Well, at long last the Julius C. Wilkie has been reduced to flinders and toothpicks -- albeit rotten flinders and toothpicks.

It wasn't Winona's finest hour.

I can't say I had any great love for the boat-shaped building at the foot of Main St. It was a Disneyfied misconception of a remarkable era; a structure that was neither historic nor contemporary with as close to an anti-functional design as has ever been foisted upon a good intentioned community.

Built on the cheap, haphazardly maintained, never open and forever in the red it was a only a matter of time until the whole edifice collapsed in upon itself. A few hours and a backhoe finally put it out of its misery.

But the tragedy that finally played itself out last week had little to do with bad plans and poor lumber. After the original Wilkie\Pierson burned, the Winona community rallied to replace what had been lost. People dug deep, writing checks and tossing change into collection buckets sitting at virtually every checkout counter in town. Winona invested money and spirit in what was promised to be a lasting representation of their heritage ... and Winona was badly shortchanged.

But at long last it's all over, but for carting away the rubble. Hardly a good, definitely not a happy, ending. But an ending.

Let's learn from it.