I’ll admit I drove by Mary’s house more than once. Even
biked by it. Wherever I wanted to go in Minneapolis, the house became part of
my meandering scenic route to get there. I imagined Mary Richards in the neighborhood.
Based on the opening and closing credits for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”,
everything made sense.
In the closing credits, for example, we see Mary with a
grocery bag, following behind a line of schoolchildren. Well, Kenwood School was
only a few blocks from the house. (A school! What are the chances?!) There’s
also an image in the closing credits of Mary feeding ducks by a lake. Lake of
the Isles was but a short walk from “home”. No ducks. But I saw the fowl at
other Minneapolis lakes. Apparently, they’d moved on after Mary stopped feeding
them.
I also found a charming block by the school with a quaint
bookstore and a restaurant. Neither image appeared in the show’s opening or
closing, but I felt certain these were regular stops for Mary. She’d have gone
to Birch Bark, picking up books to read when there was no second date, after
Rhoda had moved back to New York and Phyllis was busy attending to Lars.
Mary
would have gone to The Kenwood on a few dates.
She’d have gotten the gulf shrimp with saffron risotto and sofrito—she’d
ordered shrimp cocktail in one TV episode—or the healthy-sounding grilled
chicken breast with chilled spring vegetables dressed in tahini. Mary Richards
had a figure to watch, after all. I am certain Mary would have passed on the
duck liver pate. Not the creatures she hand-fed by the lake!
Yes, this was Mary’s neighborhood. The fictitious Ms.
Richards felt more real than ever.
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