Tuesday 5th May 2009 – Sneaking Out for a Pint

When you come to Minneapolis, you have to go and look at the Saint Anthony Falls.  These are the last proper falls on the Mississippi, and must be, looking at the map, at least 1200 miles from the Gulf.  The river is already of awesome proportions.  The falls have a turbulent history, due to a combination of the geology under them and the rapaciousness of late nineteenth century industrial man.  The water power the falls made available was used to destruction.  In the 1860's, the falls, essentially, fell down.  Dams of varying durability were built, until, nowadays, it is in the charge of the Army Corps of Engineers (the whole Mississippi is in the charge of the Corps of Engineers, as is the great dam on the Missouri at Glasgow, Montana, which we shall be visiting SOON).  It now looks like an army engineer's idea of a waterfall.

Just below the falls is a fine stone bridge, built to carry the railroad into Minneapolis.  The Inaugural Plaque on this bridge carries the name of the railroad company president, James J Hill.  He is the man who became known as the 'Empire Builder', the name now given to the trans-continental train which brought me from Chicago.  This train runs on to Seattle and Oregon, stopping at the afore-mentioned Glasgow, Montana.  It was his company which named the sidings along this route, allegedly by stabbing a finger at a spinning globe of the world, with siding 45 becoming 'Glasgow'.  I really want it to be true that he, personally, produced this name.

Did you know Longfellow was an American?  Of course you did.  It's only me who didn't.  Well, it's not that I didn't know: it's more that I never thought of it at all.  But he's big stuff here in Minneapolis.  They have a real pretty waterfall called Minnehaha Falls, in Minnehaha Park, at the junction of Hiawatha Avenue and Minnehaha Parkway.  And there is a fine bronze statue of the pair of them overlooking the falls.  I think they have merged Longfellow's nonsense fiction with the history of a charismatic 18^th-century native-american leader who had a similar sounding name, and placed the poem here: and why not.

 

Left to my own devices, recidivism set in late in the evening, driving me south to Rosemount and a bar.  A series of happy accidents led me to 'Shenanigan's'.  The barman asked me what beer I wanted, and because I couldn't make up my mind, laid out a row of 'taster' glasses in front of me.  I picked one called 'Finnegans'.  "How much?" I asked.  "It's free", he said.  It was 'Gentleman's Tuesday', first drink free. 

The drunk at the next stool started chatting.  As usual, I froze.  Then I thought that this was not what I was supposed to be doing, so I chatted back.  And he turned out to be fascinating, if hard to follow.  He made custom furniture out of expensive wood.  He was currently working on the hospitality suites at the new Twins (baseball) stadium.  And he had all of all of his fingers.  When he left, the man one stool away fixed my eye and said "he's been here since lunchtime": a sufficient explanation,

When I ordered the next drink, the barman said "that'll be a dollar": a dollar!  It was also 'Tapper's Tuesday'.  I began to understand why the joint was jumping.  I could also see trouble ahead.  But this is the sort of place where they call you a cab, so I got back OK.