Mississippi Headwaters

The Mississippi River gets it's start in northern Minnesota where, as Garrison Keillor tells us, "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

The Headwaters Region is forest and wilderness. Northern pine forests as far as you can see in every direction, and lots of water. As you drive north out of St. Cloud you begin to get a clear sense that you're leaving civilization behind. This impression is bolstered by a rapid decrease in visible agriculture.

The Mississippi in the headwaters region is clear and clean. It meanders through bogs, lakes, pine and aspen forests. Often it is shallow enough to wade across. It's banks are overgrown with reeds and grasses and wild rice. Pools occasionally open up and lily pads grace its banks. It is most certainly not the river that most people associate with the name Mississippi. In talking with people who live along this section of the river I sometimes noticed a touch of resentment as they spoke about their river, and "yes, it is also the Mississippi." As the river flows past Grand Rapids it shows a tannin stain picked up from all the evergreen plants along its banks. This gives the river a darker more mysterious look. In it's youth the Mississippi flows with cold dark waters that portend its monumental destiny. The urge to load up a canoe and paddle away with this river is irresistible.

The towns in the Headwaters Region (they're not quite big enough to call cities), border on being tourist traps, and it's clear that tourism is a major part of their economies. Each town has it's tourist theme. Grand Rapids is the birthplace of Judy Garland who played Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ. The above photo is a mural on the side of the Judy Garland museum. Little Falls was the birthplace of Charles Lindberg and so you can visit the Lindberg museum, eat at the Lindberg cafe or even the "Lindberg theme" McDonalds. The main street is Lindberg Ave., and you get the picture. Both Bemidji and Brainerd, not fortunate enough to have a celebrity son or daughter, have to fall back on Paul Bunyan and his blue ox. Bemidji has the bigger statue, but Brainerd has the theme park complete with helicopter rides and old World War II aircraft mounted on pedestals.

The other obvious industry in the area is forest products. While driving, you share the road with logging trucks. A paper mill in Grand Rapids and a particle board manufacturer near Grand Rapids seem to be the largest industries in the area. Brainerd also has a paper mill and Little Falls had one until 1999 when it shut down. From anecdotal information I gathered just talking to folks, it would seem the forest industries are healthy, but there was a troubling note. Automation in the plants has resulted in a steady decrease in employment. Blandin Paper for example has reduced its workforce from approx. 1400 to 800 in recent years due in large part to increased automation.

The towns are clean! The streets are clean and the homes are well kept. A drive through the residential areas of any of these towns presents a picture perfect view of middle class America. The town parks are beautiful and well used. If you're from a big city, as I am, a drive through a town like Grand Rapids leaves you wondering where they hid the poor people. Indeed a walk down "main street" in Little Falls fails to turn up anything but happy healthy looking folks working, shopping and vacationing. Again I have no facts to back me up, but I suspect the winters up there have something to do with the absence of visible poor, homeless, etc. If you're homeless in Bemidji and you want to stay alive you better start walking south come September. I've worked with the homeless here in St. Louis and although winter on the streets here is no picnic, it is survivable, the same wouldn't be true in northern Minnesota.

The downtown areas of these towns are in good condition. Like many small towns in America, the older downtown centers of some of these communities have been bypassed by new highway. However, these communities have kept their older downtown centers healthy and vibrant. Both Bemidji and Brainerd's downtown centers are uniquely delightful with the addition of some whimsical outdoor sculpture like A.J. Lutter's carved bear shown here. I mentioned above that these communities bordered on being tourist traps. It's the intact nature of their town centers that's responsible for my reserve. In a full blown tourist trap (like Hannibal MO. for example) the town center is completely converted into souvenir shops, theme museums, and novelty clothing stores. In these towns in the Headwaters Region you can still go downtown and purchase auto parts, hardware, or practical shoes.

After a few days in the area I asked Isaac if he noticed anything different about the people. Then I asked when was the last time he'd seen a black person. He answered, "Iowa." In a week and a half traveling through the region we saw no more than half a dozen African Americans, or for that matter Asians or any other representatives of non-white ethnic groups. In Grand Rapids I saw two women in saris and wondered, if they were'nt vacationing, why were they there? Then it occurred to me that maybe the paper mill needed a good chemist or computer specialist. It's a real homogeneous bunch of folks up there. If you're a blue eyed blonde you'll feel right at home. I don't believe the racial homogeneity of the area is the direct result of racism. I suspect it's more a factor of climate and geography and, as such I'm not inclined to ascribe any guilt. (I did however encounter some disturbing racist behavior toward Native Americans while visiting the area and, to answer my question posed above, the poor people live on the reservation.) The problem with northern Minnesota's climate is very simply, winter. I'm reminded of a stanza from Robert Service's poem The Ballad of Pious Pete:
. . .
Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death crept down from the peaks far away;
The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky was a tatter of gray.
Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the lights of the witches arose;
The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched by the stark and cadaverous snows.
The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase, each leaf was a jewel agleam.
The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped us round in a crystalline dream;
So still I could hear quite loud in my ear the swish of the pinions of time;
So bright I could see, as plain as could be, the wings of God's angels ashine.

It's not at all uncommon on a winter's day for the temperature in Alaska to be warmer than the temperature in northern Minnesota. And so I think the lack of racial diversity in the area is mostly a result of the fact that the present inhabitants of Scandinavian and Germanic origin are the only ones daft enough to live there.

The most obvious problem this causes, at least for me, is that there's not much variety on the local menu. Now the last time I took a trip to Memphis I had the best breakfast of fried eggs and buttered grits with lots of pepper. Try ordering grits up there and they'll think you're speaking a foreign language. No mortadella sandwiches, no Sicilian olives, no pitas and humus, no fried okra, not a barbeque shack in sight, no gyros, no gumbo, no sushi, no collard greens--there's nothing up there to eat! All I can say is the folks in northern Minnesota may be blissful in their ignorance, but they don't know what they're missing.

Overall, it seems an idyllic lifestyle--no obvious poverty, low crime rate, close to nature, good schools for the children, skies are blue. It's the American middle class dream still intact in the heartland of Minnesota except for two things; winter is seven mean months long, and if you've ever had a plate of black-eyed peas and cornbread in Mississippi, or creole jambalaya in Louisiana, you'll always have an empty feeling inside.