Well, my father and mother were both from northern Minnesota, but somewhat opposite ends. My father struck out on his own and moved to Alaska, got married, had a couple kids, moved to Maine, got divorced and moved back to Minnesota, but not back to his hometown. He was in the Air Force and then the Army National Guard, and when he was either not on active duty or in the guard, he made his living in retail management. He have moved to Duluth, MN, which was about 3 hours southwest of where he was originally from, but which was probably the only “city” of any size within 200 miles of his family, and became a manager at a Target Store when he met my mother in the mid 1960s. My mother had also recently relocated to Duluth from about an hour and a half due north of where she was from, to attend college at the University of Minnesota. When they met, my dad hadn’t finalized the divorce and my mom refused to go out with him while he was still married, but a year later they happened to meet again, his divorce was final, and they were married in 1968. The next year, my father volunteered to go to Vietnam for a year even though he was already in his late 20s, and they started to work on a family. After my father came home, the Air Force transferred my father to Strategic Air Command in Omaha, NE, and that is where I was born in 1971.
After his tour of duty ended, my father began a retail management job at Zales, and was transferred to a store in Elmira, New York, that was home 2. They had very little money and agreed to do some work on their apartment in exchange for reduced rent. Then one day when my mom and I were at home and there was a public access cable channel on, an ad show came on for real estate rentals and I apparently at the age of 2, recognized our apartment on the TV and called my mom. Apparently the landlord liked what my parents had done with the place so much that he decided to rent it out from under them without informing them. So, we moved to another apartment in Elmira, and my mom’s sister moved in with us. Both of my parents and my aunt swear that the house was haunted by an old lady who liked to watch over me, but I’ve never believed in such things, so I’m not realy sure what that was about. Anyway, that was home 3.
My dad got transferred again, this time to Fargo, North Dakota, which was considerably closer to home, a little closer to his family than to my mom’s, but we had an apartment there (home 4) until my parents decided to buy a house (home 5), also in Fargo. My dad re-enlisted, this time into the Army National Guard, and managed after a couple years (I was 5 at this time), to secure a job in Minnesota about an hour from my mom’s family and 2 hours from his in the northeastern part of the state, working as a service tech for Ma Bell, AND was able to transfer to the local Armory. My mom’s sister who had lived with us in New York had agreed to move in with us again when we moved back to Minnesota to a house they’d had built that was actually only about 40 minutes away from most of my mom’s family. My dad made weekend trips for a couple months to bring all of our possessions to this new house, but after he’d gotten everything moved in, but days before we were set to move ourselves in, a forest fire destroyed the home and everything we owned.
So, for home 6, we found a small town in northern Minnesota called Cherry and they bought a trailer home, where we lived for most of a year, until finally, my parents settled on a home in the country just on the outskirts of a small town called Chisholm, which is next door to Hibbing, which is where both Bob Dylan and Kevin McHale come from. It was a small, and small minded, rural mining community which shunned development (a town of 5,000 and not even a McDonalds), and THAT is where my parents live to this day, but the area never appealed to me.
So, I did my school years, and then 2 years at community college in Hibbing, then I transferred to Bemidji State University on the other end of Northern MN (pretty close to where my dad grew up), and moved into the dorms (home 8). After 2 quarters in one room with a roommate whom I to this day consider to be my best friend, I managed to get my own room one floor below (home 9). After college, I moved back home for about a year while I looked for work anywhere but there. I was hoping to find something in Albuquerque, but I probably applied for jobs in 25 different states, and even in Guam. But none of it panned out, and I had to strike out on my own eventually.
So, I moved to the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota and started my career. I had a small one bedroom apartment (home 10), starting in April of ‘94. I met my now wife in June of ‘94, and in early August, my apartment (the East Side being a fairly bad part of town, unbenounced to me when I moved there), was broken into, I was robbed, and my wife/then girlfriend told me I was moving in with her and her roommate in a northern suburb of St. Paul (Maplewood), so that was home 11. After a year, our roommate moved on, and after another year, we began looking for our first house. In February of 1997, we moved into a house in St. Paul in what is called the Como Park area, and I’ve been here ever since.
So, I’ve lived in 12 places, 5 have been outside of Minnesota and 7 have been inside. However whenever it’s been MY choice where to move, it’s still been within this state. When I finished college, I wanted to get the hell out of Minnesota, because my entire impression of the state was based on living in a pissant, depressed town with no culture, no shopping, nothing to do but drink and fuck (and I was unable to find a partner for the later), but when I relocated to the Twin Cities area, it was everything I’d ever wanted. It has all the appeal and attractions of a well known tourist destination…we have museums, night clubs, casinos, outdoor activities, the largest mall in America, great restaurants, theater, and it’s a very clean and literate and polite culture here. It’s basically as good as Chicago, but 1/10th as crowded and 1/10th as dirty. So, I don’t forsee ever leaving Minnesota…I hate the cold weather, but whereas growing up in far northern Minnesota, I’d expect 40 below for 2 solid weeks every winter, it rarely gets below 10 below in the cities, and then usually only for a day or two here or there, the weather is actually not that bad here, I have roots here now, my son is in a great school, and I see no reason to ever leave.
But never say never….
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