Bonus Episode: Family Pod
Hi, Side by Side listeners. We are hard at work on season two and looking forward to sharing new episodes with you soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this conversation with my siblings, Megan and Keith. One of the reasons I started the Side by Side podcast is to tell stories about living and working across rural and urban spaces and the ways in which these spaces are connected because we don't tell this story enough. And my family has one of those stories too.
Ellen:So my siblings, Megan, Keith, and I grew up in rural Montana in Bismarck, North Dakota. When we lived in Montana, we lived thirty minutes away from a McDonald's. My third grade class consisted of only six people, which was combined with the fourth grade class, making the total number of students twelve. When we went on road trips to visit family, I remember there were so few gas stations along the way that we had to carefully calculate how far we could drive before running out of gas. And like many others from rural areas, we all left to experience life in urban areas.
Ellen:Megan eventually settled in Denver and Keith in Minneapolis. And I lived in Minneapolis for almost twenty years before moving to Central Minnesota and And as you'll learn, we all have a deep appreciation for the experiences that both rural and urban spaces provided us.
Jim Griswold (Music):When they've all had their quarrels and parted, we'll be the same as we started just to travel along singing a song side by side.
Ellen:This is Ellen Wolter, and welcome to a Side by Side podcast bonus episode with my siblings, Megan and Keith. So we grew up in Southwest Montana and, of course, North Dakota in a pretty rural part of the state in Montana. How do you describe what it what it was like growing up in rural Montana?
Megan:I tend to highlight when we arrived and I showed up at school, and we had three classrooms in the whole elementary school. And I was the only girl in fifth grade of of the five fifth graders that were there. We had the sixth graders in our class. There were three of them, and we did have a large kindergarten class of, I think, around 15 kids, and the principal was our teacher. And I tend to think that says it all.
Megan:That was pretty shocking for me even having moved from Billings, which was the big city in Montana. And the principal who was our teacher would kind of move around the room. It was just one room. And and fifth and sixth were taught together, but the kindergartners were in the back part of the room, and so he kinda bob around.
Ellen:Our third and fourth grade was combined, and then we had just 12 kids in the class. So it was it was pretty small.
Keith:You know, when I meet people and we are talking about where we're from, a lot of times I sort of gloss over it because I think you can kind of tell when somebody, like, kind of understands and they wanna know a little bit more. And then some people are like, they have no idea where where it is, how small it was. And so, you know, it requires more time sometimes to get to get into that with someone.
Ellen:Yeah. It's a really unique experience. And I think when I share with people that we were, like, thirty minutes from a legitimate grocery store. Right? And then, for me, the memories are a lot about being dropped off by the school bus, Megan, and then we'd cross our cattle guard, and we'd walk home that, you know, quarter of a mile to a mile home, and we'd pass through all the cows and, like Yeah.
Megan:And I was scared of those two that we first. They were huge.
Ellen:And then, like, on snowstorms or, like, when there's lots of snow, we'd get snowmobiled into school. Just those unique experiences that I don't think a lot of people have experienced growing up in a pretty rural space. What are some of your favorite memories about rural Montana and North Dakota too? And for listeners who don't know, we also grow up in in North Dakota.
Megan:With both Montana and North Dakota, and Bismarck was a little bit of a bigger city, but still, you know, a place that I think not a lot of people have been to or know about when you do live in a bigger city, which we do now. I loved the wide open spaces to explore and adventure. And to me, that was so unique now that I'm in a city. And I live in Colorado where there's lots of places to adventure, but it's so much more crowded. And growing up, we had you know, we'd bike to our friend's houses, but sometimes that was three, four miles away.
Megan:So it wasn't, like, three houses down, and, we would roam and just I felt like we just had license to explore in a different way. We'd follow the little creek near our house and could walk from the beginning of it until it met the, you know, bigger Mill Creek, and you could kinda head down towards the river. And just seeing the land in that way was a really unique experience. And I would say Bismarck was the same way. It's a place where you can see basically, it looks like you'd see to the horizon and beyond, and there's not much there except the land and the sky.
Keith:I remember just being able to I think mom would just send me outside in Montana and I would just wander around. You know, we weren't near any other houses, really. So, you know, we had a series of little forts, right, that we go check out. We had sort of a circuit of forts in the woods. You'd go from one to the next one to the next one or just walking in the creek or near the creek and jumping from rock to rock.
Keith:And, and so without neighbors, you did have more of, like, some freedom and strong connection to the land around the house too.
Ellen:So you are both in cities now. Keith, you're in the Twin Cities. Megan, you're in the Denver area. So what are what are some of the ways your kids are growing up that are different from how you just described?
Keith:Well, yeah, very different. My kids, they go they go to a very urban school just outside of Downtown Minneapolis. I mean, in a lot of ways, it couldn't be more different from the schools that we were going to, even in North Dakota, even though Bismarck's a, a, quote, unquote, larger city. But, the school that I went to, at least in Bismarck, was was still out outside of the city in the country and still quite small. And so, yeah, for for iKIDS, they're they're right in the thick of a city.
Keith:They see they see it all, you know, just humanity everywhere.
Megan:Yeah. And I think just like we had so much connection to the land, I think there's less of that here because there's less ability to roam and just be free. So I think there's a lot more structure to my kid's lives. It's structured activities, so many things to choose from in the city, but it's a little less creative in a way because it's going to the museums or it's going to a play or going to the mountains where you're skiing. You have to plan for it.
Megan:It's not so much of the just go outside and roam around.
Ellen:When I lived in Minneapolis, I sort of felt like my little neighborhood or my little four block radius and even larger at times, started to feel like a small town. Like, you start to see the same people. You start to kind of engage with people in the same way that you that you do in a small town, and it kinda surprised me. But are there things that you feel are similar in across sort of rural and urban spaces, things that you experienced like that?
Keith:You know, that's a You will. That's a great question. You know, our kids' school, while it is very urban, it's also very, very small. It's a very, very small school. And so there's a, there's a strong community within that little school that is in some ways, oddly similar to Montana in just in terms of the size of the school, it's, you know, all the families, you know, all the teachers and the administrators very well.
Keith:And so, I think there's some real similarities with just the size of the school and how how we were able to sort of get to know all of those all those families in the school similar to similar how it was in Montana, I think.
Megan:Yeah. I think that's true. You we have our communities related to kind of the kids' activities and sports in the schools and things we do outside of, work and and as a family and also the work circles. I do think it's a little more transient. People have come and gone a little bit more in in my experience here.
Megan:Although in the rural areas, I do think some of the friends we knew as kids, there are some of the people who are still in those rural communities, but there are also a lot of people who have left. So, you know, I think I feel it in the city that people move neighborhoods or they change schools or you've got stroke school of choice. So some of those things pull people in and out of your lives in the city a little bit more, but, yeah, over time, definitely, similarities in that community building and the ways people look for that and find their communities.
Ellen:Why do you think we all, ended up in in cities?
Megan:I don't think I really did wanna be in the city. I would be very happy if I'd stayed in Montana or in a place like North Dakota where you have a little more space, but I think I got pulled for work and professional reasons. I also, my spouse and partner is from the Washington DC area, and we had to meet in the middle somewhere. So I got the West, but we are in a city and not a more rural area.
Keith:I followed a girl to Saint Paul. That's what happened to me. What would have happened had I not met her? Would I have stayed there? Would I have would I still be in Montana?
Keith:I I don't know. It's hard. It's interesting to think about. But, yeah, same thing. Jobs and, family, you know, brought me to to Minneapolis specifically.
Keith:And, in some ways, I'd still think of, like, oh, I'll get I'll get back home to Montana at some point.
Megan:That's the hope.
Keith:Yeah. And so I I don't know if that's quite right. Yeah. It's kinda fun
Ellen:to think about. Well, it's funny because I was always the one that wanted to live in the city, then it's funny that I've ended up more outside of
Keith:the city. Right? So
Ellen:backyard is a cornfield. Here my backyard is a cornfield. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Ellen:Well, what do you think people get wrong about about Montana or North Dakota or just rural places in general?
Megan:I remember when I went to college, it was the first time I'd really been around a lot of people from big cities, and I just went to rural Minnesota really for college, but it was the college that drew folks from other places. And people thought it was boring in a small town or that there wasn't stuff to do out in the middle of nowhere. And I think that is completely wrong because I felt like there was so much to do, and it was such a rich way to live.
Keith:Yeah. I think for people who haven't been to some of these places or if they've driven through or just passed through, I think they think they just think nothing is happening there. And I think they have a really hard time relating to the, to the idea that like actual people live live and work there and choose to and and choose to do that.
Megan:I also think that the thought that maybe growth and learning and culture isn't as available there in more rural areas. And to me, there was almost more room for that because you had some space and time outside of the structure and the busyness of the city. I I think, you know, you find people wherever you are who are interested in literature and arts and culture and music. And I I've been fascinated to see since we've left Montana, it's always been a cult place where I think there is a lot of culture, but it's it's still even to this day, it's still growing, the music scene and and the artists and the people who want to bring theater to Montana. And I think it's actually pretty fun and almost more fun in a way to see it in a more rural area because it's a little more intimate and and right there in front of you versus these huge theater halls where it's thousands and thousands of people and you it's hard to see.
Keith:You know, I like you guys, but I I'm the youngest for everybody listening. I'm the I'm the youngest. So, you know, where we grew up, I that's all I, that's all I knew in, in Montana and then North Dakota and, you know, similar to you, Megan mentioning going to college and sort of first time, like meeting a lot of people from definitely not Montana and definitely not North Dakota, you know, and sort of took took that my, my experience for granted and the fact that it was really pretty unique, a pretty different experience than many or most people. I don't know if it was shocking, but it was definitely notable, like, in that first year of college being like, oh, most people who did grow up in the little tiny town Montana or definitely had never been to North Dakota. You know what I mean?
Megan:Or even met someone from North Dakota. I have that a lot. Yeah.
Keith:Yeah. I I applied to a college in Maine, and I remember getting a handwritten letter back from one of the professors who was sort of encouraging me to attend because they either hadn't ever had any students from North Dakota or it had been a very long time since they had had someone from North Dakota there. And so it's just interesting to be in that position to realize, oh, yeah. My my upbringing was a little bit unique in that way. And that was, yeah, it was a point of pride, I think, for me in college.
Keith:And even now, even today, when you when you get to know someone, it's it's fun to talk about. It's fun to share that experience with with people.
Ellen:Yeah. I I identify with all of the things that you both just shared. And, I think for a long time, it wasn't a point of pride. It was sort of a point of confusion. Like, oh, like, you know, when I would meet people from New York City or when I would go to school out on out on the West Coast for graduate school, it's kinda like, oh, North Dakota.
Ellen:There was a little bit of kinda looking down the nose, not always. And it took me a while to be like, oh, you know, I actually really appreciate how I grew up and have a lot of pride for that unique experience. I do lots of presentations about rural and urban. And when I share with people how I grew up, there's a lot of surprise and there's a lot of, oh, like, wow. I didn't I didn't imagine anybody ever growing up like that or or I've never experienced a real place, and I really appreciate hearing what it was like to grow up in a place like that.
Keith:I remember some, one kid in this guy in college who went to a fancy for high school. He went to a fancy DC private school and, and he had some backhanded compliment, like in a class where I had a presentation where it was sort of like, oh, I didn't expect someone from your background to be able to do whatever it was like, really, it's really weird. Most people are just curious about it. This guy was a little more like a little rude about it, honestly, but I still remember that. Yeah.
Ellen:I would get that every now and then.
Keith:In college, I remember, I'd be curious if you if either of you did anything like this in a similar way, but when I was homesick this is this is sort of funny. When I was homesick, I would watch a river runs through it. That made me feel better. Isn't that funny?
Megan:And I would I would read Wallace Stegner. That was what I would do when I was feeling sad and missing Montana. That's
Keith:that's pretty dorky.
Jim Griswold (Music):I know.
Ellen:I think that's great, Meg. And I think mom would be so proud that you're reading Wallace Stegner
Megan:at nineteen ninety. Grasped it, but, you know, I need to reread it.
Ellen:What do what do folks get wrong about living in in cities? You know, there's a lot of narratives right now about, the intense crime that's sort of overriding cities. There's a lot of dominant narratives, I think, in rural spaces about cities that aren't accurate too.
Keith:I get this from, you know, extended family. I've gotten it from people I work with who live in the suburbs who are still in the metropolitan area of the twin cities, and they are at some times the last. So how is it made? You know, and just the way they ask it, they're implying that it must be really, really bad. Like, it's it, like, it's just this overwhelming thing that is happening on a daily hourly basis that you would notice.
Keith:And, and so that is something that's newer in the last few years, you know, in terms of, like, as if it it's, like, so unlivable now that how it's almost like, how could you possibly live in Minneapolis, which, you know, at least at least for us, couldn't be further from the truth. We we love living in Minneapolis.
Megan:And I think for, you know, we talked about this earlier, but I think the community piece. Cities have communities too. It it, you know, people find their people and have passions, and there are ways to connect and and do things and come together. It's not just the kind of everyone's head down and and running around and staying busy. And and so I think that community piece is common in in cities too.
Megan:And sometimes it you don't see that if you have, you know, or outside of that, and it it may look a little less warm and fuzzy.
Keith:Yeah. Totally. They're they're right. There are plenty of people who are very intentional about the fact that they want to live in Minneapolis or in Denver. They have pride in it.
Keith:They love the city or they they love their their small community in the city. And, and so, yeah, they it's just it's not just about work or career. Right? It's like there there are lots and lots of people who just really like living in in a city in that community.
Ellen:Well, Megan and Keith, it is such a pleasure to talk with you. Yes. Keith is the youngest. I'm the middle child, and Megan is the oldest. I wonder listeners if you could tell.
Keith:I feel like I sounded like I was the oldest.
Megan:Definitely. You're the loudest. That's why.
Ellen:Yeah. You've always been the loudest. So you feel like the oldest.
Keith:I do. I still do.
Ellen:Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining today. It was a treat to talk to my family.
Keith:We love you, Ellen.
Ellen:Thank you for listening to Side by Side. We welcome your emails at sidebyside@umn.edu. Side by Side is a production of the University of Minnesota Extension and is written and hosted by me, Ellen Wolter. Special thanks to Jan Jackola, who designed our wonderful logo, and Jim Griswold, who sings and plays guitar in our opening and closing credits.
Jim Griswold (Music):It really doesn't matter at all.
Ellen:You can find episodes of Side by Side wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ellen Wolter, and this is Side by Side.
