From Arizona to Minnesota life is always interesting for Nugget Fields

Nugget Fields grew up in Arizona and is a first generation American as her grandmother and mother both were from Mexico and they spoke Spanish all the time at their home. Her father, George Stevens, was a rancher and was also involved with law enforcement in the Patagonia, AZ area. Since her father was also a gold miner he gave her the unusual name of Nugget.
Her father died when she was two years old and after a few years her mother remarried. The family moved to Evansville, Indiana for 10 years before moving back to Arizona and it turned out her future husband, was born in Evansville and had also lived in Evansville when they were there.
Her stepfather insisted that her last name be changed to his last name Stone, she said.  “I heard more than enough smart comments going to school when they would call out my name,” Nugget said. She explained when she married Robert Fields in 1965 it meant she had four different last names and was only married once. Talk about an issue to get things correct when she applied for a passport the first time!
She attended the University of Arizona studying in the field of Elementary Education. She started teaching in Tucson, and after being married they lived in the Anaheim area in California for less than two years. Since they were close to Disneyland, a lot of things in the school had a Disney focus.
The couple moved back to Phoenix and she found a teaching position in the inner city. She was only the second white teacher in the school’s history and the school enrollment was 98% black students, she said. She said she had a great principal, who was a former NFL player, so there were few discipline issues as no one wanted to get sent to the principal’s office more than once. She added she was issued a “Board of Education” paddle but only used it once when she caught a student stealing items from her purse and then lied about it.
Nugget recalled an incident where two eighth girls were fighting at school recess and not knowing quite how to handle the situation, she went up to the girls and just told them to stop doing that. Amazingly the girls stopped as they were not used to such low key behavior from their teachers and the other teachers were also surprised as they told her “we always get enough help when that happens.”
Another time she noticed two first grade girls had toothpicks in their ears so brought them to the office as she thought there might be child abuse going on. The girls were not gone long and she found out from the school nurse that they were getting their ears pierced, so she learned something new again, Nugget said.
On her way home on a very hot 112 degree day her car stopped on the freeway and you get desperate in the heat. Of course at that time they did not have cell phones but soon a car pulled up behind her and a big man got out, came over and asked if he could help. He told her he would take her to a garage and since she knew some close by, she rode along. When they started going past the ones she recognized, she started holding onto the door in case she would need to jump out as this might be getting to be a problem. Finally they stopped at a garage and the man said  “I took you here since my brother owns this one and he will get your car fixed.”
When working with youth in the inner city she would often hear the rough language being used on the playground. Instead of telling them it was bad she would say “we don’t use that kind of language at school” since it was probably what they were used to hearing at home!
During a summer school pre-K session in Phoenix, Nugget noticed a young boy was tapping a live bullet on his desk and trying to make it go off. She took it away and he ran home across the street.
Later that day there was a knock on the classroom door and a lady appeared and asked if she was the one that sent the child home from school. Fields said she did and the lady hugged her and told her “I’m Big Mama” and said it looks like you need some help around this room. She became a welcomed friend and it turned into a great class.
Work was slowing down for Bob in Arizona so someone encouraged him that there were jobs in the Twin Cities so he traveled to Minnesota to find a job. When he was there in November, it was cloudy and raining and Bob thought this would be a great place for duck hunting and they should make the move to Minnesota. They started out for Minnesota with their young son and two dogs in the middle of January wearing their summer clothes. Their first stop was in Texas and it was cold and their unprepared cars froze up and needed to be winterized the next day to keep going.
Nugget said she always would wear shorts but quickly found out she needed to buy different clothes to live in this cold climate. When she was driving near the end of their Minnesota trip she kept noticing her car had a hard time stopping and thought there must be something wrong with the brakes so she stopped at a garage. When she told the station operator of the problem he looked at her Arizona license plate and said “lady, we call that ice in
Minnesota.”
When they moved into their home in Bloomington many people in the neighborhood came over
to their place to introduce themselves and brought food as they were wondering why these folks came from warm Arizona in January to live here.
Their first week in Minnesota, Nugget called all her relatives in Arizona to tell them that it was 30 below and the kids were walking to school. They couldn’t believe it. In Phoenix they had just closed the schools because they had too much rain. Minnesota kids are tough!
Nugget said she never wore socks until moving to Minnesota so found out quickly why we do in the winter. She also learned to drink coffee.
After a couple of years her husband found a job with IBM so they moved to Rochester where she did some part time work. She found out about a Title One job at Kasson-Mantorville so she came over to talk with Principal Gary Purvis. While waiting to talk with Gary, a man came by and asked what she was looking for and she told him. He said “I am Sig Anderson” and she said “Sig Anderson who?” He said “I am the K-M superintendent and I could hire two others for that job for the same cost as one of you.” He finally said stop by next week and sign the paperwork and Nugget said she told him “maybe I will or maybe I won’t” and that became a running joke for years during their many conversations.
Sig would always make arrangements to leave school for golfing at 3:45 p.m. on Thursdays so she would show up in his office about 3:25 p.m. when she needed something done or needed various supplies. Since he was in a hurry to leave, Sig would tell her he needed to check it out first and Nugget said would say “you make the decisions around here” and usually her request was taken care of.
Nugget loved teaching and especially her wonderful co-workers and students at K-M. She taught a total of 40 years, 28 at K-M, one year in California and 11 in Arizona teaching grades kindergarten to eighth at K-M.
She taught remedial reading and Spanish and really enjoyed the first grade students as she would see their young minds start to bloom..
She taught classes in the summer at St Mary’s University for teachers working on their masters
program.
One student always came in late bringing his newspaper and would proceed to read it during class. When she asked him why he did that he said “that’s what I always do” and Nugget said “not in my class! If you want to quit we can refund your money.” He stayed on and took every class he could after that and commented how much he learned in her classes.
Nugget had always lived in the city but now she was a county girl when the Fields moved to a farm site south of Kasson. One day Bob had gone to an auction and told her he had bought her a present. It was an Appaloosa horse but it would never listen to her commands compared to the other horses they had when she was riding.
They would feed the horses each day using a black bucket and one day a lady stopped by selling some product. She was carrying a dark briefcase and soon that big horse started following her closely, bumping the briefcase thinking it was food. It didn’t take long before the woman crawled under the electric fence to get away and left, Nugget said.
Nugget learned some new terms in Minnesota when people would ask them to come over for dinner. She was used to breakfast, lunch and dinner. In Minnesota, they would use breakfast, lunch, dinner, lunch and supper so she would ask them just what time are we supposed to come since lunch was usually coffee and a pastry.
Shortly after moving to the farm site, Bob said they needed to have the septic tank pumped out. He was at work when the septic tank service stopped out the worker asked her where the tank was located and Nugget pointed to the LP gas tank. The fellow said “please have your husband call me when he gets home from work!”
The Fields used to have a flock of 40 sheep on hand, she said, and during the lambing season in mid-winter they would take the newborn lambs in the house to keep them warm and they would put them in a box by the boys and their beds at night.
If the sheep would be out in the pasture when she came home from school, she would check on them to see if any toppled over on their back and the boys would roll them back on their feet as just like a turtle they couldn’t get up.
One evening they noticed someone was out in the yard and when they called out the person ran away yelling April Fool and left a big billy goat tied near the yard light with a note, “to one old goat from another.” That goat was a real pest as it would sleep by the front door of their house and would try to chase people when they came over.
When she found out it was a local banker, Nugget brought a chicken in a cage to the bank when he was gone and put it on his desk. Shortly after that the billy goat also disappeared from their place.
Nugget started raising guineas in 2007 and has had as many as 43 but now has 19 as the fox and hawks are tough on them so she needs to keep them in a house, especially at night. The guineas do a great job of keeping their yard free of ticks. They started noticing they were having a rat problem under the shed so she starting trapping them and one morning when she opened the guinea shed there were eight rats hanging on the screen door looking out. It almost seemed like one of those Hollywood scary movies, she said.
In 2001 she was feeling tired and after the tests the doctors said she needed to have heart surgery and not do anything as she had three blocked arteries so this was very serious. She told them it was Thanksgiving week and she had company coming, plus she had the car packed and was driving to the cities to give a speech that evening, which she did.
While she was waiting the following Monday for the surgery in the hospital, no one came in her room and was wondering why. They found she had eight blocked arteries and she started thinking “God I just don’t have time to die now as I have too many things yet to do.”
When Sig Anderson heard about her heart operation he called her and told her he was surprised as he didn’t think she ever had a heart!
The Fields have two married sons and four grandchildren. Jonathon is a doctor living in Iowa but also comes to the Olmsted Medical a couple times each week and stays overnight at their place when he is here. Their other son, Stephen, has a law firm in the cities.
A new rambler house was built on their place in 2013 by her sons replacing the old farm house, so it is certainly handicapped accessible if the need ever occurs.
Nugget said she is not involved with a lot of activities as she was so busy when she was teaching but likes to read and also plays dominoes a couple of times each month with a group of women. Nugget said they have a feisty young German Shepard in a training (boot camp) school for 20 days to teach the puppy obedience. She said they have had 11 dogs during their 55 years of marriage so she is not sure why they are starting with a puppy again at their age.
For a person that said she didn’t have many interesting life stories, Nugget has certainly had some great experiences to share with all of us!