CHASING MARY: Even When I Don't Know It

You’d think since Mary Richards was my main reason for going to Minneapolis that I’d have planned everything out before arriving—where to stay, what to see.

But I’m not a planner. Planning is impractical. If and when I plan, I go astray almost immediately.

Six months ago, I’d Googled some Minneapolis sites that linked with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s” opening and closing theme sequences, pasted the info to a Word document and saved it on my laptop. I never referred to this information when booking accommodation. I figured I had a car and, if I could invest four days driving to the city, it certainly wouldn’t be a big issue if all the key locations wound up on the other side of town.

So it stunned me when I woke up to my first full day in Minneapolis, consulted my laptop and discovered that the grocery store I’d gone to the night before, Kowalski’s, was the place where Mary shopped and reacted to the price of a meat cutlet. Of all the grocery stores in Minneapolis, I’d inadvertently gone where Mary went! (Sorry, Mar-, as a vegetarian, there are limits to what I’ll replicate. I passed on the meat and contented myself with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Blueberry Vanilla Graham Cracker Greek frozen yogurt, a more diet-conscious indulgence than Chunky Monkey ice cream. Mary would approve.)   

More than thirty-eight years after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” went off the air I found myself hot on the trail of Mary Richards. You might say I was stalking her. And, lucky for me, fictional characters cannot get restraining orders.