SENSE OF PLACE

Sketch by my dad of the two of us in his studio

The rain started as the plane landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. I had watched the weather report for Minnesota for the last month as the weather went from the low 20s up to the the 50s in a couple of weeks. I couldn't decide what to pack. Those 50s happened during the week before I arrived. Today, in the third week of March, the forecast was for rain and snow. That's spring for you in Minnesota. As I sat waiting for a shuttle I overheard two flight attendants talking. One had spent February in Minnesota while she was training. Coming from Florida, she couldn't grasp how people withstood the 20 degrees below weather. Silently I concurred. I grew up in California and lived in other places but never spent an entire winter in that kind of weather. Minnesotans had to be hardy people. I thought of the long-ago photo of one of my aunts as she stood at her front door between two walls of snow that towered over her. Farmers ran ropes between buildings so that they wouldn't get lost in a blizzard.

My dad graduated from St. Cloud State University and became an art teacher at the School for the Deaf in Faribault, Minnesota before he was hired by Walt Disney to work on early animated movies. After leaving Disney, he drew the Bugs Bunny comic strip for 30 years. Now all these years later, the university accepted our collection of his drawings and other material that he did for the strip. They will be archived in their library for others to see. I am returning for a reception in his honor.

Sketch of the iced-over Mississippi River, St. Cloud, Minnesota

I caught the shuttle to St. Cloud, a town right up against the Mississippi River, where the university is located. I settled down for a ride that I was grateful that I didn't have to drive. Snow began to fall as we edged out of the airport. Not a hard storm, just enough to cover the ground and vehicles along the road with about six inches of light snow. The snow softened everything and muted the colors to greys, browns, and blacks, which reminded me of our winters in Japan. We passed the Fort Snelling Cemetery with its rows upon rows of white grave markers like stiff rows of wheat stalks in fields nearby. Along the road, signs continually popped up, crying, "We're Hiring."

The road reminded me of the drive from the Bay Area to Sacramento -- one town connected to another, with no real definition in between, except on this road, the occasional, solid stands of pines and aspen, seemingly untouched by progress, appearing then disappearing along the way.

Living near a coast, I'm used to the boundaries of mountains, hills, and water. The prairie goes forever even in a snowstorm, and it is hard to determine direction without the sun. The low clouds hovered over the roadway, but I still felt a sense of a never-ending universe all around me. 

Corner of E. Germain St & 5th St. in St. Cloud, Minnesota

When we reached St. Cloud, we drove through the old downtown area with its brick buildings with ornate detailing around windows and doors. The main street was empty of people. The large department store had closed and For Lease signs spanned windows along the street. Near my hotel, a few stores stood ready for customers including a bank, a Mexican restaurant, a game store, and a sandwich shop with a sign, "Hiring Drivers." Names like Granite City Comics reminded me that St. Cloud has been a place of mining, railroads, lumber, farms, and maybe a little good humor. The weather emptied the streets of the university population at the downtown's steps.

St. Cloud's campus had expanded greatly from the time my father attended in the late 1920s. There were only five buildings then, all nestled against the Mississippi River. Riverview, the model school for teaching, is the only building remaining from that period. The building is now used by the Communications Department. It has been restored so that the wood paneling and parquet floors shine and includes the original classroom doors with handles low to the ground for small children to turn. Old wood clocks hang above each door in the classrooms. Absent are those familiar odors of mustiness, cleaning solutions, and sweat of old schools.

Though people are traveling more, many of the hotels I looked into for this trip were not quite ready. Their in-house restaurants were still closed, and neighborhood eateries offered limited hours. In the hotel in St. Cloud, I stared hungrily at the blackboard menu in the small cafe in the lobby. Nothing on the blackboard was available. Instead, in their glass cases rested plastic-wrapped, pick-up selections for their few customers during the pandemic. I looked at the plastic containers wondering how long they had been sitting in the cases. No room service was available unless I ordered delivery service from outside. I picked up one more container of yogurt parfait and drank coffee out of a paper cup with the residual taste of paper lingering as I entered the elevator to my room.

As I unpacked in my hotel room I heard the lonely whistle of a train, a sound when I hear it anywhere brings me back to Minnesota. My dad's family came from Willmar, which was a main hub of the railroads for many years, with one train track of many running right behind my grandmother's house. At one time, Willmar had a roundhouse where we could go watch the locomotives being rotated around to go back from where they came. When I hear a train whistle, I think of Minnesota and returning to my roots, and with a little sadness, having to turn around to go back to California again.

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Don't miss these two wonderful blog posts from thoughtful writers:

Literally Letty: https://literallyletty.blogspot.com/2022/04/in-search-of-light.html

Stephanie Rafflelock:  https://www.byline-stephanie.com/post/we-matter-at-every-age