CLITHERALL, Minn. — Would I enjoy living in rural Minnesota so much if I wasn’t white and straight?
Before you cringe and stop reading, hear me out. I’ve been thinking about this since writing a column about the [ten reasons](https://www.startribune.com/tolkkinen-ten-reasons-im-thankful-to-live-in-rural-minnesota/601188163) I’m thankful to live in rural Minnesota. The night sky. The peace. The ability to wear mud boots to Big Foot gas station.
With every sentence, I was conscious that not everybody feels about greater Minnesota the way I do. Some have written to me about it since I started writing this column in May. They aren’t white, or they aren’t straight, and greater Minnesota hasn’t always been kind to them.
So I want to share some of their stories with you. Because underneath everything, we are just human beings who cuss when we stub our toes and go too long between washing the bed sheets and get excited when “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” [comes on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgIwLeASnkw) the radio.
Don Mercado, 68, born in St. Paul, and second-generation Mexican American, wrote to tell me that his first trips to greater Minnesota were as a young boy in the late 1960s, when he joined his dad and his dad’s friends pheasant hunting in the Madelia area in south-central Minnesota.
“Even as a young boy, I knew we were not welcome in many establishments,” he wrote. “My Dad was stoic and ignored the stares and comments. We still continued to go because Dad taught us not to limit our lives based on other people’s prejudices.”
In the late 1970s, Mercado and white friends visited a white friend who was teaching in Melrose. The friend took them to a bar she frequented, but the manager said he wasn’t comfortable serving Mercado. They all left.
But like any Minnesotan, Mercado loves the lake country and for more than 30 years he and his wife have stayed in the Nevis and Park Rapids area. Most businesses treat him courteously, but he notices that at times people there treat him differently and wishes he didn’t have to think about it at all.