Mickey's Diner is a landmark establishment in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota and I have a fun story about what happened the day I created this black and white photo of it. 

I went to downtown St Paul on Martin Luther King's Day 2021. I didn't go there because of the holiday, I just had time that night, and it was a rare nice night to be outside in the Twin Cities in January. So I grabbed my camera and planned on having an enjoyable night taking photos. 

I started out taking photos around the Xcel Energy Center, and then I started heading northeast along 7th St toward the downtown area. I will fully admit that I do not know the downtown St Paul area at all. I am fairly familiar with downtown Minneapolis, but St Paul is completely unknown to me. 

I didn't have any agenda while taking photos. I was just out walking around, seeing what caught my eye. As I was making my way down the street, I saw the Church of Assumption and knew I had to take some photos of that. While I was doing so, I noticed how close I was to Mickey's Diner. At that point I knew I had to take some photos of the iconic diner. 

After I finished the church photos, I did indeed make it to Mickey's Diner. The next trick was finding a good view to capture. The first view that I wanted looked awesome, but had some light posts in the way, so I couldn't use it. I finally settled on the view you see in the photo above. 

At that point, I had spent a few hours out taking photos and decided it was time to head back home. I made my way back to my car and started to get back on the road. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I noticed my car making some odd sounds. I bought the car used, and drove it for 5 years and it was approaching 300,000 miles. The exterior still looked fairly new, so no one believed it had that many miles on it.

Anyway, I pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the next intersection waiting for the light to turn green. As I was waiting, the engine just quit. I couldn't do anything to get it going again. So there I was, stuck in downtown St Paul. I stated calling towing companies and spent over an hour without finding anyone who could come tow my car. I then finally found some one, but an hour later I was still sitting there waiting. As it was nearing 3 hours of sitting there, a Street Security guy was walking by and asked if I needed any help. I told him what had happened, and he couldn't believe I was there for 3 hours an no one stopped to help. He called it in, and a handful of minutes later a police officer showed up. He called a tow truck, and a handful of minutes later a tow truck showed up and I was finally on my way home. 

In the end, the engine of that car had seized up and I sold it to someone who was going to use it for parts. I was really hoping to hit 300k miles on that car, but it wasn't meant to be. I ended up losing a car I really enjoyed that night, but I got this photo, which I know is going to be a favorite of mine for a very long time. 

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