Minnesota History - So Who Cares?

One of the joys of my altered lifestyle during the pandemic was rediscovering our local library, especially the magazine section. I found myself on a number of occasions lost in the stacks, perusing, reviewing and discovering new and old magazines. One in particular caught my eye.

As a lifelong resident of the state of Minnesota, I hadn’t given my residency here any real thought other than the fact that I still hate the winters, relish spring and fall and now have readjusted to the warmer than usual summer months. The magazine that caught my eye was ‘Minnesota History’, produced and published by the Minnesota Historical Society.

The magazine provides a fascinating glimpse back at many different aspects of Minnesota History down through the ages. My own historical timeline begins in 1943; a period in Minnesota when the state had just come out of the Great Depression and was now fully immersed in the Second World War.

My parents were products of those historical benchmarks and the agrarian lifestyle that preceded them. The events that took place in my parent’s marriage and afterwards shaped the kind of persons my sister and me ultimately became. It was that historical wallpaper around our lives that caught and held my attention last summer.

I found articles on the Summit Hill area where I was born. Smith Avenue, where we lived in a hovel for a short period of time. Then Irving Park, where we lived in a six-plex apartment building while our mother was building her own house in Highland Park.

For eight years my sister and I took a streetcar then a bus into Saint Paul and the little French school on the hill above downtown. With those daily sojourns, we saw and felt ‘Old Saint Paul’ going through another one of its average every half-century of cultural, social, and architectural evolutions.

Old St. Paul was morphing into a mid-century of population growth, expanding neighborhoods and suburbs, transportation changes and new attitudes towards everything from religion to music to means of communication.

By perusing, scanning, and reading various articles in the magazine, I was able to learn more about relevant events, incidents and benchmarks that marked my time in the city. In the sixties, when I had moved physically and mentally out of town, there were other articles that discussed events in the twin cities or the state that had impacted my life one way or another.

Now in my senior years, I live in two different worlds and I’m comfortable in both. One is a progressive state; adventurous and sometimes a bit outrageous, but always leaning forward. For half a year I wear my Southern California flip-flops as comfortably as any other sun seeker.

The Midwest is more staid and conservative than California in a common sense kind of way. For me it’s two different life styles and two points of view. Yet there’s a common thread running between the two with openness for all and acceptance of different points of view. Both states offer a realistic view of the world and not a closed-minded myopic wish for what used to be. They don’t dwell on a world that, in fact, never really existed except in television sitcoms and wishful thinking. Instead they focus on what could be and not what once was.

I’m born and bred Minnesotan with a strong streak of California to taint my mind. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Both states have become home in more ways than one. They’re like a cradle upon which my imagination gives birth to creative, frivolous, silly and sometimes enlightened ideas, concepts and storylines. It’s the flip side of that routine called your average lifestyle. If ever there were a balance in my life, it would be called the Minnesota-California connection.

There’s a quote I love that goes something like this: “At some point in the journey, you realize it’s time to head back home. It doesn’t matter where you are in the journey, the Gods begin calling and you must return home.” I think there is something about that mysterious force called ‘home’ that calls to all of us. I feel it every spring when the itch to return to my roots begins to claw at my insides.

Overall, Minnesota History Magazine helped me paint a picture of my home state, golden glow and warts included. It’s a state that really defines ‘where I came from.’ Over the years, Minnesota has collected its fair share of great moments and embarrassing stumbles. But in the end, it is the embodiment of the Midwest and everything that that cliché entails.

It’s a nice place to grow up in and a greater place to have come from.

On the Street Where You Live

Like the emptiness of a Paris winter, we often times don’t see what’s all around us as we trudge through the streets of life. In 1929, the great French architect Le Corbusier turned from designing houses to the planning of cities. His classic book shocked and thrilled a world already deep in the throes of the modern age.

One of Le Corbusier’s favorite arguments was that there is an order to things and an order in our lives whether we know it or not. Growing up in Saint Paul, I was hardly aware of the urban changes going on all around me. It signaled the end of one period of growth for the City and a slow painful aging process that followed. Old St. Paul was gradually being replaced with a newer version of itself. Turns out there were subtle changes going on all around me while I was pondering third grade math in grade school downtown.

Old Saint Paul proper was going through its last death rattles as I boarded a city bus each day to attend ‘the little French school’ on a hill overlooking downtown. The city, which had once prided itself as the steamboat capitol of the upper Midwest, had long ago thrown on the cloak of growing wealth and opulence of its early pioneers. Thus had begun a new period of brick and mortar replacing stick buildings with turn-of-the-century modernism. Yet by the mid-to-late-forties, time and a changing demographic had spelled the end of its downtown area as a core of business, social and economic growth.

Le Corbusier had defined the parameters of a great city back around the turn of the century and metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities and New York were struggling to find and define a new definition of a livable city. Urban development ran rampant and old neighborhoods were falling victim to the times.

Old St. Paul was a Midwestern repeat of New York City’s Jane Jacobs and her continuing battles with transportation czar Robert Moses fighting to save whole neighborhoods from being swept away by elevated highways slashing through their communities. Only in the case of Saint Paul, Interstate Highway 94 won out and the Rondo community fell by the wayside.

From 1943 through 1949, I was living on the outskirts of downtown, moving from one rental to the next. Growing up near downtown St. Paul, I was too young to understand the organic changes happening all around me. Even after we moved to the Highland Park neighborhood, I was still too young to understand the ever-changing cityscape from 1949 through 1957, as I traveled to downtown St. Paul each day.

photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

From 1957 through 1961, I was pretty much cloistered in my own neighborhood with frequent trips to first ring suburbs like Roseville. After 1961and high school graduation, downtown St. Paul had become a place to avoid because there was nothing there of interest for me.

My horizons broadened with time in the service, living abroad, and finally settling into a hovel near the University of Minnesota. The West Bank, Como area, and Dinkytown became a place of refuge for me. Little did I know at the time that the entire area, especially north of Dinkytown, was going through revitalization with dozens of old mansions like my ghetto being torn down for modern student apartments.

Fast forward many years later and I was working at our public television’s new digs in downtown St. Paul. By the late seventies, the Lowertown area of St. Paul had started to come out of its century’s old shell of neglect and decay. The area east of the downtown core began to take on the accoutrements of an urban village; at least in the minds of developers and real estate speculators.

By then I was settled into a third ring suburb and raising kids in a modest yet comfortable environment. The thought of living in the cities never occurred to me. Jump ahead another twenty years and my daughter now lives in St. Paul, less than five blocks from where I was raised. She and her husband love their home, their neighborhood, and new St. Paul.

Sharon and I now have to travel to my old stomping grounds to see our grandchildren in a neighborhood filled with young families eager to enjoy the benefits of living in the city.

I guess it’s true; what goes around comes around.

Little French Church

Grade schools today come in all sizes and shapes. Most are large sentinels of education complete with gymnasiums, cafeterias, front offices and teacher’s lounges. My grade school squeezed two classrooms per room, an asphalt playground that over looked downtown Saint Paul and a sinister-looking police station next door. It was older than many of the buildings downtown and had served its students for well over a hundred years. At times, it seemed as if some of the nuns had been there even longer than that.

The Church of St. Louis, King of France Catholic Church, affectionately known as the ‘Little French Church,’ was founded in 1868. It was built to serve the French-speaking citizens of Saint Paul. Five years later, the church built a school called Ecole St. Louis.

I knew none of this when I first trudged up those stone steps as a first grader in 1949. It started with an early morning streetcar ride from Highland Park and culminated in sixteen years of Catholic education.  The whole experience proved a proverbial mix of academics, socialization, discipline, and a suppressive culture that was the clay that formed the person I am today.

photo credit: St. Louis Church

The grade school was beyond ancient by the time I got there. There were two classes per room.

The bathrooms were in basement along with the cafeteria with a kitchen smaller than most in modern homes today. The cloak room, if you could call it that, was in the back hallway and exits were old wooden rickety steps to the ground level. It was a fire trap waiting to happen which thankfully never happened.

My memories are sketchy from that period in my life. Augmented by old black and white photos and chats with my sister, images arise from which I can paint a picture of life as a grade schooler in old downtown Saint Paul.

photo credit: St. Louis Church

My memories of the nuns are the most poignant. There was the rotund Sister Paulet who shamed me in 2nd grade for sneaking a peek at my Davy Crocket comic book stashed in my desk. Sixth grade teacher Sister Roselia let me hang out the second story window and clean it after school. Fortunately another student was holding my legs so I didn’t drop to the asphalt below. There was the new nun who made a disparaging remark about our poverty because my sister and I were getting free clothes for confirmation. Finally I remember how I admired Sister Alfred Marie who was strict and stern but fair. The rest were all forgettable. They were some of the last stewards of Catholic education before major changes and upheavals shook their world of teaching. Their style of Catholic Education had reached its zenith and was slowly dying out.

Seven Corners from Cathedral Hill [photo credit: Jean Day]

As deeply ingrained as those memories are, so too are the long since forgotten or remembered landmarks along the way. There was the Tastee bread factory across the street whose whiffs of freshly baked bread distracted even the most ardent scholar of education. A large stone edifice to fighting crime was on the corner. Our asphalt playground offered sweeping view of old downtown Saint Paul. Tenement housing snaked its way up to the capitol while the last remnants of old turn of century mansions slowly crumbled away behind Capitol. The Nuns Rectory was across the street and Mechanic Arts High School several blocks away up the hill.

photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

The one landmark I remember best was the new W.T. Grant Department store that I cut through each afternoon to catch the bus back home. A streetcar token cost ten cents and offered a daily tour of a changing cityscape. If I had time, I would walk a half block to Saint Paul Book and Stationary. I loved the smell of new books and exploring the myriad of titles awaiting me.

One book in particular stood out. It was a first novel by an English author named Alistair MacLean about the battle in the North Atlantic during World War Two. The book was entitled: H.M.S. Ulysses. I was hooked except that the three dollar and ninety-five cent price tag kept me at bay.

The city was on the cusp of major changes to its downtown core. There was just the beginnings of a shifting population away from the cities to the suburbs and social undercurrents that only hinted at the disruptions ahead. For a hungry horny youngster the siren call of rock and roll only added to the angst and anxiousness for the years ahead.

It was the beginning of the end of an era of pre-world war II buildings and an entire way of life for downtown residents. The first suburb, Roseville, was just beginning to grow and Larpentuer Avenue was no longer the end of civilization.

Walking along Seventh Street [Photo Credit: Minnesota Historical Society]

Walgreens [Photo Credit: Minnesota Historical Society]

White Castle [Photo Credit: Minnesota Historical Society]

Seven Corners in 1954 [Photo Credit: Minnesota Historical Society]

Grabbing the bus gave me a birds eye view of Walgreen Drugs with its ten cent candy bars. The Orpheum and Paramount theaters which I frequented in high school. Bridgeman’s Ice Cream for treats afterwards. White Castle and the Edsel dealership were down the road. Seven Corners was a crossroads with its old grocery story on one corner and the Wilder Youth Center across the street. Further down the road, Anchor Hospital was about to close and the Schmidt Brewery was bottling some of its last brew. The Pitney Building survived them all and still stands.

Graduation Photo - Class of 1957

Eight years of traveling on wicker-seated streetcars then graduating to leather-seated buses brought an end to my daily urban jaunt. No more year round altar boy duties every Sunday. No more sweating out those math tests. It ended my infatuation with fellow student Elaine in the third row-fourth desk down.

Cretin Military Officers Ball - 1961

The years ahead would prove more fortuitous with a Christian Brother education, military discipline and a first introduction to the opposite sex. It would go on to include military service, living abroad, career development and a hungry life never quite satisfied.

Postscript:

Not long ago the St. Louis church choir tried singing a few nontraditional songs. It didn’t last but for one Sunday. Pastor John Sajdak explained that “It’s the people who like traditional church music like the Gregorian chants, hymns and the traditional liturgy who come here.” I could only smile. Nothing much has changed after all these years.

I shed my vestments of obedience a long time ago; about the time I finished high school. Yet I can appreciate the rote and routine, the traditions and blind obedience that was demanded of us kids. It didn’t hurt and probably helped us in the long run.

Thanks for the memories, Sister Alfred Marie. Beneath that cloak of black and white, I’ll bet you were probably a pretty cool lady.

Something Strange is Happening Here (with apologies to Crosby, Stills, and Nash)

Sometimes my daughter goes a bit ballistic because of some of the comments I make or the observations she feels I shouldn’t share with others…especially on my blogs. This could be one of those examples.

I thought it would be cute and attention-getting to entitle this blog: ‘The Caucasians are coming’ (or something akin to that.) The idea came from a movie from the late 60s. The film was entitled: “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. The main premise was that a Russian submarine had run aground by a small Northeast Maine fishing village and its inhabitants were all up in arms because they thought they were being invaded by the Russians.

Now the good residents of my hometown, Saint Paul, Minnesota might be saying the same thing.

There’s an invasion going on and it’s been quietly happening for over ten years now.

I spent the first twenty-one years of my life trying desperately to get out of Dodge. I couldn’t wait to split from Saint Paul and see the world. That was the norm back then. Young people split. Old people stayed. Downtown was dying ghost town and new families were moving to first tier suburbs. I couldn’t imagine raising kids in the city.

Fifteen years later, when I came back to Minnesota with a family, I would never have considered moving back to the cities. The new and burgeoning suburb of Apple Valley was the place for me. I got a nice sized rambler, large yard, good schools and wide open spaces left around.

But perceptions change and tastes change and attitudes shift over time. What was once an unattractive alternative to the good suburban life has now morphed into a very attractive alternative to painful commutes, dependency on the car to get practically anywhere in town,

over-crowded schools and lack of amenities that so many young folks demand. For them, the city is the answer.

While not quite an urban pioneer, my daughter was one of the first of her friends to plant her roots firmly in the city. First in an apartment in Saint Paul and then after marriage to a home in Highland Park.

She has a cute little doll house (her description, not mine), a small fenced-in yard, close proximity to shopping and in the future, a range of good schools to choose from. She wouldn’t trade it for the world. Nor would many of her friends who live nearby.

My, how things have changed in just a brief fifty years. Data collected from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute shows that Saint Paul has experienced a twenty-eight percent influx of white population between 2000 and 2010.

It’s a reversal of the white migration to the suburbs which started in the early 50s. By the time, I had graduated from high school in 1961; I didn’t know anyone who wanted to stay in the city. Now their children and grandchildren are flocking back to plant their roots there. And it’s not just downtown or hip urban neighborhoods that are experiencing this kind of growth. Select neighborhoods around the core downtown areas are also experiencing this kind of change.

Who knew what changes a mere fifty years could bring?

Read the City Pages article here

Read the original study findings from the Thomas B. Fordham institute's Flypaper Blog here.