Some wouldn't even consider it, and some wouldn't have it any other way. In this month's "A Closer Look with Laura Oakes," she uncovers the lure of small town living but with a twist - it can actually be found just in the shadows and within an hour's drive of the Twin Cities.
According to the latest U.S. Census, the Twin Cities metropolitan area has a population of roughly 3.71 million people covering nearly 3,000 square miles, seven counties, and 182 unique communities. Most of those residents work in Minneapolis, St. Paul or a suburb. Or perhaps from their homes as employers permit. Those outer ring suburbs? They're exploding with populations expected to double in the next 25 years.
The average commute time isn’t bad, especially compared to other major cities, roughly 25 minutes. For most in the workforce, that’s in a car. For others, a bus or light rail train, or combination of the two.
MORE: See all of Laura's "A Closer Look" stories here.
There is really no mystery to living in a larger metropolitan area. You learn to deal with the good and the bad, and get used to things like paying for parking, locking your doors and your car at night, and during the day.
But for countless others - life is perhaps different. They’re playing bingo on a Saturday morning in Waterville. The dreaded Black River Falls JV hockey team arrives to take on Baldwin-Woodville. And the mayor of Lindstrom stops by on her way home from the grocery store to chat about the town water tower.
These kinds of scenes are playing out daily, just beyond the borders of the big city bustle.
Baldwin, Wisconsin
A cute windmill welcomes visitors to Baldwin, population 4,390, and pretty much a straight shot east from the Twin Cities on Interstate 94.
It’s a tight-knit, mostly rural community, and while the main grocery store in town may not have an organic section or carry all of the brands, it’s big, clean, sells eggs from local farmers, and even has a Starbucks.
Baldwin’s downtown is just down Highway 63. It’s dotted with auto body shops, a law office, dental office, the liquor house - spelled haus - a Snap Fitness, a couple of banks, a Kwik Trip, and the Baldwin Bulletin community newspaper.
The village dump is open Saturday’s 8:00 to Noon, and Baldwin-Woodville High School is just off the main drag, as is the ice arena, where John Bresina has set up his home office next to the concession stand.
"So you're basically working for Target in an ice arena in Baldwin, Wisconsin? That's pretty cool. A lot of people would envy that lifestyle," says Oakes.
"It's quiet here during the day, you know, because for the most part, there's nobody here during the middle of the day," Bresina says.
"When I called earlier and asked if you were going to be around all day, trying to kind of plan what time I was coming, you said you would be," Oakes explains. "But you go home to Hammond for lunch around noon and to let the dog out and then you come back here. Think of how many people would love that lifestyle?"
"Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a quiet lifestyle here," says Bresina.
Though his job as a database administrator for Target Corporation is based in the Twin Cities, Bresina has been working remotely since the COVID pandemic. He chooses to work from the hockey arena, the same arena where he played and coached, where his kids played, and where he finds community.
"So you raised your kids in Hammond, right? That's where they grew up, played hockey over here, but Hammond was where your home base was. Tell me what that was like in terms of just childhood living, and not having to worry about big city problems, and whatever kind of freedom you were able to give them as kids?"
"Oh, I mean, my kids used to just take off and go to the park," he explained. "I mean the park was probably a half a mile away and they'd hop on their bikes, ride their bikes over there, go play baseball or whatever they do, whatever they were doing at the park. And you know, get together with their friends and stuff. I didn't worry about them, worry that somebody was going to go and try to kidnap them or anything like that. But that's how I grew up too, in a small town by Eau Claire. We'd take off in the morning in the summer. The big thing was to be home when the street lights came on. We had to be back in the yard, so kind of the same thing around here. It was 'let the kids just go play and have fun' and then just make sure mom and dad knew where you were at."
Parents always know where there kids are in Baldwin and if they play hockey, they know John too.
"When your family becomes part of a hockey association here in the small communities, it basically becomes your family," Bresina said. "I mean, you get to hang around these people all the time, year round, because it's become a year-round activity too. Everybody becomes family and you start going to everybody's kid's graduations. And the next thing you know you're going to their weddings and stuff like that. It's just like I said, we're all family."
"It sounds like a really nice sense of connection that is so important and that we are lacking in this world, especially now with all of the remote work," says Oakes. "And like you were saying, you can only do so many Zoom calls and you miss being around people."
"Yeah, I agree 100%, that's exactly it," Bresina answered. "So yeah, I enjoy my time here at the rink just because, even though my kids don't play anymore, I still know most of these families, and they all know I'm here. So in the summer months when we have ice in, some parents will actually drop their kids off here to skate knowing that I'm here, and they leave, and they just know that if something happens we'll give them a call and they can come pick up their kids or whatever."
Lindstrom, Minnesota
Where Baldwin was like a Hallmark movie, Lindstrom is "Happy Days". Lora Tatinger runs the Chisago County Historical Society and knows all about Lindstrom’s Swedish heritage.
"OK, so here we are, we're looking at some clogs," Oakes observes.
"There's a Swedish engagement comb," points out Tatinger. "So the gentleman would make this for his bride, his bride he hoped to have, and would leave it on her doorstep. And if she took it into her house then she accepted. And if she did not then she did not accept him."
"So it's a passive aggressive way to say no, I don't want to marry you," laughs Oakes.
"It's the most Midwestern proposal ever," jokes Tatinger. "So that's really cool. The Swedish shoes, the wooden shoes, were very, very popular. They're almost like Crocs because leather costs a lot of money and you wouldn't be able to clean them after you've been out in the barn and out in the mud. But you could make wooden shoes as your kids grew, you could hose them off, you could bring them to the river and scrub them. You know, so that was very common for everybody in the family to have pairs."
So who typically comes here to look at this stuff?
"We actually get a lot of European travelers that come through here," Tatinger said. "In a typical year we get people from Sweden and Norway and Russia and Germany and Korea and just lots of people come here. It's charming, it's not far from the Cities, which is nice. We had some college girls that were here about a month ago that took an Uber up and then couldn't get one back because they thought there was gonna be a bus system. And we were like, 'oh bless your heart, there's no bus system, and there's no taxi service.' Then the Uber wouldn't come all the way up here, so our mayor, Judy, was kind enough to run them to Forest Lake so that they could get an Uber to get back to the University of Minnesota. Because even in 2024 it's still a small town."
"That's how it should be," Oakes says.
"It is it is how it should be," agrees Tatinger.
Lora has lived in Lindstrom, north of the Twin Cities in Chisago County, her entire life. Though it’s only about a 40-minute drive, again, it’s a world away.
"Tell me a little bit more about that sense of community around here, and everybody knowing each other, and just the comfort level," Oakes asked her.
"Well, when you grow up around here, you don't get away with anything because everybody knows your grandpa," Tatinger explained in a way only those who grow up in small towns can understand. "My grandfather was a bailiff at the county courthouse and my mom was a social worker for the county and did children's mental health for years. You don't get away with anything."
"I graduated high school in 2005," Tatinger continues. "Even in the early 2000s, my best friend and I would go walk and rent a movie, and we'd walk to the gas station and buy Cheetos and A&W. And people that we knew would honk at us on the road and we'd wave to them. It was normal to walk around a small town with no driver's license at 15 and spend the day existing, you know? We didn't have cell phones. My parents would just think, 'oh she's with Sarah, they're running around town there somewhere.' She was the pastor's daughter in town, so it's not like we were gonna get into any trouble. And that's what we would do forever, and we'd go sit in her basement and watch a movie and eat Cheetos and that's what you did."
Judy Chartrand is mayor of this cute little town of roughly 5,000 people. On her business card, it’s referred to as “America’s Little Sweden,” nestled in a string of lakes and close to the St. Croix River on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border.
"What do you like about living in a small town," asked Oakes?
"The fact that I know my neighbors, I feel the connection," Mayor Chartrand says. "I know the children across the street. I know their names. I know their birthdays. It's that kind of connection where if I maybe needed my driveway plowed out somebody would come and help me with it. That kind of connection that I really appreciate. So I don't ever feel lonely or isolated."
"It's striking to me that you can find that kind of connection and sense of place within an hour's drive of a fairly major metropolitan area. It's possible and it does exist and it's kind of, I would think, a little hidden secret," Oakes asks her.
"It is. It is," Chartrand chimes in. "People think we're way far away but truthfully, 30 to 32 miles from downtown St. Paul, maybe 34 miles downtown Minneapolis?"
Judy’s job as mayor runs the gamut: plowing, what to do with an old building on the edge of town, and whatever else might happen to pop up.
"Three weeks ago I got a call, there's a Swedish guy up at the Swedish Inn," explains Chartrand. "Can you come up?"
"Because there's a Swedish guy?" asks Oakes? What were you supposed to do?
"Shake his hand," Chartrand says in all seriousness. "His name was Per Olov. And so I welcomed him and he told us how he'd been here 25 years ago and who he knew. So we still do that."
And, Judy says the big happening in town right now has to do with it’s beloved coffee pot water tower.
"So, we were very fortunate to have a woman who had a vision, and rather than tearing down the old water tower, she said 'let's turn it into a Swedish coffee pot'," Chartrand says. "And there was steam in it, so when the King and Queen of Sweden were here visiting in 1996, the coffee pot steamed. It hasn't steamed for many years now, and some groups like the Ambassador's Club said let's bring steam back to the coffee pot. And it has become, truly, a community event where all the stores are putting donation boxes out. And so we just reached our goal thanks all donations, all public. We're gonna have steam back in the coffee pot and we were able to receive a grant and a mural so we're gonna do that just below, so that when people from the city come up and stop and take selfies and kind of enjoy the town a little bit."
Waterville, Minnesota
To the south - Waterville, Minnesota, 14 miles west of Faribault on Highway 60, where propane tanks dot front yards and a lake of some sort is always within view.
In town, you'll hear the call of "O- 64, O-64," during Saturday bingo. It's burgers at the Corner Bar where the conversation is always lively and dart champions line the walls.
Or maybe it’s the Hardware Hank where MaryAnn, who still writes checks, needs a part for her dryer and Bridget has just the solution.
"I need a magnet and I need three-inch screws," says MaryAnn Wray. "To go into my drawers to hold it. So I come in with a description like I need a magnet that will hold down the flap and she knows what I'm talking about and only that she has it. And the other person that works here, Steve, that owns it, he is also very good about listening to my descriptions and translating them into actual technology."
"I need a thing-a-ma-jiggy for this, and do you have it," jokes Oakes.
Bridget says, "Yeah, other people come in and draw pictures. Oh yeah, yeah, I know what that is."
"This is a picture," displays MaryAnn. "This is the top that goes over, and this is the flap that goes down when my dryer pushes hot air out. The flap goes up, but it's so cold that I need to keep the flap down unless I have the dryer on."
"And she knew exactly what you needed," Oakes observes.
"If you come out here on a Friday night or a Thursday night, you will see the golf carts, everywhere," Mary Vancura declares.
"Is this a way to avoid a DWI?" Oakes asks jokingly.
"I don't know what it is, but I was shocked," says Mary. "So we have a golf cart too now. Mine is a gas operated golf cart that goes twice as fast!"
Mary and Dave VanCura moved to town three years ago after decades in St Paul’s Como neighborhood. Dave thought he’d never move.
"Part of it for me was, I was in the Cities all my life, in St. Paul all my life, and probably less than two miles from where I grew up," says Dave. "The Como area and then we moved to the East Side for about a year when we were first married. We lived on the top of a friend's parents' duplex. And then we bought the house where we lived in until about three years ago."
"And things just changed," Dave continues. "It was, it was different. All our friends had moved, the kids were all grown, and we were just maybe looking for something a little different. A little bit more of a slower pace of life. We had been doing so many things involved in the community and It just seemed like a change was in order at that time. Things were a little stale, maybe."
"It almost sounds like this was a new adventure or a time in your lives where it was time to try something different," Oakes asked?
"Yes, absolutely," Mary chimes in.
So what is it about small town living, which we’ve now discovered is possible even in the shadow of the Twin Cities, that draws folks and keeps them there?
"I feel like it's more like it was when we lived in St. Paul, kind of in the heart of it, when our kids were involved with the school, where it was more community, in St. Paul" says Mary. "When it wasn't quite such a changing community, where there was people around that kind of looked out for each other and, I feel it's a real safe community. We can go to bed without locking our doors. I don't worry. We have left our doors open and it just seems like people look out for each other here. They watch out for each other."
There are two common threads - at least in these conversations - about what's most important to people who choose to live in small towns.
One, safety --never needing to lock their doors, allowing their kids free reign, and the sense of security that brings.
Two, the people. The ones who sit in the bleachers with you, pool their money to bring the steam back to the water tower, and tool around town in a golf cart.
Why? Well, just because it's fun.