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The small town that never was

By Michael Grohs, Special to the Times
Published April 8, 2007

A year and a day after Pat died, they charged his friend with killing him.

It was an unusual case. The prosecution alleged that the defendant gave Pat the morphine-based Fentanyl patches that caused his overdose. The defense said the patches were for Pat's back problem. The recommended dosage for Fentanyl is one patch every 72 hours. When they found Pat's body, he was wearing four.

A murder trial is a rare thing in Morris, Minn. It is a small town in the west-central part of the state, the last in the archipelago that dots the farmland before it turns to prairie. It was originally a railroad hamlet that over time turned into a cross between a farming community and a college town. It is a good place to raise a family. It is safe and predictable. It is practical and quaint. The people are pragmatic. Growing up there, I was expected to ride my bike to school. There was one movie theater that never showed the latest releases, and everything was closed on Sunday.

I was not surprised to hear that Pat died, but I was surprised to hear that he died in Morris. It seems like a difficult place to be an addict. I left for prep school 20 years ago, and I assumed that at some point he had done the same. Morris is the sort of town people leave.

I met Pat on the first day of first grade at St. Mary's, a small Catholic school with about 100 students that was run by the non-knuckle-rapping variety of nuns. His brother, Aaron, was in my grade. Pat was a year ahead. Later on, he was the center on the hockey and soccer teams. He got good grades. He was the Dungeon Master because he was creative and articulate. He had an image. He was the first to introduce the trends that seemed to arrive in Morris a year later than everywhere else. His sense of humor was years ahead of his age. He was the sort of kid one might expect to end up on Letterman. He was a good, well-liked kid.

Throughout prep school and the first two years of college, I made it back home once a summer or so to see Pat and Aaron. Over those six years, my friendship with Pat gradually abated, not of anyone's accord, but that is just what happens. I vaguely kept in touch with Aaron. Whenever we got together, we talked about Pat and what he had been up to. The stories escalated every time. He had gotten a girl pregnant. He had developed a drug problem and made little effort to conceal it. He had been arrested for forgery and made a deal with the prosecution to serve his time in winter when there was nothing to do anyway.

One May weekend, I went to Morris to tell Aaron that I was transferring to a small college in Florida. I saw Pat for the first time in a couple of years that day. We drove him to a liquor store and then to a neighboring town for an unspecified reason. That was 15 years ago. It was the last time I saw them and the last time I returned to Morris. I don't remember saying goodbye.

I had not heard a word from or about them until the day I happened upon the story of Pat's death on the newspaper's Web site. I was struck by the fact that the article did not mention that he had a child. There was no mention of what he did for a living. I realized that I couldn't recall him mentioning any ambitions the whole time we were growing up.

The defendant was not convicted on the murder charge, in part because of the good grace of Pat's family. I'm older now than Pat ever got to be. The Morris I knew is gone. Everyone has stories about the way things once were. That is part of getting older. People discuss the societal issues Morris has now, and I wonder whether they existed when I was there and I just never knew about them, protected by the shroud of childhood and the atmosphere people come to expect in small prairie towns.

I have been reading the paper's Web site more frequently. Most of the news is about the high school football team. Once there was an article about a crystal meth lab discovered in a nearby town. A survey on the site asked the town residents if they thought that crystal meth posed a serious problem to the area. Thirty percent voted yes. There had been a total of 18 replies.

Maybe Morris is like the town in Blue Velvet, with a soft facade and a hard core. I really wouldn't know. It has been too long since I've been back. But part of me remains there. That's where I'm from, and in the human experience, that tends to mean something. To this day, the most wistful noise I can imagine is a train horn sounding over the prairie on a cool October night. Home isn't just a place; it's a time and a place.

Maybe Morris isn't the same town it was when I was there. Maybe it never was.

Michael Grohs is a freelance writer in St. Petersburg.

[Last modified April 7, 2007, 16:37:40]