"The one thing I've noticed about St. Paul that I didn't know how to put down in a couple of words is that St. Paul on the whole has a kind of a narcissistic personality. Pretty much like the nation and the state right now. People in St. Paul are more worried about their own little kingdoms than they are worried about the less fortunate in society. They have a hard time taking time out of their busy schedules for volunteering. Or a couple bucks out of their paychecks for the food shelves.
Maybe the word I'm looking for is just "cold"."
I thought that was the meaning of "Minnesota Nice." I learned what Minnesota Nice meant the first full winter I was here. I was commuting to Wisconsin for work and one morning my car ran out of gas on the long vacant stretch from St. Paul to the border. It was -25 out in January, at 7:30 AM. I'd been told to just put up my hood and someone would stop and help me. So I got out and did that and tried for a few minutes to wave someone by. It was a weekday and there was a lot of traffic, plenty of cars. No one stopped.
I wasn't dressed for hiking in the cold so I got back in the car. 30 minutes later, the car was cold and the traffic was dying down a lot, with the main "rush hour" passed. No one had stopped. Hundreds of cars passed me, sitting there with hood up and lights blinking in way sub-zero weather. I figured I'd stay there until I froze unless I did something, so I got out and started trying to wave down cars again. 20 cars passed. No one stopped. I was really freezing.
No one was stopping. So I walked out onto I-94 and STOOD IN THE LANE. I put my body in the way to stop someone so they would help me. And you know what? The first three cars swerved to avoid me and kept going.
The guy who stopped was from Michigan. He said he hated Minnesotans for exactly the behavior I was describing. I haven't seen anything about Minnesotans to make me think that morning, when I could have died of exposure while several hundred people drove by, was a fluke.
_________________________________________________________________
Set yourself up for fun at home! Get tips on home entertainment equipment, video game reviews, and more here. http://special.msn.com/home/homeent.armx
NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract _______________________________________________ Stpaul mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul
