Minnesota Tough

A couple of years ago, Minnesota endured two polar vortexes back-to-back. It was hardly a new phenomenon; just another Minnesota season with a new label and dire warnings of impending doom. Call it the enthusiastic effort of news directors to get as many eyeballs glued to the television screen as possible…media rating wars and all that. Why not be honest and just say it was another cold winter with a polar ice cap nestled snuggly over Minnesota’s crown. Any veteran of the cold wars will tell you there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. It was hardly the first harsh winter and certainly not the last that Minnesotans have endured.

As a friend described the weather when he was growing up, he simply stated with a shrug: “It was either snowing or below-zero. Those seemed to be our only two weather options all winter long.”

Of course, everyone bitched and complained about the brutal weather because that’s what most Minnesotans do during the heart of winter’s assault. But they endured and persevered and survived the cold and white-outs and accumulating snow. And they will do so once again this winter.

I endured Minnesota winters for almost seventy plus years and wouldn’t want anything less for my own children and grandchildren. It’s what makes Minnesotans…Minnesota tough. I love Southern California during the winter months but four seasons beat plain vanilla temps every time.

When I was younger, I’d heard the cliché that where you are born and raised leaves an indelible mark on your consciousness no matter where you end spending the rest of your life. I personally experienced that phenomena first hand when I was in the service.

Back in stone-age of 1964, San Francisco was a pretty spectacular place for a young, untraveled, hungry soldier stationed just outside of civilization. Not far beyond those military gates were more than the Seven Wonders of the World. It was the Haight-Asbury neighborhood, North Beach, Stanford, Sausalito, the North Coast, Half Moon Bay and the Big Sur....just to name a few.

But I was forever struck by the fact that where a person is raised can forever imprint a pull back to home no matter how strong their wanderlust might be. Many a night over pizza and beer my comrades and I would reminisce about our ‘life back home.’ It was nostalgic, exaggerated and ripe with fond memories, real and imagined.

If given a choice, I would have returned to Minnesota in a heartbeat. My buddy Daniel wanted to go back to standing on a street corner in Brooklyn; not doing much of anything except just watching his life passing by. Joe wanted to go back to the Southside of Chicago where he and his buddies would also just ‘hang out.’ Johnson wanted to go back to Mississippi to be with his family. Cruz wanted to go back to East L.A. So, there we all were in this glorious cornucopia of entertainment but like sailors on shore leave every man one of us would rather have been back home.

Certainly, part of it was homesickness, missing our girlfriends, missing out on what our friends were doing. For me, it was a combination of a girlfriend back home and college which I left as a dropout; both now out of reach for at least two more years.

But what was it that was drawing my mind back to that hinterland of snow and ice and cold and long winter nights. Simply stated, I guess it was my place of origin. It was what I knew best and what ultimately had and still does define me.

Growing up in Minnesota wasn’t so much an exercise in toughness as it was simple survival. You did what you had to do to earn, learn and play. And you don’t let the stupid weather get in your way. Earning money meant a paper route starting in seventh grade that included sub-zero winter weather at 4:30 in the morning, wearing galoshes and walking uphill both ways. Learning was shuffling across the college campus during a white out without hat and gloves because it wasn’t cool to wear them. Play was the pure pleasure of hiking in the woods for the serenity there.

Both my kids have grown up in Minnesota. Melanie still runs outdoors year-round and Brian, having moved to Colorado, is usually on some mountain top, skiing or climbing almost every winter weekend…with his family following right behind him.

The grandkids in Colorado are as comfortable on a mountaintop as are the Minnesota grandchildren sledding in sub-zero weather or playing king of the hill when Papa is back in town.

Forget the lame attempts of ‘Fargo’ clichés such as ‘yeah, you betcha’ and other Scandinavian accents to define a Minnesotan. If you were born and raised here and even if you’ve move away, the toughness that helped Minnesotans endure Minnesota winters is ingrained in your very psychic.

Minnesota Tough is not just a learned trait, it’s homegrown.

Minnesota Tough

Minnesota endured two polar vortexes this last winter. It was hardly a new phenomenon; just another Minnesota season with a new label and dire warnings of impending doom. Call it the enthusiastic effort of news directors to get as many eyeballs glued to the television screen as possible…media rating wars and all that. Why not be honest and just say it was another cold winter with a polar ice cap nestled snuggly over Minnesota’s crown. Any veteran of the cold wars will tell you there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. It was hardly the first harsh winter and certainly not the last that Minnesotans have endured.

For the uninitiated, the polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near either one of the planet’s geographical poles. They usually span less than 620 miles in which the air circulates in a counter-clockwise fashion. They’ve been around forever but are a bit of a headache when they spill down over the states. I think it’s their length and the depth of their freezing temperatures that rankles even the toughest of Minnesotans. Combine those serious below-zero temps with constant snowfalls and it was a very tough time for most Minnesotans this last winter.

As a friend back home described the weather to me, he simply stated with a shrug: “It was either snowing or it was below-zero. Those seemed to be our only two weather options all winter long.”

Of course, everyone bitched and complained about the brutal weather because that’s what most Minnesotans do during the heart of winter’s assault. But they endured and persevered and survived the cold and white-outs and accumulating snow. And they will do so once again starting next December.

I endured Minnesota winters for almost seventy years and wouldn’t want anything less for my own children and grandchildren. It’s what makes Minnesotans…Minnesota tough. I love Southern California during the winter months but four seasons beat plain vanilla temps every time.

When I was younger I’d heard the cliché that where you are born and raised leaves an indelible mark on your consciousness no matter where you end spending the rest of your life. I personally experienced that phenomena first hand when I was in the service.

Back in 1964, San Francisco was a pretty spectacular place for a young, untraveled, hungry soldier stationed just outside of civilization. Not far beyond those military gates were more than the Seven Wonders of the World. It was the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, North Beach, Stanford, Sausalito, the North Coast, Half Moon Bay and Big Sur....just to name a few.

I was forever struck through conversations that where a person is raised imprints a pull back home no matter how strong their wanderlust might be. Many a night over pizza and beer my comrades and I would reminisce about our ‘life back home.’ It was nostalgic, exaggerated and ripe with fond memories, real and imagined.

If given a choice, I would have returned to Minnesota in a heartbeat. My buddy Danny wanted to go back to standing on a street corner in Brooklyn; not doing much of anything except just watching his life passing by. Joe wanted to go back to the Southside of Chicago where he and his buddies would also just ‘hang out.’ Johnson wanted to go back to Mississippi to be with his family. Cruz wanted to go back to East L.A. So there we all were in this glorious cornucopia of entertainment but like sailors on shore leave every man one of us would rather have been back home.

Certainly part of it was homesickness, missing our girlfriends, missing out on what our friends were doing. For me, it was a combination of a girlfriend back home and college which I left as a dropout; both now out of reach for at least two more years.

But what was it that was drawing my mind back to that hinterland of snow and ice and cold and long winter nights. Simply stated, I guess it was my origins. It was what I knew best and what ultimately had and still does define me. 

Growing up in Minnesota wasn’t so much an exercise in toughness as it was simple survival. You did what you had to do to earn, learn and play. And you don’t let the stupid weather get in your way. Earning was a paper route starting in seventh grade that included sub-zero winter weather at 4:30 in the morning, wearing galoshes and walking uphill both ways. Learning was shuffling across campus during a white out without hat and gloves because it wasn’t cool to wear them. Play was the pure pleasure was hiking the woods for the serenity there. 

I got a harsh reminder of Minnesota winters three times this season. We were drawn back home to help Melanie with her campaign for State Representative. It was truly Four Weeks in Purgatory.

We first returned in December for Christmas which wasn’t too bad, weather-wise. Then in January in the midst of their polar vortex and again in March for more cold weather and snow storms. Even the birds and squirrels were on hiatus during the coldest days. It was a cruel adjustment from t-shirts and flip-flops to layered clothing and hats and mittens.

So this year I was once again greeted with that old familiar chorus of complaints about record-breaking snowfalls and 60 plus days of below-zero weather. The polar vortex was camping overhead for days on end and the darkness of winter days was playing havoc with one’s mindset. 

On the flip side of that frozen coin, the first day of 30-degree weather brought out the t shirts, an abundance of runners, bikers and convertibles with their tops down. It’s what Minnesotans do when the sun comes out and the temp is above freezing. It’s seen a taste of spring even in February.

Both my kids have grown up in Minnesota. Melanie still runs outdoors year round and Brian, having moved to Colorado, is usually on some mountain top, skiing or climbing almost every winter weekend…with his family following right behind him.

The grandkids in Colorado are as comfortable on a mountaintop as are the Minnesota grandchildren sledding in sub-zero weather or playing king of the hill when Papa is back in town.

Forget the lame attempts of ‘Fargo’ clichés such as ‘yeah, you betcha’ and other Scandinavian accents to define a Minnesotan. If you were born and raised here and even if you’ve moved away, the toughness that helped Minnesotans endure Minnesota winters is ingrained in your very psyche. 

Once Minnesota Tough always Minnesota Tough.

Four Weeks in Purgatory

Campaigning Under a Polar Vortex

We landed in hell at around 2:30 on that January afternoon. It was an overcast yet sunny day. Outside the terminal, the wind was blowing hard and there was a 45 degree below zero wind chill. Welcome back to Minnesota under the polar vortex.

The weather wasn’t as advertised…it was worse. After being born and raised in Minnesota, I was used to blowing wind, biting cold and snow so deep you had to do chest-presses just to get over those miniature dirty white mountains.

I’d been there many times before. In grade school, delivering newspapers at 4:30 in the morning and trudging through the snow at twenty below zero. In college, unloading trucks at a wind chill of 80 below zero. Years later, I’d occasionally find myself running in white-out conditions because I hadn’t gotten in enough mileage for that week. The unrelenting cold has always been a pain in the derriere and on the extremities. But we were there for a purpose and a little blanket of sub-zero weather wasn’t about to deter us from our objective.

My wife and I had just left the warmth and comfort of Palm Springs to support our daughter who was running for State Representative in her district…64B in Highland Park, a neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota. We were going to be back home for two weeks in January. Then another two more weeks in March just before the district convention which would decide who was running for that position of State Representative. It would be a total of four weeks in purgatory.

The return trip home for a total of four weeks meant I wouldn’t be writing…anything. I wouldn’t be exercising at the gym. I wouldn’t be running trails or bike riding. There were a lot of things, board meetings, neighborhood gatherings, etc. happening back in Palm Springs but they were all on hold for now. We were needed on the home front.

The campaign was shaping up to be a very tough contest for everyone involved. It was Melanie’s first plunge into running for state office; a veritable baptism of fire. A lot of folks who might have been able to help her had already committed to one of the other candidates or didn’t want to get involved at that level. There were six other very qualified candidates, most of whom had done this kind of campaigning before. The ‘good old boys network’ was supporting one candidate and long-time party activists had attached themselves to another one.

Our daughter, who was stepping into the election ring for the first time, was earning her SHK (School of Hard Knocks) bruises, blisters and kudos as she went along. There were good days and bad. It was a roller coaster of emotions with loving support, financial commitments, surprise turndowns and disappointing phone calls. It was a newspaper article that called her simply a ‘stay at home mom’ as if that was a bad thing while it ignored her deep involvement in the community. But through it all, Melanie persevered and kept to her grueling campaign schedule.

To be honest, Melanie had worked for a large law firm and spent considerable time at the capitol working for the same representative who was now leaving office. She knew the rules of the game and the enormous time-commitment it took. We were simply back in town as back-up babysitters and sounding board and encouragement coaches. It’s what parents do for their kids…no matter the age of their kids.

Two weeks of campaign work along with babysitting for most of that time wasn’t as much a chore as it sounds. It meant precious time with my daughter as I chauffeured her for door-knocking in the neighborhood. It was stuffing envelopes and fund-raising. It was squeezing in time to see grandma in Wabasha and stealing time for coffee with an old friend. It was making up new nighttime stories every time as I put Brennan and Charlotte to bed. It was making snow angels with them and playing King of the Hill in three above zero weather.

 We did another two weeks in March which pretty much followed the same pattern. The weather wasn’t as bitterly cold but it wasn’t Palm Springs blissful either. The travel put some real roadblocks in my seasonal participation in my writers group, the Palm Springs Writers Guild, city activities and neighborhood involvement. We never really had a chance to get involved as we had during other seasons. Perhaps next year.

When we were done and the campaigning was over, we slipped away on a Sun Country escape …until spring and another return flight again. We did what you’re supposed to do when one of your kids needs help. We’d do it again…in a heartbeat.

           

 

Oh yeah, Melanie didn’t get the endorsement…but it certainly wasn’t for her not trying. She lost that race and yet won in so many other meaningful ways.

Through this process, strangers and simple names on a card became ardent supporters and life-long friends.  Melanie went from a stay-at-home mom to someone with real campaign chops and war stories to tell. She went from Speech and Debate in high school to real-world campaigning in front of standing-room-only audiences. She went from mothering her kids to formulating political positions and strategies in neighborhood, city and state political circles. She went from a virtual unknown four months ago to a known and respected entity in the world of politics in Saint Paul and Minnesota.

She gained notable name recognition that no ad campaign could have done better for her. She earned the respect of the other candidates. She created a heightened awareness among the ‘in crowd’ that there was a new player in town. In other words, she won…big time…in the game of politics and life. What more could you ask for?

I can’t tell you how proud I am of that young woman who took a chance, put her life on hold and ‘went for it.’

Was four weeks in purgatory worth it?

Hell, yes!