I drove up every few weeks from the Cities (we lived in Prior Lake for 16 years.) My office was in St. Paul.
My job was to sell our oil (supplied mostly by Murphy) and delivery service to steamship lines. This put me on Northwest Airlines off to Cleveland and Buffalo quite a bit, plus Duluth for US Steel’s Great lakes Fleet. I left in 1997.
This job was one of the best...
I grew up in Superior from 1953 to 1971 and then was off for education until 1971. Post graduate medical education and repayment to the Navy from 1979 through 1987 and then back here again to practice.
When I was a kid, there was a legitimate shipping industry out of the ports including grain trucked in from the Dakotas, coal, limestone and other minerals, and, of course, iron ore.
The steel industry has its natural cycles of prosperity and decline and is in the process of finding ways to recreate itself. Grain, however, is being barged down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It must be cheaper to ship this way. The railroads are shrinking here due to reduction in the demand of these industries and the population base is slowly eroding as young people have to go elsewhere to find work.
It is truly amazing to watch the antibusiness attitudes that exist in an area clearly on the decline for decades now. None of it makes any sense.
This is a nice place to live if you have a good income. Good outdoor activities, relatively low cost of living, nice although reserved folks, safe place to raise kids, good schools. Thank God the medical profession has been relatively recession proof throughout my career and that I am now partially retired.
But God help the young folks trying to find work here.