Was It Something I Said?

I see Jessica Lange is in the news again for looking back with anger on the days when she walked among us:

Q: Do you still have a home in Stillwater, Minn.?

A: No, but we have a cabin near Duluth. When we first moved to Stillwater, it still felt like a real place. It had a downtown with a hardware store, a furniture store, a clothing store. Now it's all gift shops and these terrible condominiums. It was a little town with a great deal of character. Everything gets yuppified, I guess.

It is true that downtown Stillwater isn't "real " anymore, in the commercial sense of selling things people actually need. It has gift shops and bead stores and bars and restaurants. Basically things to entertain a prosperous society with a surplus of leisure time. It's the same as Grand Ave. in St. Paul. No one really needs to go there for any reason whatsoever. But people do, because they've got the time and resources to seek out novel ways to amuse themselves.

I'm not sure "real" Stillwater existed even in 1995 when Ms. Lange and company moved into their Victorian mansion on the bluff. By that time the vibrant commercial zone (of Target and Cub Foods and Ace Hardware and Herberger's) already existed along Highway 36. Many of the retail stalwarts of "real" Stillwater didn't disappear, they just moved out of downtown to where the action was. Probably because they could get more space, provide parking for their customers, and get cheaper rent. All to better serve that voracious, prosperous, expanding society surrounding them.

I suppose less economic vitality would have helped retain the quaint atmosphere the newly arrived mansion dwellers on the bluff preferred. Alas, the masses were just too damn productive and well compensated. Where was a recession and massive tax increases when you needed them? (Come back Jessica, things are turning your way!)

Maybe we shouldn't put too much credence on her most recent comments on why she left, as they do not exactly match up with her previous statements.

Lange says she realizes now that she returned to the state in 1995 so she could
spend more time with her mother, who died in 1997. Now, however, Lange told the magazine: "I'm ready to move back to New York," adding that she'll wait until her youngest child graduates from high school. "This is a nice place to raise children. But there's no reason for me to be here anymore."

The magazine also reported that: "Then comes a string of anecdotes about what it's like to tool around in rural Minnesota with a 'No War in Iraq' bumper sticker on her car. 'I had my tires slashed,' " the star told the magazine. " 'I'm being totally serious."

Not enough hardware options downtown, too many yuppies, absolutely no reason to stay, too many violent conservatives. I don't want to be presumptuous here, but I'm starting to get the feeling that her love for this state was something less than torrid.

I am haunted by the thought that I may have had something to do with it. And this may have been the moment it all started to turn sour, my real life encounter with Jessica Lange at a grocery store in Stillwater:

The experience was all too fleeting, but we did make eye contact (at least through her polarized lenses). Right before she left, for some reason she looked over her shoulder to scan the assembled rabble. And there I was right behind her. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.

I'd like to say it was a magical moment, but I can't. Instead, it was a class conscious moment - as in she had it and I didn't. I've never felt the distinction between the rich and beautiful people vs. guys like me to a stronger degree as at that moment. She was Jessica Lange, looking like Jessica Lange. And there I was, glassy-eyed, slack jawed, wearing Dockers, holding a ham sandwich and bag of Funyons.

Which probably looked something like this from her perspective.



In other words, maybe she left because, as intrepid paleontologist Jack Prescott proclaimed in the 1976 classic King Kong: (sound file)

Knowing the way it all ended for Kong, perhaps its best for all of us that she left when she did.

The Elder Rings Twice:: Ahem..."glassy-eyed, slack jawed, wearing Dockers"...I think we can now clearly identify the tipping point in Stillwater's yuppification.