There and Back Again is Bilbo Baggins’ account of his adventures in The Hobbit. I recently took a car trip from the Phoenix area where I now live to Minneapolis where I grew up. Rather than Thorin and Company, I had Woolley, my 100-pound Golden Retriever, as my boon traveling companion. Woof! Here’s the BigBoi swimming at a dog park on the Mississippi River near Minnehaha Falls: 
Faithful readers will know that I often chronicle my travel adventures in posts that relate my experiences to the wonderful world of grant writing. When on a road trip, I get off the interstates as much possible and drive US and state highways and county roads (read William Least Heat Moon’s 1982 travel memoir, Blue Highways, to understand why I do this) to touch the real America. This time, I took US 60 east to Tucumcari NM, connecting to US 54/56 (the “Kansas Diagonal”) to Overland Park KS, and then up US 169 to Minneapolis.
I essentially recreated the route in reverse that I took in January 1974 when I threw my stuff and my mutt Barney into my rusted ’65 VW and headed to LA after college. My wild Jew-fro and bushy beard are long gone and I now drive a reliable car, but my spirit of adventure is the same—I stopped at the same kind of unique cafes (in Blue Highways, Moon refers to these as “three-calendar” cafes) and roadside motels in random small towns that I did in 1974, while taking time to stop at roadside attractions (you know I stopped at the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM!).
I was last in Minneapolis 19 years ago on another road trip with my oldest son and colleague, Jake, who lost his battle with cancer last year, making this visit bittersweet. In 2006, we stayed downtown and it was perfectly safe at night to walk along the Nicollet Mall past the nine-story former flagship Dayton’s Department Store, then a Macy’s, for dinner at Murray’s Steakhouse (“Home of the Silver Butter Knife Steak,” which was way too pricey for my poor immigrant family back in the day, but I loved to stare in the window as a kid). This visit, I didn’t feel safe enough to even park my car downtown in the daytime, let alone walk around at night. In 2006, downtown was a vibrant example of New Urbanism, with successful adaptive reuse of office towers as hotels and warehouses as housing, but no longer—I saw many vacant boarded-up stores, while the Nicollet Mall now resembles the equally screwed-up Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, with glassy-eyed druggies and homeless wandering around, etc.
As I drove around, much of the rest of Minneapolis was also dismal. I grew up on the Near Northside, which was then a low-income Jewish trending Black neighborhood. That all changed with riots in 1967 and 1968 that destroyed the Plymouth Avenue shopping district and sent the remaining Jews fleeing to the suburbs. The Near Northside never recovered. The Lake Street area near Chicago Avenue that was ground central for the George Floyd riots is scary. When I was in college, I lived there near Powderhorn Park. Back then it was a great park, but today is filled with homeless encampments, while lots of stores on Lake Street remain boarded-up and there are many vacant lots where buildings were torched. Similarly, the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood near the University of Minnesota West Bank Campus has completely morphed. When I was in college, Cedar-Riverside was ground central for us wannabe hippies and had many fun dive bars and shops; it’s now called Little Mogadishu since the huge Somali immigrant population is centered there.
Still, all these vacant buildings and lots represent great opportunities for nimble nonprofits to develop alternative uses like affordable housing, community centers, and the like.
I stayed four days in Minneapolis. Or, I should say, I stayed four days near Minneapolis in a suburb, Minnetonka. As noted above, while I used to stay downtown when visiting, I talked to some friends from Minnesota before I left who advised me that downtown is no longer safe. A quick scan of downtown hotel reviews had many along the lines of “nice hotel but homeless outside when I came back at night.” So, I stayed at a hotel in a soulless office park that could have been in Irvine CA, or a thousand other suburbs. This was depressing as I’m a fan of New Urbanism and downtown Minneapolis has many great adaptive reuses of historical buildings like the Foshay and Rand Tower, both of which are now hotels, and lots of multistory former warehouses and factories converted to residential/mixed uses.
When I was growing up in the 60s, Minneapolis was the quintessential “Minnesota Nice” community—run by liberal DFL* politicians in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey, mayor in the 1940s before becoming Senator and Vice President; Floyd B. Olson, the socialist “Boy Governor” in the 1930s; and Donald Frasier, Fifth District Congressman (same seat now held by Ilhan Omar) when I was in college. But as Minnesota homeboy Bob Dylan put it, Things have Changed. Minneapolis today is a mess. The DFL I knew no longer exists. Disastrous public policies like defunding the police, facilitating out-of-control homelessness, allowing the Lake Street area and police precinct building to burn during the George Floyd riots in 2020, etc., have taken their toll.
Minneapolis is not alone in its current distress. I drove through over 100 rural towns and small cities on my Blue Highway adventure. Entering these towns was almost always the same: speed limits dropping quickly from 65 to 25, the highway (usually the main street) passing by vacant, and often abandoned, houses, gas stations and retail stores, with perhaps a single Dollar Store and fast food place being the only signs of life. These windblown towns look like every dystopian B-movie you’ve even seen. The retail and residential lots, particularly at the entry and exist points, are strewn with junk vehicles and mountains of broken plastic crap, presumably made in China and bought from Walmart or Amazon. As recently as ten years ago, I’d slow down upon entering a small town, since there was usually a cop car manning the inevitable speed trap. While I still slowed down to observe the towns closely, while looking for a three-calendar café, I only saw one or two vigilant cop cars. I assume these towns can’t afford traffic cops anymore since the local tax bases are decimated. This also played out along the Blue Highways and some freeways I drove—there’s almost no traffic enforcement anymore. Although this is fun for folks like me who like to drive a bit fast, it’s emblematic of decline of rural America and somehow depressing.
I did, however, find some exceptions to small town decline. I spent one night in Dubuque, IA, as I was driving the Great River Road ** along the Mississippi River. It’s a charming river town, with the same kind of engaging adaptive reuses of former industrial buildings that also grace downtown Minneapolis. There was a fairly lively street scene and I found a delightful “Supper Club” (a unique Midwestern holdover from the 50’s) for dinner. I also spent one night in Roswell. NM (unfortunately, I didn’t spot any UFOs). While not nearly as charming as Dubuque, Roswell’s main street (US 285) had no vacant buildings, some great New Mexican restaurants (pro tip: order Christmas chili with both red and green sauce), the aforementioned UFO Museum, and seems to be thriving. I have no idea why, among the many small towns I visited, Dubuque and Roswell are doing so well.
Perhaps the old adage is true: one really can’t ever go home again as that past no longer exists except in our memories.
* There hasn’t been a Democratic Party in Minnesota since 1944 when Hubert Humphrey engineered the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party into the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party. Growing up my family was solidly DFL.
** The Great River Road runs from the headwaters of the Mississippi in Northern Minnesota 3,000 miles to New Orleans. I only had time to drive it for about 500 miles but any part of it is a joyful experience.