One Sunday a few weeks ago, we celebrated my brother’s birthday at a Minneapolis restaurant. It faces Lake Street which is being repaired. We watched people milling about near the construction area and asked the server about it.
     He said the construction company dug down so far they reached bricks from the street car days. On weekends, people come with trucks and trailers to cart away loads of bricks for landscaping projects. Saving the construction company money, was the theory at our table.
     On a Sunday two weeks later, we had dinner at the same restaurant. There they were—still lugging countless pavers to their waiting vehicles. "I want a brick," I told my husband, feeling nostalgic for my teenage years.
     My family had moved to that same neighborhood when I was nearly 13. Lake Street was our main drag. It seemed fitting, on the day we celebrated my 60th birthday, to take home a brick to remind me of the days I spent riding the Lake Street bus from one end to another. The many times I drove my mother’s convertible down Lake Street to White Castle, Sears, and Porky’s drive-in.
     Not long after we moved to that house, Dad mentioned the beauty shop where his secretary, Carolyn, had her hair done. (Dad was always after my sister and me to do something about the rats’ nests on the top of our heads.) Mom made an appointment at Judy’s Beauty and gave us bus fare, lunch money and a check for the Hennepin Avenue salon. My sister and I rode the bus from our end of Lake Street to the other by ourselves, relishing the freedom we’d been given in this new neighborhood.
     Two years later, when I attended Regina High School, there was no school bus. The only means of transportation was a city bus down Lake Street with a transfer on Fourth Avenue. My friends and I, no matter how low the temperature dropped, never wore leggings or a hat. In fact, we disliked our uniform saddle shoes so much, we left then in our school lockers and wore nylons and thin little flats. We rolled our plaid skirts above our knees, too, shorter than the nuns allowed. Waiting for the bus in winter meant we could freeze to death. So we skulked between the rows of cars on the Chevy lot until we found one unlocked. We slid down in the seats and peeked out the side window to watch for the bus.
     Everything we needed was on Lake Street. The library, where I pretended to study and held the record for being shushed more times than anyone else. Freeman’s department store, where Mom had an account and we were allowed to shop without an adult. "Charge it," we said boldly to the salesclerk who never questioned whether she should or not.
     The Tom Thumb store, where we hung out during lunch in eighth grade. Where a boy teased me and I threw a blueberry pie at him in retaliation, staining his new tan Easter jacket; I got in terrible trouble with his mother and mine.
     I really don’t need bricks to remind me of my years on Lake Street. Which is good, because I may have to return the three in my garage. Or face charges. It seems the men who gave them to my husband did so illegally. An article in the Minneapolis StarTribune said the men, who call themselves "harvesters," do so without permission from the construction company. It’s considered stealing.
     My next column may come to you from a jail cell. It seems I’m an accessory after the fact.