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Entire contents copyright © 2002 by Stephen Farley. All rights reserved.

Who I am…

Born: May 6, 1937
Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Returned to the Twin Cities in 1952

“My half-sister want to school with me, and she always fought for me. If anybody wanted to pick on me, you’re gonna have to report to my sister; she would take care of it. She was protective, but she might have resented some of it. She was five or six years older than me.

“We came to Minneapolis in ’52. I was in my early teens. I worked in the Cerebral Palsy center. I have cerebral palsy. I couldn’t go to normal camps because I didn’t feel that I could keep up with people. But I couldn’t go to handicapped camps because I wasn’t bad enough to go there. So I just didn’t go anyplace. That’s where my imagination came in. I just pretended things. I went down to the feed store and pet the horses.

“I can’t talk about boyfriends or husbands or children. I’m a loner. It’s partly because of school. I didn’t go through all the grades, so I never had a chance to go to special places or go to dances or have boyfriends, or a big family. I just had no chance to do anything like that. ’Cause all the boys, they wanted an intelligent person. They wouldn’t want me. It would be like taking care of their daughter, or some little girl or something. Nobody wanted to waste time with me, when they could pick somebody that could be a good helpmate to them.

“The reason why time goes so fast for older people is that it takes so much longer for them to do something than it would take a younger person. So we have no time to do other things.”

My favorite place…

Favorite Place: Walking at Mall of America

“Too bad I didn’t have my hair cut—I look terrible! Otherwise it looks like a real good picture. That’s the Mall of America. I like to walk—I walk a lot—I go all three floors. It’s easy to get to—I can either take the 7 bus or go downtown to get the express.

“The Mall of America is my favorite place because it’s big and it’s fun to walk around and look at things. I like to people-watch. I also like the State Fair. When the State Fair is on, I’m there about every day. Just watching people.”

“I like chocolate, but I try to avoid the candy stores as much as possible. It’s kind of like being an alcoholic—you stay away from the bars! I’ve trained my taste buds, so chocolate doesn’t taste the same as before. I can go back to it and it doesn’t give me the same feeling. Of course, I could get it back if I ate enough of it!”