Bill State Journal of Crap

Bill, walking into the Mankato Olive Garden

Our first stop on the Goodbye tour is in no way prestigious or even interesting. We ate at an Olive Garden. We were heading to South Dakota to see my Grandfather and other family members on a busy May weekend. I had to stop in Mankato to pick up my bridesmaid’s dress for Nicole and Dave’s wedding. We also needed lunch.

Mankato possesses a romance that is out of place for a city of its stature. Bill likes to deny the locational significance of where we met, but I celebrate it. Mankato is the staging of our love story. I know I am not alone in this affection and sentimentality for the hilly river valley. Some people have Paris or New York, we have Mankato.

I must discuss is the significance of the Olive Garden. Mankato is a city with an absence of culture; at least it was from 1999-2005.*  One of Bill’s Mass Communication Professors said you had to go to the Twin Cities for a night on the town because Mankato doesn’t have any restaurants or movies. To some degree that elitism is honest. There are smatterings of local (non-bar) establishments. For a night out you were relegated to either an Applebee’s or Friday’s. If you wanted a fancy night out your choices were Red Lobster or Timberlodge. All anybody wanted in a nice dinner with family or friends was Italian food, but we had to settle for Super Fries.**

Long before I moved to Mankato the rumors of the coming of an Olive Garden were constant. These rumors persisted for the six years I lived in Mankato. The rumors hit fever pitch at the abrupt closing of the Ground Round.***  I was in my second year of Graduate Teaching and I had a student who was convinced she was quitting her waitress job at the Timberlodge in a few days to perform the same job at the Olive Garden.

When Bill and I left Mankato for the Twin Cities in July of 2005, the Ground Round building remained empty and the rumors persisted. In the winter of 2006, the status quo was violated, when the Olive Garden opened in a renovated location of the Ground Round. By this time we didn’t care, we lived in a city with several hundred interesting restaurants that we never went too.

I have eaten at the Mankato Olive Garden twice. We had a Bridal Party lunch there on Emily’s Wedding day. But Bill, who rarely returns to Mankato, had never been there. I tried to talk him out of it, but soon I had no choice.

Trip Highlights
• Taking pictures of Bill, because he hates it.

Bill, drinking iced tea at the Olive Garden

• Not letting Bill order an appetizer knowing we did not need one because of salad and bread sticks.
• The waitress who was way too interested in our cell phones.
• I do not remember what I ordered, but I do remember spilling it on my shirt.
• The hostess was possibly the student I mentioned above, but pregnant. [

*Some argue Mankato has always lacked culture and continues to lack culture. Others may say culture began exist when Starbucks arrived. Even more will proclaim that a new bar which features women in ass-less chaps is the down fall of all civilization. I want you to make up your own mind.

**I am not besmirching Super Fries, they are awesome. One might say they are super.

***According to myth, rumor, and fact, the management of the Mankato Ground Round was ordered by the corporate folks to close the restaurant in the middle of lunch service.