Living In the frozen north - Minneapolis

When I heard about the bridge collapsing in Minneapolis, my thoughts were about how many times we have crossed that bridge and enjoyed the riverview and St. Anthony's Falls upstream. You crossed the Miss. River on this bridge to get to the twin city of St. Paul, the capital of MN.

This is our home, on a hill, in Wayzata, MN, about 12 miles west from downtown where Jim worked (Vice Pres. of Manufacturing, Vassarette Women's Div) at the Munsingwear Headquarters. We transferred from Texas in May and everything was green and lilacs were blooming and it was beautiful. We didn't know we would be going up this hill in several feet of snow in the winter! I had a neighbor with a snow plow (he was a contractor) and he found out I could sew and repair his Eddie Bauer down jackets, so we bartered right away. He plowed our driveway when it snowed and I mended his jackets when he snagged them while working. Our home was split level with a basement where we would stay in the summer when it was hot on occasions. We didn't have air cond. I really enjoyed living near Lake Minnetonka and we learned to go cross country skiing on Cargill Grain corporate headquarters property adjoining our property nearby or on golf courses.

Our mentally handicapped son James was still attending public school in Crystal, several miles away. The roads were plowed during the night and his school bus (van) was never late and never missed a day because of weather. Jim was traveling to plants in Texas and AR and LA, so he was gone a lot and hated to return to the cold weather. He was happy when he was offered a job with Bali, Div. of Hanes, in Winston Salem and we moved there after two winters in MN. I attended VP Hubert Humprey's funeral while living there. We had met him earlier at the sheltered workshop his granddaughter attended. The quality of life in Minneapolis was great! And I loved the summers there - so many blue lakes all over the city. The winters were another story. We left two sons in Texas, in college, when we moved and later the youngest son, Bill, got a job in St Paul with KSTP TV station for awhile. I still have two friends there that I hear from on special occasions.