Nanny and Nanny’s Daddy
2013
p>Nanny is my grandmother. Daddy is her husband, my grandfather. One day, years ago, Nanny and Daddy were out looking for the Winter Carnival Medallion. They watched others find the medallion on the grounds of Nanny’s old house.
The Bully
2013
The fear of you haunted my every day. Fear of your fist—a slap or punch— there was no difference between the actual and the dread.
Finding Home: The Journey to Saint Paul
2013
Mother said they already knew that the communist soldiers were on their way to her father’s house because he was a provincial governor, he was one of the firsts on their lists. They had many lists.
Bill’s Menagerie
2013
I spent two summers semi-underground in Saint Paul. I worked in a corner of a municipal building’s warehouse near the Mississippi River. It was, more accurately, the city’s basement.
End of the Line
2013
Take the bus? Sure, I can take the bus. Moving to Saint Paul from a small southern Minnesotan town in 1976 was thrilling. I was nineteen years old and fearless; riding the bus didn’t seem like a big deal.
XXX Searle
2013
A chunk of snow falls while my grandma Dorothy Marie Miller Wick Rangitsch Hayes stares out the window. She is eighty-nine years old and lives in the disorientation and terror of dementia.
A Lot of Learning to Do
2013
We stood at the corner of West Seventh and Albion waiting for the WALK signal. Though it was February, the sun was shining and the weather was mild. My four-year-old
The Sweetest Kiss in Saint Paul
2013
As you go through life you get kisses you remember forever. There is the kiss you get in the parking lot of Porky’s Drive-In when you are fifteen. There is the first kiss that tells you this is the girl you are going to marry someday.
They Build Ice Palaces There!
2013
When I was eight years old and living in Pennsylvania, my father took a new job in Minnesota at the Saint Paul Foundry. He and my mother had immigrated to America from Scotland and always spoke lovingly of their hometown of Edinburgh, but work opportunities were better in America.
This One Is Not Hers: 1989 Golden 240 Volvo Station Wagon
2013
I see the car. I know it is not hers. I know, because she has been gone for years—at least gone from my world. This car—it is the same color, the same make, maybe even the same year.
Linwood
2013
The railroad caboose was our warming house. Pete didn’t open it until ten, but that didn’t stop us. With our blades and sticks over our shoulders, ear bras on our heads, choppers on our hands, we would change in the snow banks and the Stanley Cup finals began.
Workin’ on the Railroad— Dale Street Shops
2013
Driving through the intersection of Dale Street and Minnehaha Avenue, in the Frogtown district, you couldn’t help being impressed by the massive yellow-ochre brick building with the exceptionally tall glass block windows.