Park Rapids

PARK RAPIDS, MINNESOTA
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ETIQUETTE AT THE BOAT RAMP PARK RAPIDS NEWSPAPER

July 2001 Trip to Itasca
Some excerpts from Sands of Pima Arroyo

In 1966 Park Rapids was not exactly hip. Back then, I walked down the street and people would spin on their heels to see my hair, which was just a Beatles/surfer cut. I remember kids running up to our car to see where the hell we were from and saying, "Oh, ARIZONA!" If California was a year or two ahead of the times with respect to Arizona, as it always seemed to be, then Arizona was a year or two ahead of Park Rapids.

Northern Pike Park Rapids Aquarium
Year: 1966

      This trip, however, Sally and I found the new Park Rapids to be a rather hip town and quite a cool place—rustic and very western in style. Many of the Minnesotan small towns look a lot like Gun Smoke's Dodge City—they seem quite a bit more western—Hollywood style—than most Arizona towns, which are far more Spanish in design. I stopped into a barber shop and got a quick haircut. Sally was patient and I really needed one. More than thirty years ago I was part of a big scene in a barber shop in Park Rapids, and it may well have been this very one. (My father kept telling the barber to cut some more off and the barber would say, "I don't want the boy to be mad at me." Finally he just hacked away and messed up my hairdo. I felt he was just being lazy.) But this time the woman cutting my hair and I had a fine time yacking and yucking. Sally and I then decided to pop in for a beer somewhere.

      We found that the Royal Bar was the best place to go; it had a good selection of beer and there was quite a community of Park Rapiders in there—old and young and in the middle of the day. The bartenders in the Royal Bar have a drink every time you order one of your own, a fact that surprised me a great deal. Didn't they have liquor control here? We found that it was standard procedure for the bartenders to drink on the job.

      The place was so crowded, however, that we went and hit another joint called Art's Place. Oh, God how low class it looked from the outside—and inside it presented no disappointment. It was a dark, damp joint made for get-down-and-drink drinkin'. Arizonans usually just order beer, but Minnesotans drink a lot of hard liquor in those bars. We had a beer that was absolutely insipid and icky and we left and went back to the Royal, found a place at the bar and had a beer and a nice chat with the drunk bartender. Wood ticks were crawling out of my clothes and Sally wanted to scoot away from me. We didn't stay long.