Author: Joe Pastoor

The public’s inclination to tithe is unpredictable, but demand for beer is pretty much constant. That truth explains the genesis of a new homeless shelter funded in part by beer sales. It’s the result of an interesting coalition: Love Power Church, St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, and Finnegan’s Irish Ale.

Love Power Church had a space, St. Stephen’s had start-up money, and Jaquie Berglund had experience marketing beer for Kieran’s Irish Pub. “I’m just trying to sell beer and I’m just trying to raise money for the poor. I’m trying to make a difference in a very creative way,” said Berglund over pints at The Local recently. “You can’t keep going back to the same pockets for the same money.” To that end, Berglund founded the Spud Society, a charitable foundation devoted to raising funds by marketing potato-related products.

Pairing consumerism with charity is not new. Paul Newman’s self-proclaimed “Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good” has been going on for 20 years. His salad dressings and spaghetti sauces have generated $125 million for various causes. It’s been tried with beer before, too. Professional contrarian Dean Crist spent three years campaigning against Native American fishing rights in Wisconsin via sales of “Treaty Beer.” Defunct by 1990, the brew did find its clientele, but Crist never managed to keep contract brewers committed to a product that got the public pissed in the wrong way.

Berglund has run into no such trouble with Finnegan’s Irish Amber, the first product commissioned by the Spud Society to generate income for the Love Power Shelter. You can find it at MGM and many other liquor stores, and the kegs are in rotation at 30 local watering holes, including The Local. Presently, Finnegan’s is brewed under contract with Schell and James Page, but the Spud Society plans to consolidate production with a new contract at Summit. “The product is really taking off,” said Berglund, thanks in part to a pro-bono ad campaign crafted by a pair of anonymous mavericks from a trendy downtown ad shop. Finnegan’s, they say, is “mentioned in four out of five Irish confessionals,” a claim not yet verified by St. Patrick’s.

If you’re going to argue the merits of charitable brewing, it’s best to do it over a pint. Samples conducted liberally over the last few weeks have found Finnegan’s worthy of its goal, though Berglund declined to reveal exactly what role potatoes play in the recipe. The draft version presents a creamy, malty body akin to the honorable Irish stouts, but much lighter. The bottled version is less complex, and more crisp with a slight hoppy bitterness. In the Gastronomer’s home, it has so far been matched nicely with chorizo quesadillas and Big Mike’s Italian subs, making Finnegan’s the least painful tithe of fiscal 2002.

On the one-year anniversary, security checkpoints at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport’s Lindbergh terminal looked-well staffed and efficient. Most ticket holders moved through with only a whiff of delay, even young men dressed entirely in black. And if a profiling pattern emerged at all, security staff appeared to select elderly white men for closer inspection at about double the rate of other demographics. They were ushered to the side where adjacent stations were installed to allow passenger flow to continue. Green-gloved screeners with metal-detector wands drew outlines around the men, requested unbuckling of belts and shoe removal and maintained a calming stream of barbershop patter. Surviving this trial, the old men shuffled in socks to a chair, recovered their shoes, and headed to the concourse, in no discernable way bent on jihad.

The nascent Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken pains to alert the flying public to new rules about what you can’t take with you on a plane. But in a state where folks take only ten weeks to forget how to drive on snow, the security process still produces a reliable stream of dangerous items orphaned at the checkpoints by people who head for the airport with corkscrews, scissors, lighter fluid, mace, lock-blade knives, and daggers. Believe it or not, one year after the main event, nice Minnesotans still occasionally show up with box cutters. All of the above were harvested in about three hours at a single checkpoint the other day. Asked to name the strangest thing he’s come across, Northwest employee Ken Lahti’s memory was fresh. “This morning I found a quart of acetone.”

The bulk of these items are surrendered voluntarily, says Acting Deputy Director for the TSA’s local field office, Becky Roering, a polished 30-something from Melrose, Minnesota who learned her chops as an air marshal. “Two months ago we put amnesty bins in front of the checkpoints for passengers to get rid of these prohibited items and save themselves some time in the screening process. We’re going to find it anyway, and here’s a chance to get rid of it before you get to the area,” said Roering. Other accommodations recently offered to passengers include a mail station at Traveler’s Assistance where you can mail your Swiss Army knife back home instead of tossing it.

The bins are well marked to avoid being mistaken for trash cans, but the compression of decision-making in this situation has yielded an odd slice of traveling life: Sandwiches, salt and pepper shakers, sewing kits, and marijuana have all found their way into the bins. Mace and pepper spray are common. One security staffer who declined to be named also declined to name the specific items in a collection of “sex toys” that had been discovered in the bins recently. Nor could he guess exactly how they might have been used to threaten the security of a flight.

Most of these orphans are the product of idiocy, not evil. Many end up here precisely because their owners are not in the habit of leaving home without them. Keepsakes or keychains tossed by habit into a briefcase can undergo a surprising transformation when they are brought near an airplane, where a humble pen-knife can receive a field promotion to a Legitimate Threat To The Free World. Marc Mannes, a research director for a local non-profit, lost his Swiss Army knife in just this way last year, not long after it was proved that you could take on the world’s only superpower with $20 worth of utility knives. “I just had it in my pocket with my change,” said Mannes. He wonders to this day if his confiscated treasure has found a new home.

It has not. Checkpoint jetsam is inventoried, but not saved. Northwest Airlines runs an incinerator on site, said Roering. “It’s all dumped in there and melted down.”

When the wind is right, a battalion of vents pushing through the roof of 3753 Nicollet Avenue pump a fried, spicy scent into the sky that can reach you as far away as Stevens and 38th. There are throngs of eaters who are cultishly devoted to the soul-food of Shorty and Wag’s Wings and Ribs. They come from as far away as Stillwater, Faribault, and north Minneapolis. For 23 years, this take-out stand has been getting people four-cornered on the cheap. On a recent afternoon, The Rake met the master of the joint. Not the famed Art Song, under whose name the establishment first opened in 1978, and not Wag, who left about five years ago. It was Harold Preevish, a.k.a. Shorty, the only constant in a series of partnerships at this location for more than two decades.

A full-time staffer named Carrie led me through a Wonka-like stainless steel maze of kitchens, coolers, and food-processing machines. There stood Shorty and his fry-cook. They had been forcibly relocated to the most remote of his kitchens when city workers broke the gas line serving his main operation. With a long pole, he worked a massive pot of greens in smoked-turkey broth. The short and soft-spoken chef took the accident in stride. Luckily, his redundant kitchen is served by a different gas line, so half of his dozen deep fryers kept the wings moving to the front.

At 2 p.m., he unloaded 60 pounds of ribs from his vintage electric smoker. They had slowly roasted since 6 that morning. The smoker, which has lasted longer than most marriages, is fed with hickory sawdust. Shorty proudly described how he repairs and maintains it himself. Another machine he demonstrated looked like a stainless-steel raffle-ticket barrel; a motorized crank tumbled dozens of wings in batter and spices. A salted bucket then received the wings for delivery to the fryer.

In a reversal of its decline as a functional part of living chickens, the wing has here undergone a dramatic evolution in the after-life. It dominates over menu habitat once shared with Art Song’s egg rolls and the legendary Siamese hot dog (a hot dog slit length-wise to accept a strip of cheese, wrapped in a wonton skin, deep-fried and covered with spices). Like Art Song and Wag, egg rolls and Siamese hot dogs have left the partnership, but chicken wings thrive.

On a wall-mounted calculator, Shorty figured how many wings he serves in a two-day production cycle. “Forty-three cases, 240 wings a case. Let’s see… that’s 10,320 wings.” He seemed dumbstruck by the number, and did the math again. It was true.

The retail end, a window-walled store front in the southwest corner of the building, has changed nothing but the prices since this writer first stepped through the door 13 years ago. Cravings and budgets still reach their compromise during long staring matches with the light-up menu. There is fried okra, greens, hush puppies, black-eyed peas, and other sides to the wings-and-ribs staples. Chit-chat is sparse to none among the counter crowd gathered over the boomerang-patterned Formica.

A customer named Jenny, packing off with a carton of wings, had come some distance. She professed her taste for Shorty’s hushpuppies, which I had never tried. She promptly produced a bag from her take-out carton, and offered one. It was smooth, light, hot, and deep-fried. “I’m eating them on the way home in the car,” she said. I could understand why.

Fill a public swimming pool with kids on any of the scorching days to come, and sooner or later someone’s going to shout, “Marco!” Several others will shout, “Polo!” and in the summer heat, this vexing water game is reborn.

The person shouting “Marco” is “it,” and must tag one of the “Polos.” It’s tricky because the “Marco” has to perform this task in water, without the benefit of eyesight. While they are usually trusted to keep their eyes shut, “Marcos” have been known to cheat.

Like building meth labs and bonsai gardening, instructions for this simple activity have proliferated online. Since the game consists mostly of delivering misleading information over a distance to the uninformed, it can easily be taken for a grim parable of the world wide web. Like everything else on the net, it now spreads unchecked across the heartland. At the St. Louis Park Aquatic Park some of the game’s admitted participants are also pool employees.

“I liked that game,” admitted ticket-taker Katie Johnson one recent afternoon. She stressed the past tense. Her companion, Jessie Lee, added that at their age (around 15) priorities have shifted too far guyward to get into the spirit. Even so, kids old enough to drive have owned up to The Rake that they still get a kick out of blind water tag.

Lifeguards have also taken notice of the game, though they say it is easier to hear it than to see it. While none would consent to playing the game while on duty—indeed, they preferred not even to talk about it while working—they have one thing in common with those who do: They have no idea what the game has to do with the 13th century explorer from Venice for whom the game is named. Venice is, of course, full of water. And Marco Polo sought the unknown. But to a number, both players and observers of the game find no connection to the father of the Eurasian spice trade. “I have no idea,” is the mantra on this topic, though a few are willing to ruminate on the matter.

“He was a guy who went to China,” said Jessie Lee, betting on historical fact. During the five o’clock safety break during which the pool is emptied of swimmers and checked for victims, one lifeguard warmed to the topic. “Maybe,” she said, “he was blind.”

At least 10,000 whitetail deer will give their lives this year to auto-animal conflict, converting Minnesota’s roads into a 130,000-mile dinner table for a growing population of crows. Depending on when you count, Minnesota’s whitetail population rises to about 1.1 million (about 20 percent of the state’s human inhabitants) before the fall hunt. At a glance, roads are hardly a good deal for the whitetail, few of whom drive at all, but who suffer crash fatality rates at least 16 times that for Minnesota humans. So it makes sense that MnDOT is working to develop technology that might keep the critters off your hood in years to come. They’ve added an amber light to the top of existing “deer crossing” signs. Nearby motion sensors can activate the light via transmitters for about a minute at a time to warn drivers. If a two-year trial at three locations shows promise, the system could be deployed statewide.

In the meantime, the car-animal death match continues, and someone has to get rid of the leftovers. The Rake recently met with several Minnesotans who have stepped up to the job in the years since the DNR relinquished the responsibility in 1987.

Rick Johnson has contracted with counties (including Hennepin) and cities to dispose of whitetail road-kills for the past 12 years. “It’s really nothing special,” Johnson said modestly. “I have a winch and a truck and a board I put up to the back and throw the winch around the neck.” By lunchtime on the day we spoke, he had recovered six animals this way. Johnson strongly disapproves of local maintenance operations that simply stack the animals and mulch them with their woodchipping operations. It’s not unheard of for snowmobilers, for example, to collide with these above-ground graves, he said. “It’s disgusting.” MnDOT’s Kent Barnard states emphatically that MnDOT does not apply this disposal method to any road kill, but that it is approved by the Pollution Control Agency and may be practiced in some counties. MnDOT only uses landfills licensed to receive the animals, though in remote areas they can be dragged clear of the road and left for the benefit of scavengers. How does Rick Johnson honor the dead? He delivers about 1,000 deer each year to feed private collections of wolves, tigers, lions, and other predators, a route that puts 80,000 miles on his truck annually.

At the top of the food chain, humans rarely miss an opportunity for free meat. Out of 10,000 deer confirmed dead in traffic by the DNR, about 4,000 will be claimed with “possession permits,” available at no cost to folks who like to eat what they run over. At least one MnDOT employee admits having fed the family this way, and Kent Barnard promotes this use of unintended harvests. “What you call road kill, some folks call food,” he quipped, cautioning that penalties including vehicle forfeiture await those who bypass the permit process.

Closer to home, the victims are less likely to be supper than the family pussycat or pooch, which makes for a more delicate topic with Minneapolis Animal Control’s Bob Marotto. “We don’t refer to it as road kill,” Marotto recently said. “For us, we are dealing with ‘deceased animals.’ Obviously people have a close bond with their pets and we would absolutely never refer to them as road kill.” In Minneapolis, it’s Marotto’s sad task to impound 5,500 to 7,000 animals annually. In 2001, about 1,000 of them were pets killed in traffic. Marotto and his staff also undertake the job of owner notification, “One of the most difficult things we deal with.”

But for a chosen few creatures, the end of the road in Minnesota is also the launch of a more distinguished career—in modeling, naturally. The University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum holds one of the DNR’s handful of salvage permits, which allows Jennifer Menken and other museum staff to resurrect any dead animal for educational purposes. Current road kills on display are the raccoon in the museum’s touch-and-see room, and the popular “wing table,” which makes use of the flight anatomy when “the rest of the animal was too badly damaged,” said Menken. She noted that a wolf recently retired from the exhibit was also a rare road kill trophy. Eventually, said Menken, the wolf was “loved to pieces” by the 700 kids a day hosted by the museum in springtime—a kinder death, no doubt, than its first.

Monica Hammersten woke up at 3 a.m. one night recently. She smelled beef cooking. “And I think, ‘Oh, now what is that?’ So I come running downstairs. I had a bunch of hamburgers pattied out for the next day, and Jack had them all in a frying pan. He was standing there in his P.J.s just flipping them, as happy as can be.”

As his mother told this tale on him at home in St. Louis Park, lanky 10-year-old Jack paced the floor with a puckish smile and a sound-muffling headset over his ears. He’s autistic, and doesn’t like the disorganized sounds of his little brothers Elijah and Benjamin at play. But he likes Alice Cooper, and he loves to cook. While many autistic people are overstimulated by tactile sensation as well as sound, Jack delights in the pebbly texture and sound of couscous in a pot.

As a class, cooks are eccentrics, as documented by Anthony Bourdain. And even by autistic standards, Jack is no exception. Neighbors who have left their doors unlocked have found Jack undertaking his craft in their kitchens, his frontside dusted with flour. And his many night-time wanderings have taken him to McDonald’s, where his parents once found him standing next to the drive-through speaker repeating a favorite selection from his limited verbal output: “Burger, burger, burger, burger.” It’s an incident that keeps Tom and Monica Hammersten amused when they imagine it from the cashier’s point of view.

While it’s hard to guess at Jack’s point of view, it has dawned on Tom and Monica that his need for lifetime care will continue past their ability to provide it. Some autistic people learn to function in relative independence, but Jack’s tendency to wander and his experimental use of knives and toasters are likely to make him a danger to himself 24/7 for the foreseeable future. The Hammerstens estimate Jack has generated at least four calls to 911 since they moved to Minnesota eight years ago.

Parents who can handle that kind of stress naturally end up in the restaurant business. Behold, the birth of À La Mode at the Mall of America. Should the fickle gods of food service smile on Monica and her business partner, Marilee McGraw, their dessert shop may someday fund a group home custom–built for Jack and other autistic people. “I dream,” said Monica, “of fall afternoons in a warm kitchen with Jack and others like him cooking up their favorites for our big family dinners. This is the home I will build for Jack so that I can feel secure that when Tom and I are gone, Jack is going to have a great place to live.”

For now, this dream is tucked into a 790 square–foot wedge on South Avenue near the Mall of America’s food court, a spot once occupied by a hemp shop. À La Mode offers over-the-counter American desserts. It’s a modest mission: Monica and Mariliee want to offer a small menu of traditional items made well.

Very well. The apple crisp sampled by The Rake achieved the rare ideal of tender apples and crisp oatmeal. Under two scoops of cinnamon ice cream from the Edina Creamery, it was nearly impossible to unhand for a stab at the fudge-drizzled cheesecake. A chocolate chip cookie the size of a dinner plate met with unqualified approval from our five-year-old guest. Adults who insisted on sharing detected the signature of real butter. “I just found out from our Sysco rep that we use more butter than any other restaurant in the mall,” said Monica. A white-chocolate raspberry scone went into storage against leaner times.

Things are hopping this year at the new Fifth Precinct station house just south of the beleaguered Lake Street K-Mart. New crime stats show Whittier Park pulling ahead of Third Precinct neighbor Phillips, which has hogged the crime spotlight for the better part of a decade. In February, Whittier reported 167 “part one” crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft, auto theft, and arson) to Phillips’ 131. Add a homicide to the normally tranquil Linden Hills neighborhood, and it seems like Fifth Precinct cops have plenty to do. Thus one may wonder why they’re so concerned about graffiti.

But under the controversial CODEFOR program, the Minneapolis Police Department operates a two-member anti-graffiti team out of the Fifth Precinct. CODEFOR stands for Computer Optimized Deployment Focused On Results, which in the king’s English means “look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves.” Acting on the fashionable theory that petty crimes create an environment that incubates more serious ones, CODEFOR has gained attention by cracking down on loiterers, jaywalkers, prostitutes, and other small-time offenders. The indirect effect these efforts have on serious crime are then tracked and analyzed on—what else?—computers.

Naturally, graffiti ended up in the mix. And that’s a good thing, according to Sgt. Rick Duncan, who serves as top banana of the team. Just don’t look for the “Computer Optimized” part any time soon. The City of Minneapolis’ budget crunch has indefinitely postponed Duncan’s planned web site, which would have given the public direct access to the fight against taggers and “writers” (as spray-paint artists optimistically describe themselves).

Even by CODEFOR standards, graffiti doesn’t sit high on the food chain of crime, which also may explain why funds have still not arrived for Duncan’s team to go dot-com. Gang tags account for only about 20 percent of graffiti complaints. Talking on his office telephone the other day, Duncan acknowledged that most taggers and writers have a low crossover rate into other illegal activity. “That’s pretty much it,” he said. Still, Duncan noted that graffiti artists tend to be well-connected to “the drug culture.” Plus, he wryly observed, “most of the paint ain’t bought.” In other cities, he added, violent turf wars have broken out among writers trying to protect their urban playgrounds.

On the subject of legitimate space for writers, Duncan offered this utopian thought: “If we could have a wall where I knew that only graffiti would be on that wall and would be nowhere else in the city, I think I’d build it.” But the nearest thing to such a wall, the Intermedia Arts building on Lyndale Avenue, just a few blocks north of Lake Street, offers no such comfort, even though it’s officially fair game for anyone with a spray can. “Because of that Intermedia Arts wall, you can’t go a five block radius without seeing stop signs and mailboxes covered with graffiti.”

The north wall of nearby Herkimer brewpub is thickening with regular applications of stainkiller, and general manager Chad Jamrozy confirmed that there is no graffiti shortage in that neck of Minneapolis. He doesn’t blame it on Intermedia, though. “Graffiti is really just part of the background in any urban environment,” he said, noting that his bathroom walls sometimes get more ink than the exterior.

Despite Intermedia’s trademark graffiti walls, Tom Borrup offers no defense for what he calls “aerosol art” in unauthorized places. The executive director of Intermedia Arts for more than 20 years, he’s posted admonishments on his walls asking writers to “respect the neighborhood,” among other things. “Tagging,” he opined, “is just bad behavior and destruction of property. It’s not art.” Even so, he acknowledged that more than a few “aerosol artists” practice on unsanctioned sites, motivated by exhibitionism or just a desire for space. And others, he asserted, may not feel they leave a wall any worse off for the enhancements they leave behind. “Those are the architectural critics,” said Borrup with bemused chagrin. “But it’s bad behavior. They shouldn’t do it.” In this respect, Borrup said he and Duncan are “on the same page,” even though Intermedia’s walls put a burr under the Sergeant’s saddle.

If Borrup played the square on the subject of illegal aerosol art, Sgt. Duncan revealed a jot of hipness in his heart, despite his line of work. “I’ve said all along that graffiti is an art form. It has to be. If you can go down to the Walker Art Center and see a screen door propped up against a wall and they can call it art, you’ve gotta call graffiti art. The problem is you can’t go and put it on somebody else’s property without their permission. Do I like graffiti? Some of it’s pretty cool stuff.”

Tucked neatly into a shelf of dainty Victorian houses on the bluffs of St. Paul, the home of Charles Arndt and Kelly Bjorklund was the site of U.S. Senate incumbent Paul Wellstone’s February 9 fund–raiser. The Rake was in attendance to savor the food and sample the politics.

Contributors to the Wellstone campaign were confronted with a buffet that looked almost too good to touch. Sliced vegetables, presented attractively alongside a neat array of dips, were crisp on the tooth. In addition to the de rigeur spinach dip and its many variations, Bjorklund gave a clever nod to the Lebanese history of the neighborhood with a bowl of excellent hummus balanced with lemon and garlic. Fresh fruits dominated the west end of the table, where there was a striking presentation of fresh raspberries mounted in a hot pepper raspberry preserve on a foundation of cream cheese.

Senator Wellstone held the center of attention, but a tray of baby shrimp in whipped cream cheese and cocktail sauce with Spanish olives was popular too. Also favored was a creamy artichoke gratin with blue cheese, sweet red peppers, and garlic, though many were kept at bay as the senator’s sincere gesticulations over this area of the table did not stop for quite some time. But with a great selection of red and white wines and a truly international bin of beers within easy reach, guests were happy to a number. And at an entry fee of $25, the value was truly Democratic. Four out of four stars.

On the other end of the cities and the political spectrum, donors to Norm Coleman’s Senate campaign were invited for face time on February 12 at Jazzmine’s on Third Street, just around the corner from Sex World in downtown Minneapolis.
While Coleman has left little doubt that he would eat anything Dick Cheney feeds him to win this election, The Rake sincerely hoped the $100 minimum would win better fare for the party faithful. Alas, after the tedious battle for downtown parking at 6 p.m., Republicans found themselves paying their own way at the expensive bar and filing past a short table of uninspiring victuals.

The dim lighting of the cheese tray was of no consequence, as the selections all tasted about the same. The main attraction, barbecued pork in a sterno-heated tub, was odd given Coleman’s Jewish heritage. It had long since progressed from tender to mushy. Equally underwhelming were the grilled chicken skewers which, though blackened with grill lines, offered no hint of smoke or any other flavor unless dipped in the adjacent green sauce that tasted strongly of rancid mayonnaise. Excusing the pork, a staffer indicated that Norm does not eat at fund–raisers. That may augur a long season of dyspepsia for GOP contributors. One out of four stars.

Kent Barnard is a road-salt aficionado. He is also a public relations expert for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, tirelessly striving to let you know that much is being done to keep your automobile out of the ditch this and every season. If breaking news about all kinds of alternative de-icers and road sensors kept him busy last winter, there’s something about MnDOTs errands that transcends all seasons. “We’re always ready,” Barnard. “If it snows in July, we could get out there.”

Widely reported to be yellow, the darling of new de-icers this year was a corn based product from Minnesota Corn Processors subsidiary Glacial Technologies. This space-age compound can push melting points down to 40-below zero Fahrenheit. This winter, it was tested on the Lafayette bridge in St. Paul and two other undisclosed metro locations.

Still, the largest story by weight is salt. Because salt has, over the years, saved so much of the time that might have been spent prayerfully greeting loss of traction, riding in tow trucks, and sipping burnt coffee in body-shop waiting rooms, it deserves consideration in proportion to the hundreds of thousands of tons MnDOT keeps on hand.

Each year an average of 200,000 tons of rock salt are
applied to Minnesota roads. That amounts to about 102 pounds annually for each vehicle registered in the state. This is certainly a large amount, but as a percentage of body mass, it compares favorably to the 10 pounds of salt the vehicle’s driver can expect to consume over the same period. So called “nutritional salt,” though, is less likely to contain sodium Ferro cyanide. (Barnard says this anti-clumping agent is not nearly as nasty as it sounds).

Still, however you cut it, 200,000 tons is a lot of anything, and while this writer has no idea how many times it would circle the earth if each grain was laid end to end, it’s quite true that if the annual dose were dissolved into Lake Superior, it would become more saline than the Atlantic Ocean in less than two years.

While no one at MnDOT has proposed the salinization of Lake Superior, road salt does go somewhere after it’s done its work on the pavement. George Hudak, Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, has discovered chlorine levels in fresh surface water that can’t be explained any other way. The environmental implications are not necessarily clear, but, Hudak speculates, “It’s not so good for your steel canoe.”

Most commercial rock salt began as efflorescent deposits from evaporated prehistoric oceans. In order to form the massive domes of halite from which it is mined in Michigan, Kansas, and Louisiana, Hudak says these evaporates must spend millions of years compressed under millions of tons of rock. Being of lower density, it gradually pushes up through faults toward the earth’s surface, where Cargill and Morton lie in wait for the harvest.

Salt had been established for millennia as a fundamental element of political and military force. The Roman empire, known for its roads if not for the salting of them, nonetheless coined the word “salarium” (salary) from the occasional use of salt as payment to soldiers. Hundreds of years later, Marco Polo reported watching Roman authorities mint salt-cake coins bearing the emperor’s seal. The power and influence of Danish kings was once estimated by the amount of salt each guest could expect at a feast.

By these standards, King Jesse Ventura is a mighty lord indeed, with his sovereign rule over 292,000 tons this year alone. But before he is duly venerated, forget not the kingdom that lies to the east. Wisconsin reportedly treats its roads with as much as 700,000 tons in a single year, says Kent Barnard.

Barnard and Hudak speculate that the “lake effect” accounts for Wisconsin’s larger share of the salt pie. Yet it may be worth noting that Wisconsin’s inhabitants, according to the Beer Institute, consumed an estimated 1,165,251 more barrels of beer than Minnesotans in the year 2000. Even when adjusted for population that’s more than a third of a barrel more per person. Which raises the possibility that Wisconsin roads merely seem more slippery.