Finding work, joy at rest stops
- Sr Perspective
- Apr 30
- 7 min read
‘I always come in a half hour early because I love it’
By Bill Vossler
Ken Krona of Bemidji started working at a pair of Minnesota highway rest areas 13 years ago, and he’s glad he did. “After I finished working for UPS for 30 years, I always lost what day it was, and I decided I couldn‘t keep living like that. I couldn’t stand sitting around on the porch and knew I had to find something to do.”
That meant working at a series of jobs that he discovered didn’t suit him--until he got laid off at his last “other” job at Christmas. “That’s when I started working part-time at the Fuller Lake rest area on I-94 near Clearwater.”
Since then, he has worked six years at Clearwater, and the last seven years near Bemidji. Over that time, Ken has had a ton of different experiences, which seem to occur when he’s working. Perhaps because, as he said, “I love to talk to people. I’ll talk to anyone.”
A couple of years ago that turned on him. “One night I was working late and three guys came in, and I started talking to them. I asked how far they were going. One of the guys said ‘Grand Forks.’”
But then tenor changed. “Another guy looked at me and said, ‘Hey, we need some gas money. Why don’t you grab the keys for that vending machine and give us the money?’ I said we don’t have the keys to the vending machine. That’s not what we control. By that time I felt like things were going haywire, and figured I was going to get beat up. Luckily, the big guy of the three, weighing probably 300 pounds, grabbed the guy who asked about keys and threw him away. ‘Leave him alone,’ he said. ‘And let’s get going.’
In the end, the men scared Ken, but did nothing else.
“We don’t get paid much, just above minimum wage,” Ken said. “That gives me a little gas money to drive around and go fishing, and me and Suraya can drive out in the country and see a road and say, ‘Let’s see where that one goes.’ But pay isn’t why I do it,” Ken said. “I love people.”
And often they love him too. For example, “A couple of years ago a woman about 30 stopped, and I started talking to her. I asked her how far she was going. She said to Oregon. I told her that on the way she has to stop in the Cour d’Alene, Idaho, because that area is absolutely gorgeous. We chatted for another ten minutes, and I said it should be a fun trip for her. She looked at me, and said, ‘Are you married?’ I said I was. ‘That’s too bad,’ she said. ‘I want you to go with me.’ I told her I wasn’t part of the package deal,” he laughed.
Another experience at the Fuller Lake rest area near Clearwater. “A car show had gone on in the Twin Cities, and on Sunday afternoon they were all leaving to go back home, so they stopped at the rest area for a break. Some people from Grand Forks had a 1962 Chevy Biscayne, same as the one my dad had bought new in 1962, a blue four-door car with hubcaps and black wall tires. I went up to them and looked at it, and it was so neat. It took me back to my past. If there had been any way to buy that car I would have, but they didn’t want to sell it. Too bad for me.”
During the six years he worked on the westbound side of I-94, he said, “So many people were coming through from the east coast and heading out west to Washington and Oregon that I wondered if those states were going to tip into the ocean,” he laughed.
After six years, Ken and his wife Suraya moved to Bemidji, where, still enchanted with the rest area work, he took up with the Cass Lake rest area near Bemidji. “The Clearwater rest area is a lot busier than the Bemidji one, Ken said. “I like it when it’s that busy, because I get to see and talk to that many more people.”
Ken said he’s often surprised about how people coming to the rest areas react. “We get a lot of people who come out and say ‘thanks.’ Mostly women, but often men, too. Recently I had a knock on our office door, and a woman said she wanted to thank me for the good job I was doing.”
Another day Ken was going to check the men’s bathroom, when a woman stopped and turned and said, “You don’t know how valuable you are, doing a good job like you’re supposed to do. The public sees what we’re doing.”
A company contracts with the State of Minnesota to take care of 189 rest areas in the state. “Just like the military,” Ken said, “suddenly they will show up, and start checking. Wearing rubber gloves, they inspect everything, the cleanliness of the urinals, under the bathroom stools, making sure the windows are clean and the floors are clean and uncluttered. And they make sure no garbage is laying around, inside or outside, or any cigarette butts. They do a thorough inspection. Sometimes they’ll find a bit of dust on one of the bathroom dividers. But that’s about all they find, because we take our jobs seriously and keep everything clean.”
Used to be people couldn’t often tell who the workers were at the rest center, no uniforms, just normal clothes. That changed a couple of years ago, Ken said, when a worker at Duluth got run over by a car and killed. “But they discovered that the guy who killed him had a vendetta against him. They knew each other. So since then they require that we have to keep our green and orange vests on all the time.” He said he doesn’t always wear it, and though he’s been hit up about it, he shrugged.
Ken said five workers rotate days and time at the Cass Lake rest area near Bemidji. “The crew leader is a wonderful guy. I told him that growing up on the farm I have common sense and a drive, not only to do what has to be done, but thinking and doing other things.”
For example, Ken said when the crew leader comes in, Ken helps, though he wouldn’t have to. “When some guys might sit around, the crew leader will wash windows, which is a lot of work because there are a lot of them. I always go out and help washing windows.”
Two years ago when Ken was working at the Cass Lake rest area he was doing a garbage run when a car from Ohio pulled in. “I said, ‘Your GPS must have gone haywire, because you’re way out of your area.’ They laughed, and I asked what part of Ohio were they from, and did they know of Lima? They said they lived near Lima. I said, how close to Spencerville? They said they knew Spencerville.”
Ken said he had a good friend from Viet Nam who lived there, “And be darned if they didn’t know him. I’ve kept in touch with him and his family for 50 years, and here in the oddest situation they know him. That was unique.”
Ken said his job is to keep everything clean, “The building, the floor mopped, mirrors cleaned, mowing and cleaning off the main sidewalks in winter. The DOT does the big lot.”
The contracted company requires rest area workers to work 12 shifts a month of six-and-a-half-hour days. “Once a month you get a full week off for vacation, which is another reason I like to work at the rest areas. They always want me to work full time, but I said I didn’t want to do that, because I want to go fishing, and if they wanted to push me to work full time, I’d have to quit.”
They said he shouldn’t do that. “They said, ‘If you want to go fishing, just write down on paper when you want to go, and we’ll make sure you can.’ After that, I went more or less full time.” Which he has been doing in Bemidji since 2018.
Ken has noted how people stop and what they do. “They stretch, go for a walk, or pull over, pull their cap over their head and lean back and go to sleep in their car for a while, maybe an hour. That makes the roads safer, and shows what a good investment rest areas are for state money. It’s a wonderful investment.”
He said the state inspects the well at the rest area. “When people’s pipes freeze up, I carry the water jugs out to their vehicles for them, regular people, or those with physical disabilities, or older women. They say I don’t have to go out of my way, and I tell them I’m not. I enjoy helping. I enjoy people in general. I find them very interesting, and many times they are characters. Talking to them is fun.”
Ken says he also helps people with car trouble. “Being a farm boy, I offer to look at it and give them an opinion. We aren’t supposed to jump a car with a low or bad battery. But I do it anyway. People sometimes need help.”
One negative thing happens when he comes in the morning and seeing that transients have destroyed parts. “We leave it really clean at night, and with nobody to watch all night, some people bust into the vending machine, or toss things around and break them, so it’s not fun to see that in the morning.”
“I always come in a half hour early, because I love it. I put the flags up, check the water count, clean the bathrooms, do office stuff. People have asked me how long I want to keep doing this. I tell them, ‘until I’m a hundred.’”
Comments