Day Five - Rochester
People walk around in t-shirts here. Windchills in the teens, and t-shirts. Thursday afternoon I passed a guy wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and Crocs. Crocs. Just hanging around outside a cafe. What is wrong with these people?
Mixed in with the January t-shirts, lack of sense of personal space, and the quirky accents, is an extraordinarily high Asian and Muslim population.
We checked off the morning at a nearby St. Louis Bread Co. (or Panera, as they apparently like to relabel it in any other state). Mom got cozy by the fire with a mug of coffee while Carrie-Bri and I typed up pages at a nearby table over selections from the bakery.
Top of the hill – cold silence – Assisi Heights. The Sisters of St. Francis had a little gift shop open one hour a day after lunch. Home-grown honey, hand-knit afghans. We left with armfuls. These kind little ladies can’t honestly be making anything off these products from their beautiful nunnery, but we certainly weren’t ungrateful. Besides, I’ve always sort of wanted something made by nuns. Going back to my good old days when I wanted to be a monk. Only because it sounded more interesting than a nun. As we left, the sister at the cash register chatted with us about the time she visited St. Louis in a station wagon with five of the other sisters. Finally found one last hotel room at the Holliday Inn.
“Must’ve been baseball season,” Carrie explained.
“That might have been it, you know. They let all six of us stay in there,” she laughed. “We were so young back then, and we had so much fun!”
“Well come back again and see us,” Mom advised.
“I should do that.”
“But not during baseball season. We’re big Cardinals fans!”
“Well good!”
As we walked away, Carrie laughed. “Mom, I bet she thought you meant Catholic cardinals.”
Just a mile or two away at another antique shop, Mom browsed through stacks of lace doilies for the kitchen table, while Carrie-Bri and I gawked over various relics from former better-forgotten ages. Amidst the heavy concentration of Swedish and Native American relics, we were constantly amazed at the level of racist “commentary”. Apparently black face somehow wasn’t offensive in this part of the country.
Before our Olive Garden dinner, we Facetimed with the fam back home. Something about Steak ‘n Shake coupons and repaired toilets. So much excitement.