Editor’s note: This is the first edition of “Full Circle,” a column by author Peggy Keener on her experiences in early Austin. Keener grew up in Austin, moved away for 58 years but returned to town last year. Keener published her memoir, “Potato In A Rice Bowl,” in 2010 to outline her experiences living in Japan in the 1960s while her husband was in the military.

The woven cane backing of the armchair glowed as if the delicately plaited strips had been soaked in honey and left to dry. Around the chair, the room was eerily strange and scary as if I were invading a forbidden territory.

The chair sat in front of a many-paned window which permitted a late afternoon sun to squirt through its golden caning and lie shredded in disjointed stripes and hexagons across the dark wooden floor. So captivated was I by the lovely richness of this sight, that even at the unsophisticated age of 2, the impression was planted forevermore in my memory. I recall it today, 74 years later, as if I had seen it only yesterday.

Then, as suddenly as the engaging vision first struck me, a second distinct contradiction caught my attention. It was the room. Dark, bulky furniture lined the walls creating a gravity which loomed frighteningly before my very young eyes. How heavily solemn was this room. All, that is, except for the lacey cane-backed chair whose radiant golden shafts had so securely captured my attention.

This memory is the oldest mental picture I have from my childhood. It is a recollection not prompted by yellowed, curly-cornered photos or other people’s oft-repeated stories. This is solely my memory, my enchanting private keepsake.

The year was 1940 and the room, which I had mistakenly toddled into, was, indeed, off limits to me. It belonged to my widower grandfather, Wallace Lee McLaughlin and it was in his handsome two-story red brick home at the end of south Main, currently the last house saved from the flood plain on the west side of the street.

My Austin story begins with Wallace, for without him there would never have been a me nor would there have been a story. The Herald has asked me to share some of my early memories of living here, a place I have reverently labeled “The Hub of My Universe.” You may smile at such an esteemed title, but it’s true. You see, along with the nearly 30 years my family lived in Asia, I also moved 27 times. When one is such a great distance from home (and, I ask you, how much farther can a person be than the other side of the world?), it feels mighty secure to have a permanent place you can call your very own “hub.”

One day in 1920, Wallace McLaughlin set off from Perry, Iowa, with his wife, Anna Belle Trouth, and their two sons, Donald Lee, 12, and Gerald Eugene, 10 (my father, Gene). Their goal was to travel north to Austin, Minnesota. To them, Austin looked like a sure bet for they recognized it as a place of good, clean, honest, hardworking folks. Also, the time in history was propitious for a new start. The Treaty of Versailles had been signed the year, before officially ending World War I and everything seemed suddenly morally scrubbed, none more so than Austin. Not only were its citizens upstanding, but the city already had such fine established institutions as an excellent high school and an honest-to-goodness library, both clear indications of a city going places.

The library, mind you, had not happened overnight. Its origins began with the Austin Ladies Floral Club, a society with two objectives: the study of the local floral and the establishment of a circulating library. To raise funds for the purchase of books, the ladies sold seeds, bulbs and plants. Three members vigilantly kept the books in their homes. Eventually, the ladies wrote to the Carnegie Institute, whereupon in 1901, they successfully gained approval for the first library in Austin. Upon opening, the Floral Club donated an astonishing 3,500 books, all accumulated over the previous 35 years. Talk about spring housecleaning! The floorboards of those three homes surely exhaled an enormous sigh of relief!

(Ladies, you are invited to join the current Floral Club where you’ll find the meetings a barrel of laughs while still accomplishing good deeds for Austin.)

Wallace McLaughlin’s dream was to open a grocery on Main Street. This happened when he purchased the former Hormel Provisions Market. No one knows for certain, but the elaborate brass cash register that greeted visitors to the old Spam Museum was either in the old market when Grandpa bought it, or Grandpa installed it new himself. Either way, the handsomeness of the machine speaks volumes for the dignity of the new business in town: The Square Deal Grocery.

And with that, my memories begin.

Peggy Keener invites readers to share their memories with her by emailing pggyknr@yahoo.com. Memories shared with Keener may be shared or referenced in subsequent editions of “Full Circle.”