Guest Post by Kelsey Johnston

A few weeks ago, Kelsey presented us a guest writeup to post on Living in 55404. Without further ado…

Whoever said circles are in this season, is either joking or is dim-witted, I had read and heard this statement come across me only a few times in the past month and thought IKEA must have a new subliminal campaign for Spring. I’m riding the six bus, with my hangover as usual, I’m heading to work to cash my pay check for the weekend that had been planned with my sister, and sitting in my view is a woman in her thirties wearing circle jewelry and a black and white, circular patterned blouse, with khaki colored pants, no back pockets, it was a Friday. Circles surfaced in 1997and shorty diminished there after and can be rarely pulled off in attire recently. I had a great weekend ahead and was wearing my recently restored red heels. My sister was going to pick me up when she got done with work and we were going to stay with our mother in Rochester for a night filled with Miller or Michelob, fantastic junk food, and cable. Then we were going to visit our father in Wabasha for a “spiritual journey” right along the Mississippi River where he lives to join the company of our father, his wife, and a variety of domesticated animals. We had planned the weekend for quite some time and my sister and I were, above all, looking forward to getting out of the city.

When Sarah called me to let me know she was in my back alley I had finished up a ridiculous dress I had made for the summer and going to the beach. The dress looked like a clown kimono so I needed my sisters advice on how it looked and how to fix it. I had her come in to my constantly gloomy apartment, due to poor light filtration, where she tends to run into things and have a need to go to the bathroom. She came in and said it would never make it on Project Runway, gave a few suggestions, used my bathroom, and then we left. We went to the car and it wouldn’t start, the key wouldn’t turn over to start the engine. To save some painful explanation and details on the trial and errors we went through to try to get the car started, we ended up getting her Chevy towed. After about two hours of exploring all other options of trying to start the car except for one option, my idea, hot wiring. We got the car towed and it even seemed to cause some commotion on Emerson Street since the tow truck took up so much space on the road.

My sister and I sat on my fire escape, looking pathetic. We sang our sitcom song into Paul’s answering machine. “We’re just sisters stranded in the city, one of their cars doesn’t start, hey they have their obstacles, they can’t make it work, sisters”. I unpacked some clothes because I was going to be spending the night at Sarah ’s and not the weekend in Rochester and Wabasha. Sarah and I walked to her house and discussed dinner and evening plans. We also discussed how we were going to get to Rochester on Saturday. When we got to her spacious apartment we dressed up to go buy a bottle of vodka, in order to try to improve our moods, the bottle helped. We changed back into our jeans when we got home and made our drinks, Vodka, black berry liquor, some cranberry or grape juice, tonic water, and a lime. They tasted horrible we needed straws just to get them down. Later on, we biked to a bar called Bar-B-Q- Market over on Nicollet, where we felt a little out of place, then Sarah remarking “This is the kind of bar where you can drink when you’re pregnant and no one will care”. The bar was dead for a Friday night which is hard to find in Uptown and most places on a Friday night in Minneapolis. We went to The King & I Thai on Lasalle where we had calamari and kept Greyhounds our staple beverage. We went back to Sarah’s and got trashed and crashed, as if we were a set of swift Gruenwald sisters, Gruenwald being our mother’s maiden name. The next morning we had a plan to get to Rochester.

My friend Ted, said he was going to be playing his last show with his band from his high school “December’s Fall”. This was going to be our ride to Rochester, Sarah and I both had a bit of a headache over it. We were to meet Ted and Kirk at Caffetos coffee shop at noon on Saturday. Sarah and I showed up, then Kirk, the three of us sat in the hot and sunny outdoors for about an hour after noon had passed asking “Where’s Todd?” numerous times and laughing at how suitable the name is. Finally Ted/Todd showed and we were off to Rochester. We got to our mother’s house and of course went shopping for dresses for our cousin Hannah’s wedding, an upcoming blog I’ll be sure of it, we went to Apache Mall in Rochester where Sarah pointed out the old logo that was one of a few things that hasn’t changed in Rochester. Then we went home and ate and after dinner poked fun at a Lutheran Cook book my mom had gotten at a funeral, we’re Catholics. Then Sarah and I went to Ted and Kirk’s show at Kathy’s Pub, we stayed for a fifteen dollar pitcher of watered down New Castle and ditched the K-mart clothed bar. We walked over to a place I had always liked since it opened, City Cafe, a classier place with lower lighting dark stained wood and an Art Nouveau decor. We took a seat at the bar and I got a glass of my scotch and then we kind of joked and soaked in the muddle of our weekend situation. Our mom came and picked us up and we went home and we fell asleep to the cable television. The next day Sarah headed back with Todd and Kirk, I was bummed she couldn’t stay and hang out, especially now that I found out I was staying a night at dad’s, Sarah had wanted to go to dad’s house.

The next day I went to the Mayo Clinic to get my ears looked at and a slight problem with my heart and arm hurting, Dr. Franz the old family doctor gave a pretty poor examination. It was fine I didn’t know what I had expected anyways. I went to Mac’s Cafe for lunch in downtown Rochester off of the Peace Plaza. I used to work and manage at Mac’s, the Greek Restaurant, had the time of my life. I was also renting a warehouse space in an old chicken coop with my two best friends and working at the Restaurant, running around in a Toyota Corolla, having a blast, throwing great parties, spending great money, and making the most from what we had. It’s that kind of feeling where you feel you own a place from knowing it so well, it’s people it’s inner workings. That feeling was applied to everything I was doing at the time, even if it was buying a bagel. It’s encompassing some sort of mastery and pride it everything, which put quite the stubborn ego on me as well. Nothing could have really topped what I had had during that time. My old “boss” came outside where I was sitting to say hello. He wasn’t actually the boss the was the owner’s son. The owner, Jimmi, loved me but, must have not been around. George, the owner’s son was a sleeze at heart and had a thing for crack, which worked well for black-mailing. The owner, Jimmi, was cold at heart, a common lifestyle for business owners. After a quick catch-up chit chat with George my dad came to join me for lunch and I got my Gyro and fries and took off.

Dad and I discussed meeting so he could take me too his house and when he showed to pick me up he arrived on a motorcycle with a side car. I got to ride in the side car from Rochester to Wabasha which was an absolute delight. The road from Rochester to Wabasha was hilly, scenic, nostalgic, and rural. Cruising along 42 throughout the farmland countryside where Sarah and I grew up. It’s a surreal feeling to experience such a contrast from city to country, it almost seems like the country side is fake because it’s so perfect and clean. When dad and I were coming through Plainview I asked him to go by the house we grew up a great old house that we all miss dearly, though mom had to sell it because there was no way she could maintain a big house like that on her own, a good move in the long run. The house was so small with all of us living there and so huge with all of us gone. Sarah, I, and our brother were very lucky to grow up in such a house, such a town.

My dad and I made it to his home in Wabasha off of a road called Binner Way where looking from his front step you see an open corn field and across from that you see a small farm, The Binners, and then a open view of the bluffs. Southwest lasagna for dinner and a trip to the local pub where dad was at one time building his business but had sold the building after meeting his wife, a good move in the long run. I remember when I was in high school visiting him at his apartment above the business and ripping up the old floor boards of the business so he could put some sort of Brazilian wood or something down and when the family that bought the building to put the pub in they took out the nice floor my father had put down. I slept in the night on their screened in porch with their tail-less cat, Kona.

Sarah got her car fixed the next week and carried on with our lives. We keep enjoying weekends and weeks especially with summer fully kicked in. This weekend was just a segment of the typical luck and obstacles Sarah and I encounter from time to time. Also where we come from and the people who raised us is all due to who we are. The next step is our cousin’s wedding which will have a full report as well.