Main Street. June 9, 1954. I was waiting on the sidewalk outside The Square Deal Grocery, my father’s store …. currently Twice Is Nice.  Bunched up around me were clusters of eager folks all shuffling about for a better view of the upcoming attraction. This was, we knew, no ordinary kind of hometown parade. Actually, if truth be told, none of us knew what to expect.

I’ll grant you that at age 16, I was no world traveler and my geography of the world was pathetically lacking.  But that day changed my view of the universe because I was about to behold a very special visitor.  A foreigner. A distinguished foreigner!  Just the sound of those words titillated me from head to toe for I knew this was a truly rare event. Let’s face it, things like this didn’t happen everyday in a place like Austin, Minnesota.

As I said, this esteemed guest was not your ordinary run of the mill notable person, but rather royalty! Indeed, an emperor! It may well have been the first time true royalty had ever graced our city, at least in my lifetime.  That is, of course, if you discounted Princess Kay of the Milky Way and our three Miss Austins who went on to become Miss Minnesota … which was about as much glitz and glamour as any of us could handle.

It was a puzzle to me why such a renowned personage had come to Austin?  How had he even learned of our small city situated far up here in the North American hinterlands, and then why had he traveled across the globe to get here? Ethiopia?  Where was that?  What was that?  I hadn’t the foggiest idea.

The crowd suddenly surged towards the curb as the sound of a fire truck blared down Main Street. This was the strangest of Austin parades … no high school floats, no bicycles, no cluster of VFW vets, no clowns throwing candy to the children.  Not even a tractor!  Instead there was a fancy new convertible with a man sitting on the top of the back seat.  A small man. Weren’t emperors big?  At least they were in the National Geographics I’d seen.

“Tell me again,” I asked my dad, “who is this?”

“Haile Selassie,” he answered.

What a peculiar name, I thought.  I’d heard of “highly combustible” and “highly contagious,” but Haile Selassie?  And did his subjects greet him with “Hi, Haile?” or “Hail Haile?”  Still, two things I knew for sure.  If he lived in Scotland, his daughter would be “Lassie Selassie” and his dog would have to be a collie!

I must say that Emperor Selassie didn’t much impress me that day.  Other than his military uniform which I’ll admit looked impressively regal coming down our Main Street—the sunshine glinting off his medals—but otherwise I found him pretty darned ordinary.  Neither a crown nor scepter adorned his imperial countenance. Sheesh! Certainly not the imposing figure I had expected.

For what reason had he come, and from so far away? Well, of course, what else but Hormel!  Just as the company had always drawn livestock experts—as well as the curious—from all over the world, so had the word of our meat giant reached the shores of distant Ethiopia.

I’ll never know if the Emperor was successful in his desire to improve meat production for his people, but that day Haile Selassie gave a hint of aristocracy to Austin.  And all of us in attendance felt a bit more elevated, more worldly thereafter, as we could say we had “met” (from our perch on the sidewalk) a true living monarch … even though the whole event still seems like it was “highly” unlikely!