I remember when visiting Minneapolis the thrill of eating chow mein
at the Forum Cafeteria and what a wonderful, grand place that
seemed to a young girl from a small town of 800. I also vaguely
remember riding on a street car! I think we used to stay in the
Andrews Hotel in downtown Mpls (I hope I'm remembering
correctly) where we had the windows open for comfortable
sleeping. I stayed awake for a long time, in wonderment, at the
'lightness' of night in a city, the sounds of traffice and of all the
horns honking. It was so different from anything I had ever known
before that it was exotic; I was entranced.Years later, after I had
moved to Mpls. I lived on the West Bank and remember very fondly
the daytime dinners of pork roast and mashed potatoes in the Five
Corners Bar. Yes, all those small neighborhood bars had full
kitchens, and boy, did they turn out the food! I liked them because
the old people who constituted the majority of their daytime
clientele were so friendly, and because it was the kind of food I had
grown up on in rural Minn. Real food! Real people! I learned that the
people had lived on the 'flats' most of their lives and for most of their
lives had seen very hard times; sparse education, low incomes,
heavy labor jobs, horrible flooding of their homes. They had been
relatively cut off from the rest of the city (no bridges across the
Mississippi in that area then) and had their own Snoose Blvd.
culture. Later, when I bartended at the 400, I kept their individual
snoose cans (with their names on them) ready for them under the
bar. Oh, the stories! They were wonderful! I miss them all. The
times, they were a'changing then, and so did their old
neighborhood.
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