When I was 17 in 1957, my parents and I moved to Minnesota from Upstate New York. It was a tough time in my life to move to a new place and to say that my teenage friends that I had known since first grade felt sorry for me is an understatement. They were pretty much horrified.
One of the things that concerned them most was: “But, I heard they don’t even have TV out there yet. You’re going to miss 'American Bandstand!'" Put a big whine on that last quote and you have the general interpretation. We were moving to Rochester, Minnesota, which as the medical capital of the world certainly had television in 1957, but that widely held perception of Minnesota as a northwoods wasteland has always put Duluth, my adopted hometown, at the very top of the list of places you wouldn’t want to live, or even visit.
Until you’ve been here. Then you do pretty much everything you can to visit regularly or move here. We try to keep it a secret, but once you’ve come over Thompson Hill and seen the lake and the city spread out before you, what else can you do? ADVERTISEMENT I have always said that the two best things I have done in my life are marry Tom and move to Duluth.
The kids come in a very close third. We came to Duluth for the first time in 1962, one baby in tow, so Tom could do his internship at St. Mary’s Hospital.
The 11 interns' families, all of us, lived in the Shoreview apartments, right across the street from St. Mary’s, so our world was pretty small. Interns were forever on call so we didn’t go far from the hospital.
We knew where the closest grocery store was and Joe Huie’s, down on Lake Avenue, was the place we’d go for a big night out on the town. Occasionally, we’d drive out to the gravel pit on Jean Duluth Road to do a little target shooting and tramping around in the woods, but downtown was pretty dismal with lots of empty storefronts and big, old hotels and turn-of-the-century buildings withering away. No Highway 35 yet, so no Rose Garden, no Grandma’s or other Canal Park attractions, no Miller Hill Mall, no Target, no Spirit Mountain and the Depot was still a train station.
We had no clue there were nice residential areas all around us, east and west. However, one time, all of us intern couples were invited to a lovely buffet dinner at a Duluth Clinic physician’s house out in the Congdon area. It was all very nice, in a beautiful, old home, until one of the guys tripped and dumped his plateful of food on the brand-new carpeting, resulting in an early end to the lovely buffet dinner.
The big thing that happened while we were here was the opening of the wonder of wonders, Goldfine’s by the Bridge, where you could buy anything from a package of lunch meat to brake pads for your Chevy or a three-piece living room suite with sofa, two chairs, footstool and a coffee table. Another place to go. Yay! There were things you could afford to buy when you got there! The thing that made it possible was the replacement of the scary old swing toll bridge, which for so many years was one of only two ways to drive to Superior, Wisconsin.
With the construction of the new ”High Bridge," renamed the “Blatnik Bridge” later on, suddenly you could get to Superior much easier. Now, we could go to Louis’ Cafe for its Greek food and pancake breakfasts. ADVERTISEMENT An internship only lasts one year so, in July 1963, we left Duluth, saying to each other, “Well, we won’t be coming back here again, anyway.
” Only because the point is, we did come back and have been very happy we did. Fast-forward to 1969, whizzing through two years of living in Germany, two more babies, three years of residency at Mayo and our first house: a little English Tudor south of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. This was what we’d planned to do, through all those years of training: Move to the beautiful city of Minneapolis so we wouldn’t have to drive 90 miles from Rochester to go to the museums, the theater, the zoo, all the festivals and amenities.
We tried to make our plans work — we did. But, there were too many people; things were too expensive; there was too much driving. It just wasn’t working.
Dang it. We just moved here! Dang it. We just bought a house! Dang it.
Dang it! Tom had joined the clinic in Golden Valley! And, we had found babysitters! Triple-dog dang it. What do we do, now? We have to find the right place! Preferably before all the kids start school. Our solution was to pile the kids in the station wagon and drive to places that sounded appealing, had job openings and where we had friends to stay with.
So, how on earth did we wind up in a place where unemployment was high, where we didn’t know anybody, and, last time we saw it, looked like it was about to close down? I’ll tell you next time, but here’s a spoiler: The lake did it. ADVERTISEMENT.
