Blog

Main Street Reflections

Just a Nice Town!

by VAL STADICK
Main Street Books

Tuesday afternoon and I am surrounded by the familiar smells of the bookstore – the earthy odor of wood floor mixed with bare brick walls, a hint of Amaretto, and the occasional scent of Minot in August as it wafts in gently through the open front door.

What exactly does Minot in August smell like? When the temperatures are in the mid 70s, as they are today, it is a clean and barren smell.  The blossoms on the flowering crab are long spent. An occasional cloud blows by and brings a hint of rain and is gone again, only to be followed by a spattering of more clouds that float surreptitiously past.

And then again, with their passing, that rain promise smell vanishes.
To paraphrase the above, today is a lovely and beautiful summer day in Minot. The lack of prairie wind makes the day perfect for tennis and if we were playing a baseball game it would be so nice we would play two.

And in the middle of all this beauty drifts a young man into the store and enquires about several authors: Bukowski, Gabriel Marquez, Coelho. I check on these authors for him, I show him what I have on hand, find a new copy of “My Melancholy Whores” in the 50% off bin in front of the store and he finds a used poetry anthology and a biography of Kafka. As I ring him up he looks me in the eye and says “What is it about Minot?”

I ask him what he means. I feel a bit defensive.

He says everyone he has met has been really, really nice.

I beam with pride because, after all, this is my town.

But I stumble over my answer. I am blushing, a bit, almost like he told me I had a cute ass or something. And I stutter a little bit also. I ask him where he is from and he tells me Oregon.

That’s a nice place. I remind him.

Yes. He agrees. But he has never met a whole town this nice before.

I smile a big maternal smile and ask him where he has been during his visit.

Around, he answers, slow to give up any details.

And I am still thinking about a really good answer to his question.

"What is it about Minot?". And I just don’t have a good answer. Is it the location? Is it our heritage? Is it the climate? No. No. And most definitely NO.

And the best answer I can come up with when he asks why everyone is so nice is-- “Well, it’s not winter.”

Stupid answer.

But he laughs, anyway. And then I grow serious. And I answer as honestly as possible. “I just don’t know,” and then I add,. “It’s just a nice town I guess!”

And as he leaves it is still Tuesday afternoon and the scent of August is still with me and I am feeling very much like I am in the middle of a Moody Blues’ Tuesday Afternoon. Everything is beautiful and lovely and everyone is just so dog-gone nice. It may be a little boring, a little dull, and a little less exciting in this magical city on the prairie than say New York or San Francisco. However, one young man from Oregon just discovered that in Minot “NICE MATTERS” and that a 50-year-old woman can still blush–like a proud parent -- when the right compliment is thrown her way.