You Might Be From Minnesota If...

GeoCities.us » Heartland » Ranch

Get your FREE home page!

You Might Be From
Minnesota If...
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, and a pan of bars for anybody who asks

Hello and welcome! I'm Genevieve Clifford, and I've lived in St. Cloud my whole life except for two years in Fargo, which we don't talk about. My husband Ed and I have been married thirty-nine years.

Our daughter Holly moved to Phoenix in 1994, and she calls every Sunday to tell me it's 75 degrees out. When she told her new friends out there she was from Minnesota, they asked her things like "Is it cold?" and "Do you know Prince?" So Holly and I started making this list over the phone, to explain. It's gotten a little out of hand. Ed says I should have quit at fifty.

Read along and count how many fit you. If it's more than half, welcome home. If it's all of them, you should call your mother.

The Weather

...you still talk about the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 like it was a war you fought in.
...you've worn a parka over your Halloween costume, and so did every kid on the block.
...you plug your car in at night, and your cousin in Texas thinks you're making that up.
...you know the difference between twenty below and twenty below with the wind chill, and you have opinions about both.
...you've said "It's not so bad once you're out in it" and meant it.
...forty degrees in March is shorts weather, and you've seen your neighbor wash his car in them.
...you keep a shovel, a bag of kitty litter and a coffee-can candle in the trunk from October to April.
...you have mittens in every coat pocket and not one pair matches.
...you've never seen an orange construction barrel in December, and you've never driven a mile without one in July.
...you've gone ice fishing in a heated fish house with a TV, a couch and a card table, and caught nothing, and had a wonderful time.
...you've driven a car across a lake. On purpose.

The Food

...you call it hotdish, you know at least eleven kinds, and every one of them has cream of mushroom soup in it.
...your hotdish pan has your name on masking tape on the bottom so it comes home from the funeral lunch.
...you think a "bar" is something you bring to church in a 9-by-13 pan.
...you've had Jell-O salad with shredded carrots in it and counted it as a vegetable.
...you're Catholic, but you've been to a Lutheran lutefisk supper anyway, for the fellowship, and you ate the meatballs.
...you've had a walleye sandwich, and fish anywhere else tastes like cardboard.
...you put wild rice in something at Thanksgiving, and your son-in-law from Iowa asked what it was.
...you've been to the State Fair and eaten something on a stick, finished a whole bucket of Sweet Martha's cookies, and stood in line to watch them carve Princess Kay of the Milky Way out of butter.
...your idea of spicy is a lot of black pepper.

The Way We Talk

...you say "Oh, for cute!" about anything under two feet tall.
...you say "Uff da," and you aren't even Norwegian.
...you've answered "How are you?" with "Well, it could be worse."
...it takes you forty-five minutes to leave a party, because you say goodbye in the living room, again in the entryway, and again in the driveway with the car running.
...you've said "A person could maybe have another cup of coffee" when what you meant was "I'd like more coffee."
...you say "Well, that's different" when you mean you don't care for it one bit.
...nobody will take the last bar on the plate, so it sits there until it goes stale.
...you saw the movie Fargo and thought the accents were "a little much." Then you said "Oh, yah?" about something else and heard yourself.
...you say "the Cities" for Minneapolis and St. Paul, "up north" for anywhere with a cabin, and "the lake" for whichever lake you mean.
...you call it pop.

Getting Around

...you can say Wayzata, Edina and Mahtomedi, and you enjoy watching new TV weathermen try.
...you give directions by what used to be there: "Turn left where the Red Owl was."
...you measure distance in hours: "The cabin's about three hours. Four on a Friday."
...you've been stuck behind a boat trailer on Highway 10 every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
...you took out-of-town company to the Mall of America, and then to see a lake, because that's the real attraction.
...you've gone swimming in Lake Superior in August and lasted about eleven seconds.

Sports

...you still have your Homer Hanky from 1987.
...you know exactly where you were when Kirby Puckett hit that home run in the eleventh inning of Game 6 in 1991. (Ed was in the bathroom. He has never forgiven himself.)
...you still can't talk about last January's NFC Championship game, so let's not.
...you've listened to the state high school hockey tournament on a radio hidden in your desk.
...you play Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, and you believe the rest of the country has it wrong.

Up at the Cabin

...a loon calling across the lake at night is the prettiest sound you know.
...you own at least three things with a loon on them. (I own fourteen. Ed counted.)
...you put the dock in every spring and take it out every fall, and some years it rains the whole time in between.
...you've played cribbage on the porch until somebody got skunked, and then played one more.

And the Rest

...you've explained to your cousin in Ohio, more than once, that yes, our governor used to be a professional wrestler, and no, he doesn't wear the feather boa to the Capitol.
...you know somebody who drove all over Stearns County looking for Lake Wobegon.
...you've dressed for church in a sweater in June. (from my sister Helen)
...you've shoveled the whole driveway before breakfast so the plow could fill the end of it back in by lunch. (from Ed's brother Roland)
...you know that anybody who moves away "will be back." (from my niece Ronda, who is pointing at Holly)

A Little Minnesotan-English Dictionary
For Holly's friends in Arizona

Hotdish	A casserole, only better. Usually has tater tots on top.
Bars	Dessert baked in a pan and cut in squares. Lemon, scotcheroos, seven-layer. Never just one kind.
Uff da	Oh my. Also: ouch. Also: would you look at that.
Oh, for cute	That is adorable.
That's different	I don't like it and I will never say so.
You betcha	Yes. Also: you're welcome.
Up north	Anywhere there's a cabin.
Pop	What you call soda.

Got one I missed? Send it along and I'll add it with your first name and your town. Minnesotans living away from home are especially welcome. You'll be back.

You are visitor number

Thanks for stopping by. There's coffee on.

[email protected]

Last updated Monday, September 6, 1999, Labor Day, the last day of the State Fair. My feet hurt.
Back to the Heartland