ST.
PAUL. HOME OF THE SAINTS
715
with stops, starts, portages, and unless a native, one should take a
guide. The fare by taxi
is
said to be $3.50. Some expected the inven–
tion of the aeroplane, later the helicopter, to solve the transportation
problem, to bring us together in other ways too, but it never worked
out.
The twin cities are anything but two of a kind. Only a stranger
would reckon them so. To describe one city to its satisfaction
is
to
malign the other. Minneapolis is still the Zenith of Sinclair Lewis,
and proud of it. St. Paul, by comparison,
is'
in part what a writer
for the
Saturday Evening Post
called it, "slow and poky, and there
are few extroverts around to disturb the calm." The last part is un–
fortunately too good to be true, but as might be expected the Cham–
ber of Commerce braves fought the appraisal in bitter letters to the
editor.
Both cities are doomed by climate and circumstance not to realize
the bright promise of their beginnings. St. Paul lives in retirement
and grows older gracefully. Minneapolis will very likely collapse all
at once, like a noisy salesman from a heart attack. Doubtless St. Paul,
the smaller twin (now), is more conscious of the war between the
cities, having lost.
Minneapolis can assume a galling indifference to the struggle
and get away with it, but the old meanness still crops out. On a
streetcar in Minneapolis recently, I heard a passenger say as a colored
woman rose to get off: "Look at that poor girl coming back from St.
Paul," a reference to St. Paul's alleged dinginess ,and still no tribute
to her industry. However, we find ways to get back. At Lexington
Park, home of the St. Paul baseball club, the Saints, a good thing to
say when a Minneapolis Miller flubs the ball a few feet is: "That
woulda been a home run at Nicollet," a dig at Minneapolis' cracker–
box ball park. (Alas, they are building a new one that will be bigger
than ours!) When I first came to St. Paul I heard the audience at a
neighborhood theater boo when a selected short of the Minneapolis
Aquatennial flashed on the screen. (I was puzzled then, but now I
boo with them: I just can't get enough of this heady chauvinism.)
II
Minneapolis is a city on a plain. St. Paul rises from the river
in
a series of hills and valleys. On this Dr. Miller comments: "Some