gerisullivan | Minneapolis Now and Then

Thirty years ago, I spent my first Christmas in Minneapolis. I'd moved there specifically for the weather, for that promise of winter full of snow and cold.

During the fall of 1979, co-workers and neighbors told me about the previous winter. Backyards had disappeared under a blanket of snow in October and hadn't reappeared until April. I began to fear I'd perhaps bitten off more than I could chew of that whole winter thing.

Come Christmas, I felt totally betrayed. It wasn't white. It was brown. Apart from one thoroughly magical, sunny morning of hoarfrost, the landscape was thoroughly dreary.

Hoarfrost on Fence, 1979
It wasn't a white Christmas, but I'd never before seen hoarfrost anything like the hoarfrost that encased St. Louis Park, Minnesota one morning in December of 1979. Polariod SX-70 photo by Geri Sullivan, taken within walking distance of 3657 Rhode Island Ave. S.

The 25 years that followed brought plenty of white Christmas' to Minneapolis, but I don't remember any of them having anything like the 15+ inches of snow and blizzard the Twin Cities are getting hammered with this year.

Yes, there was 1982 -- the year

coffeeem and

willshetterly called on Christmas Eve to see if I was up for a rescue trip over a legendary coating of black ice in -20 degree F. weather to Menomonie, where

pameladean,

dd_b, and BoyOBoy were stranded en route from Boston. Oh. That's why they didn't show up the night before at the party up at the Courts of Chaos in Blaine. I said yes before learning that we were talking about the Menomonie in Wisconsin and not Menominee, Michigan. It was only 40 miles over the border, but it still took Will, Emma, Jan Appelbaum, Karen Johnson, and me several hours to make our way safely there.

The parties and adventures continued through the years, morphing along the way as these things do. I wish all of my Minneapolis friends and loved ones warmth, safety, good health, comfort and joy through the storm and well beyond it, too. I'm glad I'm here, but I also I wish I were there. I'd help shovel, and savor the joy of your company, too.