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Living in Minnesota
In a joking way, I say that I am serving my second sentence in Minnesota. To explain: I first moved to Minnesota in 1966 when my husband got a job with the U.S. Public Health Service and found that I had to make a number of adjustments in my life. First of all the social change is huge. Famed “Minnesota Nice” is more like the description of the Platte River by Pioneers -
“A mile wide and an inch deep.” A Minnesotan is very friendly
on the surface, but there is another saying I have learned: He will
tell you how to get anywhere but the way to his home.”
Other conundrums involved learning to cope with the long
winters. It was a year of epic snowstorms. The University of Minnesota
closed for the first time in its history due to weather.
We had few adequately warm clothes and were poor as church
mice, so I learned to knit hats, scarves, mittens, and sweaters as soon
as possible by reading directions in a magazine. I was in grad school
studying for a Master’s in Public Health degree made possible by a
scholarship. Classes were held on both sides of the Mississippi, meaning
I had to walk across an open bridge with frigid winds blowing down the
valley. The only thing that made it survivable was a ratty old fur coat
that I inherited from my husband’s grandmother. It was ragged, but it
was warm. I had no car, so I traveled by bus to and from campus with my
three-year-old son, Ben. He attended a nursery school near the campus
while I attended classes I would stuff him into a nearby phone booth to
shelter him a bit while we waited for the bus to come.
For the next seven years, I worked at General Mills. The
company recognized that employees sometimes needed help with
transportation so they provided electric hookups at each parking space
so we could plug in a device called a “head bolt heater”. I still have
no idea what a “head bolt” is, I was only interested in knowing that my
car would start in sub-zero weather. When I visited Missouri, people
would ask me why I had a short electric cord hanging over my front
bumper. One bitter cold day, my ears were frostbitten in the short time
it took to walk to my car. I learned to not wear earrings on cold days.
After leaving General Mills, I worked at the University of
Minnesota for another 4 years before returning to Pineville to go back
to attend the University of Arkansas to earn a Ph.D. in Food Science. I
found it much more difficult to drive in winter weather commuting to
classes in Fayetteville than in Minneapolis because there was little
equipment to handle snow or ice. The prevailing thought was “God put it
there, God will take it away.” One memorable morning while driving on
black ice, I slid into ditches three times when I stopped the car.
Finally getting to the campus unscathed I parked, and the car was later
hit by another driver in what I thought was a safe place.
I never planned to return to Minnesota, but fate had other
ideas. In the spring of 2011, we lost our home to a flash flood on Big
Sugar Creek. In the next few weeks, nearby Joplin was blown away by an
F5 tornado and my husband nearly died from a gushing ulcer. While we
were distracted by his illness, a second flood destroyed many of the
items we had “rescued” and thought were safe. My son and daughter-in-law
found a house for us to rent in Minnesota and it was the best option,
so I began my second sentence in Minnesota and will remain here until
the end of my days. This time I am better prepared for living in cold
weather: Instead of a single garage at the end of a long driveway behind
the house, there is an attached double garage and I have warm clothes.
No shoveling huge piles of snow, there is a nice company that does it
for me.
Here are a couple of photos of the big storm in February
2023: The street scene was taken at 1 a.m. I was amazed at how much
light was reflected by the snow.
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The view from my office was taken through a screen as I wasn’t about to let in the sub-zero weather.
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