An unexpected tale for Good Friday: The House on Lake Minnetonka That Never Existed

Today is Good Friday, and also the start of Passover; the slight divergence in the calculations this year makes for an unusual coincidence.   Good Friday is a bank holiday today, so there is peace and quiet here.  It is good to remember what the Lord did for us this day.

I thought that I would point you to an article that somehow seems appropriate to the season.  It comes from a rather unusual place, the “Captain Capitalism” blog.  The Captain is not a Christian, I should add.

The article is called The House on Lake Minnetonka That Never Existed.  It’s long, but it’s worth the read.

Many years ago, when the Captain was but a wee corporal, he was attending the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis.  Close to the campus was “the lakes.” “The lakes” included four lakes that were chained together and formed the “crown jewel” of the Minneapolis parks system.  These lakes were:

Cedar Lake
Lake of the Isles
Lake Calhoun, and
Lake Harriet.

These lakes served as the hub of nearly all outdoor summer activity in Minneapolis and to this day remain the most popular part of the Twin Cities to be during summer.  But of the four lakes “Lake of the Isles” was the most prestigious.  Here the “old money” captains of industry built their Minneapolis mansions in the 1880’s and 1900’s, and thus Lake of the Isles is perimetered by beautiful mansions and even some modern day ones as well.

Because of its proximity to the campus me and my friends would regularly bike and run around this lake.  Not only for the beauty of the lake, but the architecture of the houses that surrounded it.  And even though one would prefer to run around this lake during summer, one of my fonder memories of the Twin Cities was running around Lake of the Isles at night during winter.

Even though it may have been -5 outside, I still enjoyed running around Lake of the Isles because it gave me my goal, my inspiration, and my incentive to work hard and study hard in school.  I did not come from wealth, but at night (and not in a creepy, stalker type sense) many of the mansions would have their lights on allowing me to kind of peer into these homes and wonder about what life was like on the inside.

What was it like to have a nice warm home and not sleep in a basement?
What was it like to have so much wealth you didn’t have to worry about student loans?
Is that a wall oven I see?  Is the wife of that home making dinner?  Gosh, a home cooked meal would be great.
And forget dinner, I bet those people have nothing to worry about. They’re RICH.  They got it made.

It also helped that while running during winter it was usually Christmas time, allowing my mind to further wander and dream, speculating about awesome Christmas gifts, nuclear family meals, perhaps sitting down and watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.  And adding to this spectacle was that (at least in the 90’s) nearly every house would put up an impressive display of Christmas lights.  I may had been the only fool running around Lake of the Isles at 10PM in -5 degree weather, but it was and remains today one of my fondest memories….More

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