It Can Get Really Cold in Minnesota

mprnews.org

I flew back to Minnesota just in time for a classic hard Minnesota freeze like the ones of my childhood, when you walk out the door and the cold hits you like a board and suddenly you realize you’re wearing the wrong clothes. You chose these clothes for elegance to emphasize your slim figure. The right clothes would make you look like you weigh 300 pounds. You wish you had those clothes on now.

St. Paul is bleak. I walk out of the Hotel St. Paul and wait for my Uber ride to the Midway Saloon. I feel I’m at a concentration camp for political dissidents. The wind blows in off the Mississippi. Nobody is out for a walk, nobody is hanging out, everyone is heading briskly for a car or for a warm building. And there is no complaining. This is the remarkable thing. Nobody says, “My God, it’s cold out, I have no feeling in my face,” because (1) this is not a personal experience, everyone else is cold too and (2) God is aware of the cold and is hoping it will make you a better person, which God knows it should. Nobody says, “I wish I were in Florida,” because (1) you are not in Florida and (2) there is a reason for you to be in Minnesota, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in Phoenix with all the retired cops and teachers and ministers.

I’m here because my friend Pat Donohue asked me to come do a gig with him at the Midway Saloon and how could I say no? I’m 82, I’m a performer, and thanks to my evangelical upbringing, I’ve never performed in a bar where people drink beer and whiskey. I did a show at a winery once but that’s different. This is a neighborhood bar where everybody seems to know everybody. The pool table is up front, the stage is in the back. I’ve spent a good deal of my life in high-end venues, the ones with ushers and dressing rooms and a stage manager and a Steinway piano and it seems right, at the end of my career, to get back to basics and do two sets on a stage next to the men’s room on a profoundly cold night in St. Paul.

Pat’s a guitarist I’ve known for years and Richard Kriehn plays mandolin and I do a couple songs I remember from childhood, the ballad of the babes in the woods who froze to death in a blizzard and the ballad of Frankie and Johnny, the crowd singing the refrain “He was her man and he was doing her wrong.” It is a very warm crowd, packed in tight in chairs, around tables, standing in the corner, and thanks to the cruel wind outdoors, they are all very happy to be here, which is not always true of an audience in, say, West Palm Beach or Honolulu. The cold has drawn us together as mammals. They know that I used to live here and then moved to New York, but they’re in a forgiving mood because here I am suffering with them. Someone asks if I know Bob Dylan. I don’t. I used to sing his song “Mozambique” but can’t remember the words. I sing a Van Morrison song, “Oh won’t you stay? Stay a while with your own ones. Don’t ever stray. Stray so far from your own ones. For this world is so cold, don’t care nothing for your soul you share with your own ones.”

And in a little bar on a bitterly cold night in St. Paul, I feel the full weight of those words. The crowd was in a singing mood so we did some Everlys, some Beatles, “Honky Tonk Women,” but I felt like singing a gospel song about the river Jordan: “Now look at that cold Jordan, look at the deep waters.”

I was young and unemployed in this town at one time. I had to live in my parents’ basement at one time. I went to several funerals in this town that broke my heart. I sat in dark bedrooms and wrote on a typewriter here with no expectation I’d get published. I got fired here twice. So this is my home. I’m a visitor in New York, always will be. I never had it rough there. I need to come back here and be with my people and sing with them on a really cold night.

Garrison Keillor © 12.16.24