News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Friday March 14th 2025
Searching ”“ A Serial Novelle Chapter 24: “The Great Divide”
By Patrick Cabello Hansel
Luz had her own story, part of which she had buried deep. Growing up in two countries””in the winter along the US-Mexico border, Pharr on the Texan side, a small pueblo outside of Matamoros in the land of Cuauhtémoc. During the harvest season, she travelled with her family to the onions, the peas, the corn, the green beans, the pumpkin. She learned to pick before she could read.
Luz had family on both sides of the great divide. Mexican and US. Documented and undocumented. Speaking Spanish, speaking English. Migrants and land owners. Dead and alive. Her ancestry went back to great healers of the Nahuatl people, who had had their hands cut off and their tongues torn out by the conquistadors for being “pagan”. And she was a direct descendant of Mateo Kelly Hidalgo, the ghost of these pages, the prince of the divide.
This came pouring out little by little as she talked with Angel. They had walked into the teeth of the blizzard until they reached the Global Market, where they bought coffee and chai. Although she had felt cold much of the day, she now felt like she was burning up. She knew Angel needed to hear something, but she didn”'t know what she needed to tell.… Read the rest “Searching ”“ A Serial Novelle Chapter 24: “The Great Divide””
Squire Borden, Tender of first Bridge Across the Mississippi River
Members of the Minneapolis Cemetery Protective Association”'s Ladies Auxiliary sprucing up the cemetery in the Spring of 1926. The cemetery will reopen on April 15th, 2010.
by Susan Hunter Weir
Squire Borden was born on the Atlantic Ocean on August 25, 1823. Perhaps that explains his life-long attraction to water. For many years, he worked as the bridge-tender on the first two suspension bridges that spanned the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, and since everyone who crossed the bridge encountered him, his was one of the most familiar faces in the city.
In 1854, local entrepreneurs paid for the first bridge in the country to span the Mississippi River. The bridge was made of wood, and the cost of operating it was initially covered by tolls (two cents for a pedestrian and 25 cents for a wagon). Twenty years after it was built, the bridge was in poor condition and too narrow to accommodate the number of wagons that needed to cross it. The City contracted with Thomas M. Griffith, a nationally-known engineer, to build a replacement.
The second bridge, 675 feet long and 32 feet wide, was constructed of steel and concrete rather than wood. It was thought to be an engineering marvel and crowds gathered along the riverbanks every day to watch construction workers string the cables from one side of the river to the other.… Read the rest “Squire Borden, Tender of first Bridge Across the Mississippi River”
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