“Minnesota”: located in the US’s Upper Midwest; 12th largest state; 21st most populated; known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes; 32nd state, it was admitted to the union on May 11, 1858; a locality just chock-full of water – many more than 10,000 lakes, big-time rivers, and shimmering swamps, all leftovers from the most recent glacial age. The 2-mile-thick Laurentide ice sheet left behind an incredible amount of water.

Thanks to the generous amount of water bequeathed to Minnesota by the melting ice sheet there are 90,000 miles of shoreline in the state, including Lake Superior, all the smaller lakes and the rivers. That’s more water meeting shorelines than in California, Florida and Hawaii put together. Minnesota’s drainage leaves home in three directions – north to Hudson Bay in Canada (The Red River of the North flows north through the Red River Valley.), east to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Approximately 60% of the state’s population lives in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St Paul). The rest of the place is prairie, woods or water. And, although I am a native, I confess to a vast love of the scenery. There’s nothing like the Rockies or the ocean to view but what you do get to see is rich farmland, the sun setting in a sweet little lake, enormous amounts of wildlife, water birds in particular.

Before the Europeans, mostly Nordic and German, discovered their own American Dream in the state, Minnesota was the home of several Native American tribes, largely the Dakota and Anishinaabe tribes. The Anishinaabe also called themselves the Ojibway. Others called them Chippewa. They had migrated from the east into Minnesota when tensions with the Sioux became more than they cared to cope with.

The first Europeans to arrive in the territory were Frenchmen; either fur traders or missionaries. One of them, Daniel Graysolon Sieur du Lhut, an explorer, gave his name to Duluth, the city on Lake Superior’s western most point. Another, a Franciscan missionary named Louis Hennepin, left his name all over the state. I was born and lived in Hennepin County not far from Hennepin Avenue which includes Father Louis Hennepin Bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. Here are some other places that bear the old Friar’s name:

•Father Hennepin State Park, in Isle, Minnesota

•A Great Lakes wood-hulled steamer built in 1888 which sank in 1927

•The city of Champlin, Minnesota, the site historians report where he first crossed the Mississippi in 1680, holds an annual Father Hennepin Festival on the 2nd weekend of June that includes a reenactment of Father Louis Hennepin crossing the Mississippi River.

•Hennepin Island is in the Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls. Although it is no longer an island, it extends into the river and houses the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, a five-unit hydroelectric plant, owned by Xcel Energy, and the Main Street substation – serving downtown Minneapolis.

•Father Hennepin Bluffs Park lies on the east bank of the Mississippi River adjacent to Hennepin Island. It is administered by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and features picnic areas, a bandshell, and Heritage Trail plaques.

•Hennepin Room at the Minneapolis Hilton

Father Hennepin christened St. Anthony Falls, the lone falls along the entire 2,320 mile length of the Mississippi River which starts at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. Of course, the good father’s party had already been the first Europeans to view Niagara Falls. Fr Hennepin traveled with a Jesuit priest/explorer named Robert de LaSalle. There is a short street in downtown Minneapolis named for him – LaSalle Avenue.

Speaking of downtown Minneapolis, the climate-controlled Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is known as the only facility in the USA to host a Super Bowl, a World Series and an NCAA Final Four basketball championship. At the moment it is known for the collapsing of nine Teflon panels from the roof. A December blizzard, sweeping through 8 states, including Minnesota, dumped enough snow and blew enough wind to undermine the roof. But this was not the first collapse. In 1982, shortly after it was built, the roof folded in onto the floor below. And it happened again and again until the 2010 collapse made it five times. Teflon and snow do not gentle companions make.

I’ll give you one more Minneapolis statistic then move on to a fraction of the rest of the state and other towns’ prides. Minneapolis has more golfers per capita than any other city in the entire nation. My take on that factoid is that Minnesota winters turn golfers into insane-persons. The sole medicine they will willingly take for their malady can be found in a bag full of sticks.

Hibbing, Minnesota is the birthplace of the American bus business. A pair of far-seeing businessmen named Wickman and Anderson began the first line with one bus in 1914; it later became Grayhound. The stapler was devised in Spring Valley, which is situated in the far southeast corner of the state. Darwin sports the world’s largest ball of twine rolled by one man. In 1922 water skis were invented by Ralph W. Samuelson who took the first ride behind a motorboat on Lake Pepin. Roseau, Minnesota’s Polaris Industries invented the snowmobile. Northwest Airlines, out of the Twin Cities, was the first major airline to ban smoking on international flights. Another Anderson, this one from Red Wing, discovered the processes to puff rice and wheat. Originally, the puffs were used only in rice cakes. Later the puffed grains were made into light, unsinkable breakfast cereals.

Minnesota “firsts” are astonishing. The first children’s department in any public library was established when the Minneapolis Public Library separated the children’s books from the total collection in 1889. In 1926 the McGraw Electric Company of Minneapolis put the first pop-up toaster on the market. They called it the Toastmaster and it sold for $13.50. The very first intercollegiate basketball game was played on February 9, 1895 in Minnesota between Hamline College and the Minnesota School of Agriculture with Minnesota taking the game nine to three. Austin’s Hormel Company sold the first canned ham in 1926 and introduced Spam in 1937.

OK. We have innumerable Spam jokes in and out of Minnesota. Here are a couple. “Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in Walnut Grove, Minnesota and was famous for the ‘Little House’ series of books, as well as inventing the ‘spam diet’ which consists of looking at a plate of Spam until you lose your appetite.”

“Frank C. Mars, founder of the Mars Candy Company, was born in Newport, Minnesota. His famous Three Musketeers candy bar originally contained three bars in one wrapper, each filled with a different kind of nougat – chocolate, spam, and lutefisk.” (Mr. Mars is buried at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. May he rest in peace.) And here is an Ode within an Ode:

AN ODE TO SPAM(tm)
Oh SPAM(tm)! Oh SPAM(tm)! Gourmet delight!
My food by day, my dreams by night.
To carve, to slice, to dice you up -
pureed in a blender and sipped from a cup.
What shining deity from Olympus knelt
down to the earth and hog butt smelt?
Creating then man's eternal desire
for swine entrails congealed by fire.On some corporate farm, a pig has died.
Eyes, tongue, and snout end up inside
that cube of SPAM(tm) hidden in the can
I now hold in my trembling hand.More than mere food, SPAM(tm) is for me
a hedonistic expression of gluttonous glee.
Mottled with pork fat, the pink cube engrosses.
My mouth takes it in, my intestine disposes.
Long have my arteries clogged to the sound
of sizzling SPAM(tm) when there's no one around -
furtively chewing or swallowing whole.
Triple bypass by forty, my medical goal.
Other processed meat products I've tried or declined
Vienna Sausages, Treet, even pig's feet in brine.
Though each may be tasty in different ways,
none matches SPAM(tm) for gelatinous glaze.
That glistening pinkness beckons me
with gristle, fat, and BHT.
Oh SPAM(tm), my SPAM(tm) - the taste, the smell!
The sacred meat product, from Hormel.

Also, in the Spam vein, George Burns and Gracie Allen did commercials for Spam on their 1940s radio programs. The announcer did most of the work, such as giving out recipes dressing up Spam. He usually closed with, “Cold or hot, Spam hits the spot.” You look for Spam online now and all you get are health warnings or complaints about internet spam. The Hormel Company tried legally halting the use of their label as a word for computer garbage but they lost the complaint in court. Oh well, way back on TV Monte Python did Spam up royally. Spam, Spam, wonderful Spam and so on and on.

The following were all invented in Minnesota: masking tape, Scotch Tape, Wheaties, Bisquick, the Bundt pan, HMO’s, Aveda beauty products, Green Giant vegetables, and of course, ever-popular Spam.

The state is also well-known for some of the biggest depictions of just about everything in the known world. Such as; Pelican Rapids, Ottertail County in western Minnesota is the home of a 16 foot concrete pelican contemplating the Pelican River in downtown Pelican Falls.

Olivia, Minnesota, seat of Renville County, is probably the corniest place on earth. The Minnesota Senate named Olivia the Corn Capital of the World recently. The town had already given itself that title in 1973. To prove their claim, the population (2750) put their heads together and had a 50-foot tall corn cob built out of fiberglass. Olivia celebrates Corn Capital Days during the last weekend of July. Activities include a parade, corn cob toss, corn-lympics, cornication, free corn feed, kiddies’ parade, Lion's walk-in, fly-in, drive-in breakfast, and live music.

Nestled in a vast woodland and lake area in the northcental sector of Minnesota, Bemidji is a college town. The town identifies itself as the” First City on the Mississippi” and nobody argues the point. Definitely not myself. The yearly average temperature in Bemidji is 37.2 degrees. You don’t want to hear the January stats. An 18-foot-tall Paul Bunyan and a 10- foot-high Babe, the Blue Ox, greet you as you drive into Bemidji on Paul Bunyan Drive. From nose to tail Babe measures 23 feet. The pair have been in the National Register of Historic Places since 1988, but they’ve been standing guard over Bemidji since 1938. The Kodak Company says they are the second most photographed statues in the US; second only to Mount Rushmore.

Mora, Minnesota has the largest Dala Horse (a Swedish form of art) in North America. The Dala Horse is 3,000 lbs., 22 ft. tall, 17 ft. long, 6 feet wide. It was manufactured in fiberglass by FAST in Sparta, Wisconsin. The statue is a replica of the Dalecarlian horses hand carved in Mora, Sweden. It was constructed and decorated in 1971 by the area Jaycees, and presented to the community "As a reminder of their cultural heritage and as a tourist attraction." (From Wikipedia)

To end this not-quite Ode I’d like to share a few words from my currently “favorite ode”; “Ode to Chocolate.” What could be more excellent for a chocolate addict?

Brown creamy friend -
You contribute to
My well-being,
Soothing stimulant,
Smoothing recovery –
You race my heart
Unsludge my brain.
You are liquid pleasure,
Sweet tongued
Inspiration to forgive –
Edible love.

There’s quite a bit more of this Chocolate Ode created by an anonymous but talented writer. I hear all you anti-ode-ers delivering those huge sighs of thanksgiving. I am not impressed.

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About the author Cate Lane: Born in Minnesota and raised a temperate progressive, I was carried off to Texas 10 years ago by the tsunami that was my husband's retirement. Texas is not Minnesota, not by a long shot. However, I hear that Minnesota isn't Minnesota anymore either.

Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.

I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.

Email: CthlnLn@aol.com

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