There are two kinds of Minnesotans:
those who, against all odds, survived the Halloween Blizzard of 1991,
and those who have considered faking their own deaths to get out of hearing about it.

I belong to the former and I’d like to welcome you to the conversation.
I see some of you reaching for your coats, which is encouraging.
Most audiences resist the reenactment.

To understand what happened 35 years ago,
you have to understand our temporary estrangement from humility.
5 days before the sky fell, we watched a man go up and catch it.

Kirby Puckett, built like somebody who’d help you move a fridge
but would first need to know what was in it,
climbed the plexiglass, stole Atlanta’s future, and walked it off in the 11th
to Jack Buck shouting across the Midwest, “And we’ll see you tomorrow night!”

On that tomorrow night, the kid from Saint Paul, Jack Morris,
pitched 10 innings of nothing.
10 innings of the Atlanta Braves patting their pockets
for a run they were sure they’d brought with them.
At one point, Tom Kelly came to take the ball from Jack
and Jack said something to him that I wasn’t allowed to say to anyone.

TK quickly turned around,
suddenly remembering that he had 9 other players
who might actually enjoy being managed.

The rest is history:
Gene Larkin lifted one over a drawn-in outfield and Dan Gladden came home
looking like a golden retriever being told who’s a good boy
by the entire state of Minnesota.
55,000 Homer Hankies turned the Dome into a snow globe.

We thought we were celebrating.
We didn’t know we were ordering.

Tuesday brought the parades.
St. Paul poured into the streets, and so did Minneapolis,
once it confirmed St. Paul wasn’t getting a better one.
Grown men in Zubaz hugged strangers in Zubaz and said, “Hell of a deal,”
because the alternative was discussing what they actually felt.

For one afternoon, Minnesotans from Bemidji to New Brighton
accepted a compliment without explaining how little it cost
or naming a cousin who deserved it more.

We were magnificent. We were unbearable.

If heaven had fielded a team that week, we’d have taken it in 7.
6 if we got to Gabriel early.

We were so high we figured we could throw hands with Winter itself
and Winter would apologize for having hands,
bring us a pan of Scotcheroos,
and ask if anybody needed the recipe.

We were wrong.

Instead, Winter waited till Thursday,
took off its wedding ring,
handed it to North Dakota,
and hit us with 28.4 inches of something
we will be discussing for the rest of our lives.

The first few flakes made us think the sky had heard about the Twins.
A little white confetti. A nice gesture from an otherwise difficult relative.
But then it kept congratulating us until nobody could find their car.
By dark, we suspected Atlanta had somehow gotten ahold of the thermostat.

And all’ve this was going down on Halloween, which was our night.
We had spent weeks becoming terrifying
and now our parents wanted us to pivot into sensible.

“Go as Reasonable,” they suggested.
“You should go as Supportive,” we responded.

Besides, it’s real easy to preach restraint when you had a checkbook.
Our economy depended on a woman who bought used teeth
and one evening of door-to-door begging in a cape.
Neither offered a weather contingency.

And so we went out in waves.

The Ninja Turtles first. Then the Batmen.
Then the ghosts, according to the ghosts.
The Kirbys came last, ready to carry Sota for the second time that week.

On that first stretch of street, the snow was up to our knees.
That was in 1991.
By my junior year at Mounds View the snow had reached my waist.
By college, my chin.
And today? It’s level with the gutters and, honestly, still rising.

Behind the windows that we walked past
were the children whose appeals had been denied.
One Batman pressed his hand to the glass.
We held up our loot so he could see what his mother had done,
and expose how his dad is Judas.

By the second block, the two-piece policy had completely collapsed.
“Just take it,” people said, tipping whole bowls into our pumpkins
with the urgency of folks who’d bought 6 pounds of Milky Ways
and could suddenly see themselves eating the last one in a bathrobe
while watching the Masters.

We were young, but we knew when a community needed help.

When it was over: 28.4 inches of snow had fallen.

Listen, we forget why we came downstairs.
We forget the password we changed because we forgot the password.
But we will die knowing the .4.
Put us under anesthesia and the last thing you’ll hear is,
“And that was at the airport.”

My three boys have heard this story so often they recite it in unison,
like the Apostles’ Creed, and with about the same enthusiasm:

I believe in snow, the Father Almighty, maker of drifts and school closings,
and in twenty-eight point four inches, its only begotten storm,
conceived over Texas, born of the Gulf of Mexico,
suffered under a Winter Storm Watch,
was underestimated, shoveled, and buried.
It ascended into legend and sitteth at the right hand of Dad,
from whence it shall come every Thanksgiving
to judge the young and the transplanted.
Amen.

This moment 35 years ago is why every October at a Caribou in Eagan,
a grown man will stare a thousand yards into a scone
until the barista says, “Sir? Oat or whole?”
and he whispers with no eyes ever lifted, “28.4.”
It’s why we take our hats off when the plows go by.
It’s why when some kid born in 2003 says, “Yeah, it snows a lot here,”
we set down our cider, light a cigarette and say, very quietly,
“You weren’t there, man. You don’t know the things I saw.”

So, to the second kind of Minnesotan: You win. I’m done.
Next time, if you want to avoid another telling
that I’m already planning for next year,
just say the only phrase that has ever worked: “Thank you for your service.”
We’ll nod, the way veterans do.

And then, because we can’t help ourselves, we’ll say one more thing,
the only part of the story that was ever the point:

Whatever 28.4 hot mess has buried the shape of your life,
may you trust that buried is not the same thing as gone,
that the curb is still under there, and the car, and the garden,
and the person you were before the sky came down.

May you keep walking until you find a door with the light still on.
May you hold out what’s empty, unashamed,
and be graced enough to let the whole bowl be tipped in.

May the plows come while you sleep, scraping out a way in the dark.
Today is only today. It gets inches but not the season.

And we’ll see you tomorrow night!


“28.4”
24×24 Oil and Acrylic on Canvas