I had never been to a Rotary Club meeting, so I didn’t know what to expect.

What do Rotarians even do?

Are they obsessed with switching around the tires on their cars?

Do they track Earth’s spin on its axis?

Mike Lamb, editor of the Marshall Independent newspaper, recently invited me to address a meeting of the Marshall, Minnesota Rotary Club. I had never knowingly interacted with a Rotarian – let alone a group of them – but I’ve never let a trivial matter such as a total lack of experience stand in my way.

The lunchtime meal served at the meeting was tater tot hotdish. It just doesn’t get any more Midwestern than that. It had been eons since I’d had that dish, and it evoked fond memories of mom’s warm hotdish on cold winter days. My wife, who is a tater tot fan, especially enjoyed the repast.

As the meeting unfolded, I quickly learned that the Rotary Club has nothing to do with spinning plates on sticks. They are a community service organization that’s dedicated to good causes both locally and in the world at large.

The Marshall Rotary Club has a long history of working toward the eradication of polio.

The polio vaccine was widely available by the time I came along, so polio has never felt like a threat for me. But I’ve met people who have been afflicted by the disease and suffered from lifelong disabilities. They described what it was like when polio outbreaks were common, how polio victims could wind up in iron lungs, how parents could face the devastating loss of a child.

I learned that small pockets of polio still remain in Afghanistan. I hope that the Rotary Club succeeds in its goal of eliminating polio from the face of the planet.

The Marshall Rotary Club also sponsors scholarships for local high school students. A pair of recent scholarship recipients addressed the meeting. Just when you think that today’s youth are all lost in a fog of video games and TikTok reels, you meet a couple of excellent young people like those who spoke at the Rotary Club meeting.

After the Old Business and New Business had been taken care of, it was my turn to speak.

I talked about random things that sprang to mind such as how I became a columnist more or less as a joke. I reminisced about what it was like to get a book deal, how mind-blowing it was to hear that a group of folks in a Manhattan publishing house were reading and enjoying my musings.

As a kid growing up on our family’s hardscrabble dairy farm, this was beyond even my wildest dreams.

Some Rotarians asked about our cat, Sparkles, and our dog, Bella. They have both made multiple appearances in my columns.

Sparkles is 12 years old now. Her main activities include napping and finding a lap to nap upon. Her life’s goal seems to be diffusing as much of her fur as possible throughout our house. My wife and I wouldn’t be surprised to find fur in our toothpaste. Sparkles has discovered that she can greatly increase the efficiency of her distribution system by parking her furry little rump in front of our kitchen’s furnace vent.

Bella is the happiest creature that I know. She’s ecstatic when we go for a walk, and overjoyed when we have a game of fetch. She might find a stick and bring it to me with an expression that says, “Hey dad, look at this! Isn’t it the best thing ever?”

She seems to feel the same way when she finds something that’s disgusting.

Bella has been blessed with a sweet personality. She has no enemies, only friends that she hasn’t yet met.

The folks at the Independent gave me a copy of their book, “Cultivating 150 years of History in Marshall and Lyon County.” This doorstopper of a tome contains selected reprints of Marshall newspapers from every year for the past century and a half. It’s catnip for a history buff like me.

Page two features a photocopy of an old map of Lyon County, Minnesota. It reminded me that my great-great-grandfather Jens Johnson homesteaded the family farm located a mile south of Minneota in 1873.

Everyone is interested in their history, so I scoured the book until I found the news from 1957. Shockingly, there was no mention of my birth. There are, however, extensive accounts about the flood that inundated Marshall in June of that year.

Maybe that terrible event was a harbinger of the excellent one that would take place in October. At least that’s how I’m going to spin it.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.