A Night at Mickey's

This past weekend I played impromptu DD for a buddy of mine. While I was yawning through the night hours in my old 'hood in St. Paul, downing glasses of water to stay awake he and some of his friend BS'd the time away. I was okay with that but I knew I needed to get to bed soon and well, why must we stay till close? But we did and that was that. So when it came to my turn for leadership (i.e. he had too many shots) I whipped the car onto 94E rather than 94W where we should have gone.

Friend: "Wha...what are you doing?!"
Me: "We're going to Mickey's downtown. I want a grilled cheese and you need food."
Friend: "ahhhh..okay."

And that was that!

When we walked into the diner it was as if we stepped onto stage with the cast of "A Prairie Home Companion" we were just missing GK. We managed to snag two stools at the south end of the counter near the debutantes who had just finished a show at the Ftiz. Now I'm sure you're picturing a bunch of young ladies, so stop there. Nope, these ladies were dressed in sparkling periwinkle dresses with matching boas. They were all tanned, only to enhance their time aged faces but they wore bright fuchsia lipstick and brunette wigs. They were shove into a both in the midst of an "after wedding" crowd. Just as we sat down they started to sing "Going to the Chapel" for the obvious reasons.

Just to the left of us there was a young couple who looked as if they hadn't slept or eaten in days. The girl, dressed plainly, just sat there, all quiet and sipping on her soup and coffee. The guy next to her never uttered on word. As people started to fill in through the door and line-up against the wall the noise only got louder on our north end when the wedding groupies started to play music on the mini-jukebox.

As I was scanning the crowd there was everything. Everything demographic that makes what I call Minnesota. Not one person in the cramped 50'x 10' diner was like the next. Also, you couldn't pick a person out of the crowd and throw them into a common stereotype.

We had our food, watched the ladies sing a few more songs and tipped the waitstaff heavily. After leaving we may have had an encounter with a two civilians and a fire truck which will be for an entirely different post.

But that evening made me think. As I was digesting all that I had taken in during our 1 hr stint at the diner with a friend, who had never been to MN but has two great friends from here, he noted something that stuck with me..."You people in MN, you're very independent people aren't you? You can't say that about the rest of the country, you can pinpoint them and tell them what they like, but in MN you can't do that...can you?"

That's right. We're odd. We vote for crazy wrestlers to be Gov. We elect our own Supreme Court. Just because you love to read the markets doesn't mean I won't donate to MPR. We love to sit on ice and fish and then complain about the cold. We don't judge if you have super white legs come April.

Yeah, unique. That's us. Uff da!