The Author’s Story: To Outer Suburbia
December 17th, 2004,I spent the first five years of my life in St. Louis Park, an older, inner-ring suburb immediately west of Minneapolis. We lived in a small neighborhood only a few blocks from the intersection of Excelsior Boulevard and France Avenue. France Avenue marks the border between Minneapolis and St. Louis Park, and the Minneapolis lakes and the Uptown area were only a mile or so east of our house.
When my parents had moved to St. Louis Park in 1964, they were part of the mid-twentieth century exodus from the city. My dad’s job at Groveland Elementary School in Minnetonka was even farther out, so when I was five years old they moved to a new house in Plymouth, on the western edge of the metropolitan area. My dad wanted a shorter commute to Groveland, where he taught sixth grade.
My parents’ house in Plymouth, where they still live today, is only about fifteen miles from the Mississippi River and the center of Minneapolis. When I was growing up, that seemed like a long ways from the city, although it does not seem so to me now. As a result, my childhood was suburban to a degree that it would not have been had we stayed where we were in St. Louis Park.
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to grow up in St. Louis Park, right next to Minneapolis. Would I have ventured into the city and discovered wonderful things? Would I have been a different person, maybe a more savvy urbanite? Well, I would have lacked what I enjoyed in Plymouth, so I won’t dwell on that.
Growing up in the outer suburbs provided rewards that would not have been available to me had we stayed closer to the city. There were always new houses going up in our area, and we made them our playgrounds. We played in them at every stage of their construction, from the pouring of the foundation to the building of the wooden frame and completion of the finished product. As I got older, I took bike rides out west on County Road 6 or Highway 24. Baker Park and Lake Independence were not far away. I have good memories of golfing at Baker Park in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. The gently rolling land of western Hennepin County, which is still made up mainly of hobby and horse farms, is quite beautiful. That beauty shows through even in winter, with the dry vegetation in shades of brown and red, vivid against the white snow, and the bare trees starkly black and gray. And, of course, there were the friends I made.
As I got older, I became more conscious of how suburban my childhood was, how different from a city or small town. I enjoyed suburbia then and thought it special in its own way–not perfect or idyllic, but an expression of its time and place.
Weather Note
Early Tuesday morning (December 14) the low temperature fell to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the Twin Cities, the lowest temperature since March; temperatures in the northern part of the state were well below zero. For a couple of days the low temperature for the nation (Alaska excluded) shifted from mountain towns in the Rockies to the Upper Midwest, where it will often reside this winter.
Just 24 hours after the cold snap, the low temperature was 28 degrees, much warmer than the day before and an example of our highly changeable regional weather. The cold weather, even if brief, made 30 degrees feel balmy, which is one reason I appreciate it.
Although it is getting quite cold again this weekend, the weather news has been mostly about relatively warm conditions for the region. It has been one of the warmest autumns ever. Though the grass has finally turned from green to a dormant brown, we still have no snow.