Robbins Street

I worked near a very special street in Minneapolis today. It doesn’t look special, but it is. Even lifelong Minneapolitans have probably not heard of the street. In Mpls. it’s fairly easy to get a handle on the streets. Most are alphabetized or numbered or follow the sequence of the U.S. presidents. And they run from one edge of the city to the other. I pride myself on having every street in the city memorized. Quite different from St. Paul, but that’s for another time. I’m reminded of a Garrison Keiler book I once read (I think WLT) where he talks about the founders of the city and (with tongue in cheek) lists them as Aldrich Bryant, Colfax Dupont, Emerson Fremont, Girard Humboldt, etc. A little inside joke letting us locals know that he too can recite the names of the streets on the west side of town.

But anyways, back to this special street. It doesn’t follow the rules. It’s like a St. Paul street in the middle of Minneapolis. Amongst all the numbered streets—50th, 51st, etc. is plopped this two-block-long, east-west, named street, breaking all the German-inspired grid-like conventions. This street in the far southwest corner of the city goes by the name of Robbins. It’s easy for me to remember since I hail from the town of “Robbins” dale. However, this street is no where near my hometown.

I first learned of this street about 10 years ago. (I work in construction and travel the entire metro extensively.) A NW suburban contractor for which I worked called and asked if I could do a job on a street in SW Minneapolis. I better give you directions, he said, since it’s a little hard to find. Upon finding the house, I now knew where Robbins Street was. A few weeks later, I received a call from another contractor (not related at all to the previous one) asking if I could do a job on a small street in SW Minneapolis. He offered to give me directions to this “hard-to-find” street, but when he told me it was Robbins, I was able to tell him I knew the way. Forward a few more weeks, a third contractor (no relation to the first two and also based on the north side of the Twin Cities) called. He had a job he needed done. You guessed it. Robbins Street. SW MPLS. More than 10 miles from my home and the offices of these three builders.

A little odd. Doesn’t look like a special street. Homes are modest. Not much construction was going on amongst those two dozen or so homes. So I told my story to the third homeowner on whose house I was now working. He too thought it a little odd that three separate contractors from the other end of town would within a few months send me to one out-of-the-way street with not much building activity, but the story he was about to tell me trumped mine in the category of coincidence (or divine providence?)

Mr. X told me about his days growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, almost 200 miles from the Twin Cities. He lived in a modest two-story on a quiet street and had his own bedroom while growing up. After graduating from college, he moved to the big city and settled in on this quiet street in the Minneapple. Being from Stephen’s Point, WI he knew no one in the area. Reaching out to his neighbors he got to know the guy next door. In time they realized they were both Cheese Heads. They failed to see the purple light and followed the Green and Yellow instead (pre Favre that was.) Upon investigating each other’s past they found that they both hailed from Stephen’s Point (a coincidence), and both grew up on the same side of town (a coincidence), and went to the same school (a coincidence), and lived on the same street (a coincidence), and lived in the SAME HOUSE (a coincidence), and actually (I swear this is true) used the exact bedroom when they were youngsters (a coincidence?) They had never met before and didn’t even know of each other. But they both moved over 200 miles and ended up as next door neighbors. I still think WOW whenever I drive by their neighborhood.

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