A Crazy Place to Take a Kid

Fully caffeinated and heading to St. Peter, MN for a history tour my 15-year old daughter Bug and I would first stop at the Minnesota Treatment Facility--the state's first Asylum for the Insane.

If you want to visit the facility's museum, housed in the last remaining original building from 1878, you have to make an appointment.

In the 1860s Saint Peter secured placement for the state's institution by providing 2,000 acres of land and a temporary facility in town. The Ewing House in town became the temporary Asylum. Originally, the three-storied brick structure was a hotel in 1858 and served as an impromptu hospital during the Sioux Uprising of 1862.

In December 1866 the hotel-turned-Asylum opened up its temporary quarters to Minnesota's insane, having retrieved them from Iowa. Not that Iowa was crazy, it's just that they had a facility first and had agreed to take our disturbed Norwegians and New Englanders until we had a place for them to call home.

Today, the facility houses a maximum security treatment center, mostly confining sex offenders. While we stayed on the opposite side of the maximum security fence, it really didn't occur to me until we arrived that this might be a crazy place to take a kid. But Bug is always a willing partner in our history adventures and no detainees were in sight.
The building we entered was once the admissions hall built of quarried limestone. Its classical architecture remains, but we were not allowed to take photos. Inside, we were led to the center of the building behind secure doors. Up two flights of marble stairs, we began to sense fear. Perhaps not our own, so much as lingering memories imprinted over time.
We learned of the Asylum's beginnings and discovered people like Dr. Shank and Matron Pexton who brought their compassion and classical training with them from Utica, New York. Over all, people had good intentions. Often, lack of understanding mental illness led to such treatment as confinement and shock therapy. I have never been a proponent of pharmaceuticals, but I gained a better perspective of what it was like to treat violent patients before the advent of sedatives.

Bug and I explored old rooms staged with department-store mannequins, read snippets from the past and viewed old photos and relics. We even read a poem by Ms. Pexton upon the death of Dr. Shank, hailing the irony of dying from one's own profession (no, Dr. Shank did not go mad; he contracted typhoid from an immigrant who was thought to be insane, but was merely suffering from fever).

This facility had once been a fully contained community. There were dormitories for living quarters and kitchens for meals. Vast gardens and farm animal like dairy cows, pigs and chickens kept the larders full. So who would be crazy enough to work here? The inmates!
Long ago, doctors observed that inmates, especially the violent ones, did well with work. Structured jobs in the kitchen and farm provided a healthy outlet. But somewhere down the line it became deemed "inhumane" to expect Asylum inmates to work every day. Better to feed them pills. And the farm shut down.

Leaving the musty halls of St. Peter's Asylum museum I had a crazy idea: what if the inmates next door started a farm on the lands that now grew woods protecting the free world from viewing this one?

We left the Treatment Center and trying to figure out the street numbering left us with unexpected turns and new discoveries. By accident we happened upon the Cox house and briefly read about the lawyer-turned-senator who was impeached for alcohol consumption. There has to be more to this story!

Next we came upon St. Peter's co-op. Sometimes people think only crazy people work or shop there, but I know better. However, it was my first visit to that particular co-op.
Minnesota has fantastic natural food co-ops--local food, good food, sustainable economy. Don't throw your money away at the big box stores; join a co-op and keep profits in the community. Lecture over (by now you should have guessed where I work as a marketer by day).

Anyhow we left the St. Peter Co-op, and Bug said, "I like co-ops. Everybody's always so nice." Really, she did say that.

I was wondering if the co-ops would buy food grown by the current inmates of St. Peter's Asylum. What a crazy idea of sustainability.