TheBanyanTree: Christmastime in the City

[Suzanne Stewart]

Nancy talks about the Minneapolis of "those olden days."  My mother 
and father lived in Minneapolis quite a bit earlier, in fact I'm sure 
Nancy wasn't born yet when they first met at the Marigold Ballroom in 
1928. He asked her to dance and she said No, and his stricken look 
brought out: "I mean yes".....without which, of course, I would not 
be here to tell this tale.

He was somewhat privileged, born on nearby Lake Minnetonka in a 
wonderfully staid Queen Anne on a property called "Many Acres."  But 
my mother was very poor, living in a crooked flat built on the banks 
of the Mississippi River. Maybe you couldn't live like that in 1928 
in newly sophisticated Minneapolis, but twenty years back, when she 
was born, that was where poor newcomers to this country 
lived---picking up coal from the railroad tracks to burn at home, 
living two or three families in a flat with just one stove. Funny to 
think of a Norwegian as an outsider in Minnesota---but it was the 
poverty that was the foreigner, not the race.

I'm not sure I ever heard of Lake Harriett, though it was the sort of 
name my mother loved as a girl (she loved to spell and sound out 
words), and a good frozen lake, where she could put on skates in the 
evening, was a favorite.  I do know that her big sister hinted at her 
Christmas present: it's two words---the first starts with s and ends 
with g and the second starts g and ends with s---skating gloves!

And mother's feet must have been very cold, just as Nancy says.

Suzanne
(moved young to California--daughter of ice-bound Minnesotans)





   At 08:15 PM 12/2/2007, NancyIee at aol.com wrote:
>Ah-h Lake Harriet.  As a child, I lived six or eight blocks from  there, and
>remember well the band shell. My father ground the lens and then 
>made  his own
>telescope and was a member of the local telescope club. On an icy, clear
>night, we would haul the telescope to the dozen Lake Harriet and set 
>up, with
>all the other members, telescopes pointing skyward, and watch 
>Mercury or Mars,
>whichever would make its appearance during those months. I usually wore my
>snowmobile suit, and had a knitted throw around me for good measure. 
>The winter
>night wind would have a knifen quality, and my feet, no matter how many socks
>I  wore inside my boots, would ache me to tears.
>
>During the pre-Christmas season, we would all pile into the car and tour  the
>downtown lights, and oooo and ahhh over the animated displays in Dayton's
>windows.  Of course, Daytons is no more, and all the shopping 
>generally  goes to
>the outer malls these days.
>
>I also rode the Oak Harriet trolley, which wended through alleys in those
>olden days. I believe the track line still exists in the form of a  preserved
>walkway. And, before the Twins, there was a baseball team called 
>the  Millers.
>My grandfather was an avid fan, and would take me to a game now 
>and  then in a
>concrete field . .I think it was called "Nicollet."
>
>Does the Washburn water tower still stand?   T'was the sight of  more than
>one "first kiss".
>
>My memory has kicked in. . .lol
>
>NancyLee
>
>
>
>
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