Have A Nice Day

We had spent the day after Thanksgiving touring and eating in beautiful downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, and decided to top off our visit by checking out the views from the observation deck of the famous Foshay Tower. Minneapolis is a great city, with multiple excellent cultural attractions and a super food scene.

While checking out all four cardinal points from the observation deck more than 32 stories up, delicate snowflakes the size of small dimes floated down in the light breeze and stuck to our jackets. They melted on wool but stayed for a few seconds on polyester before being brushed off by gravity. My glasses started to fog and the weather-impinged view became less interesting.

“Ready?” I said to my fellow local tourists.

Fifteen minutes later when everyone else was finished drinking in the viewscape, we got in the elevator, pushed “G” and started our rapid descent down a contraption that was built just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Sobering thought.

It stopped suddenly at an unexpected floor.

A couple of women got in, each rolling medium-sized luggage.  At least one bag had a broken wheel and went “clickety-clack” as it struggled onto the elevator floor. One of the new passengers was in her fifties and looked like a typical Midwestern, working-class housewife with a faint dark shadow on her upper lip.

Her travelling partner was probably about my age, but looked considerably older.  She had scraggly hair and wore a shabby down jacket.

I thought for a second, then asked, “So how was your stay?”

My age-mate looked at me and opened her mouth.  It was as though she had something to get off her chest, but didn’t want to know me.  Or answer any of my stupid questions.

She closed her mouth, looked away, and our two newest traveling companions hurriedly got off with their rolling bags at the next floor. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack…

I raised my eyebrows and turned to my friends.

“Was is something I said?”