Getting to know "The Rube" When the boss told me that I would be interviewing Jup, I was assuming that we would have a nice sit down after a game with a cold Coors Light. However, when Jup called and told me to meet him at his house I was a bit taken aback. The Cotner Family Estate is not what one would call a convenient trip.
As I make a left out of Waconia heading south, my Tom-Tom starts blurting out, “Columbus was wrong! Columbus was wrong!” It is an eerie feeling when you don’t know where you are or where you are going and you only have enough food in the car for a week. As the road turns from pavement to gravel, the missile silos start dominating the landscape. In the event of a nuclear event, I somehow feel comforted to know that this desolate place will be the first to go.
Unlike his fellow Rubes’, Fear and Bacardio, sprawling estates, Jupiter’s 9000 acres may be vast, but it is also very unassuming. Pulling up the house, Jupiter and his wife, Z, come out to meet me on the unfinished porch.
I look over and see their two lovely daughters playing on their favorite yard apparatus, a propane tank alligator that is painted like a stick of Fruit Stripe gum.“Glad you could make it. I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place”, Z says politely. I thought about describing my GPS unit’s reluctance to allow me to go down this path, but I knew the technology was lost on them. Sitting down on the patio with them makes you see why Jup has lived in this area for as long as he has. It is a quiet and serene place, some would say too quiet, but that is the charm.
Seeing how happy he and his family are, one would wonder why Jup makes the 105 mile round-trip trek once a week just to play hockey for an hour. He is almost always slower than the other team. Typically overmatched when goes into the corners. He has no discernible hockey skills that set him apart from his opponents, or teammates for that matter. Yet, he comes back every week, ready to play the best he can and enjoy the time with his friends.
He tells me that the time and money he spends playing hockey just makes him appreciate it that much more. He has learned to appreciate many things in life, considering the rocky start to him and Z’s life together. They started out with very little and have worked very hard to have the land and family they have.
Their relationship started slow, but soon progressed to the point where Jup planned a special evening out that ended in a very unique wedding proposal. The wedding was small, with just a few close friends and some family. The reception was a little more raucous and saw the bride not only lose her last name, but her dress was last seen on the side of a milk carton.The first house they moved into was not much to look at, but it provided them the opportunity to move the house anywhere they wanted. “There were many months we had to change our driver’s license so much that they wrote our address in pencil”, revealed Z.
Looking at what they have now, you can see that it was worth it. The house that they are in now was built strictly by Jup’s own hands and was decorated by Z. It is rare when you find two people with such similar tastes.Their two daughters, Alyssa and Sami are their lives. These have to be the two luckiest girls in the world to have been blessed with their mother’s looks, and not their father’s. To see these two parent is truly something special. Not only do they have a lot of fun with the girls, but they also have very constructive learning time. They also discipline in a very unique, if not illegal, way.
Jupi If it weren’t for the fact that the County does not budget much for travel expenses, Child Services would be paying a visit on a daily basis.
Sitting down to dinner with the Cotner’s, I felt like Andrew Zimmern. Jup assured me that everything on the table was “harvested” from their backyard. It was not what we were eating; squirrel brains, jackalope testicles and scorpion kabobs. It was more the fact that everything on the table was caught by the kids. At an early age, Jup and Z teach the girls that they need to be productive members of the family. A role they seem to have taken on wholeheartedly.
Relaxing by a campfire with some of Jup’s fine homemade hooch was just the way to cap off a fabulous day. It was truly a pleasure to be welcomed into Jup & Z’s home and be allowed a peek into a private life that few know. Even though I needed my passport and a couple changes of clothes to get there and back, I will remember this day forever.
