1971: I turned fourteen years old. I was in ninth grade at Hempfield High
School. Daddy was 42, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong
Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna. Mom worked as a nurse at a local clinic.
We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township. The #1 most popular
song on the radio on my fourteenth birthday was “Theme From Shaft” by Isaac
Hayes. Mom snapped this photograph. It must have been taken on New Year's Eve, and Daddy must have been on his way to performing somewhere. We obviously still had our tree up and most of our opened presents beneath it. Once again, we missed taking the photo on the exact day of my November birthday.
My mother was an extrovert:
a boisterous and often opinionated person who freely spoke her
mind. She had recently returned to the
nursing profession and was working at a local clinic for women. She may have been a registered Republican,
but she was a moderate conservative. She
was in favor of most women’s rights, including the availability of birth
control pills and legalized abortion.
I’m not sure what path her life would have taken if she hadn’t had a
husband and a daughter to attend to. We
were hardly high-maintenance housemates, but still. My mother lived within some self-imposed and
cultural limitations.
For inspirational role models of younger and more
independent women, I had to turn to the ones I saw on TV. When I was turning fourteen, That Girl was just ending its five-year
run. Marlo Thomas’s character, Ann
Marie, was somewhat interesting to watch because she was making every attempt
to succeed on her own as an actress in New York City. I never wanted to live there, or to live in
any big city -- or to become an actress -- but I certainly could identify with
the way she still called her father “Daddy.”
And his name was the same as my father’s was, too. (Although
technically, the writers spelled his name as “Lou,” and my father’s given name
is “Lewis.”)
But Ann Marie seemed to get only so far in her
escapades. Then she’d have to confront
her father, who usually complied with a gruff version of “tough love” before
the practice even had a name. And then
he’d soften. Or worse: Ann would go whining to her boyfriend, Donald
Hollinger. “Oh, Donald!” she’d exclaim
with a pout, at least once during an episode.
Why couldn’t she solve her problems on her own? Whenever I see these shows repeated now, I
think less of her than I used to.
Really, Ann. Grow up. Trust your gut. Rely on your own instincts. You shouldn’t have to be rescued by these
guys.
By the time of my fourteenth birthday, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been on for more than a year. It was set in Minneapolis. Since many of our favorite TV shows were
based in New York, Minneapolis by comparison seemed … exotic. They got snow there, lots of snow, and large annual
snowfall was something I always longed for.
And Mary Richards was certainly a far more independent woman than Ann
Marie was. I immediately liked her. I admired her. When I grew up, I wanted to be pretty much
like Mary. Land a decent job in a nice
place that gets snow. Pal around with
great people at work. Have a quirky
friend living upstairs in an attic apartment.
Maybe go out on occasional dates.
Maybe not. And it wouldn’t matter,
anyway. I would be able to take care of
myself just fine. I wasn’t sure if I really
wanted to hang a big letter “C” my living room wall, though. But I put Minneapolis on my shortlist of cool
places where I would consider living, along with Buffalo, New York. Because of snow, of course.
At fourteen, I was only a month older than Lisa Gerritsen,
who played Bess Lindstrom on the show.
What a lucky kid she was! She was
able to hang out with Mary and Rhoda on a regular basis. She just had to put up with Phyllis’s
nonsense as a progressive mother.
I loved The Mary Tyler
Moore Show and was sorry to see it end, even with its classic finale when
everyone in the newsroom got fired except for Ted Baxter. I am sure that the show’s portrayal of a
successful independent woman had an influence on me and what I expected of
women’s roles in society. Back then I
wouldn’t have considered it a landmark series in the history of television, but
I’m glad that people see it this way now.
I recently read Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s terrific book, Mary and Rhoda and Lou and Ted: And all theBrilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic. It’s a behind-the-scenes look and analysis of
the show. You learn a lot about the
writers – especially the female
writers – and the intricacies of launching a sitcom and keeping it going. You even find out how they filmed the
orange-tiger shelter kitty (“Mimsie”) to portray the meowing MTM logo at the
end of the credits. A fun read.
I finally got a chance to visit Minneapolis for myself in
December 1996, when I drove seven hours north from my apartment in northern
Illinois to see John Denver’s Christmas concert at the Orpheum Theatre. (This was the last time I saw John in
person. It’s a story for another time.)
I was busy walking from my downtown hotel to a restaurant
and then to the theater, when it dawned on me:
I’d forgotten to wear a hat! How
could I walk into the middle of a Minneapolis
street and toss a hat into the air when I didn’t even have one to throw? Mary Richard’s hat toss was the iconic symbol
of the independent woman. Like her theme
song said: by smiling and twirling
around and flinging that hat in the air, she showed that she was gonna make it after all. And here I was, sans hat! How could I have failed this crucial
test?
I passed another one, though. I was already armed with directions on how to
find the house that Mary and Rhoda were supposed to live in. That weekend I drove past the house twice and
stopped to take photos of it. Back then in
1996, it was painted dark brown. That’s
why I drove past it twice. Other than
the distinctive attic window, the house didn’t really look quite right. I wasn’t sure it was the same building. In the opening credits of the 1970s show, the
exterior was bright white. (Just like
the snow that appeared in some of the shots.) Here’s my really grainy photo from that
day. It’s a photo of an inkjet
printout. I couldn’t find the
original. I usually have this paper
tucked inside a customized snow globe that sits on my bedside table. That’s real snow in the picture, too.
 |
| A really grainy photo of the Mary Richards house in Minneapolis, on a day in December 1996. |
As I prepared this piece, I looked online for better images
of the house. Surprise: it’s for sale! The property at 2104 Kenwood Parkway was
listed with a local realty office in June 2012, and as of this writing
(September 2013), it still hasn’t sold.
Its current price is $2.645 million.
The price tag is not due to its TV connection, but because of its size
(7 bedrooms) and the excellent neighborhood it sits in. It’s not far to walk from there to Lake of
the Isles and Cedar Lake, just like Mary did in the opening credits of the
show. Click here to see the Realtor’slisting, which includes lots of interior and exterior photos. The house is now beige and looks much more
inviting. And yes, if I had a few more
dollars in my pocket, I’d be tempted to finally take the plunge and adopt this
trendy Minneapolis address. I’d have to
find a quirky chick from New York to rent the upstairs apartment.
Naturally, I had no clue that Minneapolis would come back into
my life in a different way. I’ve since visited
the city a number of times during my research following Henry David Thoreau’s
1861 trip from Massachusetts to Minnesota.
I’ve spoken on the topic in the city and its suburbs a few times. And even though a statue of Mary tossing her
hat was installed on a downtown Minneapolis
street in 2002, I still haven’t had a chance to
fling my own hat in the air at that spot. I almost always wear a hat these days, however. Next visit, for sure.
