I moved to the Twin Cities in 1989 from northern Virginia, after a very brief stint in Bismarck. The first thing I remember seeing upon my arrival, looming beneath the gorgeous Minneapolis skyline, were the stooped white shoulders of the Metrodome.
I wasn’t smitten, exactly. Intrigued is more like it. The Dome hung under the sky, puffy without seeming lofty. It didn’t overwhelm. It held my attention like a benign white whale. And from that point on, it formed part of the backdrop of my life in Minnesota.
For seven years, as a newswoman for the Associated Press, I worked under the Dome’s lumbering shadow, right across the street.
Appropriately utilitarian, the stadium held an unpretentious Midwestern charm. Its steady presence comforted me like the cordial, shambling neighbor you’d see walking by with his dog every morning.
I didn’t realize how much I’d counted on seeing it until it was no longer there.