Stranger Things

I'm not sure what made my sister-in-law want to walk down that street, but a compliment of a woman's home turned into a twenty-minute conversation and history lesson with a stranger. She leaned on her rake as she told us about the old days and how she came to buy a turreted Victorian on a shady street opposite the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

She bought the house in the early '70s when the city offered first dibs to the renters who occupied the old Victorians located across the street from the MIA. Then, like now, there's lot of artist types who live along the row.

She'd moved to Minneapolis from San Francisco with her then-husband, a sculptor of some acclaim. He's now her ex and living back in San Francisco, and when we ask about him, her current husband tells us how to find him on Google. They are all still friends and put one another up when they come into town. No hard feelings, you know?

She tells us that in the early 1970s, the MIA became a non-profit. The rents they were charging the students to live in the houses across the street were considered profits, so they had to get rid of them and ended up selling or donating them to the city. I forget which now. The city, in its infinite wisdom, was going to raze the old homes to put in parking. We gasped at this information and she nodded at our appropriate horror. The residents back then were of the same mind and raised such a fuss that the city decided to offer the houses to the current residents.

For a dollar.

We stood stunned on the sidewalk as our minds tried to wrap around that...and then immediately went to thinking what it's probably worth now.

She told us that the renovations were extensive. And expensive. New copper pipes, new electric, and a host of other cosmetic fixes had to be made. At one time, the house boasted five layers of roof shingles. And when they redid the turret, they found an old newspaper from a previous rehab that was layered in the wall and signed by the construction crew. They framed it and it hangs in the house now.

We chatted for a while about where we were all from. About the skyrocketing San Francisco real estate market and art - of which we knew nothing, but nodded along. About how her ex now owns the home of the first mayor of that city, but he's going to rent it out and move to his studio on the beach. About how San Francisco doesn't feel like home anymore now that the artists are being pushed out by the tech people. About getting older and how she doesn't want to leave her home, but what if she can't deal with the stairs anymore? She's seventy, but doesn't look a day over fifty, so we marvel at that.

As we were winding down, her husband told us we needed to visit the Guthrie (pictured above). We got directions and thanked them both for a lovely visit. She told my sister-in-law to ring the doorbell next time she was visiting the Institute.

Such a fascinating woman. I wish I knew her name.