![\"Looking](\"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Looking-for-Dates.jpg\")
<\/a>At the student center looking for more first dates<\/p><\/div>\n
Things did improve from there, but freshman year consisted entirely of a bunch of dates without any good night kisses. In fact I invented such a good first date, that\u2019s all I did was first dates. I\u2019d ask, \u201cDo you want to go to the horse races?\u201d (This was before Minnesota legalized horse racing.) We\u2019d walk to Snelling & University. I\u2019d explain the Midway Shopping Center sign* and we\u2019d catch the bus to the Capitol. After gazing up at the Rotunda and a quick tour of the Rotunda\u2019s exhibits, I\u2019d say, \u201cOK, it\u2019s off to the races,\u201d and we\u2019d walk downtown to the Saint Paul Hotel, a majestic, brick, old world European-style hotel, with a glass mail slot next to the elevators. We\u2019d go to the top floor, find a maid\u2019s closet with a couple sheets of paper in it, and I\u2019d say, \u201cOK, tear your paper into the figure of a horse.\u201d Then we\u2019d push the button and, when the elevator arrived, drop our horses into the mail slot and race to the second floor to see our horses come floating by. If no one else got on at an intervening floor, we\u2019d win. Otherwise I\u2019d explain what it was all about and we\u2019d go try again.<\/p>\n
Then off to Mickey\u2019s Diner for a bite to eat, but I\u2019d chicken-out when it came time for a good night kiss – – – and so on to another first date. It was only years later that I first heard from Barb, one of my many first and only dates, that some of these first dates actually talked to each other, and learned they were not the one and only one to have such a wonderful, seemingly spontaneous, \u201cgo the races\u201d first date with Andy, and wonder why I never asked for a second date (because, I told Barb, I was afraid of kissing). As to poor Jenny Sturgis, who I left on the dance floor, we never talked until we saw each other at a Hamline reunion party thirty years later where I learned, to my chagrin, that for all these years she thought it was because she<\/span> was<\/span> such<\/span> a<\/span> terrible<\/span> dancer<\/span> that I ran off, poor thing.<\/p>\n As a P.S., I am happy to report that right away sophomore year in college I met Wendy who not only knew how to kiss, but also go all the way \u2013 and very willing to demonstrate. My sophomore year roommate had a cabin on Green Lake and together we went on a double date overnight to his cabin. The rest is history.<\/p>\n ______<\/p>\n *That was a wonderful sign, the Midway Shopping Center sign, now torn down and, I\u2019m afraid, discarded except for the memory:<\/p>\n It looked like a rooster and was pretty much undecipherable (no lettering) except to the initiated. There were two perpendicular semi-thick black lines that intersected in the middle of the sign \u2013 that would be Snelling & University Avenues. Then a gold rectangle at the east of the horizontal black line and another at the west \u2013 the two downtowns. There was a wide, curvy, blue line that started at the gold rectangle on the east, then went way up to the top of the sign, and then headed diagonally to the west rectangle \u2013 the Mississippi River. Just to the upper left of the intersection, a red flashing dot \u2013 Midway Shopping Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So off to college I went to turn over a new leaf, start off with a clean slate. In high school it was not cool to dance. I vowed it would be different in college. Went to the freshmen mixer, … Continue reading