Minnesota Ex Pats...but anyone is welcome

I was disappointed to find out that the Seven Corners only has five. Its the convergence of seven ethnic neighborhoods.

Didn't realize Theo. Wirth Park was a golf course until almost 10-- a perfectly good waste of some great sliding and later tubing.

Mom and I used to go to practically every church fund raiser over Nordeast featuring perogies and kraut.

Hinkley was always the pit stop on the way to Duluth.

And Skyways. We'd travel to other cities and I found them so un-hip: no skyways.

Walker Art Center and Guthrie Theater. Started going down there 'at least once a year to get my dose of culture'.

Garrison Keillor wrote in one of his books about riding the bus downtown in January, getting off at Hennepin, and being able to smell the chlorine from the YMCA pool. I thought I was the only one...

The my kindergarten school was turned into an Alano. Who says you don't get to go home?
 
Took my daughters up to Minneapolis when they were 4 or 5; around 1999. Part of the grand tour was to get to Krymczhek's Deli (forgive my spelling) on E. Hennepin. The native Polish was still spoken by folks my age behind the counter. Same display cases and honeycomb black and white tile in the deli and restaurant.
As I soaked in the nostalgia and tried to figure out what to get, my daughters blast through the doorway into the restaurant, only to pause and look left and then disappear. It took me longer than expected to track them through, but everything suddenly became okay-- they were with the woman in the front window booth who was doing the books. She's probably the daughter or kin of the woman I always saw in that same place-- as much a fixture as the deli itself.
 
Hinkley I remember had a tragic past.

The best wedding receptions were always over in N.E. Mpls.

But there was a little Italian restaurant called Totino's there...surrounded by Polish everything. Now Totino's is global but they just don't taste the same.

They had to nuke to pool at the Y everyday for good reasons.

And me too - I don't remember seeing Theodore Wirth in the summertime, always thought it was just there for tobaggens and sleds and kids like us: frozen crusty snot all over our sleeves.

Do you Dunlaps miss it?
 
Way to get in there Jim !

This is almost as fun as a family vacation!

How 'bout Betty's pies north of Two Harbors, Sven and Ole's in Grand Marais?

A trip to the BWCA wasn't complete without them!
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Well, there's White Rock and the coast is close, Ft. Davis (been there yet?), the Chisos Basin, and this here Hill country.

Could be worse.

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Could be Cuba
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I always thought the hardwoods of MN/WSC were spectacular this time of year. Wish I could be there for it. How's the apple crop doing?

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I went camping on Madeline Isl last weekend (WI) and visited Applefest. They are cultivating Honey Crisp apples up there now which are excellent. Wife had a carmel apple with pecans and I had the apple brat. Not to mention cider that has nothing extra and hasn't been pasturized. Can't be beat. The maples were near peak color but Fall happens later within a mile or two of Lk Superior.
 
I took my 75 y.o. mom on a Segway tour of the Minneapolis riverfront a few weeks ago. I have to recommend this as an activity anywhere it's offered. It was a great way to see parts of the city up close. Cruised the Stone Arch Bridge, St Anthony Falls, Nicollet Island, flour mills, etc. Mom ran off the trail towards the river one time (for no apparent reason) but otherwise did ok. Got family pics with the new 35W bridge in background.
 
Wow! You MN guys really are having fun over here. Gosh, it sounds like I need to relocate... Or, put on about 20 years!
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Na. It is good to reminisce. Sounds like you guys have had some good times out there.
 
Nostalgia, a condition often overlooked in the race ahead. Don't know why but I seem to filter most daily experiences thru imprints from the past.

I believe we all establish a genetic impression from the land we're reared on because of that. 29 years in Texas and I still talk funny, people claim.

I can perch along the shore of any Texas lake, all of which were man-made and no matter the size of said body of water, the waves splashing onto the shore sound different, if swimming...the water feels odd. Bass here don't taste like Bass from there, and a bowl of Chili ain't no Hormels. On the flip side, women here weren't reared on sweet corn and potatos, with a side of bacon and sausages.

Getting used to the heat takes a complete generation but how is it that my daughter, born and raised here, still says: "Ya Betcha", even if I never did?

Dad made sure we spent more time outside than in back in MN, I don't recall the sub-zero cold that today here, I feel brutalized when it's 38 degrees outside. WE didn't have goose down until the teen years, only wool and ugly knitted mittens, always wet with snot or snow melt from messing around. Taking ten minutes to dress for a 15 minute recess, class rooms were steamy from the playground games I can never forget, and to think schools don't even let the kids out anymore.

Wonder how their memories when they get this old will be? And it makes me think what my old Pa - who was born before an airplane ever took flight - thought about when he went for a pair of shoes at Ridgedale Mall? His Minnesota was a whole lot different than mine. And that's the one I really miss even though I never saw it.

I'm greatful for Tom starting this thread for reasons I can't peg, but somehow it's grounded me where I probably for no other reason, would ever go.
 
When I was rock climbing we'd head down to the Stone Arch bridge for an evening of face climbing. There were 4" steel conduits on the roadbed that made solid anchors. The top of the climb was a little overhung so it was a challenge. After we figured out the simple routes on both sides of the east arch we eliminated holds to make the climb more difficult. One time we were on the down stream side with the rope laid out on the ground. Ooops...Lock and Dam #1 opened and the water came up. that made for a bit of a scramble to get to a bit higher ground.

there were bolt anchors at the apex of the first two arches too. Someone had done some serious upside down climbing to set those!

There's a white water canoe/kayak course between the islands on the east side, just down stream from the hydro power plant. If you look downstream on the U of MN side, just above the I35W bridge you'll see a big, drab building. That's the U of MN's own nuke power plant. I'll bet that there are few people who know about that. Let's hope there's never a meltdown. If so, Anoka, St. Cloud and Bemidji may look like good places to live.

Ever since leaving MN I've heard how bad the mosquitoes are in the places that I've lived. Pshaw...Mosies aren't 'bad' until you kill more by smearing than swatting. Certainly nothing to be so proud of but the skeeters in the Land of Lakes are thicker than anywhere that I've experienced. then, add in black flies...blech...
 
Skeeter's can be bad but Grammaw (Nanny) had a recipe that I still use: garlic, clove a day, raw and swallow whole.

MN was the only state I've lived in where you could pick a spot on the ground and just sleep without fear of venomous anything but I guess that's not true anymore anywhere.
 
Pa named me after Walter, the Dr. who made the Panama Canal a reality. I've been intertested in Yellow fever and other parasite-borne pathogens since. Blown-away by the epidemic predictions coming and moving above the Mason-Dixon, along with the warming Summers. One hand wishes MN has a mild winter coming, heating fuel and all, but the other hand is hoping for a long cold one to prevent more southern pests from moving from here to there.

Once we stopped and picked-up a dead Armadillo in Oklahoma, thru it in the back for the trip to Minnesota. Left it on the entry ramp from the rest stop off 35 near Faribault, just to ratttle a few cages.

Things are moving in spite of anything. There's a warning sign now, 15 miles from here, at a city lake I canoe on. Alligators Spotted, Danger. When I moved here they were 200 miles further south. Cool. When I started my tree biz here, there weren't such a thing as killer bees and fire ants, there are now. Not so cool.

Yet still, when we hiked through the understory in western Hennepin County, a garder snake could trigger immediate and unexplicable human levitation. Here snakes inspire the human body to dissappear, completely.
 
That's right. A family vacation about captures it. Nostalgia is healthy-- like looking at the wake. I recall being given a pearl of wisdom: It is good to look at your past, vulgar to stare. Nostalgia must be when your eyes blink.

My daughter had an assignment for one of her classes about genealogy and family history. Popped at the last moment, I couldn't think of a story-- sad state about not being able to be Super Dad ALL of the time. But I pointed her to this thread, and I'm sure she'll fill in the blanks.

Minnesotans. They'd be just the kind of folks to import some exotic road kill! ROTFL
 
In times such as these, with questions being asked we sturggle to find answers for...a brief excursion back to the more joyous segments of our impressionable years might provide a helpful dose of medicine, I'm sure it can't hurt.

Bringing in our children on it, can't even fathom how great the positive results that may stimulate. What each little trip we all just took into the neighborhoods of our past isn't a curriculum on any lesson plan at any school I'm familiar with. But I'm guessing that reflections on the impressioned good times influence far better relationships with our own kids and encourage them to look wider in each experience they meet and compare them to how we lived and saw in situations of our past. I look at Lake Minnetonka thru two eyes, one perspective is what I see, the other is what my Dad saw, as he relayed to me always, his way of dealing with the big water (I found a STEAMSHIP operators license issued in 1927 to him in his left-behinds after he died).

I should probably go back and edit my reference to becoming a man while camping north of Taylor's Falls, but hey, that's better than a gang initiation at man/woman relationships in an urban jr. high schoolyard while being pressured into joining the Crips or Bloods - inlfuenced by the girlie-cutsie entertainment twits that rewarded superstar status with incompetent teenage breast-enhanced paparazzied pregnancies that Mattel makes a Barbie Doll copy of.

I've enjoyed the hell out of our stopping at the same stoplights, watching the same people cross the street going to the same theaters (Mann) and smelling the same scents here at TB last few days. It kind of set the stage for my dealing with the next few days/months/ and perhaps years, and if anything, temporarily gave me insight into how I always interact with my own kids daily. I think this is something we need to add to the growing list of what everybody claims is the right way to mold a kid into something that'll succeed in today's weird world.
 
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