I’m not really out of gas. I just wanted to see something that wasn’t so planned.”

“Well, those pigs getting out sure wasn’t planned. Come up to the house and clean up.”

Later they sat down to muffins that Bart made after church. He cooked on weekends to let Katherine work on her writing. She was a nurse at the clinic in town. Weekends, she was a writer with pages of a novel spread out over half the basement.

Katherine wasn’t surprised to see Mikhail Gorbachev in their kitchen. She saw everything in life as parts of a novel. This was just a strange Kurt Vonnegut-sort of chapter.

They visited into the afternoon about the farm, the Kremlin, corn, old cars. Julia painted the Soviet president into her mural and told him about her Cabbage Patch doll. They even watched Gorbachev’s double on the TV news.

That early evening as Gorbachev rumbled in his mustang back to the airport, he felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. He smelled a little like pigs, but that was okay.