Sunday, July 09, 2006

a trip to the city

I drove through my old neighborhood today, three blocks from where I grew up. I did so at sixty miles an hour. And I never saw a thing. Didn't feel much nostalgia either.

I grew up in a suburb on the northwest corner of Minneapolis, MN. The suburb was perhaps unique in that it was one of the "first ring" suburbs that had a downtown area, not a strip mall, and a community identity. It still has one of the finest little meat markets to be found in the state. It used to have a Ben Franklin store which was close enough for my brother and I and my mom to ride our bikes there. I bought Topps baseball cards, along with the hard thin slab of bubblegum, just because my brother did. I didn't know most of the players, and looking back at them today most of the players I had are long forgotten.

Today the community is hardly recongnizable. The junior high school, just across the bridge over the former four lane highway which is now freeway, where we used to ride our bikes for swimming lessons, is gone, townhomes and condominiums in its place. I never went to that junior high, although my brother did for two years. They closed it for budget reasons and bussed us to one a few miles away. This after they closed my elementary school when I had one year left there, and then proceeded to close the high school I was supposed to graduate from. With each closing, a circle of friends was broken, a young girl's thoughts on community and permanence shaken and altered in some way.

Today a freeway runs through it. You can drive through and see nothing but the walls they have built. You hardly know you are driving through a place where still somebody lives, a place somebody still comes home to. My dad still lives a few blocks away from the freeway, in the house I grew up in. He is the last person on the block that was there when I was growing up. It used to be a white, workingclass neighborhood; now the white working class lives thirty miles out and commutes, while the neighborhood is much more ethnically diverse and still working class. I'm not judging one way or the other; that is the fate of cities I guess.

Like I said, I don't hold much nostalgia for that place. I tried to live there a few years ago, and it was a terrible mistake. I am much happier here out in the country, thank you. And I was much happier when the family obligation at my brother's new house in an upscale neighborhood was over, when we had been to the new first Trader Joe's in Minnesota, which was overcrowded and understocked and no Two Buck Chuck sales on Sunday, damn antiquated Prohibition blue laws and that. I was much happier a hundred miles to the north, in my own little slice of heaven.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two Buck Chuck?

Deb said...

pablo- You must not have a Trader Joe's in KC...yet. Two Buck Chuck, aka Charles Shaw wine, is their house line of wines, which earned the name for selling for $2.99 a bottle. (It's slightly more here in MN)It's good stuff, not what you'd expect for that price.

R.Powers said...

Trader Joes is a ???
I feel somewhat akin to a rube.

Deb said...

And might I ask what a "rube" is? Wait, never mind, Google is handier.

Trader Joe's is a chain of markets that sell organic and specialty foods, beer, and wine. Their prices are lower than a lot of other "natural foods" stores. Tres California, very trendy, but I try to make up for my indulgences there by being so not trendy in other aspects of my life.

Pam in Tucson said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Pam in Tucson said...

Sorry about the above post - somehow some garbage got pasted into it and I didn't notice.

How I understand what you're saying. In Tucson, I travel past townhouse complexes and gated communities and mourn the passing of what used to be pristine desert foothills and friendly little neighbourhoods. My son has lived in Minneapolis for the past four years - works for the Ordway Center for Performing Arts in St. Paul. He's been longing for TJ's, so he'll be a happy camper. I've even sent him care packages of TJ's stuff from Tucson. We consider it our principal grocery store - things are cheaper and better there than at the big chains. The fanciest "natural foods" store I've ever been to is Whole Foods in Vancouver, but they're much more expensive. I think there's one in Minneapolis, but we don't have one here.