Going Back to the Old Country

My apartment on University Ave

‘The Old Country’ could be a metaphor for tracing one’s roots back to the origins of one’s birth; spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and philosophically as well. Personally for me, it remains those places, people and events that made me who I am today. And even though the physical remnants may be dust or captured only in my memory vault, the emotions tied to those mile markers can never be erased.

Northrup King Building

Norde East is the new ‘West Bank of the Sixties’ with its winners and losers, seekers and soul-lost vagabonds. It is at once a cliché, hallowed artistic ground for some and a drug-etched campground for wilderness bobos (bourgeois bohemians.) It’s a carry-over from the late ‘70’s new establishment which represented a fusion between the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise and the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture.

The old neighborhood is now a factory for all forms of creativity, from aimless fun to hobby-making to inspirational statements. It has long been a respite from’ the man in the grey-flannel suit’ and the middle-aged cherubs with their everyday ‘pleasant valley Sunday.’

Triangle Bar

SIP Coffee Bar

 

For me it is like going back to the old country. Now instead of the Triangle Bar, I’ve got the SIP coffeebar. Instead of a schooner of beer, I’ve got my notepad. Instead of slumming sorority chicks giving me the eye, I’m rubbing shoulders with millennials, college part-timers and the assorted middle aged dinosaur thrown in. It’s the third stage of a bohemian migration that has occurred during my lifetime. The same ageless cauldron of creativity settling in on the fringes of civilized white cable society.

The term ‘Bohemian’ was first given to poor artists and poets on the Left Bank in Paris in the 1830’s. Twenty years later the New York Times used it as a dismissive term to describe the bohemian counterculture that had settled into the Greenwich Village area of an expanding New York City. A hundred years later, little has changed.

Those societal edge dwellers of the forties and fifties infiltrated Dinky town for many years before meandering across the river to the historic Cedar Riverside neighborhood. They flourished on the West Bank around the University of Minnesota until economic and cultural forces pushed them over to Lower Town in Saint Paul and North East Minneapolis. Then gentrification and rising rents moved the earthier to Norde East for good.

It’s my home while Sharon is in art class. Realistically there is a lot less dreaming and more doing this time around. I’ve already revisited that idea with two other blogs: ‘Resin to Believe’ and ‘Caskets and Carriages under the Torch.’ Yet to juxtaposition my life back then with the present reveals an interesting evolution of thoughts and dreams revisited, revised and in constant motion.

It was Susan and I back then. It is Sharon and I now. Two very different women running parallel tracks in search of something elusive, vapid and yet fodder for their creative souls. I shared that running track back then and still do today. Reflecting back on that era I realize now that so many of my changes began during that creative bush-whacking period. They continue today. Different woman, same vision quest.

Those parallel tracks still run close together. I was seeking back then. I am still searching today. Yet I realize I’ll probably never find that elusive answer until there is only time for reflection left. Susan was searching back then for her self-identity. Sharon is finding her new creative self and peeling back layers of discovery each time she puts paint to paper.

But once again a hint of change is in the air. New construction crowds alongside rehabbing and remodeling projects to change the dusty, dirty old face of Norde East. Brew pubs present a cleaner face to the corner tavern and condos tower hover over rundown tired relics of the past.

This will probably be my last bastion of edge living where I can go slumming among the creatives. By the time there is another migration to newer creative fields, I’ll probably be on my last bike ride. I skipped past Dinky town, lived the West Bank dream if only in my mind and now slip under the cover of journalistic observation to peruse the new haunts of Norde East.

These creative haunts still speak to me. Not for the mind-expanders or the loose living or the aimless wandering in vapid mindless ways. Instead they speak to me of possibilities, reflections, dreams and hopes for the future.’ It’s a creative cauldron of alphabet soup where a writer can dip his soul-exposed pen and etch out on a plastic screen all his thoughts and dreams and hopes and his own foolish ‘what if’s.’

It’s like going back to the old country if only in my mind. Because that’s where it all began and continues on to this day.

On the Road Again

It’s my first long distance bike ride of the season and the season is almost over.

My normal routine of long bike rides was upended this summer by play practice, acting, and finally the production of my own play ‘Riot at Sage Corner.’ I sprinted to freedom the morning after our cast party.

Long distance bike riding, or in reality, meandering - is soul-searching at its finest. It’s yoga on wheels and meditation in the saddle. It’s a rediscovery of past haunts, mis-spent youth, lost love and between the sign posts… myself.  I’m alone with my recollections, dreams, passions and ever-present tape recorder to capture those fleeting thoughts that sometimes go in one ear and get stuck there.

The coffee shop is a welcome sight of iron riders and rail thin runners. These mostly white middle-age athletes are gearing up for several races this fall.  They’re early morning vagabonds who need their cup of Joe to kick-start each day. It’s an eclectic group of support crew, racers, runners and neighborhood hangers-on gathered together to taste the first bite of dawn and forthcoming self-induced punishment. I’m here to look and marvel and suppress my envy.

There are also a lot of runners out training for the Twin Cities Marathon. 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 diehards or marginally insane who are out exercising this frosty morning.

After they leave I’ll begin my Saturday morning meanderings through the Twin Cities. There won’t be an agenda or route to follow. My imagination and ever elusive recollections of times past will point me in some direction. Crossing the bridge, I see the U of M rowing club is out before barges crowd the waterways.

It used to be that during the summer months I’d take long bike rides to peruse my old haunts for changes or as a way to recap old memories still lingering there. But something happened late last summer that altered that perception.

Surprisingly it wasn’t the old haunts that had changed. Instead it was something that clicked differently inside my head that time around. I came to the sobering realization that not only were the old places gone but now they were relegated to the dust bins of history.

The Twin Cities had become a wasteland of relics from my past. A time long forgotten except in black and white photos and old vinyl recordings. Time has that tendency to erase most vestiges of a period and in its place leave only vapid memory vapors that drift in and out of our consciousness from time to time.

The changes were all around me but I didn’t see it until last fall.

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 third and last marathon 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 is now surrounded by high-rise apartments and light rail tracks. For me it was eight years of Catholic education. Daily mass because we had to and public transportation before it became hip. Does anyone remember the street cars which came before buses?

I 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.

    

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 fall. 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.

I don’t think I’ll be retracing my old bike routes anymore. It won’t be because of bad memories. Rather the absence of visible landmarks makes it harder to reconcile memories with recollection, nostalgia with history and reality with a reflective glance at my past. It’s a gravel road that has been paved over.

Yet time is on my side. I still get to look back through old photographs in awe and amazement at what once was while still listening to those old familiar musical refrains. I’m still reliving so much that others can’t or won’t see or feel themselves.

Come next spring, new adventures wait. Charlotte, my youngest granddaughter, is now a two-wheeler like her brother. Perhaps I can enlist them as my posse and together we can discover new routes and adventures around the Twin Cities. I’ll be a younger man then and hopefully still eager to blaze new memory trails for that younger generation.

Perhaps I’ll cross trails with some old memory haunts yet undiscovered.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

Half Jewish

Charlotte has mastered the art of fashioning her own hijab. I’m not sure where my youngest granddaughter learned to tie that Muslim headwear or why she chose the hijab over the Al-Amira, the Shayla or the four other kinds of Muslim veils. She’s only worn it around the house a couple of times and as the weather warms up she’ll probably toss it aside along with her snow hat and mittens.

Not long ago, Charlotte declared to her parents that she wants to be half Muslim. Now mathematically that might be a challenge since Charlotte already considers herself half-Jewish and half-Catholic. No matter. Even at five-years-old, Charlotte seems determined to stake her claim on the religion of the moment despite what those pesky adults in her life keep telling her about waiting until she is an adult herself.

I think this fascination with other religions began when Charlotte started a preschool program at the Jewish Community Center in St. Paul. During classes on alternate days of the week Charlotte was exposed to many of the Jewish traditions. She loved the classes and her teachers.

Central to Judaism is an engagement with stories and ideas and even to argue about them. Arguments are encouraged because that’s how one learns what is important to other people and why. Our L.A. friends here in the desert have a saying: Two Jews, three opinions. Now that sounds like it would fit Charlotte’s personality to a T. The same can be said of all my grandchildren. *

Recently Charlotte marched in the Purim which is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the savings of the Jewish people in Persia from extermination. She can now proudly recite several prayers in Hebrew and even knows several songs in that language.

Then on alternate days of the week Charlotte attends a preschool program at Holy Spirit Catholic grade school. There she is introduced to Catholic tradition and song which she has taken to with equal enthusiasm. So this winter, without a lot of fanfare, Charlotte declared to anyone who was willing to listen that she is now half-Jewish and half-Catholic.

Works for me.

This sudden interest in Muslim headgear seemed to come out of nowhere but like all of my grandchildren Charlotte’s antenna is always scanning the air, subconsciously searching for life’s little surprises and mysteries. It might have been something she heard on television (although unlikely since Charlotte and her brother get very little screen time). It might have been pieces of a hundred thousand conversations her parents have had in the front seat driving someplace. Or it might simply have come from a visit to her brother’s school which has many Muslim students. Living in an urban environment, Charlotte is exposed daily to the hijab, the yarmulke and dozens of other accouterments of ethnic cultures.

Charlotte seems to be picking religions the way other people pick their favorite television shows. Over time it will probably ebb and slow and perhaps disappear. Or she may find some philosophy that finds a home in her ever-expanding and inquiring mind.

A recent report from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that twenty (20%) percent of Americans now check ‘none’ when asked about their religious affiliation. Back in 1956 a government survey found that only three (3%) percent of Americans checked that ‘none’ box. Now they’re a fifth of all Americans.

In time Charlotte can decide how she wants to embrace her faith and her beliefs. Knowing all of my grandchildren as I do that will be a decision they make on their own despite any influences they might feel from parents or grandparents. During the normal course of growing up they’ll be exposed to options and opportunities to find a belief system that works for them.

English sociologist David Martin has been quoted as saying that ‘a belief in God tends to correlate strongly with belief in the objectivity of moral values.’ Again, that works for me.

My wish for my grandchildren is not necessarily an affinity with a specific religion but rather membership in the greater ecumenical community at large. A community of values and charity and sharing and kindness and a spiritual element of their own choosing. I want them to share those values in a world they will soon impact with their lives and life style. The religious moniker they chose is their own business when they’re ready to make that determination.

I simply want them to be good people and contributing citizens of the world.

*Some comments lifted from those made by Rebecca Kanner on the Minnpost web site.

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.