“Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”
Paul Simon

“Stop fixating on stuff you can touch
and start caring about stuff that touches you.”
Martha Beck

When you grow up on a farm in Minnesota, one of eleven kids, and the nearest towns are Fairbault and Morristown, you learn to make do. As Al LaCanne puts
it,

“My mother’s favorite words were, ‘It’s good enough.’”

An aerial view of the LaCanne farm	Al (far left) with three of his ten siblings

Grow up in that environment and you either set the bar at “make do,” or you figure out a way to find something better. Al went to Arizona in search of his something better and found it in a successful management career with a strategy that comes down to “Better than it has to be.”

Al says this about Silveridge and The Resort:
“Everyone who works at the parks CARES. That’s easy to say, but our management philosophy is, Your job is to help the residents have fun. You either want to do that or you’re gone.”

He adds,

“Most RV parks are run by big corporations, so you have some MBA in Chicago or New York deciding how to squeeze every dime out of residents. They do that by having endless extra charges while squeezing every nickel on staff and amenities. And so residents end up feeling nickel-and-dimed. At our parks, we want to give the residents more than they expect. The people who come here are happy, successful people who deserve to get an experience that’s more than good-enough.”

Reminiscing about the history of Silveridge and The Resort, Al says, “When we took over the parks they needed a lot of work and we began to bring them up to a higher standard. We got to that standard, and then we raised it. For instance, a lot of places show movies in a ballroom or meeting room, but for me, seeing a movie while sitting on a folding chair isn’t going to the movies.”

So what about the future? What’s next for Al and the parks? He says, “We keep trying to make the parks better. I think of it the way Walt Disney talked of Disneyland — it will never be finished.”

Al is now imagining RV parks that are more than lively and cheerful. He turns philosophical when he talks about his vision:

“The people who come here have mostly stopped worrying about careers. So what matters then? Relationships. And memories. I think our parks do a good
job of helping people have great relationships, and now I want to help our residents save and share memories.”

And that brings us to the question Al wants to ask residents.

“I have a vision of helping people create and share memories. I’d like to do this two ways…

“One, we would have quality video cameras available for residents to use, and start a group that would volunteer to film events at the parks. The volunteers would be educated in videography and in editing. For instance, when the quilting group has a show, someone would make a video of the quilts and interview the people who made them. Then, after editing, the members of the club would have something to put on YouTube and to send to their kids
or relatives or friends.

“Second, I want to experiment with mounted cameras in places like our pickleball courts or softball field. We’d record the games and anyone who wanted highlights could request them. When you hit a home run, you can get a clip of it and share it.

“I get excited about these ideas, but I don’t want to press ahead unless our residents could share the excitement. Here’s what I want to know:

 

Would you like to have these video options available?

Would you volunteer to be one of our parks’ videographers?

Please send your answers and your thoughts.

CLICK HERE TO VOLUNTEER OR TO SHARE YOUR IDEAS

By
Avis SavreEach Christmas Eve is a memorable holiday. During the great depression in the early 1930’s everyone was poor. One gift was all one could hope for. Dad was a carpenter as well as a farmer. One Christmas he made us toy airplanes with a moving propeller and wheels. Other years he made me a white doll wardrobe, a doll bed and doll table from scrap lumber in his shop.

My brother and I grew up on a farm. Our house had a large kitchen, dining room, and a parlor (living room to the millennials). There were double sliding doors between the dining room and parlor. There also was a door from the kitchen to the parlor. Mother would close the doors to the parlor about 4:00 PM Christmas Eve. We were told that Santa wouldn’t stop if anyone was in the parlor. What time did Santa get to north Iowa? NO ONE was to enter the parlor until after the Christmas Eve dinner.

Uncle Ed came one Christmas Eve afternoon and wanted to borrow a book. Mother allowed him to go into the parlor to get it. We children were horrified that Santa might be there. To our great relief he was not.

After the roast beef, lutefisk, lefse and all the trimmings were devoured, my brother and I, lantern in hand, were sent to the outhouse in the back yard. One does not tarry in any outhouse. In summer there were unpleasant odors and in winter frozen bottoms. But Christmas Eve we would leave the door open and scour the sky hoping to see Santa land his reindeer and sleigh full of gifts on the roof. When our little “cheeks” were freezing we would run back to the house.

Everyone was now waiting for us in the parlor. There in the doll buggy sat beautiful Darlene, a large tin type doll with painted face and hair. It was so thrilling.

Darlene was perfect, unlike my old doll, the one I called Dimple Jane. Jane was a plaster doll with a nickel sized chunk missing from her left cheek from a fall off a chair.

As beautiful as Darlene looked, after a few days I discovered Darlene was not as soft and comfy as my beloved Dimple Jane who from then on got much more attention than the new doll. This proves that the warm soft and familiar things that we loved are more cherished than the new, beautiful, and cold.

Does this also prove that beauty is only skin deep?