"It's why we live here in New York, a city that never sleeps, instead of someplace like Duluth."
- Woody Allen from "Manhattan Murder Mystery."

For all the chuckles that line received in the theater where I watched the film, as a native Duluthian, it rang true for me. I haven't lived in the city since the mid 1960s, but the effects of national media's frequent lampooning of Duluth reside in my guts, and have influenced the way I view myself and the world at large.

As a kid growing up in the 1940s and 50s, our city's sole claim to fame of a sort was because Albert Woolson, the last surviving soldier of the Union Army, resided there. Duluth's only icon, he was 108 or 109 years old. But my hometown's history is replete with stories that fed our collective inferiority, Woody Allen notwithstanding.

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In the summer of 1871 when the golden age of pirating had been over for nearly a century, buccaneers pillaged the Duluth, Minnesota harbor. Ships, sawmills, and warehouses were laid waste, and between plunders, the latter-day corsairs holed up in a cave on Minnesota Point. Larger than some oceans, Lake Superior was virgin territory for Henry Morgan, Jean Laffite, or Sir Francis Drake wannabes, who may have been influenced by a July 4, 1868 address in which Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, founder of the city's first newspaper, called Duluth "the Zenith City of the unsalted seas."

Fortunately, the pirates' reign of terror lasted only weeks before their capture by an irate businessman whose warehouse had been raided. What the pirates may have felt about being captured by a shopkeeper remains speculative, as does the prospect of the malefactors being forced to walk the plank to be pecked by roving schools of lake trout and whitefish.

It is not known if pirates concerned Daniel de Greysolon Sieur DuLhut, for whom the city was named, when he crossed the high seas from France to Canada in 1675, as there is no verification of his encountering brigands. DuLhut, who sometimes spelled his name DuLuth, was born in 1650 to a family of "lesser" nobility in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He was appointed to the Guarde du Roi under Louis XIV, and fought against William of Orange in the Netherlands in 1674, and would doubtless have acquitted himself admirably had pirates vexed his journey.

The city of Duluth would take the explorer's name nearly 180 years after he became the first white man to document his arrival there on June 27, 1679. Another 286 years would lapse before the city commemorated this valorous adventurer and fur trader with a monument.

In 1675 the French military sent DuLhut to Montreal, but an unhappy love affair in 1678 saw the officer volunteer for a westward excursion to increase France's influence in the expanding fur trade. The next year he landed on what is now Park Point--the peninsula dividing Duluth between Lake Superior and the St. Louis River bay.

The esteem of Duluth's namesake seems largely established by his rescue of Father Louis Hennepin in 1680, after the priest had been captured by a Dakota tribe. DuLhut had met men who told about abundant salt a 20-day ride west of what is now Minnesota. Hoping to discover a passage to the Indies, DuLhut set off, unaware of the existence of Great Salt Lake. Shortly after getting underway, he learned of the priest's abduction and determined to affect a rescue. With his brother Claude, and three other men, he pursued 1100 Sioux for two days and nights, then angrily demanded, and secured Fr. Hennepin's release. DuLhut abandoned his quest for salt and a shortcut to the Indies, and instead escorted Fr. Hennepin to safety.

Local and regional histories have little to say about DuLhut, though pioneer civic leaders in the city of Duluth claim the man's reputation would have been greatly enhanced had he not been such a modest, unassuming sort. If true, these attributes were precursors to shaping the characters of Duluthians yet unborn, who grew up believing that it was not only in bad taste, but sinful to exalt or reveal oneself.

According to one Duluth-originated legend about its namesake,

supernumeraries of the king attempted to dissuade the explorer from undertaking a particularly dangerous mission. DuLhut reportedly responded, "I fear not death--only cowardice and dishonor."

By 1706 DuLhut had returned to France accused of consorting with the English and mishandling funds. Though acquitted of the charges, his modest fortune was depleted, and DuLhut, who never married, died on February 25, 1710.

A contributor to the book, "The History of Duluth and St. Louis County, Past and Present," summed up DuLhut's life and career with fulsome extravagance. "Unselfish, honest, brave beyond the ordinary man, so much so that had some of his deeds been done in the days of Greece or Rome they would have commanded the genius and skill of the greatest artists and sculptors in commemorating them on canvas or marble."

In November, 1908, almost 198 years after DuLhut's Minnesota expedition, the Greysolon Dulhut (sic) Memorial Association was formed with the purpose of contracting with a noted sculptor to craft a statue of DuLhut for the city. Bishop of the Duluth Archdiocese, James McGolrick, urged the committee to commission Auguste Rodin for the work. The bishop rhapsodized about Rodin's career as he lectured the committee concerning the French master's qualifications to create the monument. "The studio of M. Rodin on the slopes of Mendon, is the center of attraction for all who love art, from the king to the beggar... The great master ... is now the Michelangelo of the twentieth century ... This is the great artist who is anxious to give as one of the last works of his life artistic expression to the figure of Greysolon DuLhut, a noble subject for his chisel. Can we not enlist the cooperation of all our people in a worthy project? All the more because Rodin himself so heartily approves."

Twenty years later, in 1928, funds to commemorate DuLhut were made available by a local entrepreneur-banker, Albert L. Ordean, who bequeathed $50,000 to the city for a memorial.

The long-dormant memorial association began searching for a suitable site on which the statue could be displayed. Alas, Rodin no longer was in the picture, having had the misfortune of dying in 1917 without submitting sketches of DuLhut, denying posterity what chauvinistic Duluthians believed would be his greatest monument. Thus a bereft art world is left to assess Rodin's career solely on such masterpieces as The Burgers of Calais, The Gates of Hell, The Thinker, a bust of Victor Hugo, and The Kiss.

But without Rodin the project stalled until 1953, when the Park Point American Legion Post urged a statue be commissioned and erected near the Duluth ship canal where the explorer first touched land.

By 1956 the Ordean fund had grown to nearly $80,000. Ignoring the legion post and suggestions from scores of citizens, trustees of the fund recommended the statue be housed on the campus of the University of Minnesota-Duluth. This seemed, at long last, to get the ball rolling.

The remaining significant issue, however, was what DuLhut looked like. Despite his lifetime achievements as soldier, explorer, and trader, no copy of his likeness existed. The noted sculptor, Jacques Lipschitz was selected by administrators of the trust to imagine a visage of DuLhut for a $77,000 fee. In June 1963, Lipschitz submitted a sketch that was accepted by university regents. The statue would be nine feet high, mounted on a 15-foot granite column. Lipschitz fashioned DuLhut in a buckskin jacket and plumed hat. And almost 57 years to the day the original committee met to discuss raising a monument to DuLhut, the Lipschitz work was unveiled on November 5, 1965.

Person-on-the-street inquiries produced varied reactions, but a plurality suggested that the sculpture resembled a cartoon character. Responding to published remarks that the statue suggested "a Disneyesque giant," or a combination of "Cyrano de Bergerac and the Three Musketeers," Lipschitz said, "No one knows what Sieur duLuth looked like. I had to create an image. To my mind, he belonged to the epoch of the Three Musketeers."

In the years that followed, few would regard the piece charitably, with some Duluthians even suggesting that Lipschitz snookered the city, foisting a second-rate work upon them, getting away with it because our backwater rubes wouldn't know any better. A recent student handbook at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where the figure presides over the Ordean Court plaza, makes this observation. "The statue ... looks like the Michelin Man holding a hot dog and missing his yo-yo."

Most published guides for tourists visiting the city omit mentioning the Lipschitz monument to Daniel de Greysolon Sieur DuLhut.

The birth of this city attracted little attention in the early 1850s, more than a century and three-quarters after DuLhut beached his canoe on Minnesota Point, where the present-day Canal Park and Aerial Bridge are situated.

There were only a handful of residents in what would become Duluth until the La Pointe treaty with the Dakota of 1854, which moved the natives further west. As far back as 1855, with the opening of a canal at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, men exuded confidence in Duluth's future--a confidence that would prove mostly unwarranted. Yet as railroads looked to link up the city with both coasts, Duluth appeared to be the only port with access to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

By 1868 there were still fewer than 100 residents in Duluth, but the population surged to more than 3,000 two years later, owing to investments by robber baron financier Jay Cooke. Cooke picked Duluth as the terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and a prosperous future was anticipated. During the period 1869-70, Duluth was the fastest-growing city in the country, and it was expected its population would overtake Chicago in only a few short years.

The mood of a city on the rise was captured by Moses Armstrong when he visited Duluth in July, 1871. He recounted meeting local grain dealers, "... a jolly set of men. They are blessed with the happiest wives, the handsomest daughters, and the largest crops of any state in the Union. Many of them were exchanging their new wheat in the sack for old rye in the bottle. The ladies at dinner called for trout and huckleberries, and the tables were so crowded that I was obliged to throw a biscuit at a waiter girl to induce her to bring me a cup of coffee. A wheat buyer told me it was a waste of grain to throw bread at a Duluth girl..."

Optimism abounded until Cooke's empire crashed with the stock market in 1873, and Duluth almost disappeared. Its city designation was terminated on March 12, 1877 when the last meeting of the city council was held, and it reverted to village status. By 1881 the economy boomed again without an infusion of Jay Cooke funds, and reaching 35,000 residents by 1887, the village became a city once more.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a monument was erected commemorating Cooke, whose tainted reputation could hardly be said to compare with that of the estimable DuLhut. It is located on Ninth Avenue East and Superior Street across from Leif Ericson Park and a replica of the sailing vessel that transported Viking sailors to the New World. The Cooke statue, popularly known as A Man and His Dog occupies a prominent place in Duluth, while the effort to honor DuLhut would languish for more than a half century.

"Duluth! Love it or loathe it, you can never leave it or lose it." So begins Gore Vidal's 1983 novel, "Duluth." The geographic Duluth depicted by Vidal is set in the tropics and turns the immoderate climate of my Minnesota hometown 180 degrees, Vidal's observation nonetheless resonates with natives who espouse a kind of self-deprecation about our city and ourselves.

Perhaps this sense of subordination dated back to the infamous stiffing of the seven Duluth Merrit brothers by New Yorker, John D. Rockefeller. The Merrits were credited with discovering the iron ore pits that for generations enriched mine owners and contributed importantly to our state's economic well being.

After their 1888 discovery, the Merrits mapped out 500 square miles of mineral-laden land. But they had difficulty getting their ore to markets. Rockefeller watched and waited while the brothers built railroad and loading docks, efforts that seriously stretched their finances. By 1893, creditors were clamoring for payments, and the brothers Merrit offered to sell their holdings to Rockefeller, who owned the local railroad service, for $40 per share. He declined; their situation worsened and Rockefeller offered to buy at $10 per share, or $900,000, an offer the Duluthians were unable to turn down. For less than $1 million, the east coast magnate bought nearly $330 million worth of iron ore. Even if old John D. didn't laugh up his sleeve over his triumph, it remained a chicken bone in the throat of Duluthians and helped solidify our sense of resigned, if not genetic subservience. Of course we and our ilk would be bested by a Rockefeller. And what business did any of us have in thinking we could compete at that level with a New Yorker, no less? .

A chauvinistic thread runs throughout a 1950 book titled, "This is Duluth," by Dora Mary MacDonald, long-time public relations director for the Duluth Board of Education. For more than 20 years Mrs. MacDonald contributed a weekly article about what was going on in Duluth schools for the Sunday Cosmopolitan pages of the Duluth News Tribune.

Typical of Mrs. MacDonald's prose is this assessment of the city's character: "The voice of Duluth has a vigorous ring resounding from lake to rock-bound hills, a voice embodying the spirit of the hardy men and women who founded the community. Here is a lusty city, but a city that has its dreams and the capacity to make those dreams come true."

Mrs. MacDonald also discusses the infamous lynchings of 1920, when a large mob hanged three black circus workers on a downtown street corner. She devotes fewer than 300 words to the tragedy, concluding her brief treatment with, "Duluthians prefer not to hear the rattle of the skeleton in the closet. They dwell upon the worthwhile aspects of the city's history and future."

One of those worthwhile aspects occurred recently, when 83 years following the murder of those three innocent men, the city commissioned and erected a monument to the victims across the street from where they were hanged. The ceremony dedicating the three bronze figures received international press coverage because Duluth was the first U. S. city to have its mayor and city council acknowledge such a crime.

But Dora Mary MacDonald could not have foreseen that. Her Duluth expunged the lynchings from schoolroom discussions, destroyed records and news clips, hoping that future generations would not probe the archives to re-expose Duluth's darkest hour. "This is Duluth," closes with, "It is a city that meets its adversities with courage and clings to its dreams with stubborn tenacity. Poised on its hills it gazes out to the lake, figuratively puts its hand on its hips, raises its chin and cries out to the world, `What next? We're ready.'"

But we weren't, really. The anticipated economic boom following the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway fizzled, only added a few dozen longshoremen and tugboat captains to employment rolls. Far from becoming another Chicago, as local politicians and business leaders optimistically projected, we remained what we had always been--a remote community separated by light years from centers of culture and sophistication, generating in those of us who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, an urge to absent ourselves from the old hometown.

Thus a more appropriate conclusion to Mrs. MacDonald's tome would have been, "We're waiting."

My generation at least, seemed always to be waiting. Waiting to grow up, waiting to graduate from high school, and waiting to leave Duluth.