The Rake Magazine

Year: 2005

  • You Were Like This:

    You acted all negative at breakfast, making everything heavy and chore-like. You were like this: Where is my coffee? Is there one thing on this menu that is not fried? What’s wrong with Grandma? Do people in rural America have like super strong hearts that don’t get all plugged up and clogged? Grandma is healthy and strong, why did she stay at the motel? Where’s my coffee? I can’t believe that Grandma stayed in bed.

    Your wife was like this: Honey, relax. This is our vacation. You should make the most of it. Your mother is just resting. We can bring some food back to the motel for her.

    Your youngest daughter was like this: Pancakes aren’t fried, Daddy.

    You rolled your eyes at her and sighed.

    Your older daughters were like this: Gosh, Dad, chill out!

    You were tapping your fork against the plastic tablecloth and stacking the artificial sweeteners and going on and on like this. You didn’t stop. You put the sweeteners away and you said the coffee was stale and that you were going to walk down Main Street and check on the van.

    You were like this: Even if the van is running and ready, and we get there by the end of the day, there will only be enough time for the girls to dip their toes in the ocean before we’ll have to pack everything up and head home.

    You put on your Braves cap and tromped through the crowded diner, past everyone eating fried food and laughing. You stepped out into the blizzard with steam coming out of your ears and your mind full of complaints, like everything was serious and like you were the only one that could see that.

    You were walking through the blizzard and getting your ankles wet and the thoughts in your head were like this: This sucks. This is my vacation, and it sucks. I didn’t spend the past year in a windowless office to sit out a blizzard and eat lousy fried food in some podunk town.

    You found the body shop and you were shocked to see the garage door open to the elements and half a dozen guys sitting around, drinking Cokes. Snow was blowing in at them, melting and making puddles. You looked down and saw magenta rainbows swirling around in the puddles and you got all bent out of shape about it. You looked at your van and saw its innards strewn about in the puddles and on the tables.

    You were like this: What the hell am I paying you for?

    The guys sitting around, drinking Cokes were like this: You’re not paying us for anything right now; we’re waiting for your part.

    You shook your head thinking you were talking to a bunch of idiots, and you were like this: You could at least close the door.

    They told you that they’d never seen a blizzard before, but you just threw your hands at them and went back out into the blizzard. You were retracing your steps, getting wet up to your knees, and you were like this in your head: I didn’t spend the past year in a windowless office to sit out a blizzard and eat lousy fried food in some podunk town. This sucks. This is my vacation, and it sucks.

    You slid back into the booth with your family and you saw that your eggs were cold and you said that you had only been gone for thirty seconds and you decided right then and there that the eggs must’ve been cold when the waitress brought them to you. You said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but your family was totally silent, like they didn’t believe you, so you grabbed your plate and got up from the table and marched to the bar and waited for the waitress.

    You were like this when you saw her: These eggs are cold.

    She wouldn’t take responsibility for the cold eggs so you didn’t leave a tip, but you saw your wife leave a tip and you decided to confront her on the way back to the motel.

    You were like this to your wife: Why did you leave a tip?

    She just shook her head. You could tell she was trying to be sensitive to you and attentive to your gripes, but she just kept quiet, like she didn’t know what to say.

    She held the Styrofoam to-go box of waffles in her hands and was eventually like this: Did I make the wrong choice? Does your mother even like waffles?

    You didn’t answer her question. You just kept turning around and pointing to your three girls, marching shoulder to shoulder with their heads down and their underdressed arms crossed. You pointed at the white specks melting on their heads and you used them as an example of how much everything about the vacation was sucking.

    You went on and on, pointing back and saying how bad it was, but your wife was like this: The girls are having fun. They’ve never seen a blizzard before.

    She told you to look at their faces and see how they were smiling and giggling right then and there, which got you all worked up and made it impossible for you to prove your point. You were barmy inside and your feet were cold and everything around you was painted white.

    You were quiet and angry when you slid the metal key into the lock at your motel room door, listening to its smooth clicks. You were about to say something about key cards and the Stone Age but when you opened the door and looked in your room, you were shocked and disgusted and you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. Your mother was there, jumping naked on the bed. She was holding her breasts in her hands and bouncing around in circles with a big smile on her wrinkled face. The girls busted their guts and started shouting out to Grandma. Your wife started sucking air in a gasping guffaw. Grandma started laughing along with them. Then she started singing some old song, something she sang to you when you were young. This made you start laughing, but it was like you didn’t even decide to do it, it was just there, coming out of you like a long hiccup. Everyone got up on the bed and started jumping in circles around Grandma, and you were like this: Girls, we are going to the ocean.

     

  • B.B. King

    This may be one of the last chances to see the legend. He’s already decided that his scheduled U.K. tour will be his last one there, and when an eighty-year-old performer says he’s weary of life on the road, we tend to believe him (certainly more than when we hear it from, say, Cher). King hasn’t said heÕs done with touring in the U.S., but at Orchestra Hall, he’ll be treated in appropriately kingly fashion for what is being billed as an eightieth birthday celebration–so why not see him now? After all, he’ll eventually be sitting home with his feet up, and it’s not like there’s an acceptable heir waiting to take his place. 612-371-5656; www.minnesotaorchestra.org

  • Rose Ensemble

    Choral music sounds especially good in December, although the Rose Ensemble can get even the statuary at the stodgiest of churches to prick up its ears at any time of the year. Known for its magnificent renditions of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, the ensemble specializes in obscure and unpredictable pieces, and its holiday programs are no exception. This year, it focuses on Mexican Baroque music–fanciful and exuberant songs that express the joy of the season without getting hung up on the holiness. A new recording, Celebremos el Ni–o, collects some of the best pieces from the ensembleÕs current songbook, but no CD can capture the way a live performance–the expanse of the stage, the power of all those huge lungs–can change the properties of air and space; that’s what this holiday tour of Duluth, the Twin Cities, and Stillwater is all about. 651-225-4340; www.roseensemble.org

  • A Rakish Holiday: Silent Night, Unholy Night

    It’s not hard to understand the aversion some people have to the ubiquitous music of Christmas. There are literally thousands of recordings in this genre, and every year the market is flooded with new product. Much of it is indisputably execrable, and obviously driven by the crassest and most exploitive of impulses. But then, it’s part of an industry where crassness and exploitation are the norm. (A pretty damning accusation, yes, but let’s be honest: We are, after all, talking about a holiday that ostensibly celebrates the birth of the Son of God.) But holiday music inspires a host of other feelings besides disgust. There’s consternation and relatively benign indifference, and, toward the furthest end of the obsessive spectrum, devoted study, psychologically complicated appreciation, and genuine private (and often embarrassed) pleasure.

     

    Like the holiday itself, the music of the season is by and large an exercise in excess. There are scads of lovely and enduring Christmas songs, but there isn’t a one of them that hasn’t been butchered countless times by overwrought vocal performances and equally overwrought arrangements, often (in both cases) wholly inappropriate. And now that you start hearing the stuff pumping from the speakers of stores and shopping malls as soon as the Halloween merchandise disappears from the shelves, even the once-beloved holiday chestnuts and warhorses have become inescapable—and therefore annoying—through the New Year.

    Yet the true aficionado of Christmas music understands that in this genre, purity of motive or sincerity generally counts for nothing. Nobody ever went into a California recording studio (or a recording studio anywhere) in the middle of the summer to assemble a Christmas record simply because they were overcome with holiday spirit or a sudden fierce desire to unburden themselves of the ten-thousandth interpretation of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” No, even the most softheaded fan knows that he is being brazenly manipulated by those large-hearted barons of the music industry. These predatory characters are masters at exploiting the unique combination of nostalgia, emotional vulnerability, and atavistic hope that make the holidays a psychological minefield for so many, inducing in Americans all manner of complicated mood disorders (most prominently a collective case of manic depression) for at least one solid month on an annual basis. The true pleasure of much Christmas music, in fact, is precisely a product of its rare ability to tap into all those complicated feelings, and to whump and whang away at them relentlessly during the last weeks of the year.

    Given the short retail window of opportunity that holiday albums have (which is balanced, of course, by the fact that they can be shuffled back onto the racks year after year in perpetuity), it’s astonishing how many such records are released—Amazon currently lists 1,867 holiday discs—and how many units some of these records move. More than nine million copies of Elvis Presley’s Christmas Album have been sold since its initial release in 1957. Kenny G’s Miracles: The Holiday Album has racked up sales of more than eight million. Last year, James Taylor: A Christmas Album, sold exclusively at Hallmark stores, was certified platinum only a couple of months after its release.

    Since the beginnings of recorded sound, people have felt compelled to spend time and money making Christmas music for the commercial market. Based on the available evidence, it’s possible, in fact, that many of these folks didn’t have the foggiest notion of what they were up to—any commercial market they may have had in mind was purely a delusional fancy (another fundamental characteristic of the music business). In the last half of the twentieth century, virtually every major music figure of note eventually recorded at least a side or two of Christmas music, and the genre has also proved irresistible to various vanity artists, delightful eccentrics, and obscurities, from local choirs to lounge acts to regional country performers. Anthologists have made the Christmas compilation an art form, thanks in part to thrift stores of America, where bins are brimming with holiday LPs of every imaginable sort.

    Speaking from experience, it’s quite easy to acquire a collection of nearly two hundred Christmas records without ever quite recognizing that one’s interest has spiraled into obsession. Many of these are worth acquiring simply for their garish covers; the designers of album jackets, from the rankest amateurs to the staffers at major labels, have elevated the art to a pure and potent form of American kitsch.

    The vast majority of the Christmas music that’s been released in recent years is utter garbage, yet every season reliably produces a few new classics—there was Low’s “Just Like Christmas” in 1999, for example, and Ron Sexsmith’s lovely “Maybe This Christmas” in 2002, while last year brought Chris Isaak’s “Washington Square” and “Christmas on TV,” both from his uniformly gratifying first entry in the holiday record lottery.

    The sheer eclecticism of the vast catalog of holiday music is part of its charm and enduring appeal. For those of us who collect and actually listen to these records, the criteria for separating the pearls from the pork can be wildly random. There are those who relish the off-kilter and the just plain weird—novelty songs, in general terms (Foghat’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Cheech and Chong’s “Santa Claus and His Old Lady”), as well as radical interpretations of standards (e.g. the Dickies’ version of “Silent Night” or Stiff Little Fingers’ take on “White Christmas”).

    From the sacred to the secular to the truly profane, Christmas records offer something to cheer or offend just about everyone, and the stockpile of standards and the oodles of available versions of these songs represent both a public domain free-for-all and a study in the art of interpretation.

    For many Christmas music purists, the golden age ran roughly between 1955 and 1965, when the great crooners and cocktail swingers were in full autopilot mode and the big studio arrangers were given the resources and encouragement to run amok. Those were the days of Steve and Edie (whose exuberant “Sleigh Ride” is still, for my money, unbeatable), Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Robert Goulet, and Goodyear’s Great Songs of Christmas, an instantly classic ten-album series that was released in yearly installments. The records of that era represent the perfect nexus of the bachelor pad and the family room, and the versions of the seasonal standards they served up were pure cheese, now properly aged. Even the sacred cows were blissfully fat, corn-fed, and wobbly with brandy.

    The absolute zenith of that golden age was Jackie Gleason’s 1956 extravaganza for Capital, Merry Christmas. Gleason had a fairly long-running side career as an impresario/music engineer, in which capacity he produced a series of heavily orchestrated and downbeat records under his own name. He was the great renaissance man of bachelor-pad swank and swoon, and his ridiculously bloated excursions into the swirling mists of mood music are some of the most intoxicating—and intoxicated—documents of fuzzed art damage ever recorded. The birth of Christ has never sounded like such an utterly joyless occasion.

    I’ve probably listened to Merry Christmas more than any other record in my Christmas collection, possibly more than any other record in my collection, period. The entire record is a Prozac sleigh ride through very dark woods indeed, and every year I make it my own holiday ritual to spend hours trying to figure out its strange appeal, to explain the odd grip it has on me. Jackie arranges even “Jingle Bells” as a blindfolded and hobbled march through those same woods, headed for a bullet in the back of the head and a meeting with the bottom of a black river swirling with sharp fragments of ice.

    Some nights I put that record on and I have no problem at all imagining that it’s 1956 and the snow is falling—the snow has been falling for days. I’m sitting in front of a hideously flocked tree and a big, blazing fire, blasted out of my toasted body on cocktails, listening to Jackie and his orchestra utterly deconstruct the songs of Christmas, recasting them as equal parts Spanish fly and Jägermeister. Smashola in Lonelyville.

    The power of this record, I think, lies in the way it plumbs the heart of the romantic desolation, loneliness, and ultimate disappointment of winter and the holidays, and then plunges all the way through to the reserves of melancholy that are buried deep in the sentimental heart of Christmas past and present. Depending on the circumstances, this is a record that could either get you laid or induce you to put your head in the oven; it sounds alternately like Christmas Eve with a girl in your arms or a gun in your mouth.

    You can go ahead and take your pick, really. Give him enough chances, though, and Jackie will tear your heart into little pieces. And odds are good you’ll eventually nod off in front of the fire, only to wake up later and put your head right back in your hands.

  • Los Straitjackets

    The Mexican wrestling masks this surf rock quartet dons for every performance make them look menacing, but these guys are pretty friendly. This summer, they ran a series of twist contests, encouraging fans to get onstage and dance. No one got pummeled by the band, not even the lousy dancers. The blistering pace at which they peel off their songs is their only act of aggression, and we’ll take any gimmicks they throw our way, since a couple of hours of instrumental surf–even really good surf–can wear a body right out. They’ll be here with Big Sandy as a special guest vocalist, which doesn’t sound like a natural pairing, but we think Sandy’s smart-ass twang should break up the waves in just the right way. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

  • Sinead O'Connor

    Everyone seems to remember the Pope Incident, but few recall that a) O’Connor later asked John Paul II to forgive her for that indelicate photo crop, and b) she was singing Bob Marley’s “War” when she did the deed. It’s one of Marley’s most searingly political songs, and it revealed O’Connor to have more than a passing interest in Rastafarian culture. Now she brings her fascination full circle with a full-on reggae album and tour, and once you’re done sniggering at the image of a bald Irishwoman singing an ode to dreads (“Curly Locks”), you’ll find that Throw Down Your Arms is a very good–er, we mean irie–album. After all, she recorded it in Kingston with toweringly huge reggae producers/players Sly and Robbie, and they’re along for the tour, so expect a deep Rasta groove to rumble beneath Sinead’s breathy pipes as they mine the back catalogs of Marley, Burning Spear, Lee “Scratch” Perry and other reggae masters. This is the first show of her first U.S. tour in seven years (so much for her “retirement” from music), making it a big date for the Irish siren.

  • A Rakish Holiday: Cherries Rolling in the Snow

    GONE TO HEAVEN
    Northeast Minneapolis,
    December 24, 2001—
    Victim stated that unknown suspect entered their front yard and removed an animated Christmas ornament of an angel. Victim stated that this angel’s wings moved back and forth. Victim has no witness or suspect information.

    ABANDONED VANDAL
    Longfellow, Minneapolis, December 24, 2003—
    Squad dispatched on a damage-to-property call. Upon arrival, officer spoke to caller, who stated that he had observed five suspects outside of his neighbor’s house. Caller stated that he heard yelling and that he observed that five suspects were damaging neighbor’s Christmas lawn display. Caller then called 911. Caller stated that he observed four suspects leave in a silver colored newer Impala after they put a light-up Rudolph in the trunk. Caller then reported that after a minute, the suspects then returned to pick up the fifth suspect, who was forgotten. Vehicle then was last seen northbound on 39th Avenue South. Officer then spoke to neighbor, who stated that his light-up Rudolph was taken and his light-up candy canes were all damaged.

    DESPERATE FOR DOMESTICITY
    Uptown Minneapolis,
    3 p.m. December 29, 2001–
    8 a.m. December 30, 2001—
    Caller stated that during above time frame a videotape of Family Man was stolen from the staff office of the Hollywood video store. No suspect information.
    ST. NICK ACT
    Phillips, Minneapolis,
    December 25, 2003—
    Officer was dispatched to a rescue call on Christmas Day at the incident address. The defendant had slid down the chimney and gotten stuck. Minneapolis Fire Department Rescue responded and broke the defendant out of the chimney. Defendant was given medical treatment overnight at Hennepin County Medical Center. He was positively identified by his Minnesota driver’s license and will be charged by complaint for burglary
    of a business.

    INSULT AND INJURY
    Longfellow, Minneapolis,
    December 21, 2001—
    Victim stated suspect stole his glasses and went running out of the door of his residence. Victim stated as the suspect was running down the street she was laughing and saying, “I stole your glasses.”
    AWAY FROM THE MANGER
    Kingfield, Minneapolis,
    December 29, 2004—
    Victim stated that unknown suspect(s) stole the baby Jesus doll from the victim’s nativity set, which was in the front yard. The victim stated the doll was life size and that it was chained down and wrapped in a blanket. The victim has no suspect information and was given a case number.

    PROBABLY THAT LOSER WHO
    ATE YOUR COTTAGE CHEESE
    Downtown Minneapolis, December 23, 2002–December 31, 2002—Caller reported that she had placed a wrapped Christmas gift on a desk and left, closing the office. Caller stated that there should have been no staff in the offices through December 31. Caller stated that on December 31, when she asked the recipient to open her gift, it was discovered that someone had unwrapped the box, removed the gift, taped the box back up and left it on the desk.
    Caller stated that other office personnel, the cleaning crew and security personnel have access to this office. She stated there are no security cameras in the office. She does not know of any personnel who were in this office during this period. Caller has no suspect information.

    THIEVES NEED FRIENDS, TOO
    Maplewood, January 29, 2003—
    A homeowner did not receive holiday greetings this year from people she usually hears from and suspects she may have been the victim of mail theft.

    ANXIOUS FOR END OF XMAS
    Maplewood, December 26, 2003—
    At 2:20 p.m., a garbage truck driver called police to report that while on his route picking up garbage in the 2100 block of 17th Avenue he found his truck was too full of post-Christmas trash to continue until he dropped the load and came back. As he drove down the street, he was flagged down by a man who insisted he take his garbage, and when he explained he would be back the man “became very upset and yelled to someone inside the house to grab his gun.” The garbage truck driver fled the scene in his vehicle and called the police on his way back to pick up the rest of the neighborhood’s garbage. He arrived as police were interviewing the resident, who claimed he hadn’t said anything about a gun and was warned about the dangers of threatening people with firearms. The driver picked up the trash without incident and went on his way.

    GENDER-INAPPROPRIATE
    BEHAVIOR
    Maplewood, December 31, 2001—
    A 22-year-old woman was arrested at 11:05 p.m. at The Rock in the 2000 block of Woodlyn Avenue for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The woman was caught urinating in the parking lot next to her limousine.

    HOUSEGUEST HEIST
    Eden Prairie,
    December 21–26, 2003—
    A $9,000 diamond ring was taken from a house between December 21 and 26. The ring, with an 18-karat white gold band, has 27 princess cut diamonds with a 2.63-karat total diamond weight. The owner told police she had two houseguests during the Christmas holidays. After the holidays, she noticed the ring was missing from the jewelry box kept in the master bedroom.

    PANTS REPLACER AT LARGE
    Hopkins, December 3, 2001—Officers responded to a report that someone was entering a resident’s house at night and replacing his pants with smaller-sized trousers. Officers advised the resident on his options.

    SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY
    Hopkins, December 23, 2000—Report of a male stumbling in the middle of 12th Avenue North at 11:14 p.m. carrying an armload of Christmas decorations.

     

    CHRISTMAS GHOST
    Hopkins, December 23, 2000—Report of burglary at residence at 11 p.m. Victim heard a crash in the basement and then footsteps. It turned out to be a box of Christmas decorations that fell down the steps.

    NOVEL HITCHHIKING TECHNIQUE
    Hopkins, December 27, 2001—Officers responded at 1:24 a.m. to
    a report that a male was exposing himself on the ramp to Excelsior Boulevard from northbound Highway 169. The suspect was
    gone when officers arrived.

    CONSIDER THE CHILDREN
    Eden Prairie,
    December 20–21, 2001—
    About $300 worth of Christmas presents were stolen from a vehicle parked in a residential garage.
    Some presents were opened and left in the garage. There were no signs of forced entry into either
    the garage or vehicle.
    BURRITO BUST
    Hopkins, January 1, 2004—
    Officers responded to a domestic assault call. Officers determined there was a physical fight between two friends over a burrito. Neither person wanted to press charges.

    GOING NATIVE
    Shorewood, November 25, 2003—Officers responded to a report of two juveniles with a bow and arrow trying to shoot wild turkeys. Officers advised the suspects that they could not shoot wild turkeys in Shorewood. Officers confiscated bow and arrow.

    Items compiled from Minneapolis police reports and from reports
    in the Maplewood Review,
    Lakeshore Weekly News,
    and Eden Prairie News.

  • "Never Have Too Much Fun."

    You could be forgiven for believing that Minnesotans had something to do with inventing the Zamboni. But the celebrated Dr. Seussian vehicle wasn’t invented in the back of an Iron Range machine shop, nor in a Twin Cities garage. Your second guess—somewhere in Canada, right?—would be wrong, too. The home of this icon of winter sports isn’t in the frozen northland at all. To see where Frank Zamboni dreamed up his world-famous ice resurfacer, you’d want to put on some shorts and sunglasses and fly to sunny Paramount, California, just south of Los Angeles.

    What? Zambonis are from Southern California?

    I double-checked the address because when I got there all I found were warehouse buildings along a bumpy little side street of Paramount. Where was this Wonka factory of the winter-loving world? Given the huge popularity of ice hockey and figure skating in recent years, I half expected to see lines of hardcore fans and toothless hockey players and Michelle Kwan banging on some gilded gate to get a peek at the machines and the people who make them. But the streets were empty, and the buildings were all nondescript industrial fortresses.

    Then a couple of young Hispanic workers materialized out of nowhere. They hung several freshly painted blue and white hulks of sheet metal on hooks. As I came around the corner, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and smiled on three shiny, partially assembled Zambonis. They were lined up and being readied for shipment to China, Austria, and Nebraska.

    Richard Zamboni, the son of the founder, gave me the VIP tour of the Zamboni factory. (Perhaps all visiting Minnesotans get the treatment, I thought.) It all began sixty-five years ago, at a skating rink just a few blocks away known as Iceland. Richard’s father, Frank Zamboni, was a refrigeration expert. In 1940, he was thinking big thoughts for a cooling guy: He had a dream to create an enormous open-air rink in Paramount. The tropical sun and dry winds fast proved that Southern California was no place for outdoor ice skating. The short-term solution, Richard recalled, was to skate at night. “Iceland was covered in canvas during the day, and then they’d pull it off at night and we’d all go skating.” The rink surface was cooled by machinery at a huge refrigeration plant across the street, which also stored locally grown carrots and rhubarb.

    Richard said that ammonia, the main chemical coolant in the antique system, was run in lines under the streets. “Back then you could do anything and get away with it,” he said. Resurfacing Iceland’s rink the traditional way—with a leaky barrel of hot water, shovels, and mops—cut down on precious ice time. It was a problem at ice sheets everywhere, but especially in the warm Southern California night; even the most devout hockey player or fan would be hard pressed to wait an hour between periods while the ice was cleaned, flooded, and refrozen.

    In 1942, Frank rigged up a little tractor with a trailer that smoothed the ice and scooped up the shavings. The prototype machine hardly worked at all, and Zamboni was eager to perfect his brainchild. But with the attack on Pearl Harbor the previous December, and America gone to war, ice resurfacing was not exactly a national priority. Zamboni redirected his work, but the idea to finish his ice-making machine was never far from his mind.

    Richard said his dad never would have finished the project if people hadn’t told him it was impossible. When the war ended, army surplus offered plenty of cheap parts—especially sheet metal and Jeep components—to complete what became the world’s first working Zamboni. But in some ways, the Zamboni was never complete because Frank never stopped working on it. “He was a dedicated smoker and he’d go outside and just look at the machine,” Richard said. “My dad drove me crazy because he’d change the design each time we had a new machine. He didn’t get past the ninth grade, and he thought he was educationally challenged. But he was really a genius at design.”

    Basically, Jeep chassis were stripped and built back up. The job of a Zamboni is to shave the ice to a depth of one-sixteenth of an inch with a stainless steel blade. The shavings are then gathered to the middle with huge augers. From there, the snow is conveyed by little paddles on a chain up into the holding tank—the sort of whale’s head that dominates the machine. Directly behind the blades and augurs, water heated to 180 degrees is sprinkled onto the ice surface. A chamois distributes the water evenly behind the machine, and the rink’s refrigeration coils freeze the water within minutes. Pointing to the wheels of a classic Model J Zamboni from the late 1960s, Richard said, “We took the Jeep tires over to a shop and they scarfed off all the good tread. Then we put crushed walnut shells on the tires to make them grip the ice.”

    As a self-styled Renaissance man of automotive machines, Frank Zamboni didn’t limit his creativity to ice resurfacing; he branched out into many less well-known Zamboni vehicles. The Zamboni Gopher Digger dug trenches, the Zamboni Track Dryer mopped up after a rain on running tracks, and the Astro Zamboni laid down Astroturf in domed stadiums. Richard remembered testing the Astro Zamboni by turning the streets next to the factory into plush, green, temporary lawns. The company also produced the Zamboni Vault Carrier, which lugged concrete cemetery vaults and dropped them in the ground, and “the Black Widow,” which was designed to push dirt into the grave.

    Many of these side projects were abandoned, though, when it became clear that the Zamboni name would forever be associated intimately with the ice rink. In 1950, Norwegian figure-skating champion Sonja Henie bought two Zambonis, which went on tour with her ice skating revue.

    The Number Four Zamboni had an even more eventful career. First it traveled with Ice Capades in the fifties, and then, at the height of the Cold War, it was sold to Los Alamos National Laboratory to keep our atomic scientists happy and healthy on their days off. In February 1973, the Los Alamos rink caught fire, and the firemen were going to let Number Four burn with it. A Zamboni driver named Ted Dunn doused himself with water, entered the burning building, and threw a wet blanket over the Zamboni. He tightened the battery terminals, revved the Zamboni engine, and burst through the burning doors at the vehicle’s top speed of nine miles per hour. Years later, the machine was restored and placed in a museum where it can still be seen today—at the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota.

    Since the birth of the Model A Zamboni in 1949, eight thousand of the machines have been hand-built at the factory by about thirty employees. Richard showed me a photo of the celebration the employees had earlier this year for number 8,000—a landmark Zamboni 540 that went to a special team. Earlier this fall, it arrived at Mariucci Arena, home of the University of Minnesota Gophers.

    The eight-thousandth Zamboni is, of course, a radical upgrade from the Model A. Zamboni engines today are either electric or gas-powered. Electric engines are a bit more expensive, but they don’t spew the toxic exhaust created by the gas-burning machines. Zambonis today are four-wheel drive and have studded tires for traction around those breakneck curves. Despite being in the business for sixty-five years, Zamboni has never seen the need to sully the dashboard with an odometer or even a speedometer. A standard gas-burning Zamboni runs about fifty-thousand dollars—odometer and speedometer not an option. The Zamboni company does have one minor corporate rival. A company called Olympia sells its machines with a GM chassis at a slightly lower cost. Naturally, Richard feels the quality doesn’t come close to the real Zamboni.

    Resurfacing the ice takes less than fifteen minutes, depending on the prowess of the Zamboni driver. Three basic patterns are followed by Zamboni operators: the common double outside loop, the less common figure eight, and the rarely seen crosscut. The hockey world stood aghast as the Minnesota North Stars took the bold step of introducing two Zambonis to resurface one sheet of ice back in the 1970s. The fans were perched on the edges of their seats awaiting a low-speed Zamboni crash on the blue line that never materialized. Today, dueling Zambonis are standard at all pro hockey games. Why? To allow more ice time for those between-period shenanigans.

    The Minnesota connection with Zamboni runs deep. Through the mouthpiece of Charlie Brown, St. Paul native Charles Schulz professed in Peanuts, “There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire, and a Zamboni clearing the ice.” Schulz’s use of “Zamboni” as the punch line in so many Peanuts strips popularized the ice resurfacer like no big-budget advertising campaign could ever have done. Richard Zamboni remembered how people in Northern California, where Schulz lived, would ask him, “What the heck is a Zamboni?” Schulz missed the ice rinks back in Minnesota, so he donated an indoor ice arena to his adopted hometown of Santa Rosa—along with its very own Zamboni.

  • A Rakish Holiday: Heaven on the Eighth Floor

    Every holiday season since 1963, a baroque, fairy-tale-inspired display has been assembled on the eighth floor of the original Dayton’s store in downtown Minneapolis, a tradition that began as the Dayton family’s annual “gift to the community.” But earlier this year, when Federated Department Stores became the new parent company of Marshall Field’s and vowed to convert the Nicollet Mall institution into a Macy’s, ugly rumors began circulating about the auditorium show’s inevitable demise. Bloggers and men-on-the-street put its life expectancy at two years; thereafter, they reckoned, the tradition would become so much pixie dust in the memories of generations of Minnesotans.

    Department store flacks, however, insist the show will go on—and if history is any indication, their assertions can be believed. Ownership of the store many still stubbornly call “Dayton’s” has changed hands seven times since that first holiday show in the auditorium, and yet insiders and stalwart pilgrims alike claim that it has changed very little over the years. If anything, it has only become more lavish. The scale of the spectacle has increased dramatically since the early days, while technological advancements have made possible stop-motion animation and all manner of smoke-and-mirror wizardry.

    The early auditorium shows were an outgrowth of Dayton’s mid-century window displays (which were themselves part of a much older tradition dating back to nineteenth-century Europe), and were based on themes like “Santa’s Enchanted Forest” and “Christmas with the Animals”—static narratives that were purely set pieces for the designers. In 1969, however, the auditorium was transformed into Never Never Land for a show inspired by Peter Pan, and that seems to have launched the enduring trend of bringing to life fairy tales and other storybook classics. In the 1970s the store staged shows based on The Nutcracker, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Babes in Toyland. Productions in the intervening years have included Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking,

    The Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz, and The Twelve Days of Christmas, as well as a couple of more mercenary shows inspired by Santabear, Dayton’s collectible stuffed toy.

    The Harry Potter-themed exhibit, in 2000, was considered a coup. Designers worked closely with Warner Bros. to emulate the look and feel of the as-yet-unreleased first film in the blockbuster saga. For the most part, though, the show’s creators have traditionally worked with classic children’s tales, usually material in the public domain, and they have been careful to eschew the sort of showy aesthetics most commonly associated with Disney. Instead, the show’s designers have relied on fine art illustrators to define the look, while allowing a bit of wiggle room to inject some of their own style and sensibilities. For example, last year’s Snow White resembled Audrey Hepburn and carried a Louis Vuitton handbag.

    This year’s sparkly, pink, and rigorously floral Cinderella exhibition features seventeen scenes, over the course of which the lead character is rendered in shadow puppets, pencil drawings, and statuettes. On an early visit, a poker-faced, thirty-something man was observed crying out “Cool!” as the fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into Cinderella’s carriage—with fiber optics!

    That’s a bit more flash than many of us encountered on our initial visits to the annual eighth-floor wonderland, as wee things clinging to the hands of our parents. Yet year after year, something about these displays always manages to conjure some of the same magic we felt back then, shuffling wide-eyed through that maze of bright lights and animatronic dreams. And even today you’ll still see everybody from young families to older couples and gaggles of teenagers standing in a queue that often stretches all the way down to the elevators—proof that the Dayton family’s gift has helped to define many of our notions of what a Minneapolis holiday, not to mention a downtown department store, should be.

     

  • A Short History of Myth / Cannongate's Myths Series

    How long would it take to adequately explain the influence of myths on culture, history, language, and identity? About thirty-nine years, say the editors at Cannongate. The British publisher has just launched an ambitious one-hundred-part series to explore myths from contemporary angles, one that’s off to an auspicious start with authors Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, and Jeanette Winterson. Armstrong, the former nun behind such bestsellers as A History of God and Islam, A Short History, opens the series with the aptly titled A Short History of Myth, exploring the power of this type of story while also demystifying certain popular examples. Atwood’s The Penelopiad revisits The Odyssey through the eyes of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, who cleverly preserved his estate while he went adventuring for a couple of decades. Winterson chose to rewrite the myth of Atlas in Weight, a sympathetic and psychological portrait of the man who held the world on his shoulders. Each year a handful of new titles penned by leading writers, thinkers, and historians will be released. Coming up: Chinua Achebe, Victor Pelevin, Donna Tartt, and David Grossman. Keep these on the shelf to hand down to your grandkids.