This is Don’t Remember Me Like This
I’m Nathaniel Barber. Don’t Remember Me Like This is a homemade, nonfiction podcast and diary thing. Every episode I’ll read a work of nonfiction (and occasionally, some non-non-fiction) prefaced by updates and goings-on from a life observant. All episodes are written, and produced and performed by me (for better or worse). Thank you for listening.
On a whim, we drove 2 hours north, from Saint Paul to Little Falls in Morrison County, Minnesota, where Jaclyn was born and raised.
We went to see an exhibit at the Morrison County Historical Society by photographer Anthony Marchetti. He was giving a brief presentation for the opening of his project, “Good People,” a work in progress about the people and surrounding landscapes of Morrison County.
It took us a while to check into our hotel. Jaclyn checked us in, while I waited out in the car with our daughter who, after the drive, was fidgety about getting out of the car and eating all the food. But Jaclyn had to wait as a large group of elderly men took their time checking in for a weekend golf outing with the guys: pleated khakis, white hats, polo shirts, and loud jokes about “the wife.”
‘This is going to take a while’ Jaclyn texted from the lobby, hating life. I called in an order for pizza.
The order for pizza was not a difficult one, but there was confusion. The boy on the other end of the line seemed unsure of how to use a landline. It sounded as if he was talking with his palm over the receiver, “Okay, so I have a large pizza with pepperoni,— sausage, bell pepper, olives, and fresh tomatoes, with a pan crust, is that right?”
After we were finally checked in, we plugged the kid into some Tom and Jerry cartoons and I left to get the pizza. Walking to the car, I walked past one of the golfer’s rooms, party central. They had the door open and I stole a peek as I walked by. Crammed into the small room, awkwardly sitting on the two beds (there were no chairs) were ten or so of the bekhaki’d old men drinking beer and watching golf on the tv.
And as I walked past, they all stopped and looked at me like I was the weirdo.
I arrived early for the pizza. There was still ten minutes or so until it was done. There was nowhere to stand and wait except in the middle of the dining room, among several tables full of people tucking into dinner. None of the diners made any attempt to conceal their seeming fascination with me.
I couldn’t tell why everyone was staring at me so openly.
On a table next to the entrance, next to some dusty tourism pamphlets, there was a large news flier. A one-page flier printed by Falls Radio, a local radio station. On the flier was a solid paragraph of copy that had been transcribed from the local news as it’d been reported on Falls Radio the day before.
A 21-year-old Sauk Rapids man was caught and arrested with $4200 cash, 9kg of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a pile of unregistered guns, and several parts for building “ghost guns” which, according to the report, are untraceable by their serial numbers. He was facing seventeen felony charges that included 16 counts of receiving and possessing a firearm without a serial number.
Back at our hotel room, I was relaying this bit of news to Jaclyn, and the part about all those golfing Chauncys and their creepy party down the hall. As I was recounting these little vignettes, I opened our pizza to find not our pizza, but someone else’s pizza. There was chicken and artichoke hearts and a bunch of other shit on there.
Jaclyn asked, “Wait, aren’t you going back to get our pizza?!”
I said, “No.”
So we sat on the beds (no chairs in our room either), and we ate somebody else’s pizza and watched Tom & Jerry because there wasn’t anything else on tv.
But tv wasn’t really the point. It was a luxury just to get out of town, if only for a day, if only to hang out in a gamey hotel room. Even if there was a wad of someone’s dark, curly hair on the bathroom floor. It’s about doing something different. Getting out there and seeing something new.
After we had our fill of Tom & Jerry (which wasn’t much) we took a walk to the elementary school playground. Our daughter is just crazy for playgrounds. The mascot for the elementary school, which is also the mascot for the middle and high schools, which might as well be the town’s mascot, is The Little Falls Flyers (go, Flyers!). “Flyers” is c/o the famous pilot, Charles Lindbergh who was born and raised in Little Falls. In spite of Mr. Lindbergh’s affinity for the Luftwaffe, as well as his unabashed adoration of the German nazi party, Little Falls, Minnesota is still very proud of their native son.
The next morning we went to eat breakfast at the local grocery store, Coborns. In Coborns, Jaclyn recognized several people with whom she may have gone to school. (Little Falls is still a very small town.)
I asked her, “Aren’t you going to say hi?”
She said, “No!” shaking her head. “Good god, no.”
As we ate breakfast, we overheard a man talking at the table next to us. It wasn’t hard to hear him as he was basically shouting at an older man, probably his father, and two young boys, presumably his kids. He excitedly recalled a story he’d read, the same story about the man, or boy from Sauk Rapids. Exasperated, he noted the $4200 and the 9kg of weed, imploring his captive audience to give him one good reason to be in the possession of that much weed in Little Falls Minnesota.
I thought, “Like, beside the obvious?”
But he’d left out the most important detail about the 16 felony charges for receiving/possessing a firearm without a serial number. Or at least he didn’t mind the firearms infraction enough to omit that probably more important detail from his loud story.
It was the weed that set him off.
We arrived for Anthony Marchetti’s photography exhibit just in time, which is to say, we arrived after all the seating had been taken. The three of us took a few folding chairs in the back which turned out to be the very best seats in the room. We were sitting right next to the large, high-definition computer screen Anthony was using to run the photos to a projector at the front of the room. Everybody else only got a dim, awkwardly cropped version on the projector screen at the front.
Mr. Marchetti is from Minneapolis, he’s a teacher of fine arts at a community college.
I liked the premise of what compelled him northward from Minneapolis, to Morrison County. He spoke about how, in America, red and blue states—or, more specifically, red and blue cities and towns and the people who inhabit them—have never been more polarized than before. He didn’t like the idea he was living in a blue bubble in Minneapolis (much like my own experience). So I like the idea of putting himself out there, to learn and connect with people who are “elsewhere” in more ways than just geography–people who politicians frequently remind us are, for their intents and purposes, our enemies.
I wish people would do that more often. I wish I did that more often which is probably why I’d been so keen to see Anthony’s exhibit, to see the work of someone who wanted to do the thing, did the thing, and yielded such stunning results.
And it’s not an insignificant thing, what he did. Sadly, it’s done far too seldom these days, to not only put yourself out there, but connect with and take beautiful, intimate photos of the people of Northern Minnesota who can be notoriously mysterious and wary of outsiders, especially outsiders from the “Cities.”
“Good People” was an impressive collection of photos. The portraits were beautiful. They were striking, but they weren’t an expose, or tabloid. His subjects were vulnerable and giving, proud and dignified, captured in their natural habitats but patient and intimate. That we got to hear the mechanical details of his process, and perspective, what a treat!
I caught up to Anthony after his presentation.
I didn’t want to talk off his ear, or to chat him up for no reason, but something he said during his talk stuck with me. He said he was worried about getting in a rut, doing the same thing over and over. He was always tentative about what the next project would be, and the process of discovery for what came next always seemed a daunting task.
I think that’s fair. Nobody likes a rut. But I believe, depending on your perspective, a rut can be just as challenging and creatively rewarding as sinking your teeth into the next shiny new project.
In spite of my little promise that I wouldn’t chat up Anthony with mindless talk I told him he’d reminded me of a scene in a movie. A scene from the movie Smoke.
In the movie, Harvey Kitel plays Auggie Wren, the owner of a tobacco shop in New York. He’s a hobby photographer. And his work is very niche—every day he takes one photo of his tobacco shop, kitty-corner, from across the street. Every day, the same picture, at the exact same time. He’s filled albums with thousands of these pictures. And he’s explaining this to his friend Paul Benjamin, played by William Hurt, who isn’t getting it. At first he sees the same pictures, over and over. Why take the same picture? Over and over? Doesn’t it get boring? The same thing, on repeat?
But Auggie Wren tells his friend to slow down and look at the pictures. Paul Benjamin kind of rolls his eyes, and stops, looking at the pictures, turning the pages of the album slower, taking them in. And in one of the photos is a picture of his wife who had recently passed away.
At first, he laughs. There she is. And Auggie seems just as surprised to see her in his photo as Paul is. Paul guesses she probably walked in front of Auggie’s camera on her way from his smoke shop with a pack of cigarettes for Paul, as was her habit when she was still alive. But as Paul remembers her, and he remembers this generous errand she was running for her husband, he falls apart crying. It is a highly emotional scene and, anecdotally, beautifully written by Paul Austere.
I think of that scene often because it so succinctly summarizes the creative process I want to shoot for. Because, I can also become distracted from the work at hand, always preoccupied by what’s coming, the next new project. And Auggie Wren’s creative process is the antithesis to that. He was perfectly happy to chop away at the work at hand. Perhaps it was monotonous, but there’s a man who’s got his priorities in line. No matter how repetitive, or how elementary the work may be, you show up and do the work, you get the shot or write the story, and do it again and again. And every time you do the thing, you try to do it a little bit better than the last time. Then it isn’t just repetition. It doesn’t just get old. There’s something to learn with every effort. No matter how monotonous or supposedly repetitive. In theory, we could do a thing daily for years and years, and we could still be a novice at the thing.
It’s the difference between thinking about doing the thing, or actually doing the thing. And I like that. That speaks to me.
And here I was, probably talking poor Anthony Marchetti to death, even though I promised him I wouldn’t. He was very polite though. He said he’d keep an eye out for the movie and wrote down the name. We shook hands and I thanked him for his beautiful pictures and inspiring work.
After the photography exhibit we went to eat at the Black And White cafe, which was one of the first times we’ve been out to eat as a family in years. I got the reuben (predictable), and though I didn’t try it, their Bananas Foster bread pudding sounded splendid. Years ago, the first time I ever came to Little Falls, Jaclyn and I stopped at the Black and White for lunch, but they were closed for a special event. They were preparing desserts for the large event that evening. And I remember they had several plates of Bananas Foster laid out on tables and were caramelizing the sugar with a torch and the burnt sugar and bananas and cream all smelled perfectly divine. So, even though I’ve never eaten Bananas Foster at the Black and White, the two are inextricably linked in my sense memory. But then, I feel like I remember every minute of that trip to Minnesota so many years ago because that was the summer I tricked Jaclyn into marrying me.
After lunch at the Black and White, it was time to return home, but not before stopping at Treasure City on Highway 10 in Royalton Minnesota (go Royalton Royals!).
I’ve only driven past Treasure City only a handful of times. Jaclyn, on the other hand, must have driven by this place thousands of times as it is en route from Morrison County to the Twin Cities. In all that time, she’d never ever stopped to check it out. So, of course, the first time someone dragged her to see this gaudy, glittering paradise, it had to be me.
What a place!
Shelves upon shelves of trinkets and kitschy knick-knacks and toys and collectibles. Now that’s my kind of shop. I almost bought everything in the place. Thankfully, I only bought a magnet that said MINNESOTA.
Our daughter was also in heaven. And she lost her dang mind when I gave her three dollars to spend on anything she wanted. To be fair, we’d been meaning to set up an allowance type situation with her. I hear it’s supposed to teach a kid about the importance of money and build autonomy as they take their first swipes at capitalism. So I suppose it was unfair to spring this on her so spur of the moment right there in Treasure City, paradise of accouterments.
It was actually a big deal, a supposedly important life lesson that was unfortunately delivered as an afterthought that wasn’t very well thought out. As such, it set our daughter to searching the expansive aisles of Treasure City for something to buy, it didn’t matter what it was, it just had to be covered by three dollars. But she was taking so long. She was having trouble finding something to buy, rather than something she really wanted. Eventually, I was able to convince her not to spend the three dollars, but to save it for something she really wanted, which is not how this little financial adventure is supposed to go. You’re supposed to be hands-off, and if she wants to buy a small plastic poop, even if she already has one at home, you’re supposed to let her make her own decision, and probably, make (and hopefully learn from) her own mistakes.
So, maybe I failed at this super important life lesson. But at least we don’t have two plastic poops in the house, when one novelty poop is already one too many. And hey, she’s up three bucks for who knows what down the line.
