A Life Lived In One Place

Garrison Keillor reflects on a life lived in the Twin Cities, and a life lived in which a man and his surroundings are entwined in a single existence:

When a man has lived in one place so long, he takes comfort in landmarks. The State Theater, the Basilica of St. Mary, the Grain Belt beer sign on Hennepin. I will go out of my way to cruise by the white tower of the horticulture building at the state fairgrounds and the grandstand and the remains of the racetrack where auto thrill-show drivers raced late-model Fords off ramps and through flaming hoops and a woman in a spangly suit dived from a high tower into a water tank. When Northwestern National Bank was sold to a giant chain, whose brass decided to do away with the beloved Weatherball (“When the Weatherball is white, colder weather is in sight”), it was like a death in the family.....
When a man has lived in one place for most of his life, he walks around hip-deep in history. He sees that life is not so brief; it is vast and contains multitudes. I drive down Seventh Street to a Twins game and pass the old Dayton’s department store (Macy’s now but still Dayton’s to me), where in my poverty days I shoplifted an unabridged dictionary the size of a suitcase, and 50 years later I still feel the terror of walking out the door with it under my jacket, and I imagine the cops arresting my 20-year-old self and what 30 days in the slammer might’ve done for me. From my seat above first base, I see the meatpacking plant where those men wrestled beef carcasses into trucks and the old Munsingwear factory with the low rumble and whine of machines, and I remember an intense dread of spending one’s days at a power loom making men’s underwear. The building is today an enormous emporium of interior design showrooms, the place to go if you feel the urge to spend a hundred grand on a new bathroom, but to me it’s still the coal mine I was afraid I’d spend my life in. I think about this along about the eighth inning if the Twins are down by a few runs.
When we graduated from Anoka High, my classmate Corinne Guntzel drove her dad’s white Cadillac Eldorado convertible with rocket tail fins at high speed down the West River Road and into the city on a street just beyond right center field, and I stood in the front seat and sang, “That’ll be the day, when you say goodbye / oh, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry,” and now she and her parents, Hilmar and Helen, lie in Crystal Lake Cemetery on the north side beyond left field, my stalwart friends and supporters, in the ground; thoughts of them click into place whenever I pass the Dowling Avenue exit on 94. She was a suicide 28 years ago, drowned with rocks in her pockets, and I still love her and am not over her death, nor do I expect ever to be. If I drove by the cemetery with a visitor, I wouldn’t say a word about this. Too much. Too painful. Her at the wheel, the summer wind in my face, the lights of Minneapolis passing, sweet love in the air. I would give the world to go back to that night and hold her in my arms.

When I got out of college, I made an effort to move away from home and to head to a more rural place, one in which change seemed less likely.  One of the things that quickly brought be back home was my knowledge of the place.  I didn't want to give up all the history, the landmarks, the understanding of the communities, what they were, how they worked, and why they worked that way.  I didn't want to be a stranger in a strange land, where I wasn't educated in the culture of the place.  It is probably a strange reason to head back home, but it is one of the determining factors in me ending up where I am.  We're going to have a couple of local landmarks demolished this year, and I'm going to feel like a little piece of the place I know is gone.  However, they will live on, as long as the stories about them do.  Much like the stockyards and packing plants of South St. Paul, which I'm sure Keillor remembers well, even though they are gone, the people they affected live on, and a bit of that history will continue to be passed down.  I can appreciate that many people aren't attached to a single place, but to Garrison Keillor, and to myself, place is a part of self.