us highway route 59

US HIGHWAY ROUTE 59

Alyssa Graham

Text by John Szarkowski from “The Face of Minnesota”

For my family.

US Highway Route 59 is a highway in Northern Minnesota. As much as this project is about a place it is also about a time. While I have never been at a more transitional point in my life, time has the tendency to stand still in small towns such as these. Some businesses have come and gone, and others have stayed and haven’t changed at all. More importantly, the people are reluctant to change as well.

-AG

“Among the Christian settlers, it seems that the Devil himself was sometimes considered less of a threat than the rival sects.”

“The summer of a Minnesota town is filled with celebrations: church rallies and sauerkraut festivals, county fairs and water carnivals. No occasion—historical, present, or hoped for—is too obscure to be the inspiration for such a celebration.”

“The political tradition of the Up-per Midwest has been one glorious succession of philosophical contra-dictions. Alternately—even simulta-neously—radical and rock-steady conservative, its intra-party schisms, third-party revolts, and willful inde-pendence have made the region a laboratory for testing political ideas and a rich fossil ground for the po-litical scientist. If we use this tradition as a standard, Minnesota is perhaps the most Midwestern state of all.”

“Every corner of the world enjoys its own distinctive, indigenous snob-beries. Especially prominent during a northern Minnesota winter is the kind labeled the We’ve-Got-It-Worse-Than-Anybody snobbery.”

“The claim about the climate’s health-fulness was and is perfectly true; more important, it provided a fine, complicated excuse for men who wanted to spend all their free time out shooting prairie chicken or ducks or deer, or fishing for pike and trout, or skiing, or ice skating, or simply sky watching. And they have been doing these things ever since, in greater numbers each year. Here in Minne-sota, the outdoors comes close to being a philosophy of life.”

“Time does not consecrate that in which she has been denied, and so to make good lutfisk for Christmas Eve you have to start on December twelfth.”