Author: Joe Pastoor

When visiting sculptor Joe Anton’s split-level rambler in Brooklyn Park, it might take a while for the subject to come around to art. Horsepower TV might be on, demonstrating the latest muscle-car trick modifications. You might need to help unload an awning from the bed of his Ranchero. Plaques in the rec room display his name on General Mills patents, the most recent for a machine that marks extruded cookie dough to show exactly where to slice it. You may unexpectedly receive a humongous bag of dehydrated strawberries or Green Giant asparagus spears.

The stainless steel sculptures, large and small, are everywhere in the Anton home. Mostly they show whimsical animals and humans—somewhat akin to Alexander Calder’s early wire sculptures, but constructed from a boggling array of household items. In Anton’s hands, common objects achieve a sort of visual onomatopoeia: forks become feet, spatulas fold into wings, spoons overlap to form reptilian scales, a caulking gun handle forms the beak of a penguin, spark plugs suddenly look strangely facial and snoutlike. Already loaded with gifts of food, I tried once to decline the offer of a sculpture, a frog made from forks, spoons and nuts. “Be a cheerful receiver,” scolded Anton.

The living room contains a steel mesh chair and a galvanized end-table made from scrap for which Anton dumpster-dives (an activity he refers to as “the fine art”). He takes the outsider artist’s benevolent view of utility: art doesn’t have to be useless. The chair is comfortable, the table functional. He once welded a figure of a firefighter onto a hot-dog skewer, the skewer anatomically located (if not accurate). It, too, bears evidence of regular use.

Anton’s gift for perceiving organic forms in almost any hunk of metal may derive from being “a machinist from birth.” But it also grows out of the way he lives, including his Tao-like version of Christian faith, the central doctrine of which is adaptability.

“A chameleon who can’t change colors is a dead chameleon,” he quipped. “You have to make yourself ready for a window to open, for an opportunity. God doesn’t test you. He gives you chances.”

Putting this faith at the center of their lives, Anton and his wife, Sue, are always seeking to know how their actions “reflect the mind of Christ,” as Sue puts it. Practically speaking, this means that if God provides you with chances for good fortune, you must also be alert for opportunities to do good. “We tithe. We go beyond tithing,” said Anton, without a trace of evangelical mania. “Does that make you a Christian artist?” I wondered. “And is this Christian art?” “That’s like saying if you’re a Christian farmer, you can only grow Christian vegetables,” replied Anton, clearly amused by the thought.

Windows of opportunity have indeed opened for Anton recently. While his work has sold mostly in the gift market, in February 2002 General Mills installed his first large commission, a four-by-eight foot stainless-steel abstract piece titled “Genesis.” This came to pass, he explained, when he called attention to an irritatingly blank wall near the human resources offices. Then a public-relations manager noticed that a flower he made from spoons resembled the Yoplait division’s trademark daisy. Rather than litigate for copyright infringement, she ordered 150 copies.

He still works as a machinist, but Anton has also become General Mills’ house sculptor of sorts, turning out extra daisies on demand and welding whimsical award plaques. At the moment, he’s working on a modular piece for 8th Continent, the soy milk division. This good fortune, however, has taken some serendipity out of his work. He orders spoons wholesale, in lots of four hundred. “You can only hit your kitchen drawer so many times,” he lamented.
—Joe Pastoor

“Crisis” may be a strong word for the chocolate situation locally, but the situation is alarming. If you plan to say “I love you” with a box of chocolates on February 14th, options are dwindling. Dependable entry-level fare is still available at any of Fanny Farmer’s metro locations. And nowadays, we can’t turn around without knocking over a display of once-exotic Godiva boxes, which may say as much about our growth as Godiva’s. If Godiva isn’t good enough (it certainly no longer signifies that you went out of your way), Karl Bissinger offers custom-packed boxes from a worthy selection at their Galleria counter.

But in 2003, some favorite Minnesota chocolatiers have been up against forces as capricious as Eros himself, leaving the market more diminished than we’d like. As proof that a train wreck symbolizes love better than candy, Maude Borup’s warehouse and packing facility in Perham was destroyed when a Burlington Northern lumber car drove through it last October. Unlike the legendary collisions that produced Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, this accident merely trashed the Christmas inventory. Maude Borup co-owner Kim Kalan assured The Rake, however, that demand will be met for the Valentine’s rush. But she did advise that chocolate body frosting—a product not available when the company was founded in 1907—tends to sell out early.

A more tentative prospect is the future of Mr. B Chocolatier. The Gastronomer has seen many struggling enterprises come and go but was truly taken aback to learn that Mr. B had closed the doors of his only metro storefront. It apparently wasn’t enough to offer the best selection of the very highest quality hand-made chocolates in the Midwest at the metro’s demographic pinnacle, 50th and France. “We just weren’t getting enough traffic,” explained Mr. B’s daughter, Mary Reishus, when reached by landline at their Willmar production facility. Reishus did not blame exorbitant rents for the closure, though she confessed that the triangle-shaped storefront was hard to keep cool enough for the chocolate. “Because of the heat, we had to close the blinds, and people would think we were closed.”

Fortunately, Mr. B can still be bought at such cosmopolitan locations as St. Cloud; Deadwood, South Dakota; and the Willmar headquarters. And Wuollet bakeries here in the backwater will carry Mr. B, but they won’t be able to hand-pack your personal selections. For that you may need to plan a road trip to Willmar. We’d advise against taking the train.—Joe Pastoor

Despite the overnight snowfall and a route through some of the metro’s most notorious traffic hot spots, I pulled into the well-salted parking lot almost fifteen minutes early for my appointment to look at the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s new Roseville compound. It’s a brushed aluminum affair, called the Water’s Edge building. Together with the attached Operations Center, the facility looks spanking modern indeed, especially standing abreast of the aging Rosedale Shopping Center just across Snelling Avenue.

Mary Meinert, a traffic information officer and occasional tour guide, greeted me with an enormous cup of coffee in hand. Arriving as early as 5:30 a.m. some days and leaving as late as 8 p.m. others, she counts java second only to her ID badge as a workplace necessity. After I was fitted with a visitor’s badge, she took me to the Operations Center to show me exactly why my rush-hour drive had been so efficient. In the tour room, Meinert projected a computer display onto a large screen, made selections from a network of more than two hundred live-feed cameras, and toggled the cameras to show me, in real time, the route I had just driven from Highway 100 to I-394 to I-94 to the Lowry Tunnel, to 35W to Highway 36. “People were pretty well behaved today,” she said with the tone of a satisfied preschool teacher. She expertly panned a camera to check on a stalled car I had passed on I-94 just twenty minutes before. “You are Big Brother,” I accused. “You can call me Big Sister,” she quipped.

If there is a place where Minnesotans need some babysitting, the highways are certainly it. Pretty much everyone knows anecdotally about our atrocious driving. Last January the Minnesota Department of Public Safety released statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirming that Minnesotans drive like, well, morons. Minnesotans crash and die more often per mile than the national average, comparing favorably to only a handful of retrograde states, such as Mississippi. In 2002, there were 94,969 crashes reported in the state, fifty-nine percent of them concentrated in the metro. These crashes yield nearly seven hundred fatalities annually. This particular morning two Anokans had perished on Highway 10.

To shepherd the metro’s endangered commuters, Mn/DOT completed the new facility last February. Meinert admits that they didn’t publicize the opening aggressively; the political climate hasn’t exactly been ripe for an announcement that we’ve spent $23.5 million on a fifty-three-thousand-square-foot facility just to help folks drive around. I was, in fact, the first journalist allowed to prowl the floor of the Traffic Operations Group. It’s an impressive room, right out of Hollywood’s imagination of such places. Three banks of thirty screens each monitor more than two hundred locations on 170 miles of metro highway. The top row of each bank keeps accident sites locked onscreen, while the rest scroll through various camera angles and locations, monitoring rush-hour progress. At an array of a dozen or so desks, Mn/DOT dispatchers and state troopers watch the screens and keep track of other data streams, from electronic in-road traffic counters (called loops) to air patrols. Unlike the CIA, Mn/DOT has a pretty good idea what to do with the information: They adjust ramp meters, post messages on changeable signs, and dispatch help where needed. (Alas, they are powerless to rid the world of its most disturbing and intractable evil—the gawker slow-down.)

None of this can be done on the cheap. System architecture design supervisor Terry Haukom sat down with me to defend some of the gadgets he clearly loves. “A changeable message board costs about $60,000,” he said, “and to the average guy that sounds like a lot of money.” But the average cost of a crash is now close to $20,000, said Haukom. “If we can prevent just three secondary crashes, we’ve made our money back. And I expect to get twenty years out of each sign.”

Since this is all about safety, I asked Haukom about the new microwave technology being installed for traffic counting. I wanted to know if this is roasting drivers. He patiently explained that “microwave” can refer to any radio-wave signal frequency in the gigahertz range. “Your radar detector will go off. But you won’t be able to heat up your sandwich.”

With all these devices at the ready to spot trouble, I wondered if Mn/DOT plans to roll out the heavy artillery for the notorious New Year’s Eve commute, which, after all, will be an hour later and an hour drunker this year. As it happens, they’ll leave on the lights, but Mn/DOT staff will turn night operations over to the State Patrol, just like any other night. Operations manager Nick Thompson apparently doesn’t relish the thought of driving home in the wee hours himself. “We hope to be out of here by about 8:30.” Besides, the morning commute often supplies more entertainment anyway. “Up on 169 for the last few weeks we’ve seen a pig,” said Meinert. “People would call on their cell phones and tell us they saw something.” Eventually, she said, “they had to shoot him.”
—Joe Pastoor

When ex-president Millard Fillmore led a steamboat expedition up the Mississippi 149 years ago, it may have looked like a publicity stunt for the Know-Nothing party. Maybe he was just looking for a good cup of coffee brewed fresh from organic, shade-grown beans. Of course, in 1854, all coffee was organic and shade-grown by default. Dow Chemical had not yet invented the hazardous compounds now in widespread agricultural use, and the hybrid beans designed for growth on deforested mountainsides were not available. Even so, when the Grand Excursion reenactment of Fillmore’s expedition arrives in St. Paul next summer, you can get a shot of the future with an otherwise historically correct cuppa Joe. This is something you could not have found in the metro area as recently as last year: a bean roasted with solar power.

The solar roasting recently began at Old Man River Café on Smith Avenue, just south of the High Bridge. Historian, publisher, and restaurateur Jon Kerr admits the roaster won’t be powered directly by the bank of six photovoltaic panels installed on the café roof in October. “Truth be told,” he said, “it goes into our general electrical supply.” But the 1.1 kilowatt array will deliver thirty amps, roughly the same amount of power required to run the roaster Kerr and co-owner Chuck Debevec use for the shade-grown organics they sell.

When The Rake arrived to have a look, electrician Mike Berg was boring a hole through the Victorian-era brick foundation to admit a conduit that will carry the current from the roof. One of the fifteen-square-foot “Sunny Boy” solar panels was on display inside the café, looking like a blue formica table-top propped against a wall. Nearby, a charity-fundraiser-style thermometer poster showed the cost of the project—an impressive and daunting $12,030.

Like the 1854 expedition, the Sunny Side Project, as it’s been dubbed, has been a bit of an odyssey. Kerr was approached about a year ago by neighbors who thought someone ought to showcase solar technology. On St. Paul’s West Side, environmental causes take on extra clarity in the shadow of Xcel Energy’s High Bridge coal burner. The plant has operated for decades under the EPA’s grandfather clause, which grants exemptions from emission control requirements to older facilities that have not been remodeled. When Kerr agreed to let the café be the poster child for solar power, a small group formed to raise funds. Memberships in “the Sunny Side Club” were sold for fifty dollars and up. More than seventy-five donors have now brought the total to within five hundred dollars of the goal. The end product? Sunny Side Blend, an aromatic medium-light roast of Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Colombian beans.

It’s unlikely that members of Fillmore’s expedition had much in common with the activists behind the Sunny Side Project, some of whom reportedly chafed at the apparent male bias in the brand name of the solar panels. Fillmore was noted for sponsoring compromise slavery legislation that included the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of escaped slaves to their owners even if they were captured in the free North. Fillmore ran for a second term as a member of the evanescent Know-Nothing party on the rather narrow platform of seeking to ban Catholics from holding public office and increasing restrictions on immigration. The expedition reenactment reaches St. Paul next summer, and Kerr has already developed a coffee to bridge the gap: Expedition Coffee is a darker roast than Sunny Side and features the grim countenance of “the Last Whig” himself printed on every bag of beans. Even if the reenactment carries a little baggage from Fillmore’s dubious views, the team will be treated to the most politically correct cup of coffee in Minnesota, and they’ll like it.—Joe Pastoor

Lawyers are the ultimate insiders. Just ask anyone foolhardy enough to represent him- or herself in court. So just how does a lawyer get to be an outsider? Rob Lowe’s stunning 1985 haircut for his new TV series, Lyon’s Den, seems to be doing the trick for him. But around here, nonfictional lawyers do it with art. The evidence was entered into the record recently when “Lawyers as Artists” opened at the newborn Outsiders and Others gallery in downtown Minneapolis. About half a dozen artists, all members in good standing with the Bar Association, hung their work and braced themselves to mingle with a jury of their peers.

Under the questionable influence of chocolate martinis, the crowd gave much attention to a set of lush, erodelic pen-and-ink compositions by attorney Valerie Tremelat. Avron Gordon’s black-and-white photos of lilies were easy on the eyes. Still, there was clearly a drift toward one corner: Just about everyone felt summoned to the crop art produced by Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services attorney Laura Melnick.

Melnick’s work lays claim to outsider status in at least three ways. She has no formal training of any kind in the arts, and crop art itself is an outside medium more associated with the Soybean Belt than the Warehouse District. And being a lawyer originally from Ohio, Melnick herself is an outsider to the rural culture that spawned the form.

“I’m from Cleveland,” she confessed when we spoke at the opening. “I never saw crop art before I moved here and went to the State Fair.” At this year’s State Fair, Melnick entered a subtle satire titled Curious George Looks for Weapons of Mass Destruction, making use of sixteen varieties of seed to depict America’s favorite monkey checking under the yellow hat for VX. It won a blue ribbon and “first place reserve,” a euphemism that means second place. Last year she also took a prize with an entry titled Goodnight Buffoon, featuring the image of Governor Ventura pondering a bowl full of mush at sleepytime. Both works will hang at Outsiders and Others through November 8, though without the usual accompaniment of crop art by her husband and two children, who also hold ribbons from State Fair competition.

Another crowd pleaser was the first item to sell at the opening: a bronze casting of a Homer Simpson Pez dispenser. It was one in a series of Pez castings that includes Inspector Clouseau and the Pink Panther. Homer went quickly at the attractive price of $55. The Pink Panther, however, was priced at $95. Watercolor painter, landscape designer, bronze artist, and District Court Judge Gary Bastian explained the price difference. “I could make up to three hundred of Homer,” he said. And while the Pink Panther Pez can be had in plastic for pretty much anyone who needs one, Bastian broke the mold for the bronze casting. “It’s one of a kind.”—Joe Pastoor

It started with letters in the mail. Then there were the spies. Then one day at an unglamorous neighborhood coffee shop in South Minneapolis, the phone rang. “I’ve been to your café. I know you have a CD player,” said the voice on the phone. Paul knew he was in trouble. It was true; there was a CD player in his café. And if he didn’t do something about it, it could cost him $150,000.

Like most café owners, Paul (last name withheld) doesn’t have $150,000 to throw away. But the caller, a licensing representative with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), has the legal muscle of a half-a-billion-dollar corporation behind him. And Paul’s CD player, though innocent-looking enough, is really a delivery system for the unlicensed performance of copyrighted works that might be registered with ASCAP. Copyright law provides for fines of up to $30,000 per infringement—$150,000 for willful infringement.

Welcome to the world of intellectual property. Pop a CD you paid for into a stereo you paid for in the business you are in hock for. Push play, and check your bed for severed horse heads in the morning.

One might think, for example, that royalties had already been paid when the CD was purchased. True, but that’s called a mechanical royalty, and it’s collected and distributed by the publisher. So why not just play the radio? The stations have already paid the royalties for that, right? Well, get out your tape measure; if your establishment has more than 3,750 square feet (not including parking lot), you need to pay for radio. Got a jukebox? That means you need a “JLO”—a royalty agreement specifically for jukeboxes. What about the bearded, sincere folk guitarist who plays for tips on Saturday nights? Well, he might play a cover of a song copyrighted by someone else, and then you are on the hook, not him.

“Performance rights” are a whole and separate animal from other copyrights, and they are held by only three Performing Rights Organizations (PROs): ASCAP, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC). They have lately come calling to local coffee shops and bars to get their piece of the action. Ask nearly any coffee-shop owner or operator in the metro area about license fees, and terms like “Cosa Nostra” or “protection racket” are bound to come up.

“Somewhere between the Mafia and the Inquisition,” said Paul, describing ASCAP, the day I visited his café. A St. Paul coffee-shop owner, who requested anonymity, echoed, “They really are the music mafia.” Kate Hepp of Gigi’s in South Minneapolis, who has paid BMI for “protection,” told The Rake, “It’s very intimidating, the letters you get.”

The Hamm’s Club brewery show this past September was pretty much what one would expect: a few dozen vendors in the parking lot of a defunct brewery hawking beer collectibles to each other. Some sold genuine antiques, some had kitsch, some not-yet-kitsch, and some never-would-be-kitsch. A guy named Jerry from Fort Worth offered Styrofoam Hamm’s bear statues for $495. A carved wood Leinenkugel’s oar could be had for $45. In this unpredictable market, the table doing the most business was selling hot dogs, chips, and soda.

Business was also brisk at the Hamm’s Club tent. What looked like a thin crowd was, in fact, “a great turnout,” said Jon Morphew, Hamm’s Club chief counsel. The Hamm’s Club has controversial opposition to thank for some extra attention. After raising $12,000 for a six-foot granite monument to the beloved Hamm’s bear, and after securing Park Board approval to place it in Como Zoo, the Hamm’s Club took a slap in the face when the St. Paul City Council voted to table final approval, offering little by way of explanation beyond church-lady mumblings about “indirect promotion of alcohol” from council member Jay Benanav.

Morphew showed me the monument design as he speculated about prospects for its future. It’s a carved headstone, essentially, designed by Bill Kelley, the “Michelangelo of the Hamm’s art world,” according to the club website. The club will gladly accommodate the city and remove the word “beer” from the monument. Morphew also said they would consider placement at the defunct Stroh’s brewery site on the East Side, assuming redevelopment leaves something more than a warehouse or a crater there. If the city does not come up with a placement that satisfies the club, he said, “the bear becomes a free agent.”

Hamm’s Clubbers at the show seemed disappointed but undeterred by this setback. Mary Penning of Inver Grove Heights understands the current of cultural disapproval against which the bear is swimming. She was buying shirts featuring the Hamm’s bear playing hockey. “My kids can’t even wear these to school,” she noted stoically. “We’re so politically correct,” groused a guy called Pat who declined to give his last name. “It started with Joe Camel.”

“They probably don’t even remember who paid for Hamm’s Falls in Como Park,” accused clubber John Husnik.

Jay Benanav wasn’t taking the anti-beer bait anymore when I spoke to him, pointing out that, at age 52, he certainly has “something to show” for his time in the pints. He also seems mindful of the 856 liquor licenses currently held in the St. Paul city limits. But Como Park is in his ward, and he just doesn’t want a headstone there. “It doesn’t have anything to do with being afraid of beer,” he said. “The overriding factor is that it’s a gravestone. Como Park is not an appropriate place for a grave marker. If we don’t have some standards, what’s next? A gravestone to the Cootie Bug?”

Council member Chris Coleman also declined to take an anti-beer stance. He just hates the bear. “This bear has a white belly. What kind of bear has a white belly? We just don’t need schmaltz art in our center park. Now, that little oven mitt that’s advertising for Arby’s is pretty cute. Maybe I’ll see if we can get one of those for the park. Actually, I’d like to have giant statues of the Simpsons all over town, the way we have the Peanuts now.” Coleman was clearly not seeking reelection when I reminded him of the deep feelings many in the Hamm’s Club have for the bear. “Can any of them see their toes?” he asked.

At the brewery show, Kevin Burke had choice words for the City Council. Burke’s uncle was a Hamm’s distributor. He couldn’t say for sure whether the bear will become an endorsement issue in Benanav’s next campaign, but he made the following promise: “I’m gonna jump him like a dime-store pony.”—Joe Pastoor

The character of 26th and Lyndale has changed little in the last few decades. The C.C. Club still has a decent breakfast and a better jukebox. Though Oar Folkjokeopus is gone, the ancient carpets in Treehouse records steeped so long in Oarfolk essence that a sniff can bring the old days back, as you wander through the bins. But after thirty years as a vegetarian landmark, the Mud Pie restaurant has taken down its shingle.

For fundamentalist vegetarians and the carnivores who dated them, the Mud Pie for those three decades supplied a favorite meeting ground. Even hardcore vegans found multiple menu entries, while the meat-and-potatoes crowd was able to get surprisingly logy on soft, dark bean dishes rich with dairy. Complete with the occasional celebrity sighting (Jon Bon Jovi once ate there, you know), there was nothing more anyone could ask of the Pie. Except Chicago-style hot dogs, of course. Enter the Bulldog.

When Mud Pie owner Robbie Stair hung up his apron, Matt Lokowich picked up his own torch. Having always dreamed of having his own Chicago-dog joint, Lokowich had recently flirted with an offer on the West Bank’s Wienery. When the Mud Pie location opened up, he was on it like a rat on a Cheeto.

We looked in the other day. It was three hours before the dinner bell on opening night, and there were still more power tools out than menus. Lokowich chatted with me with the dispersed attention I’ve found to be characteristic of restaurateurs. He had installed a gorgeous bar, refinished the floors, and brightened the place up in a few hundred other ways. And he was steamed up on the subject of Chicago dogs. “I love Chicago-style dogs! People love Chicago-style dogs,” he said, offering his girth as proof of this fact. “It’s nice to get back to basics.”

Lokowich has gone beyond the basics. Even the most venerable wiener cart isn’t likely to keep twenty selections of cold beer on tap. Why it’s taken so long for this combination to tumble outside the ballpark, nobody knows for sure. But the marriage of Chicago dogs and a beer license is an obvious attraction in all directions.

Also beyond the basics is the honor with which Lokowich treats the heritage of the site. The Mud Pie stained glass remains in place. Since Robbie Stair has himself gone into brewing, the Bulldog will make room at the taps when his first kegs are ready. And just in case someone didn’t get the news and shows up hoping for a square vegetarian meal, the menu offers a veggie burger under the name, naturally, Mud Pie. We checked in a few weeks later to find out how the Mud Pie is selling alongside the dogs and roast beef. Lokowich assures us that the veggie burger is moving briskly. Perhaps even more surprising, he seems to have tapped into real demand with his “No Dog” vegetarian wiener. —Joe Pastoor

Weldon Johnson underwent a triple bypass on April 1. Twenty days later, his rooster was gone. “It sure didn’t help his recovery any,” said his daughter, Colleen Johnson, when The Rake discussed the incident with her.

Mr. Johnson first installed the nine-foot fiberglass rooster in front of his Two Harbors gift shop in 1965. Prior to this incident, pranksters had kidnapped the bird twice, and each time he was retrieved in good condition. This time was different. In the early hours of April 21, suspects ripped the defenseless roadside attraction from his pedestal without so much as loosening a nut. Crime scene photos show the cracked and shattered remains where his feet were left behind. When he was fished out of Amity Creek off Seven Bridges Road, the Johnsons discovered even more extensive damage, including a critical wound to the back of the head, and a section missing from his once-proud comb.

When we visited the Johnsons at their store in July, they were upbeat about the prospect of an arrest. After all, there was an eyewitness to the getaway. The ICP (Initial Crime Report) from April 21 states, “A motorist called and reported a brown pickup headed toward Duluth with a giant chicken in the back.” The Johnsons said the witness also got a partial license plate number, and that the suspects were identified as “Easties,” a word which here means, “spoiled rich kids from Duluth’s affluent East Side.” But more than three months later, no arrests have been made, and Two Harbors police report no progress since the recovery of the victim. In fact, they react a bit wearily to inquiries.

It’s possible that the THPD has grown cynical about the matter. Media saturation of the case reached as far as the New York Post and even Minnesota Monthly, while crime against humans has maintained its pace without regard to the story. Even so, the fiberglass population of the state remains among the most vulnerable to such attacks. From his office in Sparta, Wisconsin, Jim Schauf told us about numerous oversized fiberglass attractions that have been targeted by pranksters and vandals. “A fiberglass skier we made for a resort out here, someone shot an arrow through it. We also had a monkey stolen. That was a felony. That thing was worth $7,000 dollars.” Shauf’s business is called F.A.S.T. (Fiberglass Animals Shapes and Trademarks). They not only manufacture most of the oversized icons of roadside culture we know and love, but they are often the first responders when tragedy strikes. Five years ago, in Frazee, Minnesota, the world’s largest turkey went up in a fireball. F.A.S.T. saved the day with a replacement even larger than the first. While the flameout of “Big Tom” was caused by a stray welding torch, Schauf chalked up most incidents to “high school mascot stuff” and football rivalries.

Some victims, however, are never made whole. Few in Blue Earth have forgotten the day when Little Green Sprout was decapitated. Even the Jolly Green Giant was powerless to stop the carnage when Sprout’s lifeless head was dangled from a highway overpass by Fairmont vandals. He has not been replaced.

The Weldon rooster has come out of his scrape considerably better than Sprout. Workers from the Northwest Airlines A320 maintenance base in Duluth came to the rescue, meticulously restoring the rooster in their fiberglass studio, at no cost to the Johnsons. What brought about this uncharacteristic act of corporate citizenship is hard to say. Flightless poultry, however grand, doesn’t generate the marketing image a struggling airline typically wants. But there is that matter of the $838 million bailout from the state that required NWA to build the Duluth base in the first place, followed shortly by $850 million in union concessions negotiated by U.S. Rep. James Oberstar. NWA may have decided it was time to give something back. The proud fiberglass sentinel is back at his post and looking more alpha than Al Cecci at the height of his powers.

But with the case unsolved, is Two Harbors law enforcement concerned about its image? I wanted to help, so I called up north to offer a detective tip I picked up. Has the victim had a chance to pick the suspects out of a lineup, I asked? “We didn’t have a visual,” said Chief of Police Rick Hogenson. “The rooster didn’t talk to anyone when we found him. He was pretty much comatose.”—Joe Pastoor

The Schell’s brewery is reached by way of a trucker’s nightmare: a narrow twisting ribbon of blacktop that snakes up a wooded hill to the top of the bluffs overlooking the Cotton River on the southern edge of New Ulm. Most of the original brick buildings remain, converted to a museum, a gift shop, and offices. The 1885 mansion serves as a special events facility. Peacocks and their mates strut the grounds and one, a cock named Freddy, announces the comings and goings of commercial vehicles with squawking of remarkable volume. Four whitetails still inhabit the deer park that was one of August Schell’s favorite diversions.

Jodi Marti is married to the great-great-grandson of August. Her official title in the company is a trade secret, but her duties include playing a delightful June Cleaveresque role as cheerful housewife to an entire brewery, taking on such tasks as dropping family recipes into press kits that make it clear why beer was once promoted as a digestive aid. Even if she dines regularly on “sausage-stuffed beef rouladen with beer sauce,” she stays fit maintaining the grounds and gardens with the help of staffer Tammy Anderson. On the morning of my visit, Anderson pointed out the favorite basking spots of the garter snakes who populate the formal gardens. Whimsical sculptures of gnomes play cards under a fieldstone gazebo. The odor of cooking wort from the brewery wafts overhead. What decent beer wouldn’t want a home in a place like this?

Over the years, a number of orphaned beers have come to the Schell’s doorstep, wrapped in blankets, looking for a place to ferment. Twenty-one different beers are now brewed there under contract, including worthy competitor James Page. And now Grain Belt Premium, the only other beer with as much Minnesota history behind it as Schell’s, has made its home there. But Grain Belt Premium is no contract-brewed foster child. Evidence of its full membership in the Schell family arrived on the day of our visit; two flatbed trucks came from St. Cloud bearing a pair of spanking-new stainless steel brewing vats dedicated exclusively to the production of Grain Belt Premium.

To chat about the recent acquisition, I met with Jodi Marti’s husband, Schell’s President Ted Marti. His oak-trimmed, wallpapered office is a remnant of the original August Schell residence now attached to the brewery building. Marti is a soft-spoken guy, a perfect spy in the John LeCarre sense—a man of such average appearance he might have trouble attracting a waiter’s attention in an uncrowded restaurant. But on this day he glowed with paternal pride on the subject of the four-ton cone-shaped vats that will brew nearly 200,000 bottles of GBP every five weeks. Brewmasters know them as “uni-tanks,” which means they are insulated to permit individual temperature regulation. After fermentation, yeast can be drawn off, leaving the beer to age and pre-finish in the same tank. Giant holes were cut in the brewery roof to admit this new state-of-the-art technology, but Marti said it’s worth it for the sake of the beer; older methods might involve as many as three tanks for a single batch. Fewer transfers means better beer.

“Whenever you move beer, there’s always a danger of harming it,” explained Ted Marti.
“Unless it’s moving from the bottle into the consumer,” I pointed out. The fifth-generation brewmaster quite agreed.