I was twelve years old when I first came to Minnesota. My Father had just bought a mobile home and I was in a hurry to go spend time with him that summer. It took about a week for him to get everything ready for my arrival, so I stayed with my uncle and his family in Fort Worth, TX so Pop didn’t have to drive all the way down to Laredo. The drive takes about twenty and four hours and I’m fairly certain Pop stopped once to sleep on his way down. Even now, we rarely stop to rest on our way to Texas. Pop was driving the big green van he and my mother bought when I was born; that van will hit thirty years old a year before me! I had been on a family road trip to Florida before this, but a trip with just my dad was an entirely new experience.
Pop did not take a single moment of rest until we reached Montgomery, MN; besides a bathroom break of course. One shot! North Texas to Southern Minnesota in a day’s time. I saw three, maybe two and a half, major cities in that time: Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Des Moines. OKC and KC are some of my favorite places to drive through now, the traffic is fun to navigate, and the cities are nice to look at, but I make a point to sleep through Iowa if I can. Every time. That first drive up Interstate 35 set a standard for every subsequent trip; weather should not be overlooked. Iowa, I believe, was shrouded in total darkness the first time I saw it, but the weather was crazy. Lightning was flashing in every direction, the rain was coming down and, I’m very certain about this part, there was a tornado in the distance. Unless my little child mind misinterpreted what I was seeing, a tornado was illuminated by every flash of lightning, and I could not take my eyes away from it. Probably the coolest thing I’ll ever see in Iowa.
I have made that twenty and four-hour long trip over ten times. That may not see like a lot but that is just over ten-thousand miles and I’ll be adding another thousand miles soon. The best part of the trip is arriving in Montgomery. I’ll never forget getting over the hill on 21 and seeing the Seneca warehouse at the bottom, lit up like a beacon to show me that I was home. This year might be the last time that our TXMN road trip ends in Montgomery, so I would just like to share some appreciation. There isn’t much reason to go to Monty, as we call it, unless it is Kolacky Days or you have family there, but I would encourage you to do it anyway. Take a walk around town, the sidewalks are nice, grab a drink at the Monty Bar, tell Kim I said hi, or stop at Caseys and ask them if they know Ricardo, I think I left a good impression there; do whatever you want in Montgomery. Appreciate it. That town, my hometown, was my first impression of Minnesota and I’m very grateful that it was. The people were, and are, good to me there and they’ll treat you the same, I’m sure. It is no different than most towns in MN, I say, but my life is richer for the time I got to spend there.