Everyone
wants someplace to call home. But for me back then the house on Randolph Avenue
had long since ceased being my home. After living in Europe it was simply a place
to crash while I waited for my life to take some semblance of order. It was
where I was raised but no longer belonged.
So
finding that sad old relic of better times on University Avenue marked the
beginning of another world I was about to enter. A cauldron of cast-offs and
bottom feeders which accurately reflected where my head was at and where I was
going…in no particular order. Disheveled, messy, chaotic and rudderless yet
always angling for a better direction.
The
Twin Cities has a long history of collecting enclaves of immigrant families and
other bottom feeders who haven’t yet assimilated into modern day society. This
apartment building was just such a place. It was Swedes Hollow, the Bohemian
Flats, Little Italy and the West Side Flats all wrapped up in a half dozen
squalid cut-up apartment units. As time progressed that area around the
University of Minnesota, especially around Dinky Town and the West Bank, became
my own microscopic version of Greenwich Village.
And
as the song lyrics go ‘most of my changes were there.’
It’s
become part of my lexicon now. Not because of some foolish notion that it
represented my ‘glory days’ or the ‘best years of my life.’ And hopefully not
because it might sound like the musings of an old man. It was, instead, a
moment in time long since gone but still captured in a few faded photographs
and dusty vinyl jackets which help poke probing fingers of inquiry into that
slowly fading memory bank cached inside my head. For those places and people
and events all help define who and what I have become…and strive to be.
That
white ghetto came to represent all those individuals I knew and loved and lost
touch with over the years. It was the silly and foolish things I did and
thought. It was all those wild aspirations and stumbles I took in the right
direction. It was accidents that didn’t happen and a few that did. It was all
those seemingly innocuous events that changed my life and laid the groundwork
for a lifetime of story-telling in one form or another.
So while
some oldsters may lament their sometimes checkered past or lost years I choose
to embrace them as a reflective exercise. While some may scowl at rekindling
the past by saying ‘it’s best not to look back’ and ‘let the past be,’ it is
for me very personal. It was a time of
my lost years.
That’s
a lot of accolades to pile on a rundown hulk of a building in a poor part of
town. When first constructed around the turn of the century the building was
reflective of an expanding and prosperous Minneapolis. The huge structure was
home to a prominent businessman and his growing family. By the time I moved in
it was owned by a shady real estate investor from Saint Louis Park who would
never dare venture into that neighborhood at night. I had to go to his ethnic enclave
of real estate ‘bottom feeders’ to sign my lease.
My
unit on the second floor had been carved out of a once spacious master bedroom.
The building had been chopped-up, divided and then subdivided into probably
illegal apartments for whoever could afford the cheap rent.
There
was a group of graduate students from Pakistan below me and odd assortments of
humanity in the other units who seemed to come and go with the seasons. The building
was, at once, a rundown hippie hangout, a nightly excuse for under-age drinking
and sexual affairs and a sketchy abode for a wandering soul.
The
overall mantra of the place seemed to be “Say Hi,” don’t ask questions and
ignore what’s going on unless you think the place might burn down. In
retrospect, I think I was nuts to live in such a dump but it suited my
lifestyle back then and my frame of mind. I thought of my place as bohemian
chic. Visitors might have had a different impression. Shortly after I moved
out, they tore the building down and left an empty field.
Three
women encompassed my frame of reference for that period.
First
there was Sheila who had moved on with her life by that time while I was still
trying to find mine.
Then
there was Susan who was seeking the holy grail of life’s direction just as I
was. She needed focus in her life and together we helped one another search for
that shining light. Susan and I used to sit on her creaky front porch and waxed
philosophically about life and love and what the future might hold for us.
She
was significant in my life for several reasons, not the least of which was that
we were both seekers. It was a collision of my time and space with hers. For a
long time we were in the same orbit, thinking and living life alike, and
traveling that strange road to maturity. We were both hungry. And with similar
family backgrounds, we both found ourselves struggling to grab a handhold on that
slippery ring called a career.
And
finally there was Sharon waiting in the wings until such time as fortune
brought us together at KTCA; the Public Television station.
After
a couple of months working/writing at the Public Health Department, I ventured
down Como Avenue to the studios of KTCA. They weren’t hiring at the time but
they were glad to use my volunteer services in the evenings. I learned the
craft of television from the ground up. It became my first real job where I
never felt like I was working.
As
significant as that old television building was in my life, even more prominent
was a bar on the West Bank. That den of ear-busting music, sweet-smelling haze
and questionable characters figured prominently in one of my first novels
entitled “Love in the A Shau.” On the surface the Triangle Bar was a rundown
three-two joint with intoxicating music, cheap beer and loud crowds that came
to see, be seen or just smoke a joint in the corner. Beneath the surface it was
my baptism into another life
During
its heyday, the Triangle Bar became the flash point for a burgeoning music
scene centered on the West Bank. Since they didn’t card, the bar attracted a
lot of U of M students. I’m guessing the term ‘jail bait’ was first coined
there.
But
beneath that surface melting pot of hippies, junkies, college drop-outs,
undercover cops and other assorted flotsam from civilization came a wonderful
collection of lost souls and seekers. Every night brought another stimulating
conversation with some colorful character who usually gave a false last name,
lied about their background but presented fascinating suppositions on life and
love and war and college and our future in general. It was a true college
education outside of the classroom.
They’re
all gone now. Removed like push pins off a bulletin board of icons long since
dis-appeared. My apartment on the avenue, the Triangle Bar, the old Public
Health Department building on campus, crumbling Dinky Town, Newman Center with
its folk music, the Grandview Theater and its foreign films and a dozen other
sad-eyed structures all razed by a bulldozer called time. It was a sometimes
conflicting confluence of attitude and interest, circumstance and focus, goals
and objectives. And ultimately it led me to the stability I found in another
human being who was opposite of me in almost every way.
Isn’t
life strange that way?
