What we is and what we isn’t

One of my favorite things about Iron Range culture is my people’s willful obliviousness to how we’re perceived by outsiders. Most just don’t care. The ones that do operate off entirely different social cues, the same cues held by nerdy teenagers who think they’re cool. On a good day I straddle the line between these two groups.

My wife, the Northern Cheapskate, found this review of several northern Minnesota attractions from a travel site called RoadsideAmerica.com. The writer spent a day in and around the Iron Range reviewing our quirky roadside attractions and tourist sites. I strongly recommend you check out the Iron Range section. Meantime here are some highlights.

On Eveleth and its “big stick”:

The stick reportedly has enough wood to make 3,000 regular-sized hockey sticks, although Eveleth really could use that wood to spruce up the sagging facades along Main Street. This is a brawny, blue-collar burg, winning no points for eye appeal. Cooperstown it ain’t.

On the Iron Man statue in Chisholm:

Cross-eyed, he stares down at the McDonald’s strategically located across the street.

International Falls, though not a Range town, takes the brunt:

… we quickly discover that the town is a center for pulp processing. For those unaware, giant piles of pulp smell. Bad. Thankfully, outside of July and August, it rarely gets warm enough to generate bad smells in International Falls…

I don’t mean to imply that the review was all bad (it wasn’t) or that I’m trying to dig at these towns. Rather, it’s just funny how differently others see the same sites we do. I see Eveleth as being like a well used tool from the shed. Of course it’s gritty-looking! It’s also useful. And the McDonald’s being located across from the Iron Range’s largest and most important memorial to the miners who built this region? Well, that really was a really stupid zoning decision and looks ridiculous when you drive up 169. It’s time we Rangers owned up to that.

If you click around you can see more about surrounding areas as this was part of a multi-day trip around the upper Midwest. The reviewer spends considerable time talking about the various large statues found in so many Minnesota towns, a plurality of which are Paul Bunyan-related. It’s amusing. I’m not going to give these guys the KSTP treatment because their criticism is good-natured and honest.

UPDATE: Corrected typo in headline. Damn my clumsiness!

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