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WAVERLY, Minn. (FOX 9) - The "American Dream" is playing out in Waverly, Minnesota, but most people in the surrounding area only know the new restaurant for their ice cream at the moment.

La Michoacana Amor Paleteria opened on Jan. 27, replacing the long-time local favorite Waverly Café that stood in its place for decades.

In its wake, one family is chasing their long-held dream in an ode to their family’s patriarch who seemingly worked his whole life to put them in a position to one day be owners, not just employees.

"My father’s wish was always to be the owner of a restaurant," said Leticia Salomon, owner and founder La Michoacana Amor Paleteria. "It was his dream to cook for other people. We had a plan years ago, but for one reason or another we never got to it done until now."

Eliseo Salomon was born on March 19, 1963, in Rosamorada, Mexico, before he migrated to Yuba City, California, in 1980, where he became a fieldworker picking cherries and grapes for $.40 a bucket.

Leticia was also born in Mexico, then brought to California as a child, before the family made its way to Minnesota in 1997, as Eliseo sought more work opportunity, and to reunite with family in Waverly.

Working in Delano and surrounding areas since then, Eliseo worked in carpentry, agriculture and construction before his death from cancer.

"He loved to provide for his family and loved to work," said Leticia, who has previously worked at Dura Supreme, a cabinetry company in Howard Lake, in addition to various jobs in the food industry.

Following Eliseo’s passing, the family decided to make his dream their reality.

"He would always ask if we had looked for available places, and we always had excuses. But we knew when it was meant to be, it would be," Salomon said. "But before his passing, we promised we would make it happen. It pushed me forward, because we knew we had to make this dream come true."

Fans of the Waverly Café’s breakfast already, last winter they saw the building was available for lease, and the rest was fate.

"I called and talked to the owner, and he asked me of my goals, and we made a deal," Salomon said. "From there we painted, changed the setup a bit, and we were on our way."

According to Salomon, the cuisine centers around her mother Maria’s recipes, veering away from the Tex-Mex offerings often seen at other Mexican restaurants.

Featuring a full menu of street tacos, asada fries, torta birria and more, they also make their own homemade ice cream daily for desserts.

"These are all my mother’s recipes, it’s all authentic," Salomon insists. "The ice cream all comes with fresh fruit. People start with the food, and end with the ice cream they’ve seen too."

With a menu on the wall, and ice cream up front, the service is fast-casual with the ability to sit down as well.

"We didn’t want everything to take a while, or have to wait on a server," Salomon said. "People have to get back to work."

For the time being, employees are all family members – a total staff of five.

But with her daughters going off to college in the fall, Salomon will look to hire surrounding area students to help give them a start as well.

With Waverly currently offering only a few bars and a Domino's Pizza, their idea is an entirely new offering to the small town – one that so far has been well-received by the palates of its 1,400 residents.

"The response has been great. We get a mix of people. We started in winter, and were worried about the cold, but many people still come," Salomon said.

Quiet on expansion plans for the time being, they plan to attend farmers markets and local gatherings with their ice cream cart throughout the summer. According to Salomon, they are also working on establishing partnerships for ingredients that are more locally sourced.

For now, they’re happy to have accomplished what they have so far, and establish roots that can be passed down to younger generations.

From idea to reality, the restaurant represents a portrait of small-town America – working hard to accomplish whatever your goals are.

"[Eliseo] worked so hard. Being an owner is hard too, it hasn’t been easy – late nights and many early mornings. Long, long hours," Salomon said. "But when you do something that you love, it’s worth it."

La Michoacana Amor Paleteria is located at 805 Pacific Ave. in Waverly, Minnesota, and can be reached at 763.658.1555.

Collin Boese ran for a 19-yard touchdown with 5:07 left Saturday, giving Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted a 21-20 victory in the section semifinals and driving host Minneapolis North out of the playoffs.

Minneapolis North (8-1) held the top seed in Section 4 and the No. 2 ranking in Class 2A. The Polars hadn't given up any points since Sept. 23. Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted (8-2) was seeded fourth in the section.

The Polars trailed 15-6 at halftime but scored two touchdowns in the third quarter to take a 20-15 lead.

Keishaude Gilmer threw two touchdown passes for the Polars. Boese had two TDs for Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted, the other on a first-half reception.

In other sections:

Class 5A, Section 3: Gabriel Goldenman threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Owen Watson with seven seconds left to give sixth-seeded Two Rivers a 32-28 victory over second-seeded Bloomington Kennedy at Bloomington Stadium.

The teams combined for five touchdowns in the final 4 minutes, 10 seconds. The Warriors led 17-14 after a 20-yard touchdown run by Goldenman with 4:10 left.

Kennedy regained the lead, 28-17, on a pair of touchdowns involving Marques Monroe. He ran for a score and threw a scoring pass to Rayzjon Walker in a 1:48 span.

Goldenman got the Warriors within three points with 1:10 left on a 3-yard touchdown run.

In the other semifinal in the section, top-seeded St. Thomas Academy defeated fourth-seeded Apple Valley 55-19. Savion Hart ran for three touchdowns, Love Adebayo ran for two for the Cadets. Noah Mergerson ran for two touchdowns and caught a touchdown pass from Jackson Thornburgh for the Eagles.

Class 5A, Section 6: Anthony Powell ran for three touchdowns to lead third-seeded Rogers past second-seeded Monticello 20-12. He made touchdowns runs of 33 and 40 yards in the fourth quarter to put the Royals ahead for good.

In the other section semifinal, top-seeded host Spring Lake Park scored four second-half touchdowns to defeat fifth-seeded Irondale 28-7. Lamari Brown ran for two touchdowns for the Panthers, and Brayden Talso ran for one and passed for one.

Class 5A, Section 4: Corey Bohmert rushed for 246 yards and three touchdowns in top-seeded Mahtomedi's 44-10 victory over Cretin-Derham Hall at Mahtomedi.

Class 4A, Section 6: Victor Ruhland ran for a 4-yard touchdown, his second TD of the game, with 1:33 left to give third-seeded Orono a 29-26 victory over second-seeded host Princeton. The Tigers trailed 21-6 with 5:01 left but scored three consecutive touchdowns. Cooper Drews threw three touchdown passes and ran for a touchdown for Princeton.

Class 4A, Section 5: After going winless in the regular season, sixth-seeded Benilde-St. Margaret's picked up its second postseason win, 25-7 over second-seeded SMB.

Class 4A, Section 4: Top-seeded host Fridley stopped fourth-seeded Columbia Heights 28-0. Lex Korti ran for two touchdowns, and Isaiah Watson ran for a touchdown and passed for one.

Class 4A, Section 3: Tay'vion McCoy ran for a touchdown and returned an interception for a score to lead top-seeded Simley past fourth-seeded visitor South St. Paul 31-13. Gavin Nelson ran for two touchdowns for the Spartans. Elijah Bryant threw two touchdown passes to Bruce Doeren for the Packers.

It's the most wonderful time of the year for some Minnesotans. The State Fair has opened its gates through Labor Day and people are walking the grounds, taking in the sights, the smells, and of course trying all kinds of delicious fair food, both new and long-time favorites. One of the busiest stands at the fair each year is the corn roast stand, located right outside the grandstand. Luckily you won't have to wait too long for an ear of Minnesota-grown goodness, but where does it all come from? One man's farm right here in Central Minnesota.

Jerry Untiedt of Waverly brings in his ears of fresh corn regularly harvesting it, then hauling it from his farm in Waverly to St. Paul, according to Minnesota Public Radio. What I didn't realize is that Jerry plants his corn just for this moment, the 12 days of the Great Minnesota Get-Together, and all of that corn we enjoy at the fair is hand-picked!

The farm in Waverly supplies roughly 250,000 ears a year to the corn roast stand, and what isn't used gets donated to local food shelves or churches.

What stood out to me about Jerry is that he has the right mindset to be growing Minnesota Sweet Corn as he told Minnesota Public Radio:

“Minnesota sweet corn, I believe and I’ve been told, is the best sweet corn in the United States,” he said proudly. “It’s got that flavor, it’s got that snap and we’ve got the type of weather that produces wonderful corn.” - Minnesota Public Radio

On top of being one of the most popular stands at the fair, the corn roasting stand is also giving back, Brad Ribar, who runs the stand, has allowed local high school athletes to work the stand as a fundraiser. That's also pretty Minnesota Nice of Brad.

(Brad and his family have been at the State Fair for decades and his son and daughter-in-law run the Duke's Poutine stand)

So the next time you are enjoying some roasted corn at the State Fair, know that it was grown just 42 miles from St. Cloud, was hand-harvested, and then cooked with care, all by Minnesotans.

Two parties eager for the full-fledged arrival of spring in Minnesota:

1) Lawn services.

2) Dusty Paquin.

The former? Well, duh. The latter?

“I got the itch now,” Paquin, an ultra-avid golfer from Waverly, Minn., said by phone last week. He added the qualifier “now” only because he was briefly golfed out in January after playing seven days in a row in Arizona.

Paquin said he was going to take a pass on playing golf this week, even as the state’s courses slowly began to open. Crosswoods in Crosslake was among those, and there is significance in that, because it has nine holes that Paquin has set neither foot nor bogey upon. But many of the state’s courses remained mired in the slop of the spring thaw, and Paquin, an insurance adjuster, had work this week and family commitments over the weekend.

After that, watch out.

Paquin spends a lot of time on the golf course. He estimates that in 2018, he played 30 to 40 Minnesota courses for the first time. That is hardly unprecedented, but added on to his previous year’s total, he is up to 411 push-pins on the map he keeps at home — one for every Minnesota golf course played.

That total isn’t unprecedented, either. At least two men have played every course in the state: Art Hennington of Elk River completed the feat of prodigiousness or preposterousness (depends on your point of view) in 2014, and Dick Montroy of Maple Grove did it last September.

Paquin, at age 41, aims to become the youngest to have completed the grand tour. His mission is to do so by age 50.

Why? Basically, just because. Isn’t that reason enough?

“Me being a 13 handicap,” Paquin says, “I’m not winning tournaments or turning pro anytime soon. It’s more just the challenge.”

Paquin isn’t sure which Minnesota golf course he will play first in 2019. He says it’s “weather-dependent.” He must tackle pockets of unplayed public courses in southwestern Minnesota, southeastern Minnesota and the Brainerd area. He hasn’t played the nine-hole Northwest Angle Country Club at the state’s northernmost point, at which sand greens and flannel shirts commingle, or many of the more historic and well-heeled private clubs around the Twin Cities area, which Paquin acknowledges will present a challenge to score playing privileges.

Still, Paquin counts fewer than 100 courses on his to-do list. (The golfers who have attempted or are attempting this feat all operate under different parameters. The Minnesota Golf Association counts 447 clubs as member facilities; there are other Minnesota clubs that don’t belong to the MGA. Also, clubs that since have folded are to be considered. Paquin lists his magic number as 507, and he is operating under the requirement that he play every hole at every club, including executive and par-3 layouts.)

Paquin has no formal plan of attack for reaching his 96 unplayed courses. “I know where I need to go,” he says, “so if I just happen to be going up in that direction …”

Paquin played only a handful of golf courses before graduating from Oklee High School in 1996. He bought his first membership at what is now Oak Lake Golf Course in Erskine, then started playing frequently while he was a student at Bemidji State University. “I ended up getting really hooked there,” he says, “and ended up scheduling more night classes so I could golf in the afternoon.”

He bought a promotional card that afforded easier and cheaper access to courses statewide, which he used in the Bemidji area and then upon moving to Rochester in 2003.

At that point, the let’s-golf-em-all bug chomped.

“After awhile,” Paquin said, “I wondered how many (courses) there are. I found a website, started checking them off and said, ‘This is kind of neat,’ and started playing courses all over.”

The year 2005 “is when I started keeping track, and then maybe four to five years later, then I’m like, I was (thinking), well, I think I could play all of them, at least the public courses. I started making journeys, I’d have a day off, I’d drive two hours away to go play golf.”

Traveling and golfing helps sate another of Paquin’s interests: collecting. He says he has kept a scorecard from every round of golf he has played since 1997. He collects logo golf balls, where available, from every course he has played and has them displayed at his home.

“It’s snowballed; it’s definitely snowballed,” Paquin says of his avocation, “and I’m very stubborn, so if i put my mind to things. … If it’s something possible, i’m going to try it.”

CHARTING THE COURSES

Some of Dusty Paquin’s favorites and recollections from having played 411 Minnesota golf courses:

Favorite courses: Superior National in Lutsen, Eagle Creek in Willmar, Mississippi National in Red Wing. “I grew up in northwestern Minnesota, where it’s very flat, so anything with elevation is extra points in my book.”

Most underrated courses: Oak Knoll in Red Lake Falls, Farmers Golf & Health Club in Sanborn, Wedgewood Cove in Albert Lea

Added attraction: “Any Joel Goldstrand-designed course. … I like the unique hole designs.”

In St. Paul: Paquin mentions Highland National, with the Snoopy-shaped bunker on the 15th hole, a tribute to St. Paul native and late cartoonist Charles Schulz, and Keller Golf Club and its historic clubhouse iterations.

Which unplayed course are you most looking forward to playing? “Spring Hill — very prestigious and the only Tom Fazio-designed course in Minnesota — and Interlachen CC due to the history and also Bobby Jones winning a leg of the Grand Slam there (1930 U.S. Open).”

Memories: “Lots of different animals on the courses. A clubhouse dog that sat on the cart with me for a few holes near Detroit Lakes. He even had his dog bed in the clubhouse. A farm cat on the green that would not leave me alone in Annandale. A hawk eating a snake 10 feet from the green in Ada — good luck charm, one of the best rounds I’ve ever had.

“Played in all weather conditions. With snowbanks in fairways and ponds frozen over with golf balls on top of the ice. Women’s underwear lying near a tree line on the course near Red Wing. Heard there was a large tournament the day before. I’m guessing cocktails were involved?”

City halls across Minnesota are hanging up “Help wanted” signs.

Hundreds of local offices — mayor, council member, clerk — have no candidates running for them.

In Minnetonka Beach, an upscale Twin Cities suburb, officials worry that the city’s business will grind to a halt because nobody is running for city treasurer. In Elmore, boyhood home of former Vice President Walter Mondale, they’re hoping somebody — anybody — will raise their hand to fill a vacant City Council seat.

Along with the vacant ballot slots, 60 percent of all local offices in Minnesota have only a single candidate running unopposed. In all, two-thirds of local offices statewide have either no candidate running or just one.

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The dearth of candidates interested in political life has local officials struggling with where Minnesota will find its next generation of leaders.

“You start looking ahead and wonder, who will the future small-town leaders be?” said Connie Holmes, mayor of Waverly, population 1,357, which has no candidates running for a vacant City Council seat. “I don’t know who those leaders will be.”

Jim Weikum, mayor of Biwabik, isn’t sure why nobody has filed for either of the two City Council seats open in the Iron Range community of 998 residents.

“I wish I had a really good take on why people aren’t stepping up,” he said. “It’s one of those delicate things where you wonder if you should be more active in going out and encouraging people. But sometimes that’s perceived as trying to stack the council.

“I’ve had conversations when an issue comes up and people are unhappy,” Weikum said. “I’ll say, ‘Maybe you should consider filing.’ But apparently being unhappy isn’t enough of an incentive to actually get involved.”

‘Something’s got to happen’

Local officials and academic political experts offer a number of reasons for the lack of interest in running for office. Many cite the demands of modern life.

“We’re full of CEOs, doctors, lawyers — very accomplished professionals,” said Jaci Lindstrom, a City Council member in Minnetonka Beach, population 540. “But because we have so much talent, they’re busy. They’re busy, and they’re raising families.”

As a charter city, Lindstrom said, Minnetonka Beach can’t operate without a treasurer, and no one has filed for the office. Now the city is getting a legal opinion on whether it can move forward on a proposed bond issue without an elected treasurer.

In Waverly, about 35 miles west of Minneapolis, many residents have long work commutes, Holmes said.

“When they get home they want to be with their family, and they want to go to their children’s activities. And it’s extremely difficult to balance the time it takes to be on the council along with your work, your commute and those family demands,” she said.

The mayor of Grand Marais, Jay Arrowsmith-DeCoux, is looking at two vacant seats on his five-member council, with no candidate for either of them.

“The dynamic I’ve noticed is, something’s got to happen to motivate people to run,” he said, “and in small towns, not a lot happens.” In fact, the mayor isn’t on the ballot, either, and no one else is running for the job. Arrowsmith-DeCoux said he was on a Boundary Waters trip and missed the filing deadline, but he wants another term and is encouraging people to write him in.

Candidates aren’t drawn by the thought of running a small town.

“It’s such a thankless job,” said Joan Pomp, owner of a wood preserving plant in Tenstrike, a town of 201 in Beltrami County. “It’s basically, keep gravel on the roads and make sure it’s plowed. It’s all about the roads.”

No one has filed to run for mayor of Tenstrike, nor for either of its two vacant City Council seats. Pomp said the residents have their own ways of deciding elections.

“They just don’t bother to go down to register, and we just write them in,” she said. “It’s like for the council: ‘Which one is up this time?’ And we just write them in.”

Democracy overdose?

It may be that Minnesotans have simply overdosed on democracy, said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor and faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

“I think there is what you might describe as democratic fatigue,” Jacobs said. “The number of offices and the number of elections we have in Minnesota is outstripping the capacity and interest of our earnest, well-regarded citizens.”

It’s important to remember that government service isn’t the only way to make an impact on a community, said Dennis Donovan, a national organizer at Augsburg College’s Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship.

“You have to work with government, but it shouldn’t be the be-all, end-all,” Donovan said. “Politics is not just something politicians do.” When people learn to work together on community goals outside of government, they can enter the elected sphere and be much more effective.

As executive director of the Minnesota League of Cities, Dave Unmacht works on issues affecting more than 800 member cities.

“I’m not alarmed by these numbers. I don’t lose any sleep over them,” he said. “But what they should drive is a conversation about, how do we build grass-roots support for people in public office at the earliest level? I’m talking about grade school, middle school.

“We need to have a conversation about building leadership capacity,” Unmacht said. “Who are our future mayors and council members? And I’m not talking about 2018 — I’m talking about 2030, 2040.”