Minneapolis & Me
This is my history in Minneapolis, MN and my strong connections to the city.
I was born in Minneapolis in, as I heard on TV last night, nineteen-hundred-and-none-of-your-business. Let's
just say it was the Eisenhower decade. For the first 10 years of my life, we lived
in a small house in south Minneapolis on Washburn Avenue, near the border with Edina. My parents and older
sister made us a stereotypical American family of that era. Our neighborhood was straight out of "Leave
It To Beaver" streets lined with young families with stay-at-home moms and lots of children. And, yes,
we all knew each other, played together, and went to school together - us Catholic kids went to Christ The
King and the others went to Armitage School. Of course, we walked to school and to the grocery store and the
neighborhood drug store, although I have to admit that on the coldest winter mornings my mom would drive us
to school. Although the suburbs were blossoming, our part of the city wasn't yet fully developed. The block
kiddie-corner from our house was essentially empty. We called it "The Swamp", and that's what it was. I saw
the construction of Southdale Shopping Center and the Crosstown Freeway, both very much nearby our house.
As my sister and I grew older, our family outgrew the house on Washburn, and in 1963 we moved barely a mile to a larger colonial style house nearer Minnehaha Creek where I live today. Just 10 years old, I immediately loved the new house because it had a breezeway, and a kitchen with a nifty built-in oven that had that Space-Age look about it, and several light fixtures were on pull-down extensions. Best of all, the yard was full of trees and shrubs, and we were just a half-block away from the grocery store and other shops at 54th an Penn Avenue. By that time, I was attached to my bicycle and the new house was just a short ride to Lake Harriet, where my best friend Byrne Keefe and I would often go for a swim on hot summer days. My dad would sometimes take me fishing at Lake Calhoun, which was also nearby. We fished near the sailboat docks, adjacent to the bandshell so we could listen to the music while we fished - not that we ever caught anything.
After grade school, I went to high school at De La Salle on Nicollet Island in downtown
Minneapolis. My dad worked at the University of Minnesota, so we rode the bus together every morning. That
was the time when I grew to really dread the Minnesota winters because the bus only went as far as
Hennepin and Washington and I had to walk the rest of the way - across the Washington Avenue bridge over
the Mississippi River. On the coldest mornings, I'd walk through the Great Northern Railroad depot just
to get a brief thaw before heading over the bridge. We were a one-car family, so even when I became old
enough to drive, getting the car for the day was a treat!
After De La Salle, I attended the University of Minnesota where I studied math and computers. After school, I worked at the Montgomery Ward store in Southtown in Bloomington. That job turned into the start of my career with computers when a new personal computer company called Ohio Scientific opened a franchise store in the Montgomery Ward store and they hired me to be the manager. It allowed me to start freelance programming, which I did for three years when my life changed. I met someone online.
Even back then in the Stone Age of personal computers, there were online services with forums and chat rooms. I got hooked on the chat room on CompuServe they called their "CB Simulator", where I found a great bunch of interesting people. As you can imagine, back then females were a rare commodity online, and there was one particularly funny and clever woman there with the handle "Ms. Rainbo". She lived in the San Francisco area, and one summer our little online group decided to all meet face-to-face for a party. Most of the group lived in Los Angeles, so I flew out to San Francisco, met Maggie/Ms. Rainbo, and we drove down to Los Angeles together for the party. It was barely a year after that when I moved to the Bay Area where I lived for nearly 25 years. Maggie created Rainbo Electronic Reviews on CompuServe, and I helped her with the technical side of things while working on my own freelance projects. We started a couple of additional small businesses, all of which included the "Rainbo" moniker.
My life changed dramatically when Maggie passed away in 2007. My dad had died in 2003, leaving my mother on her own in that two-story colonial. Mom was in her late 80's and her health was deteriorating. My sister Donna was married and living in St. Paul, and while she had done an amazing job taking care of Mom while also having to take care of her husband who had significant health problems of his own stemming from his career in the Marine Corps in Viet Nam and more. So, since I was alone and my "job" was portable, Donna and I decided it would be best if I would move back home to take care of Mom. But Mom's health just got continually worse and she passed in December, 2007.
So here I am, back in south Minneapolis. The city has changed in so many ways. Even though I visited twice a year and so I was peripherally aware of the changes as they came, actually living here again is an adventure. After living for two decades in the Bay Area where it took at least 45 minutes to drive anywhere, it's been a real challenge getting used to the Twin Cities again where I can get to most destinations in just 20 minutes or less, despite the enormous increase in traffic. I enjoy walking around the lakes, checking out estate sales in Minneapolis and the suburbs, trying my hand at painting the house and garage, doing a bit of yard work, and searching for a decent Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood. While there are many things like great food that I miss about the San Francisco area, where I lived just a stone's throw from the Pacific Ocean, Minneapolis is definitely my home. You betcha!
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