In 1968 as a seventh grader living in Hartford Connecticut I remember the riots that broke out in that town following the assassination of Martin Luther King. One of my most vivid memories was breaking the news of the assassination to my grandfather as he was unable to secure a cab at the Greyhound Bus station in Hartford as he was attempting to make one of his famed "surprise" visits to us from Washington DC. He then felt he needed to cut his visit short as we all viewed on the television the sights of Washington going up in smoke.
My first visit to Minneapolis Minnesota was in 1963. My mom was close friends with the Rowe family and we were there to visit with them as there were on a business trip there. Yancey Rowe, .we called him Uncle Yancey worked for the US Post Office and Minneapolis was the city where much of the development of the Zip Code was taking place I experienced my first Minnesota State Fair then.
In 1963 as a kid I had not the faintest idea that a chunk of my adult life would be spent living in Minneapolis Minnesota and now as grandfather myself, I was experiencing the same type of unrest I saw as a seventh grader in 1968.
For a moment thoughts of fires and unrest passed as the Jefferson Lines bus pulled into the Taco John's parking lot which also served as the Jefferson Lines bus station in Little Falls Minnesota. I saw Dara and the boys waiting for me. Just before leaving the bus I quickly pulled off my mask so that Dara wouldn't see me with one on. When Dara saw me leaving the bus she jumped out of her car to greet me with a warm and welcoming embrace. It was good seeing Dara in the flesh. This time it was in a completely different setting than the sterile cubicles of Capella Towers and much better than the Zoom and Facetime chats we had been engaged in. Once I got into Dara's car I shook hands with the boys. The boys were nice and polite but they also had a protective sense about them. Boys get extra protective of their single moms when they're acting friendly towards any man besides their Dad.
The sereneness surrounding Dara's farm served as a contrast to the helicopter noises, the explosive sounds and chants I had been hearing the night before in Minneapolis. Cows grazed on the property next to Dara's. We sat in chairs amongst the tall grass I had only seen previously through camera lenses while facing the barn silo on her property. Here the biggest concern was supposed to be checking for ticks but in our heads the noises and images of crowds in the streets we were both familiar with made checking for ticks a secondary concern. The news coming from Minneapolis became the focus of conversation as Dara and I smoked a bowl of Minnesota's best homegrown weed.
"What the hell is going on in Minneapolis?" Dara said half choking on the hit she just took "I need to get my mom out of there" "Did you see that Minnehaha Liquors got robbed?"
"Yea I used to go there all the time when I worked down the street" I had a friend who cashiered there for a long time. She doesnt work there anymore"
" I'm wondering how the Schooner Bar survived.. after all the Auto Zone's gone, those new apartments they were building and the Wendy's are burnt to a crisp."
Dara laughed" I wouldnt be surprised if the drunks that hang out there formed a bucket brigade to keep that place from burning down!..my mom told me that she used to hang out there told me to NEVER go to the Schooner! "We'll deal with the garden later. Let's go for a ride"
Dara,the boys and I piled into her car and we took a little road trip to Lake Superior in Duluth Minnesota. I always liked spending time in Duluth,it's a friendly little town and home of a great local music scene..if it only wasn't so cold in the winter! The winds blowing off Lake Superior are no joke! Luckily this was May and not January. The boys appreciated my joining them for a session of skipping rocks in the Lake.
We were all getting hungry.There was no way we were going to eat in Duluth. Too many places were still shut down post the lockdown and those that remained open were likely to have some mask or vaccine mandate to enter. Wisconsin didnt have those mandates and was one of the last states to lockdown. There are two bridges that lead from Duluth Minnesota to nearby Superior Wisconsin. One of the bridges was named after a World War 2 pilot. That bridge is also a favorite of various potheads to cross into Wisconsin or to enter Minnesota The fact that its named after a World War 2 pilot isnt why potheads got cheap thrills from crossing the bridge. The pilot's name was Richard I Bong thus it was in the last name BONG why potheads claimed the bridge as their own. As we were crossing Dara said "If the boys werent here we'd be breaking the law right now" I replied "and I bet the Wisconsin police are quite aware of that possibility with everyone who crosses this bridge" Sure enough as we crossed into Wisconsin there were officers ready to pull people over. The boys chimed in "Mom don't lie you're a slow driver!"
The restaurants in Superior were crowded and one couldn't help but to notice all the cars with Minnesota plates parked along the Wisconsin streets.
After a great meal it was time to head back to the Farm as it was beginning to turn dark outside. When we arrived at the farm Dara said she was going to have some alone time with the boys. She pointed to her fridge "Open it" she said When I opened there was a six pack of Summit Pale Ale waiting for me. How did she know this was one of my favorite Minnesota beers? Did I tell her?
"Help Yourself" she said and "I'll meet you in the guest room in a few hours"
Time in the guest room was giving me time to catch up with various messages I had been ignoring during the day. Most were coming from my friends in Minneapolis sending me their reports as to what they were seeing and hearing as things were happening. Little did most of them know that I was just a few hundred miles away from them and will be back in Minneapolis in another day or two before returning to Colorado.
A smile came to my face when I got word of the Wells Fargo Bank off Lake St and Nicollet Ave ,a place I had worked at for 2 years, a place I called Stagecoach Robbers given their banking practices as well as how they treated their workers had burned.
"Good" I thought "They fired me"
It was a few hours before Dara showed up in the guest room but show up she did. The first time she talked with me about visiting her at the farm she talked about rolling around in the dirt. Getting down and dirty in the garden did not happen this day but based on what she was wearing or not wearing, a rolling around of another kind seemed possible. In the encounter back at Capella Towers where I was told I practically ignored her she talked about my ass being the best in the office now there was being little left to the imagination as to what was beneath her well rounded bottom
"Shhh..we cant wake up the boys"
Call it fate,call it an act of JAH, Gods or Goddesses but I believe one action can change an entire direction of life. .like the time a woman came into a retail shop I worked at just before closing. The time it took her to shop caused me to miss my bus home. That day I ended up going to the hospital before getting home. I learned later I had Stage 4 cancer and doctors told me if I had gone home chances are I wouldnt be here today. That shopper didn't know it but an entire life's direction was changed by that one action
Dara did have her phone with her.. "Turn your phone off" she whispered. She was in the process of putting the phone down and laying next to me. It seemed inevitable as to what was going to happen next when Dara glanced at her phone one more time. It did sound like a message had come in,
" David dont turn your phone off! Minnehaha Liquors is on Fire!"
The noises emanating from the guest room were not the sounds of a man and woman enjoying physical company for the first time since our respective breakups but rather the muffled sounds of hands covering each others mouths preventing each other from reacting and screaming as we watched the fire erupt and eventually engulf the entire building in flames. Our only hope was that no one was in that building because anyone inside had no chance of surviving. I began to wonder about the fate of the Gandhi Mahal restaurant just across the street from Minnehaha Liquors. Gandhi Mahal was my favorite Indian food restaurant in all of the Twin Cities.
"David David look! The police station is on Fire!" Since the Death of George Floyd crowds had been gathering in front of the Third Precienct Police Station. The size and anger of the crowd had been increasing forcing the police department to abandon the building so on one level seeing the station in flames was no surprise but the very sight of seeing the station going down was sobering putting it mildly
Next to the Police Station is the Hook and Ladder Theater. At one time that building housed a fire station but in between its life as a fire station and its present incarnation as mostly a music venue it was known as Patrick's Cabaret. Patrick's Cabaret was noted as one of the finest performance art venues in the country. I was once lauded for my work at Patrick's Cabaret ,once banned for my work at Patrick's Cabaret and lauded again for my work at Patrick's It was inevitable as close as the Hook and Ladder was to the Precient station that it was to be torched. I had too many memories in that building "No No this building cant go down"
The police station was an inferno at this point. My eyes were glued to the fire waiting for it to hit the Hook and Ladder. Meanwhile Dara is getting new information
''The Ivy Building is on fire and the Hexagon Bar has burnt!"
Now why would anyone want to burn the Ivy Building I thought..Who has something against an Art Gallery?
Dara had more bad news for me "Gandhi Mahal restaurant is no more" We looked at each other.
For Minnesota natives and longtime Minnesota residents what we were experiencing was a shattering of myths of sorts. If in any place the phrase "It cant happen here rang true, Minnesota was the place. Disturbances happen in Los Angeles, St Louis New York or Chicago Not here We're the land of 10,000 lakes, Ice Fishing in the winter, Family gatherings at the cabin Up North. Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon and Prairie Home Companion. Prince said Minneapolis is the place to be because its too cold for bad people. This is the land of good liberals Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale Paul Wellstone! It cant happen here. Yet it was and we were seeing it with our own eyes.
The reaction to George Floyd's death was now moving beyond Minneapolis with reports of protests popping up in cities around the United States and around the world. It certainly changed the course of direction in a guest room in rural Minnesota. Instead of falling asleep in each others arms,we woke up,our hands holding and snuggled next to our phones still showing images of destruction and with messages still coming from friends
Dara drove me back to Jude's house in Minneapolis as she decided it was time to get her mom and bring her mom Up North. I was more than willing to take another Jefferson Lines bus back to Minneapolis but she insisted and in catching a glimpse of the gun she was packing for the trip I was not about to argue. She left me in front of Jude's house in the same way she greeted me in Little Falls. People were walking by as we were saying our goodbyes. Words from Dara echoed her father's as she drove off " Fuck you Gov Walz Fuck your masking and social distancing laws! Fuck your laws!"
In 1968 I remember having to cut our games of street baseball short because the City of Hartford was imposing a curfew following Hartford's disturbances. Later that evening I looked out the window with amusement when I'd see police officers driving down our middle class black neighborhood street. In my neighborhood there were no signs of unrest.
I returned to a different looking and feeling Minneapolis. The Chatterbox Pub two blocks from Jude's house was boarded up. A few blocks in the other direction stood Matt's Bar home of the world famous Juicy Lucy burger. It was closed and boarded up too. I took a walk around the neighborhood partially because I wanted to see for myself what had taken place . I glanced at the nearby Holiday. It was burnt and boarded up. So was the Subway store across the street. There wasnt a business in sight that wasnt burnt, boarded up or full of graffiti. I flashed back to the sights I saw in 1968 near my Dad's office in Hartford's North End after the King riots.
The remaining two days in Minneapolis were spent with the city under a curfew. One might think with all that was taking place that I'd want to return to the quiet isolated life awaiting me in Colorado as quickly as possible. That wasn't the case I all
When I moved to Minnesota for the first time in 1988 I was reluctant to make the move but was persuaded to do so by Former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy whose newest political campaign I was involved with. In persuading me to make the move,McCarthy told me "There are elements of the culture I think you'll like"
I didnt see it at first. The winters were cold! I got a case of frostbite my first year. I didnt know anyone. The people I initially stayed with were complete strangers prior to my move. There's a reserve about Minnesotans,that can make it difficult for those not born and raised in the state but over time I began to see what Sen McCarthy was talking about and in the midst of all that went on in the aftermath of George Floyd's death I was reminded of much of what kept me in Minnesota for the better part of 20 years
Pop up food shelves began springing up in the neighborhood. Jude and I stopped by one held at the shell of what was Minnehaha Liquors..by the way across the street from Minnehaha Liquors stood Hook and Ladder Theater still standing.
A food truck near Jude's house gave away free vegan meals
A group of hippies punks and Somali immigrants patrolled the West Bank neighborhood thus protecting that area from harm and preserving Palmers Bar for future visits.
On my last day in town I was part of a gathering at Powderhorn Park where citizens gathered to talk about the future of the city. I saw lots of familiar faces,some never knew I had moved away.
A longtime friend,a Minnesota native from the small town of Litchfield once told me "For someone whose not from here you fit into this culture well"
Flying home I increasingly saw myself as a Minnesota Transplant living in Colorado
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