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When Bill was thirteen and living on a small rented farm in the open country of far west-central Illinois, not far from the Iowa border, he would occasionally be able to get 'into town' to watch a movie. He had been working part time for a year at that point and his awareness of a life beyond that of his home life was growing.
He went to see 'Superman - The Movie' one weekend afternoon. Of all its parts, the one that stood out most, was when a young Superman, now becoming a man, was still living on his adopted parent’s Plains farm. Pa Kent had passed away and Superman was being pulled to leave home and go North. The scene begins when one morning he gets up early, and walks northward up to a rise in the midst of a large wheat field overlooking his farm home and an endless horizon in all directions. His mother, now getting older, joins him. He tells her that he has to leave. She says that said she knew the time was coming. As they embrace and look northward the viewer is lifted into the air above them and the scene follows their gaze.
The music score for this scene was etched into his mind once he heard it. To this day, it remains one of the best scores Bill has ever heard. Its emotion stood out clearly to a young Bill who at the time was also yearning to leave home and go northward back to Minnesota and Saint Paul where he was born. He did so four years later after high school graduation in 1980.
In 1992, he then moved to northwest Minnesota to a house in the woods and then soon after, to a long-vacant hilltop farmstead on the prairie further into northwest Minnesota. After several years, he then traveled to the far northwest corner of North Dakota - a small place to call home in a near-ghost town called Alkabo, about ten miles from the Canadian border. Two years later, he found a property on a treeless windswept ridge over-looking the Canadian border (now only 3 miles to the north) in northeast Montana.
During most of these times and travels he continued maintaining his art gallery in Saint Paul which had opened in 1994.
Bill has been back in Saint Paul full-time for eight years now. Those years just described were full of adventures. Today he turns 53 - while remaining 14 inside. Life, through all its ups and downs he continues to embrace in gratitude and thankfulness.
Soon, he will complete a second business downtown - Music Forest Café. He designed the space in March 2014 and has since been through the various city planning and licensing channels. It has taken a year for him to build it out and at this time, there remains many small details to complete. It is another adventure whose outcome is yet to be determined.
More about Bill in 2011...
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'Leaving Home' - Superman the Movie
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