st paul and then moved to north st paul and continued on to st peter school after that nice st paul high school and after that the university of minnesota and after that the army and back here and i said fall i think we moved in our st paul when there were about eight or nine hundred people living in this community down all the streets and know who lived in every house in the city and of course since then this town has grown to about thirteen thousand people or a small city surrounded now by maplewood and on three sides and on the other side so things have changed a lot the old highway thirty six used to be on country road c which is so here we are over sixty years later and the town has changed a lot of course one of the big thing is for me when back when i was growing up on silver lake most of our attention in the summertime was at silver lake were we had our own little rowboats and did a lot of swimming and just spent an awful lot of time at the lake another thing we did a lot of was hunt at that time when i was about  thirteen fourteen years old we all had rifles and shotguns and we would just leave our homes and go about three blocks and we'd be in washington county and then we were able to hunt whatever was open at that time where there was pheasants or squirrel hunting was a big thing back sixty years ago now was i was kind of frightening for my mother to know that her two sons i had a brother paul and a sister surely of which i was the youngest to know that we we had twenty two rifle this and a twenty two caliber rifle and the bigger guys we could deal with a twelve gauge but that was a little out of my the power of a twelve gauge was not for me but we did spend a lot of time hunting in those years of probably sophomore through senior and high school in the washing county area and that's even kind of interesting now as i drive around the area from there st paul the stillwater and see all the development thinking oh there was a good place for hunting pheasants and that was kind of the big thing to hunt pheasants but squirrel hunting and one of the my buddies parents could fix all of but i can still remember the older people involved would make sure that when the head was taken off that they would have to chop it up because it still would snap out so so those  but the order was terrible so we would learn to put up with things like that so but then the other thing was being active in sports a north st paul high school and a hockey and football mainly a little baseball and track up back in the forty's the early forty's the main transportation at that time not everybody had cars so street cars were the big the big way to travel you would get on a streetcar here in our s paul and travel to downtown st paul and of course you could transfer do and go to minneapolis but the main the main mode of transportation was the streetcar and  were interesting days for young people to ride the street car it's hard to remember today what the street car was but people cars were getting easier to buy for people backing up again people in our same paul's worked in our same file the people in our same paw worked at the local standard conveyor which a big company that made conveyor systems for people around the world so everyone who worked here could walk to work but of course now we've become a bed bedroom community and a lot of people in our st paul work at three am and all over the metro area it's interesting today you know years ago and people work they worked in their community and they  walk now if i always find it interesting someone can live in our same paul work in bloomington and someone and bloomington can work in nursing and fall so it's it's interesting change people now that they have cars apparently are not are not do not have a problem of where they work because they just get in their car and drive highway the old highway one hundred of course is  called highway one twenty now but highway one hundred is where highway one twenty is and there were small narrow roads that carried an awful lot of commerce from minneapolis s paul to wisconsin highway thirty six will go through the northern part of our st paul that street is just a residential street although it's called county road c so all that traffic would go through the north part of town which was two blocks from silver lake over to highway one hundred which is now highway one funny it's an interesting street because highway one twenty is called the old highway one hundred it has the names geneva division and century it had about five names to that street because it's a divider between washington county and ramsey county north st paul in oakdale this highway one twenty which was the old highway one hundred the more i talk about it them are confusing people can get but it it's interesting anyone who lives on that street whether you know what century division  geneva it's all the same street so we find delivery people and people who are not familiar with the area get a little confused because you can drive down the street in on street sign in one part will see a division the next virgin leave the next century so it's a very interesting story in our area so instead of if i back up if you're coming from minneapolis the old highway came through and it was a big deal in the course as you look back it's it's good that we did that because of the increased traffic and i could never visualize forty thousand cars a day on the old highway which would be seventeen to ave but they tell me that that's what the new highway as of right today about forty thousand cars a day when the people of course come from stillwater and wisconsin a good route into minneapolis st paul for their work the highway department cited that there would be a ramp if you're coming from the east to be able to get off at margaret would be just a little slip ramp and you could get off there well that meant taking out about six or seven homes so those homes were purchased by the project by the department of transportation so that we could put this slip ramp in if you're coming from the west and want to get off and margaret you have to get off at midnight and follow service roads for several blocks to get off but coming from the east there thirty six divides the city almost in half i remember the band shell and it was a big deal and when we were kids we can i can remember going there for the the music that was big back then when people did not have cars to pursue intertainment in either areas they would have a right here and there st paul and then at some point in time that band shell which was like a guess zebul right where we call today burned down and that was the end of that and then as as time went by we  came up with this idea of our fifty foot snowman which was built down in the business district but felt it would be better off up by the highway for commercial reasons and then cannon park which was a salut to the veterans of world war one which has a cannon in the park across the highway from the snowman so those are interesting landmarks  aside thing that i find interesting is people use the snowman for directions to find different places in their same paul dill tell you take highway thirty six you'll come to a snowman turn south  d you'll come to mean mean business but we found it we got kind of humorous like in july when it's ninety above to give directions to someone that turned by the snowman they were quite a puzzle world finding an unusual things to report on and they felt that this was quite the thing to now they said we'd probably never see this in our country but an england would be one of their documentaries along with a lot of other unusual things so our snowman has created a lot of publicity for the city it's been at halftimes of the super bowl when i was here world series they always manage to search out our our snowman i think ninety nine percent of the people love the snow man and people tell me from st paul in minneapolis to grandchildren love to come out and see the big snowman although there is about one percent that  give me a little heat about it but you can't be one hundred percent of anything yet so it's a big draw the snowman the high school which is kitty corner from i'm not sure if people d rather be known as the polars instead of the snowman some but are the city all the city equipment has the littles has a snowman on their piece of equipment and i stationery and  things like that so it's non threatening a local businessman back in the early seventy's took a trip to california and ended up and disney land and was impressed by the a big snowman and he brought that thought back and got several other business man a private venture and they volunteered put together a bunch of steel and a bunch of stucco and made this snowman that sat down on the mean street actually behind a building and they thought it was going to waste their let's move this huge snowman to where it is now and then interesting so they it i think it was a saturday afternoon about two o'clock we would move the snowman we found that the snowman was too big for the flatbed so we had to cut the head from the body and have two flat beds and as for about three blocks from its original location we had quite a crowd on the main street because everybody was curious how we're going to move this huge snowman and what happened was a lot of the little kids could see the snowman being moved but no head and then the truck behind it had they had and create a few tears with the little kids because they thought we had killed the snowman them so that was part of the humorous faired of moving this moment to where it is today now we're redoing our highway and hopefully we won't have to move the snowman again so that's the construction so we're hoping that it will remain there and forecasts are that it will remain there so well like cats have used for many years margaret in highway thirty six and margaret it is the main north south thoroughfare the stoplight at that intersection for the north south traffic was usually a two and a half minute wait if you didn't get through this sign that you would spend five minutes  change that lading system so over a period of several years that problem was always there and then as thoughts came to bridging the highway there eliminating the stop light  started to gain popularity and we eventually ended up with the bridge will be there there will be no stoplight so than ourselves traffic will have easy access from one part of the town to the other highway thirty six divides the city almost in half so that we're looking forward to that completion of what we call the margaret street bridge think that that will be good for the town so it remains to be seen changes always is always interesting to see what it brings about and hopefully it will be a good  change and everything one will be happy with that of course we know in government we never get one hundred percent have you with whatever we do whether this feelings about two years old now and we're very very proud of the building we we had a referendum about six years ago on the citizens so we'd like to welcome everyone to a very historic time in the city in our stand for our groundbreaking for our new city hall complex he stood firm and fire department citizens voted to be taxed six million dollars to build this building of course we had two million in reserve so we're actually going to look better now with the city hall and if we toured the building we'd see that we have the latest in the footmen in the police department in the fire department and a city hall that really looks like a city hall a two story building and of course we're on the second floor doing the filming here right outside the council chambers and the mayor's office is down the hall so you know we're really proud of our city hall  several years ago we found we found that there are a lot of artists in the community who where there's not a lot of recognition and one of our council members  that decided to get those people involved to love artwork and started to bring them together at a certain time of the year to bring in there are and put it on display and we would do that in this building right here we're filming and i found that it was at first i wondered about the artwork and but the more i thought about it we were reaching a part of our community that never would have been reached which would be the artist in the community and the more we got involved the first time we we had the art  been sold to people who live and have them hanging in their homes so having artists involved became a big idea and now we're looking at merle's the artists of the community our interests and exciting about doing merle so that's where we are now with that  are people and involved in art would love to do a merle somewhere within the city either on an outside wall or an inside wall here at city hall so we're excited about paul for what we're doing we created a place for artists to show their work and that's important for them and we do have a lot of good artists in the you know i'll defer from sa policy community because we draw people from maplewood in oakdale nor st paul st paul all around to bring their artwork here only because we're one of the few places where they can display their talents  you know growing up here most of my life i find that people who i have been here most of their life are very loyal and dedicated to the city and are sa so it's to me it's exciting to get people with that attitude involved in artwork or historical society or in a museum or one of the few cities that has our own museum and it's important to me that if we can find those people who love know our st paul and get them active in community projects it just refle flex on the mayor even the kids at the school who wins championships and different things if i travel around and i say well i'm from in our same fall they'll say oh you had that great art display and i had nothing to do with it but i get all the credit so i like to say when the city looks good in any project high school or city it always found reflects on the mayor so