Missouri Valley's Aunt Minnie: Everything is Here
By Don Harrold
News Editor
Minnie Fisher has run a flower and gift shop in downtown Missouri Valley since 2013. The kids call her Aunt Minnie.
When someone comes in having a bad day, she pulls out a chair. "If someone's in here and they're not having a good day, I can take that time," Fisher said. "Especially if it's a friend of mine and I know they're hurting, there's something going on."
She keeps working while they talk. "I can put all my stuff together while I'm sitting here visiting," she said. "And it calms people down watching me do flowers."
She grew up here, and she is, by her own account, the person who knows what's going on. "I have a pretty good handle on the heartbeat of the town," she said.
Fisher is direct, honest, blunt. I told her I meant that as a compliment and asked where it comes from. "Very proud to be a farmer's daughter," she said, and explained that on a farm, "you don't really have a whole lot of spare time. You're working, you're moving."
"It's a work ethic thing," she said. "It's a, 'Hey, let's not split hairs.' Let's just call it what it is and move on."
I've never been able to put my finger on why Missouri Valley feels like a different kind of town. "We are very farm-dependent here," she said. Row crops, cattle, whatever the livestock. It's also a bedroom community, with a good share of the town driving to Omaha for work.
Blair, across the river in Nebraska, is another matter. "Blair is its own little biodome over there," Fisher said. "They have almost any industry you could imagine." Cargill, the rest of it. "Those people really don't ever have to leave the city limits." "They live in a dome," she said. "And they're kinda proud about it."
Her sense of the difference goes back further than the industry. Dana College was a Danish school, and Fisher is, in her words, "50 percent Swede."
"We lock horns," she said. When she was in high school and started riding around with a boy whose last name ended in E-N instead of O-N, her grandfather weighed in. "No," he told her. "Not happening."
Fisher is the secretary of the Kiwanis Club and the sponsor for both of Missouri Valley's youth clubs — K-Kids at the elementary level and Builders Club at the middle school.
Last year that was 20 elementary students and 56 middle schoolers. Two other volunteers handle West Harrison. She also volunteers with Generations Hospice, donating flowers for patients every month.
The name came from the kids, not from her family and not from her. "Kids are comfortable with me because they see me as a big kid," she said. They don't read her as an adult, she said, and they're startled to learn her age. "They think I'm like a high schooler or maybe college."
Asked why she fosters those relationships, she gave the short answer: "That's our future and we need to nurture that." In the shop's written description of itself, she goes further: the kids are the future, and they need someone to tell them they are going to be A-Okay.
The kindergartners have graduated by now. "I've gone a whole circle now," Fisher said. "I've watched these kids grow up." They come back and sit on the stool by her worktable, and some of them are scared. "They're like, 'I'm gonna ... What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do with the rest of my life?'" Her method is to name the thing they're good at and hand the question back. "What do you think you can do with that?" she'll ask. "And then we sit and we go back and forth."
She didn't have a straight line either.
Fisher spent the first 18 years of her life in Missouri Valley, then 27 years working in Omaha in the automotive industry. Ten of those were with NAPA Auto Parts. "They flew me around the country to teach people how to talk to people," she said. "It taught me a lot," she said. "I'm glad I'm out of the NAPA corporate."
That ended when the industry contracted, which she attributes to the Obama administration's Cash for Clunkers program. "I needed a way out," she said.
The way out came from her parents. Her mother managed the craft mall on the west end of town. Her folks sold some farm ground and bought the building. "It was a disaster in here," she said. "So it's all nice and shiny now."
Fisher completed the Iowa Master Florist program in 2015. It took two and a half years.
"I got my little award and my little pin and all that kinda good stuff," she said.
She served three years on the Iowa Florist Association board. For several of those years, the association decorated the governor's mansion in Des Moines for Christmas. "That was fun," she said. "I did that for many years."
The shop delivers daily to local funeral homes and hospitals. Weddings and sympathy work carry much of the calendar. The giftware is not separate from the flowers — Fisher pulls pieces off the shelves and builds them into the arrangements.
Her sign says flowers. The inside says more: boutique clothing, soaps, embroidered towels and shirts, bibs, coffee coming and consignment work from crafters around the region, including a woman who lives in Missouri and drops off pieces when she visits her brother and sister-in-law here.
Cathy, whom Fisher calls her right hand, makes the soaps, the bibs and the embroidery. Cathy's daughter, Jordan, handles the boutique clothing and is adding coffee. "We need something that has a little bit of something for everybody," Fisher said.
Asked what she'd tell somebody in Blair about making the drive: "There's something for everyone here," she said. "Everybody needs a dish towel. Even if it's a guy, a girl, whatever."
Business right now is soft. "It's been slow. The economy's been slow," she said. "And it always is during the summer. In the heat, nobody wants to get out."
There are weddings on the books and school starting. "I'm hoping we're on the way to do another upswing," she said. "I really do."
The part she wanted on the record was about the building, and the name on it. "It started out a family business," she said. "My folks helped me get started and things. So without them, this wouldn't have happened."
"I take very seriously that my family's name is on the building," she said. "I wanna take care of people. I want people to appreciate that."
Her father is dead. Her mother, Joanne, just turned 80, lives with her and designs part time in the shop. Her aunt and uncle live across from the library. "I can watch their lights come on at night when I'm still down here working on stuff, so I know they're fine," she said.
"Just everything is here."
Fishers Petals and Posies is at 410 E. Erie St. in Missouri Valley. The shop opens at 9 a.m. Monday. Orders can be placed at 712-600-6100 or through the shop's website.
