Mississippi

As a feckless youth, many a fine summer's day was spent on the shores and in the water of the mighty Mississippi river, literally a stone’s throw away from my boyhood home. We were always warned “stay away from the river” and drownings, although not common, were by no means unheard of. In the middle of July the water would usually be quite low so that most of the river, excepting the main channel, was 3 or 4 feet deep. This was the time for drifting. We’d put on our old tennis shoes and shorts, a ripped t-shirt and last year’s baseball cap and hike a couple of miles upstream. There we’d wade in about a third of the way across, and then drift down with the current, bouncing off the bottom for several miles until we reached Old Camden, where the long abandoned shingle mills once stood. There were sand bar islands there, with rope swings or, if we did brave the mainstream and cross to the other side, the city waterworks. We would climb the scaffolding above the water intake, and dive into the only really deep part of the river.

We weren’t totally reckless and we learned respect for the river. We learned the indication of a sunken tree that could trap you underwater, the hazardous current by the islands, and we also learned to most important lesson about swimming in a river:

Always go with the flow. It'’s too hard to swim against the current. If you want to cross, aim downstream, let the river push you and take you where it will let you go. Watch out for hazards, keep your wits about you, but don’t fight it. You’ll get where you want to go, but not by the shortest route. It is dangerous and you will get a little muddy but that’s the joy of it.

Pack Ice

Driving over the Mississippi River (on a bridge) I noticed that the ice had been breaking up and drifting down in floes. That reminded me of a time, some forty years ago, when two of my classmates thought that a semi-frozen river was a good place to play.

Barry and Dan were down by the river at a spot called “Old Camden”, where the remains of a nineteenth-century shingle mill had been located. The weren’t any structures, just a few pieces of concrete here and there, and the sluiceway that fed the old mill. The boys had been poking around the shore and found a dead cat. In an act of idle curiousity they threw the cat on an ice floe that was circling in a back water. The cat and the floe continued in their oscillation. Feeling brave (or was it just stupid) the boys hopped on the floating berg. They too went round and round. Barry, as teen-aged boys are wont to do, grew tired of this activity and leapt on shore. The extra kick from his leap pushed the floe out into the mainstream. Dan was now the captain and crew of the USS Icecube, heading down the river.

Oh, did I mention the waterfall? But that’s getting ahead of the story.

Dan was adrift, and too far from shore to jump and, with the water being a cozy 33° F., swimming was not an inviting option either. Barry was on shore and was, as teen-aged boys are also wont to do, laughing. Dan was getting scared now. A passing motorist saw his plight and phoned police. The fire department brought out a boat to the nearest landing—about two miles downstream. Just before the waterfall. There was quite a crowd when they snatched Dan from what could have been a watery grave.

The next day, there on the front page of the newspaper, was Dan, drifting down the Mississippi on pack ice, in the middle of February. He became a local legend. No one else ever tried to copy that stunt, however.

Most teen-aged boys, thankfully, aren’t quite that dumb.

Thinking Inside The Box

One third success. Two-thirds disaster.

The New Guthrie Theatre complex is complete. My Weekend of Culture (see previous post) continued with a tour and preview of the facility that is located on the banks of the Mississippi River in Downtown Minneapolis. The theaters themselves: one is a thrust stage—virtually reproducing the legendary original—one is a conventional proscenium, and the third is a small (250 seat) experimental ‘box.’ Thankfully, they are excellent, the thrust stage in particular maintains tradition and actually has had some of the old one’s problem areas ‘massaged’ a bit. I fully expect that those improvements will be appreciated more and more as the season progresses. The backstage and production areas (both of which were extremely limited in the old theater) have reportedly been elevated to the state of the art.

So: what, you may ask, is the problem?

A theater is, basically, a box within a box. There is the inner box, the sanctum mysterioso, where the dramatic experience happens. A place where technical requirements trump any ‘aesthetic’ concerns, once the house lights go down “The play’s the thing” as it should be, the form truly follows function.

The outside of the box, the architectural face the theater presents to the world, is massive, cold and impersonal. Even the laser-etched graphics suggest a remove from reality. Its scale and appearance are more suited to a race of metallic 40 foot tall robots than puny flesh and blood humans. Here is another take on the externals from Lileks.

In the critical space between the outside and the inside is where the "theatre-going experience" takes place. This is where couples and groups meet and talk before, during and after the performance- where people see and are seen by each other. The coldness of the exterior is magnified in the interior, with dark, gloomy spaces accented by stainless steel and black enamel, Euro-Moderne circa 1960. The creepy hallways around the main auditorium are dismal, with tiny and crude photographic scenes from previous productions as the only decor. There is, of course, the skyway to nowhere: a stunt of a cantilever which is, thankfully, a bit brighter and opens to a balcony that overlooks a vital and often ignored component of Minneapolis: the Mississippi River. A bird’s-eye (God’s eye?) view is hard to condemn although this view is somewhat distant and removed from the immediate surroundings. Elsewhere in the complex there are tinted windows that allow partial vistas of the neighborhood, these views should improve as development continues (although the specter of a sea of tacky billboards and banners is always a possibility.)

Lest I seem reactionary in my opinions, consider these facts: in the old theater's common spaces, you entered and were bathed in north-light, you could see (and be seen) and connect with people on all levels, on the mezzanines, on the stairs, on the patio, even with those in the street with the beautiful sculpture garden beyond. All of this made you a performer in a wonderful, three-dimensional play with gorgeous lighting, a sense of expectation and drama—a completely integrated experience! Contrast that with entering the new building: dwarfed by unadorned (except for the vapid laser-etchings) 40 foot tall walls (hope you like gray), torture-chamber furniture and a vertiginous/claustrophobic 200 foot 4 story escalator to take you to the lobbies. Kafkaesque is the first adjective that springs to mind.

The stakes in this project are high ($135 million, about 1/3 taxpayer money) so I wish it well. If it can elevate the performing arts in Minnesota's cultural scene, so much the better. We will support it (and the actual theater company, under Joe Dowling's direction has been superlative) with our typical Midwestern enthusiasm (“ya, it was pretty good”) and hopefully the new venues will bring back the excellence and daring of the 1960s, when Tyrone Guthrie created a dynamic and challenging ‘theater.’
I heard Sir Tyrone speak once, in 1967- he was brilliant, espousing a theater of danger, one that was a threat to mediocracy and complacency, a theater that made a difference. You’ve gotten your new theater Joe, bring it on, but don’t ask me to linger in those hideous lobbies.

Walking on Thin Ice

When I was young and the weather would turn cold, in late November or early December, I would head down to the Mississippi River to savor the crisp, translucent ice that formed along the shore. Large shelves of luminescent crystal, with the burble of the running water underneath a siren's call for daring exploration. Every child in our neighborhood had been instructed to stay away from the river, especially in the winter, you could never tell where it was too thin to support you.

But that was the challenge. It was a game, pointless in that you won nothing, nothing except the absence of an icy soaking (which you already possessed by staying on the shore!) While you were working up your nerve you would hear the ice crack, or see a large shard break off; there was absolutely nothing to give you reassurance that your little game would end in anything but disaster. Of course, if you weren't ready to tackle the mighty Mississippi, you could try your luck on tiny Shingle Creek, 12 feet wide and only 3 or 4 feet deep, at worst you might get a wet foot, or perhaps a soaking up to your knee. It was pretty tame, and grew old quickly. So sooner or later you ended up on the big ice, on the river, and by some miracle of divine intervention you didn't die.

Although some were braver than you:



Dan didn't die either, and that was truly a divine intervention.

Down By The River

Friday Fiction

“So… can you tell me a story about a river?”

“About a river?”

“Yes, I’m curious. It’s as good a topic as any.”

“O.K. This is about the Mississippi, just down the street from where I grew up. We would swim in it.”

“Swimming… Was that allowed? Was that safe?”

“Hmm… Sort of. Not safe when the water was high, of course. In the late summer it was usually pretty low: three, four feet deep for miles north of the Camden bridge, nice and warm. We’d bounce along the bottom, always wearing our tennis shoes to protect against broken glass and clam shells. Don’t try to swim against the current. We’d heard stories about kids who had drowned there but, armored in our youthful sense of indestructibility, those warnings weren’t given much credence. Now if your taking about biological hazards, there was definitely E.Coli, Cryptosporidium, Shigella and other microbes, a real toxic soup. We knew not to drink the water. None of the guys got sick or anything other than a rash, as far as I know. Girls didn't swim there much.”

“Seldom or never?”

“The main reason was probably the fact we ‘river rats’ weren’t the most socially enlightened fellows. There were a lot of places girls didn’t go, its still true. There was one time, that I can recall.”

“Anyone you knew?’

“Oh yes, Melinda, she was a straight-A student, she was dating Robby, the handsomest guy in the school. Check that, I think see was ‘seeing’ Robby, he was too cheap to ever really take her out on a proper date.”

“He was that handsome? Really?”

“Really. You could look it up in my high school yearbook; Robbie, Hall of Fame: handsomest guy.”

“Ok. What’s the story?”

“It must have been late July or early August. It was a hot evening, probably about 8 o’clock, the sun was low enough in the sky to give the scene a golden hue. It was down by the river flats, 51st and Lyndale, there was sort of a permanent sand bar there—just a sliver—maybe 30 feet wide and a hundred, hundred twenty feet long, with some ancient cottonwood trees big enough to support a rope swing. Robbie and a few of his buddies were on this island, along with Melinda. They swam there often, I had been returning from the store when I saw them. To see a girl down there, swimming, that really got my attention. They were taking turns on the swing; it was fitted out with a plank to sit on. When it came to be Melinda’s turn Robbie gave her a shove as he grabbed to rope above her and deftly swung over her lap and made himself comfortable as they swung out over the water. Melinda was screaming—in glee—not in fright. I think she was having the time of her life. I watched these hijinks for a while, but left when it started to get dark.”

“This was when you were in high school?“

“It must have been between our junior and senior years. Before they split up.”

“What happened?”

“Robbie thought it would be a good idea to get a bj from Melinda’s best friend, Nancy, who, it turns out, wasn’t such a good friend after all.”

“That would do it, for most girls. What happened afterwards?”

“Robbie thought it was a joke, but he had plenty of other girlfriends. After graduation he went in the army and came back, married someone else, then spent his life working laboring jobs. He retired to a fishing cabin up North. Nancy moved out east, never came back.”

“And Melinda?”

“You know, I have a firm belief that if you look too far into any story you’ll always find a sad ending.”

“Tragic?”

“Nothing horrendous, but some might think it sad.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“As you wish. The thing that makes all this sad is that Melinda never got over Robbie’s betrayal.”

“I’ll never fall in love again, huh? I only thought that happened in corny torch ballads.”

“She never dated, never married. She was frank about the situation, she told people at a class reunion that she’d never date, that she’d never get married. She kept her word. She worked as a successful investment broker for a while until she lost big in the dot-com bubble of 1999. Then she disappeared. End of story.”

“Hm. Not much of a payoff. The river part was nice, though.”

“That was nice, a special moment, glorious even, the high-point of Melinda’s life? At any rate, it’s been stuck in my memory for all these years. A Dreiser-esque story without the murder.”

“Mythic is a better word.”

Flood

Anoka, 1997

Recent flooding in the Red River valley brings to mind the last major flood in my town. It was 1997, the same year of the last flooding in Fargo and Moorhead.
Houses had been built on the floodplain here in the late 1890's, before a dam was installed downstream on the Mississippi. After the dam was built, whenever there would be a rapid breakup of the ice on the river it would float down to the dam and cause a jam- if the snowfall had been high that winter, the water would back up in a hurry. After the last flood, the few remaining houses on the floodplain were removed, and the land was elevated about 4 feet. New houses were built (without basements) and the area is stable (at least until it floods 5 feet!)

In the Red River Valley, Grand Forks was devastated in '97 as well. After the flood they also removed all housing from the flood plain and rebuilt dikes to a much higher level. In Fargo and Moorhead they did not. The Red River flows North, to Lake Winnepeg and ultimately emptying into Hudson's bay. Until the spring thaw in Canada, the river is prone to backing up.

About every ten years there is a significant flood in the F-M area. Many of the homes which are threatened or have succumbed to the flood waters are newer, expensive homes, in exclusive neighborhoods. Someone approved their construction and financing.

I don't understand this.

On Both Sides

I was on the river today- a new canoe, a solo rig, only 12' long and weighing in at a mere 33 lbs. Somehow, as one gets older, portaging is not quite the delirious fun it was when one was younger, hence the welcome reduction in weight. I live in a town named "Anoka", legend has it that it is an old Indian word meaning "on both sides"- because a river, the Rum, runs neatly through town- from the north to the south, exiting at the Mississippi at a spot where Father Hennepin once stayed on his 17th century wanderings. In a solo canoe one's attention is always on the banks ahead; are there places sheltered from the sun or wind, are there sunken hazards or speedboats to contend with? When you are out on your own, you have no one else to help you (and no one else to blame) if you end up in trouble.

On the east bank is the River Trail, visible at times, running roughly parallel to the river. On a fine day like this, the trail is full of people, you can clearly hear the conversations of the cyclists and hikers as you paddle past. There are geese, and ducks, and songbirds, and, hidden from view but there nonetheless- are raccoon, groundhog, fox, opossum, feral cats, deer and even an occasional coyote. An egret or blue heron has been known to drop in from time to time. Swamps and prairies alternate with stands of oak and pine. A dozen or more micro-habitats are on display in the two miles that I traversed.

The west bank is "private". There are many nice homes on well tended lots, some with docks, The vegetation is grass, with a variety of shade and ornamental trees and shrubs. I have been going up and down this river for twenty years and I can't recall seeing anybody or any critter on those properties. They have nearly a "twilight zone" aura of emptiness about them. I know people live there, these are premium sites, much in demand.

There is currently interest in the trail lands by real estate and construction interests, who see this land as "undeveloped". Their plans include building expensive homes, even bigger than the ones that already exist on the west bank, for "best use", meaning most short-term profit for them. The trails and natural parkland are already "best use", the city couldn't build or buy anything to replace it. There will soon be a large complex of mixed housing built nearby (on reclaimed industrial property) and the trail property will be used more than ever. Or it will be divided, denuded, developed and destroyed.

Notable Northsiders - Charles C. Webber

When I was young, the nearest place to swim (other than the Mississippi River) was the public pool in Webber Park. The park, its pool, and the attached library were primarily financed by donations of Charles C. Webber and his wife Mary in remembrance of their only child, John, who died when he was ten years old. There was an oil painting of John Webber in the library; I had heard that he had drowned while swimming in the river. That may have been just a story warning us kids (the river was dangerous, but the bravest of us would swim there anyways), but we still enjoyed the pool as well.

The pool, as humble in real life as it appears in the photo below, was a place of mystery- when it first opened (in 1910) girls and boys had separate swim times and the pool itself was surrounded by a high wall to keep out curious eyes. There were separate changing areas; the girls' had booths for privacy, while the boys changed on benches in the open air. In the showers there always seemed to be a hairy old man, soapy and naked and giving the little boys the eye. Most of the guys would quickly shower with their suits on, not the most hygienic of practices, but no one wanted to be thought of as a "homo."


Swimming lessons always started in early June at 9 in the morning when the air was cool and the water icy. The pool was surfaced with a gritty stucco, any scraping on the side or bottom would cause a bleeding rash. There was a diving pool at one end, I never learned to swim well enough to use it. I was probably fourteen or fifteen when last I used the pool, it was for little kids, I thought, although I still couldn't swim well enough to use the diving pool. There were some teenage girls there wearing bikinis, so it still held some appeal. The pool and library have been replaced, but Webber's name lives on. No one ever gave our neighborhood a gift as great.




Webber Pool, 1925. Image: MHS

Anoka Nature Preserve

One of the more subtle perks of living in my hometown is the Rum River, a meandering waterway that makes its way down from Lake Mille Lacs to the Mississippi River. Because its somewhat amorphous nature, there is a fair amount of land adjacent to it that is not suitable for commercial development.  The northernmost part of the river in the city abuts the Anoka Nature Preserve, a refuge with miles of hiking trails in it and links to more.  Since the stay at home order has been lifted, we’ve been spending more time hiking there. Part of the preserve is wooded and there is a pavilion for picnic-ers, although the tables shown here have been since transported to become “social distancing seating” for downtown restaurants:



There is also a farm field in part of the preserve with corn and soybeans in crop rotation. Numerous birds also use the  field as a stopover. I saw these Sandhill Cranes gleaning the stubble last week:



Toads and turtles also thrive in the swampy backwaters that adjoin the preserve:





There is even a hill, a rarity in these parts, that the school children have named “Iowa”:



A bucolic view of my home town (with the Weaver):

Took a little trip down the Mississippi River with my eldest son last week. 40+ miles in two days, with an overnight stay at Dimmick Island (pictured above), about halfway between Clearwater and Anoka, Minnesota.


Our passage was not unobserved. From the huffing and snorting of this deer I got the distinct impression that we weren't entirely welcome. The were other animals as well, foxes (too quick to capture on camera), herons (about every 1000 feet for the length of the trip) eagles, signs of beaver, cows, and even these tracks near our campsite (probably raccoon):



More tomorrow...

The Writer

    It was if she had just floated in from the night mist which hung over the lake. She was a writer.

   The band I was working with had been booked for a weekend at a club in Cross Lake, Minnesota. The pay was OK, and we got the use of a cabin that was right next to "Swede's Oar House." Not exactly the Riviera. After performing most of us would relax in that shack with a sip or two of whiskey to take the edge off. She was French and claimed to work for a European music magazine. Petey had evidently invited her to come up; his interests weren't exactly literary.

   We started in with some stories, Jimmy would play an tune on his Martin and I strummed along on old zither with one separate single string that was set up to be used with a steel, in the fashion of a Dobro. As we played she wrote and wrote (in French) in her little black Moleskine. After a while it was as if she wasn't there. After a further while I noticed that she really wasn't there, neither was Petey. We played again the next night but she didn't return.

   As the years went by I would occasionally hear people talk about her: she was living in a houseboat on the Mississippi River down by the Bohemian Flats across from the University, she was seeing so-and-so, various stories with no real point. I never did hear of her actually publishing anything. The houseboat "community" on the Mississippi was an insular and intimidating group.

The very last I thing I read about her was an oblique obituary in one of the local music papers. A veteran performer and noted writer in his own right wrote a paragraph about the "writer from Paris", who somehow landed in the middle of the Midwestern prairie, burned brightly and then had her light extinguished, she was one of the earliest AIDS casualties.

They said that Louise was not half-bad
It was written on the walls and window shades
And though she'd act the little girl
A deceiver, don't believe her, that's her trade

Sometimes a bottle of perfume,
Flowers and maybe some lace
Men brought Louise 10-cent trinkets
Their intentions were easily traced

And everybody knew at times she cried
Ah but women like Louise they get by

And everybody thought it kind of sad
When they found Louise in her room
They'd always put her down below their kind
Still some cried when she died this afternoon

Louise rode home on the mail train
Somewhere to the South I heard them say
Too bad it ended so ugly
Too bad she had to go this way

And the wind is blowin' cold tonight
So goodnight, Louise, goodnight.

~Paul Seibel, Louise

All Politics Is Local

It was Neighborhood Night Out on Tuesday, where the sociable among the locals meet at someone's front yard with food and drink and get to know each other a bit. Hizzoner the mayor was there (he lives next door) and I got a chance to talk to many of the people I see as I stroll by on my nightly constitutionals. The big buzz this year was the "spruce up the city campaign" or what ever it's called. I've been doing my part, God knows, with shingles, caulk and paint. The couple hosting the event were "busted" for not having their 1 inch wide molding painted (which surrounded three windows.) The windows themselves had been newly replaced and the couple were waiting to finish some other projects before doing all the painting at one time. "Court Action or Fines are possible!" said the notice. Someone at City Hall (but not the mayor, thank goodness!) has a problem of perspective.

This is in a State whose leaders (who carried this city in recent elections) are so parsimonious as to deny a gas tax increase (equivalent to about the price of one cup of coffee per week per motorist) which would have provided enough money to have prevented motorists from crashing to their deaths into the Mississippi River.

But that was last week's news. The school bus full of kids missed becoming a fiery inferno, or being squished under tons of concrete, or coming to rest on the bottom of the river by a second or two. That was "lucky." There has been money appropriated by Congress to replace the fallen bridge, but a proposal for a national gasoline tax increase to prevent this from happening again and again, is already being opposed vigorously. The Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" is proceeding apace, for about the same amount of money. A special session in the State has been proposed to deal with "transportation issues." I'm not holding my breath on any results from that one. But let a few strips of wood sit for a few days without paint- that kind of negligence we'll dispatch with prejudice!

My Back Pages - Green Lake

It may be fair to assume that one does not live in the nicest part of town when your nearest wilderness contains a 10 acre chemical dump.

Such was the case in my idyllic childhood where, a few blocks from my house, a lake of caustic lime (sodium hydroxide) existed for many years, a by-product of an air-reduction plant that manufactured industrial gases for welding and other uses. Children were warned to stay away from the pond. With its eerie cyan-green hue and stifling odor, we were aware of the hazard but this is where we liked to play. If there had been a lot of rain, the lake was big, if it had been dry, the lake bed was exposed—a gooey mess of chemicals said to cause severe burns if left on the skin for any length of time. There were also pipes of super concentrated chemicals; they ran right into the river.

If you were careful, you could walk all around this pit on the firmer areas (wear boots just in case) somewhat similar to walking on another planet, or so we imagined. There were no fences, only a rusting warning sign. People would dump tires in the alkaline lake, earning it the name of “The Tire Farm.” After a while it seemed as if the tires were emerging from a primeval ooze. No one had a sense of the environment in those days. A photo of mine depicting this mess ended up on the front page of the local newspaper and a lot of tsk-tsking was done so the pit was eventually cleared; the lime was used to treat fields that had become too acidic. They built a freeway over the whole area, so now this place is completely obliterated. Lord knows where the tires ended up.

Located close to the Mississippi River, with subsidized housing (and lots of kids) nearby. It was their nearest playground. When it was finally drained and filled (in the late 70s) I-94 was built over the site.



I spent a good deal of time there, it was my “gateway to nature”.

Children can imagine a paradise out of next to nothing, if they have to.

“But now… when that world is no more… the spirits rise up from the well of oblivion. People and pictures from a vanished world are reincarnated and assume a significance which was hidden at the time.” ~ Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing

Unthinkable

Every parent's worst nightmare, played out on TV. The I-35 Interstate Highway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed last night, throwing 50 cars into the water from a height of 64 feet, as it suddenly self-destructed during rush hour. The children on the school bus were all rescued, but there have been reports of six fatalities, with dozens of injured. There will certainly be more deaths as the recovery efforts continue.


This is a big bridge, in the center of Minneapolis, with over 150,000 cars using it every day. The implications of this event will be profound. Until engineering reports come in, it is hard to say exactly what went wrong, but it was definitely some sort of structural failure.

The bigger failure is in the transportation system, a system that has been starved for funds for years, with an administration proud of its attempts to short-change the State of Minnesota. There has been talk of raising the gas tax. In Minnesota, it is a fixed tax, not a percentage. It hasn't been adjusted in twenty years, with the result that it is actually near the lowest percentage of all time. The position of State Commissioner of Transportation is currently a part-time job, held by the lieutenant governor.

You get what you pay for.

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on this from an expert.

Nausea

Today marks five weeks since the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. These five weeks have seen a colossal PR campaign where almost every story, interview or feature in the media has been spun to minimize the horror, protect the guilty and/or further political ends. With the notable exception of Minneapolis columnist Nick Coleman the media, indeed everyone in power has been trying to avoid placing responsibility for this incident. The Governor has had his hacks (including the already disgraced Dick Day) in all the media outlets shilling for him. The Lieutenant Governor, Carol Molnau (who is also the Commissioner of Transportation) has, after one petulant press conference, effectively disappeared. People I've spoken with who actually work for the City of Minneapolis state that the inspection program of the State Department of Transportation (responsible for the I-35 bridge) was extremely lax and the department was not run in a professional manner.

The last injured person will leave the hospital this week, facing years of therapy. All of the survivors are depicted as "lucky." And so the story will fade away. Without any expertise in the area whatsoever, I can just about guarantee that the final report on the collapse, which will be released after the 2008 election, will conclude that a combination of events led to the collapse, and no one is at fault.

Sickening. That these people are still in power, that they haven't been indicted, and, in the Governor's case, is using this sad affair to boost his own political fortunes, is revolting. This collapse was not an accident. It was the logical result of a political dogma that is child-like in its thinking: That the least amount of government is the best government. The world is a complicated place, and requires a complicated, coördinated, and, yes, an expensive approach to maintain a modern society.

I heard it was you
Talkin' 'bout a world
Where all is free
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that
And only a fool would say that
Only a fool...

- Walter Becker and Donald Fagen

Up on Cripple Creek

When I get off of this mountain
Ya know where I want to go?
Straight down the Mississippi river
To the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles Louisiana
Little Bessie, girl I once knew
And she told me just to come on by
If there's anything that she could do



Now me and my mate were back at the shack
We had Spike Jones on the box
She said, "I can’t take the way he sings
But I love t’ hear him talk"
Now that just gave my heart a throb
To the bottom of my feet
And I swore as I took another pull
M’ Bessie can’t be beat




Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don't have t’ speak, ‘cause she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one




Lyrics: Robbie Robertson, ©1969 by Canaan Music, Inc.
Images: Cripple Creek Colorado, 1999

Art-A-Whirl 2013

Abstract Study in Blue, Caitlin Karolczak, collection of the author

It's the third weekend in May, which means its time for the Northeast Minneapolis Art-A-Whirl. I've gotten into the habit of going, there is always something of interest, even if it may not always be the artwork. Most of the studios on the tour are in re-purposed industrial buildings, which sometimes have interesting links to the past:



The very first place I stepped into was the studio of Susan Armington, who was doing a painting/oral history project on the Mississippi River. I talked to her and her most charming volunteer assistant Bridget for a long time about a subject dear to my heart:



There was far too much to talk about in one post, but I'll leave you with this image of a couple of "Art-Cars":



Some people know what great art is when they see it!

The Best Day

When my boys were young we took a trip to Dayton’s Bluff, a natural geological feature that overlooks the Mississippi River near downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. The bluffs were well known, even before the white man, as there are numerous Indian burial mounds on the plateau above the bluffs. There was large cave there that used by the Native Americans for gatherings and ceremonies. The explorer Jonathan Carver “discovered” and named it in 1766. In the nineteen-twenties bootleggers used the cave to store their goods. In recent times, most of the cave has been destroyed to make room for a railroad, but the bluffs were still dangerous,  midnight drinking parties by reckless youths could prove fatal, you could fall or suffocate in the cave. It was into this locus I brought my pre-teen sons. Child endangerment? Perhaps. We had a good talk beforehand about the dangers this place possessed and they were duly impressed. We had a good time clambering up and down the cliffs.

We lived on a sand plain, so any elevation was a novelty to the boys, and the bluffs supplied that. There were plenty of places to climb, and the soft sandstone was festooned with carvings:

Chuck, the youngest, was enthralled:

For Seth, the oldest, this was the start of a long fascination of climbing. He later became adept at mountaineering and parlayed his skill into many trips to the North Shore, the Rocky Mountains, New Zealand and Antarctica:

As I look at these images I wonder what kind of parent I've been. I managed not to have killed them but I did put them in harms way that day. But kids have to be exposed to the natural world sometime, even if it can be dangerous it has to be better than just living a life of computer games and TV.

It was the best day ever.

Paradise Found and Lost?

               “There is no there there” ~ Gertrude Stein

Memories of past domiciles can, if one is prone to nostalgia, haunt. Every place I’ve ever lived previously is now completely altered: I really can’t go home again.

The first half of my life was spent living in four houses, at three locations in Minneapolis.
My early years were spent at 5122 North Third Street, in a tiny 2 bedroom house (built in the 1920s) that was part of a funky little neighborhood near the Mississippi River, the lot it was built on had been a livery stable at one time:



It was removed for the I-94 freeway in a process that took over 20(!) years. Ironically, where that house once stood never became part of the freeway, the greater part of it is taken up by a berm:



When I was ten, we moved to a much bigger 4 bedroom “Cape Cod” style house (5006 N. Emerson) that had been constructed in the post-war building boom on what had been a potato farm. It was architecturally nondescript, just like hundreds of others in the area:



It was taken out for a new housing “Greenway” project and has sat vacant for fifteen years already, although I have read that the project may be “started” very soon:



When I moved away from home I moved into a strange little building made of concrete blocks with a small kitchen (made of wood) tacked on (brown house on the left) and later moved next door to a Victorian duplex located on the fringe of the North Side industrial district:



This pair housed many of my friends over the span of twenty-odd (sometimes very odd) years. It too was scheduled for the I-94 highway but ended up being taken for “urban renewal” in a somewhat shady land grab and now hosts a bus garage:



I’m not one to cry over spilled milk; nothing lasts forever. The Highway carries tens of thousands of cars everyday; the bus company provides service for handicapped people throughout the metro. But the house on Emerson, the newest house, was torn down to build more houses of a similar size but cost much more. That the land has remained vacant (and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue over the years) in a time when affordable housing is at a premium does stick in my craw, however.

UPDATE: They have just started building on the old Emerson homestead:


R. Lewis

Nate’s Auto Parts

1001 North Fifth Street- Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1972

When I was out and living on my own for the first time, one of my neighbors was the establishment known as Nate’s Auto Parts.

Nate’s was actually run by Nate’s son, Morrie. Nate was long deceased and Morrie must have been in his late 50s when I moved in. Nate’s was spread over a two city blocks with auto parts siting behind fences and stacked on porches. The inventory filled several old houses as well as a couple of commercial buildings. I’d see Morrie from time to time when he checked his stock, sometimes pulling a part or two, but usually he just sat in his office. I can only imagine what the inside of those houses held but in the yards there was a wild mix of springs, axles, wheels and even a few more-or-less complete vehicles.

All of it was old.

The houses Morrie used for storage had been built in the late 1800’s—boom times—and had once housed merchants and their families, people who were then building up Minneapolis and turning it into a center of international commerce. These “Painted Ladies,” as the Victorian houses of that style were called, were nearly falling apart when I moved in the ’hood, but they had been fine homes in their day. The picture below shows one of the houses on Fifth street circa 1900:

                        1101 North Fifth Street- Photo supplied by Henry Lee Griffith

Behind this house was a creek that has now been paved over. It still runs—underground—through North Minneapolis—emerging near its outlet in the Mississippi River. Natural habitat preservation didn’t receive much consideration in those times. There is talk from time to time of opening the creek again, but there is just too much industry lying, in reality, right on top of it.

Ultimately, in the early 1990s, the whole neighborhood was redeveloped and all the people living there as well as the entire stock of Nate’s Auto Parts were relocated. Those old houses were torn down as well, finally erasing the last links to what had once been a vibrant community. A North Fifth Street Story