Pig's Eye Island Adventure

By Cynthia Schreiner Smith, March 28, 2012
Cynthia (right) and her sister on the way to Pig’s Eye Island City Dump (Photo courtesy of Cynthia Schreiner Smith)

When I was growing up near Mounds Park during the fifties and sixties, fresh milk was delivered to our stoop like clockwork; however, no one came to haul away the refuse. A big, rusty metal drum in our back yard received the trash instead. When it got full, my father lit it on fire. Items you couldn’t burn—bottles, cans, old plastic toys—were driven to the Pig’s Eye Island City Dump. My brother almost always got to go with Dad to the dump, a fact that he lorded over his little sisters. But sometimes we got to go too.

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Another Crossing

By Bill Cento, June 4, 2011
The Crowne Plaza Hotel at 11 East Kellogg Boulevard in downtown Saint Paul. (Photo: Dan Tilsnen)

Vera’s death was just last December, and I am missing her on this May evening, as our forty-third anniversary approaches. I need time and space by myself, to think. A view of the Mississippi River twisting and turning sharply, as I am right now, would set the tone. A drink and something good to eat would be nice—a martini, a very good steak, a favorite after-dinner drink.

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High Water

By Captain Bob Deck, April 30, 2011
Pig’s Eye Bridge from southbound towboat Paul Lambert (Photo: Captain Bob Deck)

A grizzled old towboat mate of twenty-six named Steamboat Bill explained the dangers of working in high water to me in very simple, very direct terms. “Rule number-one is: Don’t fall in! If you fall in, you’re dead. It’s that simple. The current will drag you under and you’ll drown!” He told me this from the deck of a barge moored in South Saint Paul in the spring of 1975, when the Mississippi River was rising fast. Years later I watched as another young deckhand learned this lesson.

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December

By Nora Murphy, December 10, 2010
(Photo: Sister Edith/Flickr Creative Commons)

The moon has landed
on earth, printing her
craters and hills..

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The Fish Hatchery

By Mary Legato Brownell, October 16, 2010
(Photo: Cambelina/Flickr Creative Commons)

The bluffs near Shepard Road were steep, nearly
Worn away, over time, by the flooded
Sweep of the river. Minnow pools survived
Those years, there by the edge of the city
Near the cliffs...

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Mighty Mississippi Memories

By Linda Straley, April 14, 2009
The Village Hall

Memories often take on a life of their own and go where they will. This one leads me down memory lane to helping my grandfather, Floyd W. Anger, mayor of Lilydale from 1959 to 1970, move his essentials to higher ground every year that Lilydale's lowlands flooded where Water Street becomes Lilydale Road.

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Skiing on Pike Island

By Nora Murphy, February 12, 2009
Pike Island in Winter

In the fall after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, hundreds of Dakota women and children were force-marched for seven days to Fort Snelling from their reservation in western Minnesota. That winter, over fifteen hundred Dakota were detained on Pike Island below the fort. Under military patrol and with only thin blankets, the prisoners watched this wooded island fill with snow.

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My First Winter in St. Paul

By Badeh Dualeh, January 24, 2009
Photo: Jeff Keacher

I was born and raised in Somalia, then lived many years in Dallas. After I graduated from the University of North Texas, I moved to Saint Paul in search of a job and a wife. It was January 2004, and the temperature, with windchill had dropped to -40° F.

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The St. Paul Hotel in the late 1970s

By Tom Conlon, January 13, 2009
Saint Paul Hotel

I recently learned that the Saint Paul Hotel will celebrate its one hundredth anniversary in 2010. I wanted to make sure its role in our city's history was acknowledged in some manner. Perhaps my own personal reflections as a former employee and later a guest can contribute.

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