Anticipating the Lake Harriet Bandshell

[mrissa]

Atypical weekend around here: timprov is off on the beginning of his week+ California trip, and markgritter's parents are in town for a visit. I'm not sure what we'll end up doing with them during the day tomorrow, but tomorrow evening the plan is a picnic at Lake Harriet and Pirates of Penzance in the Lake Harriet Bandshell. Which will almost certainly be better music than my previous Lake Harriet Bandshell experience, but will also almost certainly be less memorable.

Oh, most of you don't know that story. Right. Some of you do; skip on if that's you. So I was about 8 or 9, making it 1986 or '87, and Mother and Dad and I were up here visiting my grands (which always, always means my mother's parents). The five of us had packed a big picnic, way more of everything than we needed, and set off with the intention of enjoying the city outdoors. And we were driving off, and suddenly it hit us that we had wandered into Nordeast and were not far from Great-Grandma Lingen's apartment. And there was space in the minivan and food enough in the coolers. On a whim, we dropped in to see if she was there and wanted to go on a picnic with us. She was. She did.

So we got to Lake Harriet, and we noticed that there were bunches of people gathered at the Bandshell, but there was nothing audible. It was the week of the Fourth of July. Lovely, we all said to ourselves (but not out loud). It'll probably be a community band playing John Philip Sousa marches for Great-Grandma for the holiday. Couldn't be better. So we got out and settled into our picnic spot. And the music started.

Mid-'80s thrash metal. Amps turned up to 11. No possibility of conversation, or really even coherent thought.

Now, you have to understand, Great-Grandma Lingen had had a hard life, including ongoing pain from her angina, so she was not always the world's most cheerful person. So the grands and Mother and Dad and I sort of collectively sucked in our breath, winced, and turned, oh so slowly, to see Great-Grandma's reaction.

She was beaming. She thought we had done it on purpose. She went around for months afterwards telling her friends that her grandson and his family thought she was so cool and fun that we took her to rock concerts with us. We got in the minivan when we were done eating, and she declared that that had been fun, and where were we going next? And so we drove along the old streetcar line, and she told us stories of the different things that had happened to her on the streetcar when she was young, and the time during the Depression when her brother who kept his money in grocery bags sent her home with grocery money in a glass jar he'd dipped into the bag, and how scared she was that someone was going to take it from her before she could get it home. And we went down to Minnehaha Falls, and she told me all about the picnics and church socials they'd had down there when she was a girl, the fun they'd had, and then when she and Great-Grandpa were first married, the good times at the Falls. She pointed out what was "new" since then. And that's the day I fell in love with the Falls. (I've regarded the Lake Harriet Bandshell with a wary fondness as well.) She glowed with happiness the rest of the day. We had strawberry malts. We drove back down Wirth Parkway. She told stories, and we all wanted to hear them. It was one of the perfectly happy days of my childhood. I think it was one of the perfectly happy days of her old age.

When she got older, Great-Grandma would write me letters that began with things like, "Dear Marissa, I've been to three funerals this week. Not such good turnout for Bill Johnson's. Don't know what the Johnsons were thinking," the sorts of things that a college student has trouble answering. She overtly kept score with her family. My other great-grandmother, my Gran, was cheerful and upbeat as well as having a wicked sense of humor, and I'm afraid in some ways Great-Grandma Lingen was the "difficult" great-grandma for me. And I adored (and do still adore) Gran's eldest son, while I have very little use for Great-Grandma Lingen's because of his consistent lousy behavior over my lifetime. So that was in some ways a bit of difficulty as well, though not as much as perhaps it could have been.

But living in this city I know how much it was her city, too. I know she loved it like I do, because she made sure to show me how she loved it, that day and on the day she took me on the roof of her building to show me how pretty our city is all spread out in front of us. So I come around corners and find my "difficult" great-grandma very much in my heart and very much on my mind. And I'm really glad that my folks said, "Hey, should we take Great-Grandma along? Why not?" on that day, because that one day made so much difference in how I remember her.

Comments

[moiread]

This was very, very touching.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

That is beyond cool. As is your telling of it. Thank you!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome story! :)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Seriously awesome story!

[aedifica]

Oh, neat! Thanks for the story.

[ckd]

This is making me cry, both because it's a wonderful story and because it reminds me of one of my own.

First, some background. I'm a gadget freak; naturally, even years ago I owned a digital camera, and a laptop, and all that stuff. So when my cousin got married in 1999, I had the camera and took a bunch of pictures, and loaded everything on the laptop. Everyone else had to wait for film to develop, but not us; we could even leave a copy of everything with the bride and groom (and another with the bride's mother) right away.

Most of the family had made it there, but not our grandmother; she was in pretty bad health at the time, so she couldn't travel. (This was particularly sad, since hr_macgirl and I had been to visit her some time before the wedding and taken her out to go shopping for a nice outfit to wear.)

On our way back from the West Coast, we had to change planes in Salt Lake City. Our connecting flight was cancelled (or massively delayed; I don't remember which) and so we had several hours before we had to be at the gate. (This was pre-9/11 so we didn't have to allow 2 hours to get through security or anything.) By this time, my grandmother and grandfather had moved up from Provo and were in an assisted living setup in downtown SLC.

We called my (SLC-local) uncle and asked him if he thought Grandma Jojo would be able to have us come by for a quick visit. He said "yeah, and I'll meet you there later." We got a cab, headed downtown, and spent some nice time with her.

The best part was having the laptop with all the pictures, because we could plug in the TV-out cable, show her the wedding photos right then and there, and tell her all about it.

That was the last time I saw her before the funeral. If that flight hadn't been delayed....

The last bit is the funny bit, though, and it's what your Great-Grandma Lingen's reaction reminded me of.

At the funeral, my uncle told us that she'd hardly stopped talking about our visit, and had asked him how she could get the "Grandkids Channel" on her TV again.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That last bit is so cute.

I'm glad you saw the opportunity when it came your way.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

That was a great story - thanks for sharing. :-)

[laurel]

That's very cool. Oh how I wish I remembered the stories better that my grandparents told about life in Minneapolis and in rural MN and SD. I remember the feeling of hearing the stories though, and that's always pleasant to recall.

My Dad's parents lived in a lot of different homes in Minneapolis over the years when my Dad was growing up-- they liked fixing up the houses and then selling them. Guess they were flipping houses before flipping was a "thing". I remember a few times when conversation would turn to where they'd lived and my Grandpa and my Dad would try to remember the addresses of all the houses, but they'd always come up short an address or two.

After my Grandpa died, when we were going through stuff at his house, we found a piece of paper on his desk that had the addresses all written down very neatly, in order.

When I was a kid, my Mom's parents would make a trip up from Mitchell to visit us each Fall and we'd take them to the Minneapolis Farmer's Market, which they loved, and to the arboretum and out on Lake Minnetonka. Somewhere there's a picture of me with Grandma holding a giant kohlrabi we bought at the market.

[genarti]

She sounds marvelous, and so does that day.