We moved to Minnesota twice. I’ve talked about our moves some here. The first time we moved from Chicago. It was early 90’s and Harry was two. It was a company move and we looked at houses in a couple of really small towns on the north side of Rochester, and then for some reason ended up looking out in the rural areas.
Some observations about these small towns (in Minnesota): Every restaurant we walked into looked like a convention of the Klu Klux Klan; very white and wrinkled men in overalls and a sea of john deer baseball caps, and of course the room would go silent for a full minute with all heads turned our direction when we walked in. It was creepy. Our middle aged realtor wore a jacket, one of those flannel lined nylon windbreakers like I wore back in high school, and a floppy wool rain hat. He was over 6 feet tall, so who was I to criticize his fashion sense. He had no clue what might appeal to us. If I commented on a painted door at one place (because it accented something else about the house or yard) he would immediately assume that I would go gaga over a screaming turquoise door with a fake Tudor façade on some other house that was horridly inappropriate with whatever else was going on with the colors and landscape. And there was never any landscaping. They like to mow grass right up to the houses foundation or landscape with gravel all around the house. Bushes cost money. Most of what we were looking at was post WWII ticky tacky anyway. It was a tough choice. We also noticed that inside most homes, floor molding consisted of running the rug up the wall two inches, and every boy bedroom carried a monster assortment of toy tractors and farm toy paraphernalia. Oh and also, every barn had a fabulous old car that hadn’t been run in years under plastic tarp.
My biggest concern, having lived all my life in the city, with city noises, city traffic, and dense populations, was alien sightings and crop dusting. In the city, alien ships don’t land in parking lots, but they do land in cornfields. Every place we looked had a cornfield within the immediate vicinity, so I always asked about the crop dusting because the realtor would think I was crazy if I asked about aliens. The realtor would stare blankly at me for a minute (he probably thought I was insane anyway) and then would just say “NO”. I found out later that they apply most of the chemicals with pull behind sprayers and they sometimes do aerial spraying. We lost a row of trees that way once, and there are a lot of farmers who die of cancer around here, just like in the city. Since I couldn’t ask about the aliens, I researched the topic by watching a lot of movies involving the subject. I also watched anything I could on TV, but for some reason I didn’t watch x-files, too gory. I preferred the TV journalism approach of that show narrated by the guy who used to be second in command on Star Trek, Next Generation. What I learned was that aliens for the most part have only been seen in the Northeast or the Northwest or in the Western desert, and maybe once in Michigan. We were pretty safe. So I am less worried about aliens as I am about zombies (we have about 30 acres of second growth forest), but I haven’t taken the time to do a lot of research on that topic. That’s one I am still working on.
Some observations about these small towns (in Minnesota): Every restaurant we walked into looked like a convention of the Klu Klux Klan; very white and wrinkled men in overalls and a sea of john deer baseball caps, and of course the room would go silent for a full minute with all heads turned our direction when we walked in. It was creepy. Our middle aged realtor wore a jacket, one of those flannel lined nylon windbreakers like I wore back in high school, and a floppy wool rain hat. He was over 6 feet tall, so who was I to criticize his fashion sense. He had no clue what might appeal to us. If I commented on a painted door at one place (because it accented something else about the house or yard) he would immediately assume that I would go gaga over a screaming turquoise door with a fake Tudor façade on some other house that was horridly inappropriate with whatever else was going on with the colors and landscape. And there was never any landscaping. They like to mow grass right up to the houses foundation or landscape with gravel all around the house. Bushes cost money. Most of what we were looking at was post WWII ticky tacky anyway. It was a tough choice. We also noticed that inside most homes, floor molding consisted of running the rug up the wall two inches, and every boy bedroom carried a monster assortment of toy tractors and farm toy paraphernalia. Oh and also, every barn had a fabulous old car that hadn’t been run in years under plastic tarp.
My biggest concern, having lived all my life in the city, with city noises, city traffic, and dense populations, was alien sightings and crop dusting. In the city, alien ships don’t land in parking lots, but they do land in cornfields. Every place we looked had a cornfield within the immediate vicinity, so I always asked about the crop dusting because the realtor would think I was crazy if I asked about aliens. The realtor would stare blankly at me for a minute (he probably thought I was insane anyway) and then would just say “NO”. I found out later that they apply most of the chemicals with pull behind sprayers and they sometimes do aerial spraying. We lost a row of trees that way once, and there are a lot of farmers who die of cancer around here, just like in the city. Since I couldn’t ask about the aliens, I researched the topic by watching a lot of movies involving the subject. I also watched anything I could on TV, but for some reason I didn’t watch x-files, too gory. I preferred the TV journalism approach of that show narrated by the guy who used to be second in command on Star Trek, Next Generation. What I learned was that aliens for the most part have only been seen in the Northeast or the Northwest or in the Western desert, and maybe once in Michigan. We were pretty safe. So I am less worried about aliens as I am about zombies (we have about 30 acres of second growth forest), but I haven’t taken the time to do a lot of research on that topic. That’s one I am still working on.
1 comment:
Anne - loved your poem and musings about aliens and monsters - great stuff - putting it on paper may help ease the anxieties - you 'go' girl!
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