Getting to Roseau, MN...Place #2, Part 1

My grandmother’s funeral was on the Monday after Pioneer Days. As much as I felt at peace about not going to the funeral itself, I was feeling left out of the family reunion, the gathering together of loved ones I hadn’t seen in many years. I hadn’t quite realized this yet, not until Tuesday night when my mother called asking me to describe the stuffed animal I had said I wanted to inherit, one in which I had played with as a child. She loyally and patiently went through boxes and boxes while I was on the phone with her. She couldn’t find it. I asked about other things too, like Grandma’s drinking cups, the ugly ones she’s had since I was little, the ones I remembered always using and loving simply because they were hers. But I couldn’t express this to my mother. She told me they weren’t worth anything and they went into Good Will boxes. I was heartbroken about the ridiculous stuffed animal, and then I was upset about the cups. It sounds stupid, it does. I know. It sort of is, actually. But it’s these sort of stupid things that send you off when you’re already fragile. When I got off the phone with my mother, I succumbed to the finale of my grief. I wept, sobbed, and was still trying to tell myself that I was being ridiculous, that I needed to “buck up” and “get a grip”. I don’t know why crying is so shameful for me. I believe it to be necessary, and healthy, I do, but there’s a practical side to my brain that says, “Grief is so illogical”. The conflict is ever tormenting. The words, “you could have it so much worse than this” replays like a cracked record in my head whenever I have even the most remote feeling of sadness. I hear it even worse when I have a perfectly justified reason to be sad. And with sadness, comes anger. I don’t know why, exactly, but it does. I was very, very angry last week. It didn’t help that I had a challenging week at work. All sorts of injustices and “it’s not fairs!” were filing into my head like a swarm of bees through a pencil thin pipe. Self pity became the demon that took over me. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself because my grandmother passed away. Truth be told, I was grateful that she didn’t live on in painful, suffering, pointless years. She lived her life. Dying at her age is natural. It wasn’t that at all. It was everything surrounding it. It was being alone. It was not getting the chance to be with my family. It was mourning over several other loved ones in my life that are going through hard times they don’t deserve to go through. Then it turned into more pathetic, self-centered things like, feeling sorry for myself because of where I’m at in my life. It was, feeling unappreciated. It was, feeling ugly, old, and worthless. It was being frustrated and heartbroken over the ungrateful children at work, the difficult ones that I spend so much heart on and sometimes suffer a great deal of backlash. It was feeling like I had been worn paper thin and there were too many expectations of me, and I was ashamed that I couldn’t meet up to those expectations. It was being exhausted from people, me having the complete incapacity to socialize properly on any level at all. It was mourning over every sad thing I could possibly think of. I couldn’t shake it. I tried. I did. But depression runs deep in my genetic history and sometimes the words, “you could have it so much worse than this” do absolutely nothing. When I get stuck in this mud hole it takes a lot of alone time, a lot of stupid tears, and a lot of sleepless nights of pep-talking myself out of it. It wasn’t until Wednesday that I remembered my Roseau trip was supposed to be coming up. I knew the Scandinavian Festival was in the middle of June, but couldn’t remember the dates. Grudgingly, I flipped through my “Hating Minnesota” notebook and saw to my great disappointment that it was the upcoming weekend. Right. Only a week after Pioneer Days. What was I thinking? So I promptly booked my hotel room knowing that if I booked it, I had no other choice but to go through with it. The week ended and even though I left work on Friday with smiles and the attitude of trying to convince myself that I was excited to make a six hour road trip, I was instead yearning for the luxury of just staying home and keeping myself quietly locked up in my room all weekend. However… As much as I am wearing my execrable self on my sleeves at the moment, I do want to take a little pride in disciplining myself to move forward. I have done differently in my past. I have wallowed unforgivingly, and have suffered the consequences. It is the unfortunate way of artists, as was my usual excuse. “We are far too into our heads to cope properly with our emotions.” How stupid! I realized it was time to utilize those emotions. After all, most artists boast of their best work in their darkest times. Even if those dark times are fifty per cent made-up in their heads… So, I decided to embrace. I hit the road at six ‘o clock in the morning. Saturday morning. Well, 6:10 to be exact. I was drab enough to jot that in my notebook. The morning was at first full of sun, but soon dark clouds had moved in across the sky. The interesting thing about flat lands is that you can always see the weather coming from miles and miles away. One horizon looks very different from the next. In its own way, it’s quite magnificent. The world looks so much grander, much more vast. I drove through the vastness, heading north, paying attention to interesting signs, fuming over the littering of billboards, and practically lamenting the fact that the most interesting things were rather ordinary. But ne’er have I allowed ordinary things to remain as such! Or so I try not to… I saw a sign for a pizza restaurant chain called, “Pizza Ranch”. The sign had a western, cartoonish picture of a covered wagon on it. I thought to myself, “I’m pretty sure the Italians didn’t introduce pizza in covered wagons…”. This was ridiculous to me, in a “I need to chuckle to myself about it right now because so far there isn’t anything else I’m seeing to write about on my blog.” So, I jotted, “Sign: Pizza Ranch w/ covered wagon” in my notebook right after “Hit the road @ 6am. More accurately – 6:10am…”. Clever. I was working hard, folks, I truly was. But then I entered Paul Bunyan country. Ah. I had forgotten about Paul and Babe, the very interesting folk tale legend about how Minnesota got their ten thousand lakes. I toddled into a rest area in Brainerd and took a snap shot of my first Paul Bunyan statue. Statue…sculpture… I’m not really sure what to call them, but Paul and Babe show up in numerous places up in the north country of Brainerd and Bemidji. I decided to take as many pictures as I could find of them that weren’t too far out of the way to get. My favorite, and the only one I found where Paul and Babe were actually together, was in front of “Paul Bunyan Bowl” in a Brainerd mini mall. Take a look at my photo album at the top of the post to find this particular picture… Paul is holding a bowling ball, and his hand positions make me laugh out loud. Babe has a bowling pin in her mouth. The hunt for Paul and Babe entertained me for a good two hours. So did all the billboards about getting help for meth addicts, gambling addicts, and high school drinkers. There were a lot of those. But then I began to drive through a sort of desolate wilderness where there were no speed limits, and it took a very long time and a great many vehicles to pass me at 75 miles an hour to realize that there were no speed limits. On the second stretch of 89, I drove for almost two hours before hitting a middle-of-nowhere town of three buildings called, Grygla (the worst name of a town I’ve ever heard of). I finally had somewhere to stop to go to the bathroom. My choices were between a decrepit, old gas station with a building the size of my bedroom, or a truck-stop looking bar and grill called, “Yo-Hawn’s”. I chose Yo-Hawn. The parking lot was made up entirely of pick-up trucks (see pictures). I was tickled by that. The rest of the trip was more middle-of-nowhere sight seeing. Nothing had really changed in the scenery. I have to be honest, I was disappointed for that. I was hoping to see some elk, a moose, maybe even a bear. But apparently I wasn’t in the right place at the right time for it. I was also hoping to see wild flower filled prairies. None of that either. Well, a few yellow fields, but that was it. I came into Roseau about two o’ clock. My heart sort of sank at the sight of it. I drove passed the Polaris factory and headquarters. Interesting. But not that much. Found the location of my hotel. Okay. Now go find the festival….can’t check in for another hour… (part II pending)