No, not those twins. Not even the Minnesota Twins. This is about the Twin Cities. Twin in name only. Connected or disconnected by the single umbilical cord of that great river, the Mississippi.
I just finished reading "The Florist's Daughter" yesterday and feel the melancholy way I usually do when I have been absorbed in a book and it is finished. Never one to reread a book, my people thin into the air at the end. They remain in my mind with no fresh revelations. Memoirs always provoke my memories of my life. When I woke during the night my mind actively dusted off vignettes from my mind's attic.
The book is a memoir of a daughter growing up in 50's -60's St. Paul, MN. "Old St. Paul"--the author's name, not mine. A frozen upper middle west capital she longed to escape from but never did except for when she traveled. It is the remembrance of a daughter about her adored handsome immigrant father and somewhat flawed mother. It's about relationships, the passing of values intergenerationally that are not easily taken by the offspring, and the observance of changing times. I don't agree with all of the author's worldviews but have gone through some of the same struggles.
Someone else once described St. Paul as whole wheat bread and Minneapolis as Wonder Bread. The contrasts are lessened now. National broadcasters often stand in front of a St. Paul landmark and generically refer to being "in Minneapolis", the bigger, better-known, flashier twin.
You navigate St. Paul with a map or good memory. A local politician in recent years described St. Paul streets as having been laid out by a drunken Irishman. Probably true. Not logical or on a grid like the other twin. Minneapolis is numbered or in alphabetical order. Look for Knox Avenue between James and Logan. Streets run one direction and avenues the other. Most blocks are similar lengths and rectangular. Good luck figuring out St. Paul. We have now lived on this side of the metro twenty-five years and I still navigate mostly by landmarks in St. Paul. In defence of St. Paul, it is more homey. More charming. You may be lost but you may not mind.
Minneapolis has the Timberwolves, Twins and Vikings. St. Paul had to scrap like a hockey player to get hockey back. The Wild filled the void in this hockey crazed town.
St. Paul has more colleges and universities but Minneapolis has the biggest--the U of Minnesota.
St. Paul rules--literally from the State Capitol and from the Archdioceses with it's impressive Cathedral on the hill.
St. Paul is Garrison Keillor. He does "The Prairie Home Companion" radio show here. He lives here on and off between fits of pique with neighbors or newspapers who print his address. Mostly you can hide out safely in St. Paul unless you are Garrison Keillor. Gangsters in the 20's and 30's loved to hide out in St. Paul. Police were okay with that as long as they lived quietly.
St. Paul with it's Irish Catholic history. I love this quote from the aforementioned book, "St. Paul was so baroquely Catholic that even Lutherans described themselves as being 'non-Catholics'."
Scandinavian Lutherans built Minneapolis. Irish immigrants settled St. Paul.
In past decades there was a fierce rivalry between the battling twins. Street brawls broke out between fans of the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints baseball teams. The author relates her father's dismay she wanted to attend the University of Minnesota "over there". The Catholic women's college in St. Paul seemed a better choice.
Both cities had their immigrant roots and ethnic neighborhoods. When we were first married we lived on Minneapolis's University Avenue close to the dividing line between southeast and northeast. "Nordeast" had distinct ethnic enclaves. Even in the late 60's you could walk into a shop on East Hennepin avenue and the clerks would switch from speaking their slavic tongue to English for you. There were large Catholic churches appropriately named with the national patron saints. Polish, slavic, Ukranians etc all had their own churches and shopping areas and the bars on every other corner for social life. Similar patterns were seen in St. Paul with Swede Hollow being a place where the newest immigrants squatted in little shacks on land the city owned. The Italians lived by the river flats until the great flood of 1965. The rich lived on the city bluffs enjoying river views.
I was raised in outstate central Minnesota. Eighteen-year-olds deserted most small outstate towns and headed to live and work in "the cities"; the city of choice was usually Minneapolis. Minneapolis with its nightlife and energy. Later, you discover Grand Avenue and the charm of St. Paul and relish the quieter town. These days you just need to stay away from the eastside. Some formerly embracing neighborhoods have changed into unsafe areas, but the city is still very neighborhood oriented. Consider the Rondo neighborhood which was bulldozed to make way for a swath of freeway that tore through town in the 60s. Rondo days are observed every summer with a nostalgic look back to what was lost-- an African-American neighborhood where kids growing up were watched by the neighbors and misbehavior reported to parents or a word spoken to the errant child to bring correction. A neighborhood of strong families, businesses and churches. A lost neighborhood. The eastside, now maligned as a dangerous place to live, was once a neighborhood like that for blue collar families to raise families. The newest immigrants live there now trying to live safe lives amidst the chaos of drugs and crime.
My mom was raised in the little Wisconsin almost border town of Somerset and was acclamated toward St. Paul. That is where she went when she moved to the city. The St. Paul newspaper is where she looked at obituaries for a familiar name. That is where our aunts or mom took us shopping when we were very young. I vaguely remember the street cars. My husband recalls taking them from his North St. Paul town to the city. St. Paul had department stores like The Golden Rule, The Emporium, and Field-Schlick. Stores that were one of a kind in times before shopping malls lead to duplication or national companies bought up successful local names and reproduced them logirhythmically.
Minneapolis had the venerable Daytons. For decades the large store dominated downtown Minneapolis. It was one of a kind until the 50's when Southdale opened another Daytons. Daytons came to St. Paul in the mid-60's. Daytons is not more. It has been lost in transit from being sold to Marshall Field and now Macy's. I don't think Macy's owners understood what a blow they dealt.
The twins. Related by proximity but divided by history. The twins. Watch this fall when the Republican National Convention comes to St. Paul's downtown. Some reporters will sign off saying , "that's it from Minneapolis. Back to you."
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