Jovon Everett: St. Paul Wrap-Up

Wednesday, August 15th

After I dropped Sheila Marie off at the airport last Tuesday, I visited Fort Snelling. The 19th Century fort overlooks the confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers. It was a far-west outpost when it was constructed in 1819. The soldiers stationed there were supposed to keep white settlers out of the Indian lands and regulate commerce on the rivers. The army continued to operate the fort into the 1940's when it was decomissioned. Of course, the historic fort had little value to the army as it modernized, so it's buildings and wall were all destroyed except the "round tower". The Minnesota Historical Society rebuilt the historical fort to resemble its appearance in 1827. There are costumed re-enactors demonstrating all manner of fort activities and many of the buildings are outfitted as they would have been when the fort was in operation. While I find re-enactors sort of creepy (I'm not big on audience participation), it's always fun to see blacksmithing and seeing one of the fort's cannons fired was cool.

Musket Drill

Readying the Cannon

Wednesday morning, Karl and I visited the Twin Cities Model Railroading Club. Their club room is in a repurposed BNSF maintainence facility known as Bandana Square. The buildings are now filled with offices of all types, but they still maintain an obvious railroad industrial flavor. (The train-sized doors all along the building, a watertower and a retired steam locomotive out front all remind one of the building's history.) On the second floor, the club has constructed (and continues to add to) an enourmous "O" scale layout. The layout features scale replicas of many of the area's landmarks. Club members have recreated local bridges, depots and businesses. They even have a model streetcar that traverses their model of Minneapolis (powered by tiny overhead wires). One of the club members served as our guide, giving us the history of the railroads in the area and pointing out his favorite models. I hope I find something as fun to do with my retirement as these guys have!

Wednesday afternoon I went to the Ballpark. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and I was lucky enough to come up with a ticket to see the St. Paul Saints take on the El Paso Diablos. The Saints are an unafiliated team in the American Association Independant League. They're owned by Bill Murray and Mike Veeck (son of Bill Veeck: the man, allegedly, responsible for planting the ivy at Wrigley Field & having Harry Caray sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the stretch). While Bill was the owner of the Chicago White Sox, Mike engineered the infamous "Disco Demolition" promotion and was banned from professional baseball for many years. His luny legacy is in evidence with the Saints. The team's moto is "Fun is good" and it was one of the most fun times I've ever had at a ballpark.

The Saints play at Midway Stadium which is, undeniably, a dump. It's listed as having just over 6,000 seats, but the day I was there paid attendance was more than 7,700. They accomplished this by putting fencing around the warning track and setting up folding chairs for day campers on the warning track (anything that rolled under the fencing and into the kids was a ground rule double.) and with a whole series of wacky corporate sponsored suites. A local builder sponsors the "sunroom suite" in right field (it's a teeny building with a big sunporch). There's a hot tub in right-center field sponsored by a kitchen and bath supply place. A casino even straps a "lucky" fan to a billboard in right field - if they sit up their through the seventh inning, every one in attendance gets a five dollar cupon, if they make it through the game, the "lucky" fan gets $100 cash. The PA announcer is seated at a folding table on top of the home team's dugout. The "organ" is a casio keyboard set up under a tarp at the top of the bleechers. There are games and contests between every half inning (and sometimes while the ball game is going on). On Wednesday, there was a giant staring contest going on. There had been qualifying rounds during the tailgating before the game, and the final rounds were played during breaks in the play. The semi-finals took most of the second half of the 5th inning. The "winner" got to face the team's mascot (Mudonna - a giant, pink, curly-haired pig) for the title (complete with a boxing-style belt for the victor). As you might expect, it's difficult to beat a costumed mascot in a staring contest - but it was discovered at the last moment that Mudonna was using "stare-oids" so she was disqualified. (As the announcer put it: "Unlike Bud Selig, we don't condone using stare-oids.") There was even a real, live pig that came out on the field between innings IN DIFERENT COSTUMES. The strange part was, no one ever mentioned the pig or explained its presence. It just came out every half-inning and walked around (sometimes, the homeplate umpire fed it a bottle). CRAZY.

Mudonna

The game was close. The Saints took an early lead, but had to make a late inning comeback. At the top of the eighth ushers began distributing "rally flags". The flags consisted of an inflatable tube with a flag attached. We all blew up our flags and began waving them like crazy. The stands were a sea of these things. In the away half of the ninth, the local power company sponsored "The Energy Conservation Inning" and we were all invited to sit quietly, maybe even nap while the Diablos batted. In the bottom of the ninth, our rally flags were back out in force adn the team made a come-from-behind victory 4-3. There was some exciting baseball, and there was some terrible baseball (there's a reason these guys are playing in the independant league). For example: man on second, no one on first, the ball is hit in front of the runner betwen 2nd and 3rd, and the idiot runs right into a tag! That said, I had a really great time and I can't wait for the pictures to come back!

Friday afternoon, Vera (our Props Department Head) and I went to the Canterbury Card Club. The Card Club is the casino attached to a horse racing track. They only play card games (no slots, no other table games). I played 2/4 Hold 'Em and came out ahead around $90! We only played for about an hour and a half, so it was a pretty productive afternoon! Vera didn't fare as well as I did, so I bought us dinner on the way back to work.

Saturday morning, I wandered over to the Twin Cities Irish Festival. The festival was held in a park known as Harriet Island. The island sits in the middle of the Mississippi opposite downtown St. Paul, affording some beautiful views of town as well as a close-up look at the city's riverboats. The festival featured pipers, boxing, rugby, storytelling, Irish dancing and nuns giving massages. I swear, it's true. I took a picture of the nuns giving backrubs. There were tons of kids from local dance schools doing there Riverdance impressions. The all wore big masses of doll curls on their heads. Weird. There was also a big food tent. I enjoyed a Dublin Dog (there was cabbage inside the corndog) and some potato soup (perfect for a hot summer morning!). As I had two shows, I couldn't partake of the enourmous variety of beers on tap. When I arrived, the "Run with the Celts" 5K race was wrapping up. For completing the race, participants got a t-shirt and a free pint. The racers enjoying their pints in their running togs at 10:30 AM made me smile.

Sunday's matinee performance at the Ordway was bought out by the Hormel Corporation. As the makers of Spam, they underwrote our appearance in St. Paul and threw a party for the their employees and distributors before the show. The Spamobile was in attendance and giving away samples and some Spam-swag. The invited audience was not our usual crowd. I don't think they were familiar with Monty Python and many of our musical theatre jokes sailed by them, but they had a good time. We're used to a much more rowdy response, but I supposed that's a little more awkward when you're sitting next to your boss...

The return of the Spamobile

Monday we made the move to Kansas City (more about that in a later post). I quite liked St. Paul and was really glad to spend three weeks there. Next week begins the stretch of the tour that I've been most looking forward to: Portland, Salt Lake, Denver & Seattle. I've never been out west (save a visit to Pheonix) and am excited about all of those cities. But first, we have a week in "The Paris of the Plains". I took a break from barbecue, and am happy to be in one of the barbecue capitals of America.

Two rolls of film from Snapfish recently arrived:

Birthdays & The Mill City

Saint Paul - The Middle Weeks

Some highlights and other photos: