The mayors of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were there along with the aldermen from Edina. For the first time the Cities could boast about something they had created, not simply that they were kings of lumber, grain, and taconite—raw materials bound for other ports, to be made into something mentionable in other places. For the first time the Cities were creating something unseen elsewhere in the world. In later years it could do this with ease, bragging about 3M or Honeywell, about Control Data, even the IDS, designed by Philip Johnson. And they did, patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on progress and development.

The Mall opened in 1956, when procession was still synonymous with progress. The city officials sat regally on their folding chairs underneath bunting, in front of two-hundred lucky shoppers who had won the right to buy products they had been buying for years elsewhere. There were speeches and accolades, music played by nervous, poorly taught high school students. In the center of the mall, next to the food court stood a wooden statue of an Indian, a benediction for the shoppers, turning consumption into something noble. The civic pride, the carnival of excess spoke to two desires held by leaders and shoppers alike: to prove their Americanness and hence not their European roots, and to vault the area from being a mere mercantile center to one of genuine modern commerce. Their desires were universal, their realization of them ridiculously parochial.

As the ribbon was cut accompanied by fanfare and confetti, the women threw back the veils on the front of their hats (abandoned elsewhere after the Second World War) and the men gave one another knowing laughs and hand-pumped each other the same way their fathers had done when purchasing tractors.

Inside the Mall the excitement was brought to a low simmer so the customers could spend their boom money with dignity and calm. This was a time when everyone still wore hats, and they were tipped at other felt fedoras and straw boaters in mute brotherhood. All the trousers had breaks, the shoes leather soles. They shopped like this and for the first time in the history of shopping, every footfall, each purchase or “ohhhh,” was accompanied by an echo.

Looking back, holding the colorized photograph of this moment, the hidden tragedies of these nameless people have gone and will continue to go, unnoticed. They have been bleached of their cruelty, of their petty concerns and betrayals, their failures. All that is left to see is a group of people one generation removed from the uncertainty of farmwork, war, and immigration; the only emotion allowed them is hope, made (like the merchandise they are forced to consider) out of plastic.

These are the things Simon will never know, that could offer some solace. Not that everyone wants the same thing, or feels the same way, nor even harbors the same crime. How many, after all, have driven their dying nephew through the streets?