I snuck away this past week, to go and visit the town where once upon a time I lived. It is a two-hour and 20-minute drive away, so maybe “snuck” is not the right word to use.

I had the chance to visit with some old friends. And by “old,” I mean they have been my friends for many, many years. And, yes, by “old,” I also mean they are getting to be quite old.

So am I, I suppose. But that is another story, for another time.

One of my so-called “old friends” happened to tell me that he had recently stopped in Blue Earth and had seen the Green Giant and he commented it was pretty impressive.

Wait, what?

I jumped on him. “You were in Blue Earth and stopped to see the Green Giant and you didn’t come and see me?” I asked, a bit loudly, causing everyone to cease talking and pay attention to me.

“Well, yeah,” he sheepishly said, adding that he was traveling to a wedding in Austin and didn’t have a lot of time to stop and visit.

But he did have enough time to stop and see the Green Giant. What does the Giant have that I don’t have? I mean, besides being a whole lot taller, and you know, he’s green.

Then I asked everyone if they had seen the Green Giant. They stammered and looked at the floor, and slowly admitted that, yes, maybe they had seen the Green Giant statue, while they were traveling along I-90 on their way to a wedding/funeral/family reunion/Twins game/vacation traveling to the Twin Cities/ Rochester/Wisconsin/Iowa, etc.

Doesn’t everyone stop in Blue Earth to see the Green Giant? Well, yes, there are thousands and thousands of visitors at Giant Park, the Giant Welcome Center and the Giant Museum, every year.

That is the point of having a 65-foot tall statue of a giant who is green and wearing a bunch of leaves for clothes. He brings people to Blue Earth.

He is pretty famous, and he shows up in some unexpected places.

Just recently I saw him in a book called “Driving Miss Norma,” which is about a 90-year old woman who has a fatal disease and foregoes treatment and instead travels the U.S. in a motorhome with her son, daughter-in-law and a poodle.

It is a true story.

They make 57 stops across all of America (and one in Mexico) over a couple of year’s time and one of the very first places they stop is, of course, Blue Earth, Minnesota, and the Green Giant. There is even a photo of the big guy in the book. It is one of the very few stops they make in the Midwest or in the center of the country, for that matter.

It is a pretty interesting book.

But, I digress.

And then there was the other day when I opened up the Mankato Free Press and there inside was a copy of the recent The Land publication, and splashed across the entire front page was a photo of, yes, you guessed it, the Green Giant statue in Blue Earth.

Inside the publication there was a nice story about the Giant and the Giant Museum, and the huge collection of Green Giant memorabilia that belongs to Lowell and Vicki Steen. It is a pretty good story. Perhaps you saw it.

But wait, what? I happened to glance at the byline on the story and it had been written by someone named Richard Siemers.

Richard Siemers was my back-door neighbor for many years, when I lived in that town that is two hours and 20 minutes away from here. I knew he wrote for The Land publication as a stringer.

So, my wife, Pam, and I emailed him and chided him for being in Blue Earth and not looking us up, his “old” neighbors.

He responded he would have liked to, but he was on a limited time schedule for the interview and it took longer than he had expected.

He did say he was, however, very impressed with the Green Giant, the Giant Welcome Center and the Giant Museum.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

While it might not be easy being green, it is also not easy playing second fiddle to a giant green statue. But, with that infectious smile of his, it is pretty hard to stay upset with the Big Guy for very long.

And, I guess I can’t stay upset with old friends either. I mean, I guess I might blow them off, too, if it was a choice between visiting with them or seeing a big, and I mean really big, celebrity.

Ho, ho, ho.