Our family has always liked spending time together and this goes back as far as I can remember. One of my favorite trips was the drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s house from any of the several houses we lived in North Minneapolis. Because we have such a large family Mom and Dad always had some type of station wagon. Mom and Dad up front usually with Candy in between them, 3 or 4 of us in the backseat and the rest in the luggage area all the way in the back. I would usually get one of the windows in the backseat. On our summer trips I would roll the window down, put my arm on the sill and rest my chin on my arm the entire drive. The wind in my face felt good and everything that might be going on in the car was drowned out by the wind whistling by. We started the drive on Broadway Ave headed north, there were several favorite markers and turns off the road that would bring back memories for me or send me into the fantasy land of my mind. the first marker was one of the houses we lived in on Willow St, a beautiful old Victorian with the dark wood trim and U-shaped staircase. The next memory marker was a movie theater that set back off the road. Unlike other theaters of the day this one stood alone in a building all by itself. It was beautiful building that made me want to go and see anything there, it did matter what the movie was. The one and only time I did go there I saw the Sound of Music which began my life long love for Julie Andrews. As we continued our drive the next marker was Robbinsdale. There was kind of a fork in the road, if you turned left you would drive through Robbinsdale’s business district and past the house the Miller family currently lived in. This was a family we lived next door to several times during our time in North Minneapolis. Continuing down Broadway we drove past the Twin Oaks school. It is the first school Barbara and I went to and if memory serves me it was a private school. I attended kindergarten there and Barbara attended kindergarten and 1^st grade. A little further down the road was a bridge that I thought was huge at the time. On the other side of the bridge was the building that used to have Atlantic Mills in it. You knew it was the building because of the water tower in front of it that you could see from a distance. My mother worked here for years. Continuing on you crossed Bass Lake Rd. If you turned right on Bass Lake Rd a few blocks down you would come to our old house in Crystal, MN. Then a long stretch on Broadway but that stretch included driving by the house of Millie and Roy Gillette some very close family friends. We would then finally get to Osseo and make a right turn to go through town. Just after you crossed the railroad tracks if you took a left you would be on the road that lead to the very first house I remember as a child a white Victorian farm house with no running water. It had a hand pump in the kitchen and an outhouse for the business. We drove through Osseo and into the country. Now the road was lined with a type of fur tree that you can still see throughout the Northern States. These trees were planted during the Great Depression. There was a federal program to hire men, get them to work and earn some money all the while planting these trees that would ultimately help with the drought of the 1930’s. When the car drove by them you could see the diagonal lines they planted in. Then one of my favorite sites that always put me into my fantasy land of dreams. An old schoolhouse. It was somewhat run down but I wanted it. I wanted whoever owned it to give it to me so I could fix it up and live there. I had dreams of partially restoring it and adding some areas I could live in. I also had imagine in my mind of landscaping the property and making it as beautiful as it deserved to be. I was told that the schoolhouse was being offered for free along with an acre of land to anyone that would agree to restore the schoolhouse. I wanted so bad for that to be me but I was still in grade school at the time. The fantasy of this would always occupy my until we got to Champlain. Once we got to this point I knew we were close to Grandma and Grandpas house and my daydreaming would come to an end. We crossed the Mississippi River and just on the other side to the right was a huge house that was partially blocked by trees. Again my fantasy of buying that house and my life in it was in high gear but that would only last seconds. We came up on the 5 and dime on the corner and turned left one to a secondary street. Down a few blocks, a turn to the right, drive a few more blocks and now I could see Cutter St. The street my Grandparents lived on. We turned left onto the street and there was Grandma, waiting for us. During the summer she would walk out to the street to greet us and during the winter she would stand just outside the front door but always there to greet us. We must have looked like bugs scurrying out of the car but Grandma was there and wanted to give each of us a big hug and the family fun would begin! These drives happened when I was between 5 years old and 14 years old. I remember them with great fondness. I will take this drive again at some point just to see how much still remains.