The Librarians of Kasson, Minnesota
Aug. 4th, 2009 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraJump: Preston, MN → Hayfield, MN – School grounds: 55 miles
LEFT out of the lot and arrows back to HWY 16 WEST
RIGHT onto HWY 63 NORTH towards Rochester
After you pass I-90, look for a LEFT onto HWY 30 WEST to Hayfield… arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm
Nothing in Hayfield, so I drove to Blooming Prairie
Nothing in Blooming Prairie, so I drove to Dodge Center.
Nothing in Dodge Center, so I drove to Kasson.
Nothing in Kasson but by then I was sick of driving so I ducked into the local public library where the librarian – big blonde, looks like she should be serving 18 months in the slammer for steroid use on the professional wrestling circuit – eyed me suspiciously.
Civil service or not, this librarian would not pass her performance review in the San Francisco Bay Area, lemme tell you.
For one thing she kept trying to get my car towed. At regular intervals I would hear her on the phone, presumably with local traffic control: “Well, the red car’s been there for two hours then, dontcha know –“
And I would rise from the little desk where I’d been typing, announce, “It’s my car! Do you need me to move it?”
And she’d say, “No, no. So long as you’re in the library, you’re a library customer, you can park there. But it is taking up a parking space.”
There were never more than four people inside that library the entire time I was there. There were six parking spaces.
Also she didn’t seem to like Hispanics. And Kasson – unlike the moribund farming towns surrounding it – had a significant population of Hispanics, possibly because of its proximity to Austin where the Hormel Chile and Spam factory is located.
Whenever a little blond-haired, Howdy-Doody-faced, white child wandered up to the front desk, asking where – say – the Harry Potter books were located, she’d flash her horrible, cavernous smile and gush, “It’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.” Then she would proceed to try and indoctrinate the hapless child in the mysteries of the Dewey Decimal System.
Whenever a dark-skinned, dark-haired child asked the same question – accent strongly suggestive that English might not be her first language – the librarian would snarl, “Over there somewhere,” then rudely turn her back.
(JB, to whom B told this story, thought it was so hilarious that at the end of the last show, after all the trash receptacles had been cleared away, when a lady approached him with a cotton candy wrapper in hand, asking, “Where can I dispose of this?” he waved his hand expansively: “Oh, just throw it on the ground. The brown people will deal with it.”)
LEFT out of the lot and arrows back to HWY 16 WEST
RIGHT onto HWY 63 NORTH towards Rochester
After you pass I-90, look for a LEFT onto HWY 30 WEST to Hayfield… arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm
Nothing in Hayfield, so I drove to Blooming Prairie
Nothing in Blooming Prairie, so I drove to Dodge Center.
Nothing in Dodge Center, so I drove to Kasson.
Nothing in Kasson but by then I was sick of driving so I ducked into the local public library where the librarian – big blonde, looks like she should be serving 18 months in the slammer for steroid use on the professional wrestling circuit – eyed me suspiciously.
Civil service or not, this librarian would not pass her performance review in the San Francisco Bay Area, lemme tell you.
For one thing she kept trying to get my car towed. At regular intervals I would hear her on the phone, presumably with local traffic control: “Well, the red car’s been there for two hours then, dontcha know –“
And I would rise from the little desk where I’d been typing, announce, “It’s my car! Do you need me to move it?”
And she’d say, “No, no. So long as you’re in the library, you’re a library customer, you can park there. But it is taking up a parking space.”
There were never more than four people inside that library the entire time I was there. There were six parking spaces.
Also she didn’t seem to like Hispanics. And Kasson – unlike the moribund farming towns surrounding it – had a significant population of Hispanics, possibly because of its proximity to Austin where the Hormel Chile and Spam factory is located.
Whenever a little blond-haired, Howdy-Doody-faced, white child wandered up to the front desk, asking where – say – the Harry Potter books were located, she’d flash her horrible, cavernous smile and gush, “It’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.” Then she would proceed to try and indoctrinate the hapless child in the mysteries of the Dewey Decimal System.
Whenever a dark-skinned, dark-haired child asked the same question – accent strongly suggestive that English might not be her first language – the librarian would snarl, “Over there somewhere,” then rudely turn her back.
(JB, to whom B told this story, thought it was so hilarious that at the end of the last show, after all the trash receptacles had been cleared away, when a lady approached him with a cotton candy wrapper in hand, asking, “Where can I dispose of this?” he waved his hand expansively: “Oh, just throw it on the ground. The brown people will deal with it.”)
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 05:40 pm (UTC)Not sure you can tell from this photo but every storefront on the right side of Main Street was closed. Recession has hit retail business in these little farming towns very hard.
(I'm not into mall culture at all & I first moved to Monterey when my oldest was a second grader precisely because I agree that small towns are better places to raise kids than big cities. Of course Monterey is 20 times the size of Blooming Prairie.)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 05:59 pm (UTC)The downtown was somewhat depressed back then as well. I remember he got into the hardware business during a downturn and ended up letting it go. But off main street it was a very nice place.
Small farming towns all over have gone that way. Woonsocket, SD, where my dad grew up is the county seat, and now it's almost a ghost town. The biggest thing in town is an artifical eye "factory" these days. Most of the businesses are long gone. Very sad, but it's such a short drive to Huron these days that people go there to get better selection and prices than they can locally.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 06:40 pm (UTC)Wal-Mart is killing retail in these small towns, I'm afraid. Some day I'm going to print up a teeshirt: I HATE WALMART BUT I SHOP THERE ANYWAY.