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I like to think I hail from Minneapolis,
a wonderful American city of lakes and museums and theatres and
bicycles and great bars, a strangely Scandinavian twist to the accent
and a desire to put the world right – so many good things. I’m not the only person in the Lake Geneva region thinking about this tonight – Medtronic in Tolochenaz, Vaud, is part of a multinational based in Minneapolis, where it’s considered a homegrown success. I’ve spent
much of today dwelling on an odd detail, the I-35 bridge
I remember so clearly because it’s next to the University of Minnesota
where I earned a degree. Bob Dylan sang near the spot where the bridge
was built, seven years after he came to fame.

This is the bridge that
fell into the Mississippi at rush hour last night. The idea of it takes my breath away.

I’ve watched the security camera videos of
it collapsing, falling in a dusty heap into the wildness of the
Mississippi River. I can’t even type the name of that giant water snake
without a shiver, for it brings back memories of childhood classrooms
with teachers who seemed to rule our lives. We who lived on the bluffs
high above the river famous for its muddy currents learned to spell its
name and to fear or at least hold the river itself in awe. "Em I double
Es I double Es I double Pee I" is firmly engrained in my memory, as are
the sandbags and piles of sandwiches we made for the sandbaggers when
the river rose and rose and rose in the spring of bad flood years. That
was in Iowa, a bit down-river from Minneapolis, but we shared the
Mississippi, bigger than any of our towns or cities. Minneapolis
beckoned, a sophisticated and wise older sister who scoffed at the
river’s power.

Bridges took us over that wild water and as we grew older and
technology grew stronger we learned not to fear the Mississippi. I have
only one memory of people wading into the water itself. We were a group
of college students who had too many bottles of cheap wine with us and a
visiting, slightly older Italian woman, someone’s cousin who was gorgeous but with hairy
armpits. None of us had seen that before and we tried desperately not to twitter and stare. Suddenly, she wanted to wade into
the river. Abruptly sobered, we leaped to pull her back.

Bridges were safe. The river became a beast that carried on down below,
without us. A university student in Minneapolis, I read with awe Mark
Twain’s wonderful non-fiction account of his years as a cub pilot on
the river, Life on the Mississippi, 100 years earllier. I stood on the bridge that isn’t there today and pondered heading down to New Or’lns on a boat. I pondered life, love, the future. The water just went its busy way, with little patience for college students.

Minneapolis was a city for falling in love, for falling out of love, for being
unloved. In short, it was a wonderful place to cross the painful bridge
from childhood to the world of adults. That particular bridge was not always as
strong as we wanted it to be.

News is not just something that happens. It happens in a particular
place to particular people and when the place is part of your history,
you reach out, with arms not quite long enough, to those who are
falling, falling away from your shared history. It’s only then you
realize that maybe you’ve never met, but what you have had in common is
what’s made you who you are. Bad and sad news from home is so much harder to bear.

More:

latest photos from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, day 2 of the rescue, those watching

"A surreal view . . ."  Minneaplis Star-Tribune reporter Kevin Giles, on going home from work

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