Author: 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…

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…

You’ve seen them: the new passenger vehicles with pickup truck beds sprouting from their behinds. The Subaru Baja, the Chevrolet Avalanche, the Cadillac Escalade EXT. An automotive slice of the 70s slid into this century, along with the bell-bottoms and halter-tops. Avacado-colored refrigerators can’t be far off. But can any of these freshly minted sleds…

It’s not often that someone reads the Gastronomer’s mind; it’s more likely that someone will read The Rake, if that tells you anything. But a fit of Weltschmerz left me unable to decide what to eat one recent evening, and lucky for me it was a Tuesday, and the psychic Ruth Jordan was at Santorini,…

At the 2002 State Fair, the Minnesota Pork Producers Association unveiled a catchy new slogan: “Today’s Pork: Created With Enduring Values.” Ever curious, the Gastronomer asked a representative if these might be, specifically, Christian values. According to Muslim values, of course, pork is “haram”—not allowed. To Jews, pork is “treyf,” or not kosher. “Rural values,”…

Alan Ralston started collecting De Sotos in the mid-80s, including the white wagon with a 361 parked in the front of his shop, one of two street-worthy sleds he has so far restored from his fleet of nine or ten. In back, one of the Fireflites holds an intact Torsion-Aire suspension. “I would have been…