I surely am a nut. I admit it. I was cutting out recipes from women's magazines in high school. My high school didn't offer Home Ec to college prep students. Even music or art had to be additional electives. I already worked 20 hours a week in a hospital kitchen and took 6 classes so I couldn't handle more classes. So what did I do for college? I started out majoring in Home Economics. I remember being almost in a swoon looking at giant crocheted sculptures and all kinds of craft arts on display in the buildings. I took interior design, color, clothing design, anatomy, communicable diseases, design in every day objects, and much more. I had one summer class in sewing once in high school. Other than that I was somewhat self taught. I struggled to get a C in Sewing. These girls had been in 4 H all their lives! It was more of a mostly female environment though, after a family with 7 sisters and no brothers and an all girls high school.
I actually walked past a bull in his pen on the St. Paul campus. When I was taking jewelry making, young men were learning how to judge livestock below us. It was commonly referred to as the Farm Campus.
When I was about half way through my sophomore year at the St. Paul University of Mn campus, I moved from my parents' home into an apartment with 4 strangers. It was a very small 2 bedroom apartment. As a matter of fact I had to crawl over someone's bed to get into mine. This was Jan 1968. I walked a lot. I walked to the laundromat , to work, to campus and then wandered out to explore. The coffee houses then were very different from now. They were dark and had old sofas in them. A chain didn't decorate them. You could walk in alone and not feel weird. You could ask someone if they wanted to play checkers or another game, or just begin a conversation. You could get dishes with brown rice and veggies. People came in to sing and play guitar on a sort of stage.
I won't go into all the crazy things that happened to me, but let's say it was life changing. It wasn't the same old same old. I could think for myself. I had not learned to be assertive though nor to read men. I could question religion, politics or anything else without condemnation. It was like at 19 I finally was making up for the stages of adolescence where you move towards independence. I experimented, I went to concerts, I partied, I protested the Vietnam War.
After an illness with mono I dropped out of school and just worked for 18 months. As much as I loved most of the classes in Home Ec, I was worried I wouldn't like teaching it. When I was ready to return to school I decided to change majors to Social Welfare which was in the Liberal Arts College on the Minneapolis Campus. This is where all the action was. The counselor told me that the language requirements had changed and I needed to either take up where I left off years before with Latin or French. I stared at him in horror. I had 2 years of each. Then he said, well there is a special deal if you've had Latin. You can choose to start out in a new language. I had a Saudi Arab boyfriend 8 years my senior at this point. I had started learning some Arabic from him and was fascinated. I said " How about Arabic?" He gave me a long look and said " I understand it's a very difficult language". I signed up for Arabic.
I loved the small classes. Liberal Arts classes had as many as 2000 in a lecture hall. We'd even have dinner at the prof's house! I continued to learn about the Arab cultures and the Middle East politics and war.
My boyfriend returned to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia after my first year back to school. He was here on a student visa studying diesel mechanics and we had been together a year. I had moved home to be able to have enough money for tuition. I studied for a program test for the Center for Arabic Study Abroad and got in. The summer of 1971 I spent in Cairo studying Colloquial Egyptian. It was my first time on a plane! It was a series of amazing adventures.
Later my older daughter moved in with her Dad and a year later I wanted to move very close by so that there was less disruption go her life. I hated driving from South Minneapolis to Saint Anthony Park in St. Paul all the time and the rush hour traffice. She never wanted to miss anything, including being with her new friends. I looked for a house. I bought the old Home Ec sorority house! I had such good memories of being on the St. Paul Campus. It was one block from campus. It had 6 huge bedrooms, several extra rooms, a huge kitchen, large double oven stainless steel stove, and three bathrooms. I felt I could easily rent out rooms to make a little money. I had rented out a single room at a time before. It was much more difficult than I had planned on. After a year I got licensed for foster care. I had mostly teen girls, one at a time since I worked full time as an insurance agent.
We could walk to the Wildlife Rehabilitation center , Raptor Center and later the Horticulture garden on campus. There were animal barns. You would see new born calves alone in their little shelters. There were horses that had been used to develop some kind of antibody medication. You could go feed them grass or apples we brought. On the other side of the alley from our house, there were two Frat houses and two frat/ sorority related apartment buildings of students. We saw them partying, dressed up for proms, chopping wood and loving life. Most came from small towns and went home on weekends, sometimes to help farm. Sometimes I traded a parking spot for help shovelling or painting. Once a frat brother rescued a cat stuck in a bathroom when a shower door fell over wedged against the door. I would rent out other spots. I didn't have a garage. I had a parking lot.
Sometimes I would step back and think of how this big 3 story dark gray house reminded me of the gray 3 story home I grew up in! However my parents' home had beautiful woodwork and classic details and the sorority house had been changed a lot and added to, with most of the original woodwork removed.
We moved 4 years ago and my younger daughter still misses it a lot. She dreams about our old house all the time. I used to have more like nightmares that I would find out this huge new area of the house, all falling apart. It was an enormous amount of expense and upkeep. I loved it though.
Between renters and foster kids I think we had about 50 different people live with us during the 18 years. Then there were about 150 animals I fostered for the Ramsey County Humane Society. Most of those were sick cats. Life was exciting!
The love of social work issues, and things such as sewing, related art and cooking, stayed with me.
