Going to high school in Minneapolis in the 1970s


I'd like to say that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but for me going to high school in Minneapolis was neither. My memories of it are vague.

Unlike most of my friends, I hated the snow and cold. And there's a LOT of snow and cold in Minneapolis. When I turned 19, I figured out how to read a map and use a compass and headed west.

And yes, I walked to school for miles in the snow, and yes, it was uphill both ways. I lived on the extreme end of the school zone, and it was a goodly distance to it. The house was along a steep hill, which sloped down to a creek, called Minnehaha, and that walk took me along there until I had to walk up another steep hill to get to the school. So there were two steep hills both ways. I know that because I rode my bicycle often, and it was tough going up both of those hills, especially the one to the school. Of course that was only in the summer, and in the winter we walked.

Yes, there was a school bus, and yes, it stopped right in front of our house. I took it once and could barely breathe for the cigarette smoke. No, students weren't allowed to smoke on busses then, of course, but there was no enforcement. When I told my parents why I couldn't ride the bus, they simply said "smoking isn't allowed" and that was the end of the conversation. It was the first time I ran into the "they couldn't do that, but they did" situation. In a long life now I've seen quite a lot of that.

Walking in the cold weather wasn't the winter fairyland that people who've never done it dream of. Often the wind was so bitterly cold that we walked backwards the whole way. I'm not kidding. Backwards. And it still stung like crazy!

In high school gymnastics.

Since I had been a working man since age 12 delivering newspapers, I took my high school years off and did gymnastics instead. Of course, that meant that I didn't have a car, but enjoying gymnastics was more important to me than having a car. When I turned eighteen I bought a car. Soon after that I got a minimum-wage job, doing physical inventory for a company called the Washington Inventory Service. I liked that, and it spring-boarded me to Arizona, via Omaha.

I have absolutely no memory of high school graduation, although apparently my parents took a photo of me, which is at the top of this post. I graduated with top honors, but it was meaningless, as there was really nothing to do but wait out the years, and then graduate. The classes that I took at Phoenix College, which was a Junior College (now called a Community College) were remedial. I hadn't realized what I had been supposed to learn in high school until I went to college. Luckily, I got caught up, and was able to get my four-year degree, finishing up at Arizona State, in seven years.
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