Old Man River

The Mississippi River gnaws its way through the Twin Cities like a dull knife on bark. Sediment and ever-changing currents have maligned its banks for centuries. Yet, much like my fascination with Lake Nokomis, I’ve always harbored a deep affection for the better sister of ‘the Old Muddy.’

The river is one of those icons that I can leave for a long time and yet return to with the same affection and emotions that it draws out of me every time I return to its sandy banks. The river has been with me my entire life. Just as I have grown and changed and meandered in different life directions, so too has this mighty river.

It played a subtle yet important role during my ‘lost years’ when I found solace, comfort, and companionship along its ever-changing shoreline. It was, at once, a place to go to get lost, to engage in worldly conversations, life-changing decisions and distractions from the reality of the moment.

One day, a visit to the river might mean a winter hike exploring its rocks and crevices with a friend, coffee thermos close at hand. The conversation has long since been forgotten; the cold not so much.

The next time, it could be offering up my car hood as a solar blanket to keep my girlfriend warm.

It was a moment in time for silly things like that.

Other times, it meant slipping down its rocky embankment for a solitary walk along its shores.

While I was working at Twin Cities Public Television, the station produced a documentary on the river and its special draw to Minnesotans.

It highlighted the river’s long and storied history as a landing spot for fur traders and steamboats. The film chronicled its importance to the commerce and industry that fed both cities, but especially the small hamlet of Saint Paul.

It’s been labeled the Port of Saint Paul and has long been a harbor for small boats on Harriett Island.

All through high school, I would hitchhike everywhere I went. One familiar route was down along Sheppard Road; a route that bordered the Mississippi River all the way to downtown Saint Paul. There, along the banks of the old river, sat the shacks, hovels, and homes of generation upon generation of immigrants who worked the river and factories in the city. Those immigrants who collected along its shoreline below the High Bridge finally evolved into St. Paul’s own Little Italy before its demise after the floods of 1965.

Anyplace along the river was always a great place to go on a date. Not just to make-out if that was on the agenda but also to wander and wonder and philosophize about anything under the moon.

The monument was just such a collective spot.

Once known as Shadow Falls, the monument was erected to honor the soldiers of World War I. Over the years, its surrounding landscape and accouterments have changed and evolved with the times but its overlook never fails to impress even the most familiar of visitors.

When I was living in near-squalor by the University of Minnesota, I would sometimes wander down to the riverbank across from downtown Minneapolis with Susan in hand to look and imagine where we might be in the future.

Susan and I would map out our lives, talk about our careers respectively in television and nursing, our dysfunctional families and everything we had in common. We would wax and wane philosophically about where we might be in ten years. Those salons of hopeful dreams were exciting, fruitful, and fulfilling for the moment, even though at least one of us knew, quite unspoken, that our future of pastel colors and soothing flavors probably wouldn’t include the other person.

Now fast forward almost fifty years and I’m once again wandering those Mississippi shores. When Sharon goes to her art class in Norde East Minneapolis, I find myself, once again, drawn to the river.

The times have changed, old friends come and gone, but the river remains constant. Old and sometimes slow like me, it continues its meandering down toward the gulf of Mexico but leaving behind all those wonderful old memories just piling up along its translucent transparent shores. It speaks to me of youth and inexperience, love, loss, success, failure, and most of all, longevity.

Nothing remains the same, they say.

Yes, I reply, but some things never change.

Long Rider

My Mother's statue of the blessed Virgin Mary in my backyard.

Walking on hard-packed snow at twenty below zero feels like crunching bubble-wrap with your feet. Crawling out of a warm bed at 4:30 in the morning can be just as unnerving and traumatic. Even the Blessed Virgin Mary was buried under three feet of snow.

The cold air nips at your cheeks and stings your skin until the clothes pile on and almost by rote behavior you begin the arduous task of delivering newspapers once again. It was my first fleeting taste of entrepreneurship starting in seventh grade.

The one saving grace to that morning ritual was my salmon-colored transistor radio and the wonderful story-songs it painted in my brain. A world of flashy cars with long fins and beautiful young maidens. The intoxicating sound of rock and roll and all those rebellious images it conjured up in my malleable mind which in turn only lent more fuel to an already rampant imagination.

I thought about those deep winter sojourns when I took my first of many long distance bike rides early Saturday morning. It has long been a summer ritual for me before writing, yard work and the grandchildren’s athletic schedule steal time away from such casual pursuits.

There is something very special about those springtime rides that bring back a plethora of memories. Growing up on Randolph Avenue, Cretin High School and the College of Saint Thomas. Warm summer romances. Late night excursions along the river. Walking hand in hand with that someone special who will probably be replaced by another someone special the following summer.

I guess in our youth such shameful girlfriend swapping is all part of the teenage roller coaster of life; a portrait of angst and pathos switching places with love and lust at seventeen. Living and loving and learning all within a couple of square miles of one another.

Riding down Summit Avenue this morning before dawn is a challenge. I haven’t had my coffee yet and there’s no iPad and quiet time before the rest of the world wakes up. Later on in the summer it’s a more relaxed ride because the morning air doesn’t creep under my layers to bite at my skin. I don’t have to wear long pants and gloves to ward off the chill and the sweat comes more slowly.

There are few runners out this early in the season unlike later on when everyone is training for Grandma’s or Twin Cities marathons. The Tour de France wannabes haven’t yet begun to cluster around my coffee shop before their race down Summit Avenue. Today it’s only the hardcore die-hards or marginally insane who are out exercising this frosty morning. Crossing the bridge, I see the U of M rowing club is out before barges crowd the waterways.

Much like another blog At the corner of Fairview and Summit, this ride will take me past a lot of my old haunts and a retracing of my other lives. Most of those old places are now generations apart from where I am today. But they still bring back a boatload of memories, most of them good and a few very poignant.

 It’s so early on Summit Avenue the governor is still asleep. My first romantic breakup after Sunday mass took place just down the block. At this point in my three marathons I was pretty much a walking, jogging zombie; each step as painful as the last. I worked briefly for the Catholic Archdiocese in the James J. Hill Mansion. Sharden Productions, Inc. and related real estate ventures were conceived in those oak-paneled halls.

The Little French Church. Eight years of Catholic education. Daily mass because we had to and public transportation before it became hip.

  

Moved with public television down to Lowertown when it was still empty warehouses and parking lots. Now it’s a hip thriving ‘happening’ place for millennials. Nearby the Mississippi River has long been a magnet for the land-locked before Laguna Beach and the PCH fueled my own latent surfer’s imagination.

1158 Randolph Avenue. Built for Eight Thousand Dollars by my Mother and Uncle Joe in 1948. A comfortable nest for a wondering wandering mind, blind ambition and soaring expectations. Eight years traveling by bus to grade school in downtown Saint Paul. By high school, I couldn’t wait to escape a dying downtown.

  

Cretin High School. A pivotal point in my life and solid respect for education. The first taste of love or whatever it was back then. A thirst for knowledge that hasn’t gone dry after all these years.

Courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Senior dance Cretin High School - Courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Myself and Joyce at the Senior dance - courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Melanie’s home is just two blocks off of my old paper route. Here the latest rage is teardowns and larger homes because the neighborhood has gotten so hot. Who knew? Fifty years ago we couldn’t wait to ‘get out of Dodge.’ Now they’re flocking back to raise their families in my old backyard.

There’s something about this place that still draws me back even in the chill of early spring. And it has nothing to do with the images that corporate and government Minnesota want to paint for outsiders.

Forget about what the PR hacks are saying or the Chamber of Commerce’s latest spiel about the glories of living in Minnesota. Forget our professional (subsidized) sports teams or even dare I say, Garrison Keller’s Prairie Home Companion as a folksy homespun version of Grandma’s tales of yesteryear.

Instead I’m talking about a culture of intrinsic family values, a creed of hard work and an unapologetic pride in being from here. They say our cold weather leaves just the strong of heart behind. I touched on this in my blog: Going Home Again. Whether it’s true or not, it is a moniker I subscribe to.

 

Some might argue that I’ve abandoned my state because I spend winters elsewhere. While it’s true I’d much rather hike a mountain in January than shovel snow, I’d like to believe I’ve earned the right to escape when I can.

Delivering newspapers at twenty below zero was a tough way for a kid to get started in business. But there were valuable lessons learned back then.

And besides I always had Buddy and Ritchie and the Big Bopper to show me the way.

On the Corner of Fairview and Summit

Its strange how one street corner can so clearly define a person; caught between the intersection of middle class and poor. How one location can highlight specific milestones in a person’s life amid critical junctures of multiple careers verses a mundane existence.

I guess it all began on the corner of Fairview Avenue and Summit Avenue in Saint Paul around 1924. Just 18 years old, my Mother had left the family farm for the big city. With just a sixth grade education (because she had to stay home to feed the chickens-seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!) she ended up as a maid for ‘those rich people’  on Summit Avenue. Think ‘Upstairs, Downstairs or ‘Downton Abby’ without the accent. It was back in a time when the delineation between rich and poor was very clearly defined and enforced.

 

Fast forward many years to a home on Randolph Avenue (not that far away) where my mother, with the help of her brother, built her own home and my sister and I were raised. Then it became my neighborhood and upon reflection, I’ve come to realize that a lot of my life was defined, refined and affected by that neighborhood.

 

 There were some good memories back there. Bus rides downtown to St. Louis Grade School. Walking to Cretin High School. A paper route that netted me $70.00 a month which was enough to pay for Cretin and give me a start at St. Thomas College. Finally graduation and the beginning of my ‘lost years’ and eventually focus and direction.

 

I discovered foreign films at the Grandview Theater while I was searching for myself. Beginning with the ‘Carry-On’ comedy series from Great Britain. Then French films with their candor in speech and skin, the Italian films that I could never understand, a few Australian films and finally back to the English films that probed the soot-covered grayer part of the life over there and in my own life. 

My first concrete recollection of Fairview Avenue and Summit Avenue was one of reflection amid the angst of an exaggerated demise of a fractured relationship. In retrospect, it was a long-time dying. I think she knew it was over between us long before doubts began to scratch at my brain. Even a trip back out east to mend fences fizzled and smoked but never flamed. It continued to linger on…at least in my mind. Until I finally got the call that inevitably ended with ‘but we can still be friends’ and that was about it.
 

The next day, I hitch-hiked to school and got as far as Fairview and Summit. I walked the rest of the way down Summit Avenue on that late winter sunny morning, humming a song I’d just heard on the radio, “Where have all the Flowers Gone” and in an instant the song created a memory implant that I still experience very clearly whenever I hear the song again.

For reasons I don’t really understand, that song became a wonderful standard for me to reflect upon the end of that part of my life and the wide open expanse of whatever might lie ahead. Of course, at the time I wasn’t so clear and focused and reflective. Instead I was feeling very sad and sorry for myself. Like Colleen in “Love in the A Shau” it was probably a smart move on her part but it hurt me a lot nevertheless. I love that song now not because of that incident but instead because of the memory it congers up of the bright sunlight reflecting off freshly fallen snow, the sound of my boots crunching on hard-packed ice and the self-induced bravado I filled my mind with to overcome the overwhelming sadness still lingering just beyond my consciousness. It worked and the song stuck.

Fast forward many years later, 16 to be exact, and I had investment properties just a half block away. After college, living in Europe for a while, a burgeoning career in television and starting up my own business, I took the next step. I’d always wanted to get involved in real estate. So with income from my business, I became a landlord.

 I should have taken better notes because the stories I could tell would either be regarded as pure fantasy or ‘Tales from the Crypt.’ I tried to do everything right and for the most part I was re-warded with wonderful folks to serve as their landlord. But with a large number of people moving in and out of my buildings over thirty years, there were always a few standouts.

The fellow who lived in the basement for more than 16 years. He collected recyclables and had most of his apartment space covered with black bags of pop cans, paper ware, etc. He slept on a couch because his bedroom wasn’t passable. Nowadays, he’d be considered a hoarder. I just saw him as a bit eccentric and a great conversationalist. Despite all trash bags of stuff, he never once had any problem with pests or other bothersome critters. Amazing.

The time I got a call at 3:00 am because part of the ceiling in the living room had just collapsed on a guest sleeping on a sofa there. It turned out that the ceilings in each unit had been anchored (years ago) by wire instead of being nailed to the ceiling supports. I had to vacate each unit over time and redo each one of those ceilings.

The time I got a call around midnight in the middle of winter because water was pouring into a tenant’s closet. It turned out that the drain pipe which exited the rain water off the roof had frozen and was blocked up. I got drenched as I pried the outside pipes apart so that the water could drain off the roof and not backup into the building as it was doing.

The list could go on but it really wasn’t any different from any other landlord in an older apartment building. There was the peeping tom I never could catch. The wonderful garden I planted for myself and the tenants. My kids made good money there helping me on weekends. Ax Man and Riding Shotgun with Peter Pan

I had another couple who never owned a car and just got around by their bicycles. They were way ahead of their time. The rest of us are just catching up to bicycle transportation now. We still exchange Christmas cards with those folks.

I had another tenant who delighted in doing all my yard work for several years because she liked to work outdoors. I bought the flowers and plantings and she did the rest.

I lost heat in the middle of one winter. It was twenty below outside. That phone call came at 3:00 in the morning and the furnace wasn’t going again until 9:00 the next morning. Made for some scary hours with the fear of pipes bursting all around me.

But, once again, I met some wonderful folks over the years, anyone of whom I’d love to see again. Well, almost every one of them?

The corner of Fairview and Summit became my starting point for my almost daily four mile runs. My route took me past the College of St. Catherine’s, down along the river boulevard, past the Monument and finally back past the College of St. Thomas.

Passing the College of St. Catherine’s always brought back a plethora of memories from visiting friends in the smoker and being all nervous around so many girls (women, really), to school dances (like I knew what I was doing), to getting my date back just before curfew. I can still remember the one time I saw her maroon ‘66 Chevy two-door hardtop parked on the street right after our breakup and ironically never knowing that my future wife was on campus at the same time.

The duplex on Randolph Avenue that was our first home right after marriage. I remember the crazy lady downstairs who was always listening to our footsteps and complaining. Taking care of my sister’s kid there and wondering what it would be like to have one of our own. We lasted for just over a year in that location before shipping off to another job in Chattanooga, Tennessee…but that’s another story. 

               

Summers were glorious on the river boulevard with their cooling breeze off the river and hordes of other runners, bikers, joggers, boarders, walkers and dog-handlers. Winters were a bear with the cold harsh wind blowing off the river and my slow methodically trudging through hard-packed ice and blowing snow. By the time I returned to my corner, I usually sported a walrus mustache and soaked layers of clothing. If I had stopped, I probably would have frozen in place. 

                   

The Monument was where a lot of couples have consummated their friendship. Not me…I was never that brave or foolish. Although I’m told it’s still a great make-out place.

My college career began and ended at the College of St. Thomas over a six year period of time. I first started in the fall of 1961 and finally graduated in the spring of 1967. In between was two years struggling at CST then running out of money and transferring to the University of Minnesota which was an unmitigated disaster. Then the service and finally back to St. Thomas and finally graduation and off to Europe.

I’ve been in a number of foot races down Summit Ave over the years. Some went well, others not so much. My kids never understood why I was running if I was never going to win the race.

It was also the starting point for my training runs with Melanie for the Twin Cities Marathon. The first summer of training ended with an undiagnosed stress fracture that put me under for six weeks. No marathon that year. The second summer of training was shorted by a popliteal cyst which cut my training time down to sixteen weeks. That turned out to be the exact distance I ran in the marathon before ‘dying’ out there. A Life in Pictures. 

Now, long after the buildings have been sold and my marathons are a thing of the past (I think),  I still find myself occasionally on that corner, bicycle under foot and ready for another one of my long distance bike rides. 

I’ve paid my dues and I don’t have to go back there anymore. Yet it’s always a joy to be biking down the Avenue, letting the wind blow between my ears, thinking happy thoughts and humming that familiar refrain “Where have all the Flowers Gone” amid the beauty swirling all around me.

And in my memories.