The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Like it Used to Be

    A picture of Broadway Street in Gilbert from 1910 looks surprisingly similar to one taken yesterday. Sure, there are now streetlights and pavement and tall trees, but the strip is still lined with old-fashioned, flat-roofed buildings, none more than a couple of stories high. While nearby Ely, in catering to canoeists and nostalgia seekers, has come to resemble the “Minnesot-ah!” store at the Mall of America, tiny Gilbert stubbornly remains the real deal.

    Founded as a village in 1896, Gilbert was originally and optimistically named Sparta. It was also located on another spot. But when iron ore was discovered there, the townspeople had to move, buildings and all. With the new location came the new name. In the early 1900s, it was thought that Gilbert would become huge, bigger than Hibbing, even—thus its early nickname, the “Village of Destiny.” The town built a wide, wooden main street, now Broadway, which was part of a twenty-eight-mile boardwalk connecting a string of Mesabi Range towns. Gilbert was also the eastern terminus of the Mesabi Electric Railway, a streetcar line that went to Hibbing.

    Gilbert never did become the jewel of the Range, but its streets continue to be lively and well-kept, its storefronts occupied. At one end of Broadway sits the Iron Range Historical Society, a low brick building that used to be the city hall/police station/jail. There, the curious can view artifacts from Will Steger’s North Pole expedition, jail cells straight out of Mayberry R.F.D., and an impressive mining exhibit. Food options include Koshar’s Sausage Kitchen, specializing in wild game dressing and hand-crafted ethnic sausages (including potato and blood versions), and the Memory Lane Café, which serves hearty breakfasts and homemade soups and pies, the blueberry being especially scrumptious. Gilbert’s best restaurant is also its most unlikely, a Jamaican joint called the Whistling Bird. It draws so many customers from nearby towns that a person is lucky to get a table on a Saturday night.

    When Gilbert incorporated, the first act of its village council was to grant a liquor license. Today, the town still has just two churches but nine bars, all on Broadway. Nick’s is one of the best. Owner Nick Vukelich is an old-timer with a lazy eye, a fever for sailing ships, and a deep love of polka. Representative of his cheeky sense of humor, the sign in the front window reads, “Sorry, we’re open.” About the only thing missing in Gilbert is a place to stay. For that, travelers must drive four miles to Eveleth, where the tidy Koke’s Motel awaits. It gets enthusiastic recommendations from the patrons at Nick’s. That’s the neighborly way things work on the Range. —Jennifer Vogel

  • Man Handled!

    If there’s one thing the mainstream media loves more than creating its own celebrities, it’s a good old-
    fashioned rags-to-riches story. So much the better if that classic American journey involves flesh peddling at one end and a prominent masthead title at the other. That’s why there’s no hotter commodity in local journalism these days than Donny Highrise, the former meatpacker and male escort who’s parlayed his colorful past into a six-figure book deal with Regnery Press—and an editor’s gig at the house organ of the Twin Cities zeitgeist, “Jeepers” magazine. Look for Donny’s memoir, “Nude Beneath the Chaps: Packing Meat, Throwing Heat, and Grinding Sausage,” early in 2006.

  • Kristina Larsson

    Kristina Larsson always wanted to dance, but she was turned off by the phony smiles she saw fixed on the faces of most performers. “When I saw flamenco, I thought, ‘Wow! They’re not smiling!’” she says. It was that subtle epiphany that helped this Minnesotan fall in love with a dance associated with the sultry climes of Southern Spain. It happened on her thirty-eighth birthday: She had been wandering around Paris for six months, a painter/waitress on her first visit overseas, and three weeks before her return home, she decided to take a flamenco class. “That was the end of life as I formerly knew it.” Now Larsson’s own company and dance school, Anda Flamenco, is part of a surprisingly robust local flamenco scene. “It’s the climate,” says Larsson. “We’re attracted to opposites.” Kristina de Sacramento, as she’s known onstage at nightspots like Babalu and Nochee, travels to Spain every year to study dance. What if she should become stranded on a desert island en route? Here’s what she’d want to have on hand:


    1. I’d bring my cat. Cats fascinate me. Time stops, and I feel like a kid when I watch them. They are the most amazing physical creatures. When I’m teaching flamenco to non-dancers, I teach them to walk like a panther. That creeping weightlessness, that impending doom to the prey–that’s very much an idee of flamenco. You stalk the audience a lot.



    2. My dancing shoes and a board to dance on. I’d need a board because the shoes wouldn’t make sound on the sand, and that sound is essential to the dance. Flamenco shoes are like an instrument. The only good ones are made in Spain. They have steel arches. The heels and the points of the shoe have tiny nails in them, to give support and make sound. They are like castanets. Every maker’s shoes sound different. I have maybe twenty pairs.



    3. I’d need a singer to accompany my dancing. In the Twin Cities we have a great cantaora (a native flamenco singer), Mar”a Elena Òla Cordobesa,Ó which is why I’m still here. It’s a great honor to be able to work with her.



    4. A homing pigeon, so I can stay in communication with friends and family. That undulation of love and ideas is very sustaining for me. I can write the messages with ink and paper I make from things on the island.



    5. Some beautiful human-made thing to inspire me to remember hopes and dreams and the ability of the spirit to soar above the mundane. Maybe a stained-glass window from some cathedral. Didn’t Matisse make paper cutouts at the end of his life that were made into windows? He, for me, represented both the joy and delightful transcendence of life.



    For more on the Anda Flamenco Company and School, go to www.andaflamenco.com.

  • Liza Featherstone

    It’s not just the prices that are low at Wal-Mart. Journalist Liza Featherstone has written extensively about the world’s largest retailer, exposing its many abuses of its employees and the effect its labor practices have had on the culture of work in the United States. Her new book, Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart, chronicles the injustices faced by female employees at Wallyworld and the overseas factories that keep the big box chock full of cheap junk. In the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Featherstone’s work doesn’t just record labor history, it inspires a cry for change.

    THE RAKE: What inspired you to make Wal-Mart the center of your work?

    FEATHERSTONE: I write a lot about labor issues and women’s issues. When the Duke v. Wal-Mart sex discrimination lawsuit was filed in 2001, I was very curious about the women who would stand up to such a powerful retailer. I also got interested in what it means for our society to have so many people working in these low-wage jobs.

    You’ve reported on labor violations that are almost beyond belief.

    Some of the things really are like the Shirtwaist Triangle factory days. Locking workers into the stores, not letting them leave. The extreme disregard for worker safety, child labor. A lot of the stories in the sex discrimination lawsuit really evoke the 1950s or pre-feminist America.

    What do you make of the fact that so many people so passionately defend Wal-Mart?

    Wal-Mart markets itself as a friend to the common person. There are a lot of parallels to the Republican Party, but one difference is that Wal-Mart actually does deliver something to its low-income constituents–low prices. This enables Wal-Mart to say, “Hey, we’re helping poor people.” People don’t see a connection between the working conditions of others and their own work. But the fact is, if you’re letting the world’s largest private employer get away with these abuses, then you’re opening the door for other employers to behave the same way.

    Do you think Wal-Mart is too powerful to feel any repercussions?

    They do get away with things, and people continue to shop there despite their abuses. But recently, they’ve become very concerned about their public image. They’ve hired Hill & Knowlton, a famous public relations firm that companies go to when they’re in trouble. Why? The stock price has been rather lackluster for a number of years; the way people feel about a company affects the price. Also, sales have not been as impressive as they have been in the past. And they are encountering an enormous amount of opposition as they expand into new areas, especially cities. They need to expand in urban areas because they are running out of space in the rest of the country–their stores are beginning to cannibalize each other. Which I always find quite funny.

    People of color seem especially opposed to Wal-Mart. Why?

    In some places, they’ve welcomed it because they want the low prices; and they’ve taken the pessimistic attitude that Wal-Mart jobs are better than no jobs. But in many places, people of color have rejected that. They want economic development that will provide decent jobs that people can support families on. They find it very racist that they’ve been asked to accept this kind of lowest-common-denominator development. Also, Wal-Mart is the biggest gun dealer in the country, and black communities often feel under threat by gun violence. And the fact that Wal-Mart tries to circumvent local laws in many places and build a store regardless of how the community feels–this strikes people as tremendously arrogant, and violates their basic need for respect.

    What do you mean when you describe Wal-Mart as having a “plantation mentality”?

    African-Americans are suspicious about Wal-Mart because it’s a Southern company. They see people accepting extreme violations from bosses who claim to be working in their best interests. It’s not accidental that a company like that originated in the South, because that kind of thinking goes back to slavery: “We’re going to commit these outrageous abuses against you, but we’re all family. We’re looking out for you.” That kind of paternalistic and abusive attitude goes back a very long way in those regions. I went to the Wal-Mart Visitor’s Center in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is the site of the first Wal-Mart store, and there’s a Confederate memorial right across the street.

    Have you ever experienced any threatening or retaliatory behavior from Wal-Mart?

    Never. When I was working on the book, sometimes workers would ask me, “Aren’t you scared? Wal-Mart’s really powerful.” And I’d think, yeah, it makes me a little nervous. But the provisions for journalists and free speech in this country are actually quite good. They haven’t taken any legal action against me. I haven’t gotten any anonymous calls in the middle of the night.

    Liza Featherstone will appear May 5 as part of the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library’s Untold Stories series about labor history; Weyerhaeuser Chapel at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-222-3242; www.thefriends.org.

  • Soundtrack to Mary

    Yeah, yeah. In some ways I have that “old soul” thing going on (though I find that expression to be fundamentally jive). Lately, however, some form of latent immaturity has started to kick in. For instance, I recently walked into a conversation at work among a group of people who were discussing the joy–and excitement of–a pregnant coworker. The conversation came to an abrupt halt when I pointed out how weird it was that she was growing a little penis in her stomach. Well, she is! Maybe it makes sense to be working my way backward. I was kind of an old woman as a little kid. I loved cats and my own company. Getting into my jammies was usually the highlight of my day. However, I was a complete insomniac, which isn’t a disorder one normally associates with childhood. While most little girls were sawing logs wrapped in their Strawberry Shortcake sheets, I was wide awake at 3:00 A.M., fretting that I’d lost my hot-lunch ticket and the lunch lady with the hairdo that looked like a roast was going to yell at me. Everyone says, “What’s the hurry to grow up?” Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that life is ass when you’re fifteen? Fake IDs saved my life at a time when seeing bands meant more to me than any prom or college application. There was nothing more satisfying than waking up for school with a smudged ink stamp on my hand, which I was careful not to wash off. Listening to girls on the school bus chirping about their latest crushes, all I could think was, “Dude, last night I somehow passed for twenty-one, saw Brad Brains, and had to climb through a basement window when I got home.” I think they missed out. They think I missed out. What do you think?

    Email Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com

  • The Russian Renovation

    “It was like two philosophical trains running past each other on parallel tracks,” said Brad Shinkle, describing Russian and American art during the twentieth century. “Each had little or no awareness of the other—what it consisted of, or its rationale.” Shinkle is president and director of the Museum of Russian Art, the only institution in the U.S. dedicated to Russian art. For fifty-plus years during the Cold War, he pointed out, the Russians weren’t worried just about American nukes. They were also worried about a more insidious type of damage that could come from our “decadent” and “degenerate” art seeping into their country. At the same time, Russian art was virtually quarantined inside the Soviet Union; the few works Westerners did see were disdained as “propagandistic” or “intellectually corrupt.”

    Understandably, then, most Americans have trouble conjuring any image at all of twentieth-century Russian art beyond, say, Wassily Kandinsky, or the propaganda posters and Social Realist paintings from the Stalin years. But the collection at the Museum of Russian Art—which will go on view May 9 in a new home in South Minneapolis—is meant to change all that. Many of its works invoke quietude and simplicity with brush strokes inspired by Late Impressionism. There are also glowing forests and reverently rendered birches. Frank, round faces of children stare out from the canvases. A stunning portrait of a composer in front of his grand piano might elicit comparisons to Alice Neel or even Alex Katz, except that it’s hard to believe the Russian artist ever saw their work. Nikolai Baskakov’s Milkmaids, Novella is especially arresting—these casual, laughing women are not the somber, chiseled Russian workers we’re used to seeing.

    These works and others from the museum’s collection, together with paintings from Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, make up In the Russian Tradition, an exhibition that was recently on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Its opening this month in Minneapolis will inaugurate the Museum of Russian Art’s new facility, a former church built in the Spanish revival style.

    Shinkle recently led a visitor through the building as its $4.5 million renovation was heading into the home stretch. A mezzanine level had just been completed, halfway up to the building’s exposed rafters; an empty shaft awaited an elevator. “People have been here working elbow to elbow to get this place ready,” he said, pointing out the well that would soon hold a circular staircase.

    If the dazzling new Walker Art Center was considered a modest building project compared with other products of our national museum-building boom, then this church renovation might seem quite minor as art facilities go. Nevertheless, the collection of twentieth-century paintings that will be housed at the new Museum of Russian Art is the envy of the top-drawer galleries in Russia.

    Shinkle says that people are drawn to these works the first time they see them. “For fifty years, [Soviet] artists were told to paint so that common people can understand,” he says. “So there’s a comfort factor with these paintings.” Yet they are, he is quick to add, “the technical equal of other twentieth-century works.”

    With more than ten thousand works, the museum’s collection began as the private passion of Ray Johnson, a Minnesota businessman with a soft sweep of white hair and a near-constant twinkle in his eye. When perestroika began to open doors in the Soviet Union, Johnson was already a seasoned collector. Suspecting that there might be some artistic surprises hidden behind the Iron Curtain, he sent a proxy to live in the Soviet Union for a year and learn about the art market there.

    Johnson himself poked around in attics, sheds, and dachas, all the while building relationships with artists. Many of them were wary of showing their work to outsiders. Since 1945, the government, the only legal market for art, had exclusively purchased paintings that supported its official view of life in a communist state. So two or three generations of painters had amassed whole bodies of work that didn’t fit this mold.

    Myths about Soviet art persist today because, frankly, few people have cared enough to dispel them. Recently, fourteen exhibitions of works from Russian museums were simultaneously on view in the United States—but none of them included Russian art. Even in St. Petersburg, tourists line up at the Hermitage to see French Impressionists, but few venture down the street to the State Russian Museum. Unlikely as it seems, that is the reason Johnson decided to build a public home for his collection in Minneapolis. He still sees barriers that need to be brought down and bridges that need to be built.

    “These artists, as much as anything,” he says, “want Americans to understand that even if they couldn’t make a working toilet or a good car, they could make a beautiful painting. It’s like they’re saying to us, ‘We didn’t just make bombs.’ I’ve taken that very seriously because I’ve met some wonderful, talented old men who knew full well that Americans thought they only did poster art. They changed me from being just a collector to feeling that I have a real responsibility.”

  • Don’t Go Into the Light, Dick Clark!

    Dick Clark is not pleased about the headlight situation. Oh sure, he’s driven his fair share of luxury automobiles, both domestic and European. He has even leased various Japanese models, though he finds the lack of headroom troubling. But every day lately, Dick finds he’s spending more and more of his valuable time thinking about how best to carry out his crusade against the proliferation of very bright headlights. Unread copies of Billboard accumulate in a growing column on his nightstand. He isn’t keeping up with pop culture like he should, and close friends say they’ve noticed a few gray hairs at his temples. He lies awake at night, vacantly watching the LEDs dance on his clock radio. In the morning, exhausted, he makes his coffee without turning on the kitchen radio. He does not make his customary scan of both frequencies in search of his friendly rival, Casey Kasem. For the first time in his life, there are dark circles developing under his eyes.

    Why do they have to be so bright? Why is the light so intensely white-hot? Is this a further sign of man’s inhumanity to man? Dick Clark is deeply troubled. Now that Daimler and Chrysler have merged, he feels certain that very bright headlights will be installed on virtually all automobiles. This, of course, is unrealistic and pessimistic. But there is little doubt in Dick Clark’s mind that cheap, aftermarket headlights will be made available to drivers of older cars. These will not be quite as bright, but they will have the same painful blue nimbus seen from certain angles. He’s already noticed them retrofitted on used minivans and economy cars.

    Technically, Dick is not losing sleep over very bright headlights. He’s resigned to the fact that they are here to stay. Instead, he is obsessed with what his own personal response should be. He feels a vague sense of powerlessness, even though he is one of the most influential pop culture icons ever to hold a California driver’s license.

    The fact of the matter is that this is not the first time Dick has toyed with the idea of using Bandstand as a bully pulpit. Several years ago he was very unhappy about high levels of mercury in the environment, due to sneakers with batteries in them. In the seventies, he felt that so-called “earth tones” were unflattering to most complexions. In the fifties, he was convinced that canned beer was a sure sign of social declension. But his producers always prevailed. Why would he want to needlessly alienate his fans and his potential advertisers? Bandstand was about uniting the kids, not dividing them! A professional would surely save such personal “issues” for private after-parties.

    Frankly, though, Dick is at his wit’s end. He has tried everything. At first, he would flash oncoming cars. Unfortunately, they often flashed him back. When you are flashed by very bright headlights, you don’t soon forget it. Once, Dick saw multicolored lights in his peripheral vision for a long time afterward. Dick Clark is a very conscientious steward of the corporal territories of Dick Clark (particularly those in the Northern Hemisphere), so you can imagine how disturbing this must have been.

    Dick tried honking. He quickly realized this brought him the wrong kind of attention. Other drivers thought he was trying to get them to notice him—Dick Clark! A grown man with his own television program! And yet still eager for every last bit of public recognition, no matter how petty! He felt certain this would lead to a backlash in his popularity, or at least an insinuating article in the tabloids. Not very helpfully, his agent advised him to avoid driving at night.

    Perhaps it was desperation that finally pushed him into playing “chicken” with drivers of cars equipped with very bright headlights. Most sane people would say that at this point Dick Clark had crossed the figurative line. His producers would have killed him if they knew what he was up to. Luckily, he came to his senses. In theory, of course, it would not have been an unpleasant death for a timeless legend like himself—Dick Clark finally dead! Foul play suspected! Yet he was repelled by the thought of leaving such a big tonsorial job to even the most accomplished of mortuary beauticians.

    In his troubled dreams, Dick Clark entertains fantasies that do not conform to the expectations and practices of the waking world. He uses laser-sighted weapons to frighten inconsiderate drivers (he would never actually fire). With a very powerful transmitter, he commandeers their car radios and shames them in full surround-sound stereo. He spends hours in the hot sun of the San Fernando Valley, putting up false detour signs that say “Deduction for Business Use of Halogen Headlights, Next Exit.” In the mercifully muted twilight between dreaming and waking, Dick Clark is afforded a precious few moments of extraordinary happiness each morning.

  • Tolls for Thee

    In just a matter of days, the new toll lanes on Interstate 394 will open, giving thousands of commuters in the western suburbs the option of paying to escape the bonds of gridlock as they make their busy way to and from downtown Minneapolis. The last time we drove west on I-394 it was not rush hour. It was a Saturday afternoon in October, not long after President Bush had held his “victory rally” at the Target Center. We were taking the children to a Halloween party in Golden Valley, and we were beset by scrubbed suburban teenagers too young to vote but old enough to drive—and honk and point and make lewd gestures when we did not show a sufficient level of enthusiasm for their candidate. Anyway, the traffic was terrible, and we waited for what seemed like hours just to reach the HOV lane. We were demoralized to see it was closed.

    In theory, then, we should be very pleased, along with our westerly friends, that we now have this high-tech option. It is called MNPass. For a deposit of around forty dollars, you can receive a small antenna and computer chip to be glued inside your windshield. This transponder will be recognized by overhead chip readers, which will be indirectly connected to your bank account (and, by the way, directly to the State Highway Patrol—you didn’t think this was going to be on the honor system, did you?). Your MNPass account will authorize you to use a special lane shared only by other toll payers or car-poolers. The technology for MNPass looks much like that for EZPass, New York City’s celebrated system used on countless toll roads around the Big Apple.

    There is one important difference, though. Everyone must pay to use the Garden State Parkway, or the New York Thruway, or the Tappan Zee Bridge—there are no special lanes, no special dispensations. (There are different tolls for commercial vehicles and for trailers; also, you are allowed to pay with hard cash.) Back East, all are equal under the electronic eye of God. But our own pay-to-play toll road rankles for a couple of reasons.

    While it’s nice to see that car-poolers will still be able to use the lanes unharrassed, the idea that you can substitute money for socially agreeable behavior is repugnant to us. MNPass may appear to embody the libertarian ideal of point-of-service fees, whereby those who use are those who pay. But we’ve seen how this ideal works before, particularly in our public parks. We never liked it, and now we know why. While besieged taxpayers are supposedly getting “relief,” they are expected to pay higher fees for many of the things their taxes formerly paid for. There is a subtle moral violation of the public trust in this. Forty dollars may not seem like much money—indeed, it is merely a deposit against tolls you will be paying when you use your pass, and the monthly cost of the transponder is just $1.50—but the system inherently excludes people who don’t have forty dollars to deposit. (Another telling example: You need to reserve your account with a credit card number; if you have no plastic, you are not welcome.) We think the punishment of sitting in traffic fits the venal sin of insisting on driving your own automobile alone, every day. Money should not be the lowest common denominator dictating our behavior. Morality should be.

    But if you insist, then let’s consider this matter strictly on a financial basis. The high price of gas is already putting a pinch on drivers, and in a rational world, it should lead to more car-pooling, more public transit, and more long-term solutions in which we all participate. Opting out, or rather paying what amounts to an indulgence, in order to have the law not apply to you, in order to be exempted from uncomfortable realities—is that any way to act? MNPass calls to mind recent efforts to allow industrial corporations to buy and sell pollution credits. In our bizarre, delusional state, we seem to believe that social and civic responsibility is optional, that morality is a commodity that can be traded in the open marketplace. We seem to believe that responsible behavior is something that takes place in the aggregate, not at the individual level. Someone else will take care of it; let’s just make sure I got mine.

  • Get Right with God

    About two years ago, a Northfield, Minnesota, man named Fred Herzog had a vision that made him weep for hours each day for weeks on end. “Jesus came to me and said, ‘You are crying out to the souls of people in South Minneapolis,’” he said. “When I discovered South Minneapolis, it was narrowed to Uptown. I saw young people in chains, hands in chains, legs in chains. And I heard these words: ‘These people are in the devil’s chain gang. Pray for them so they can be set free.’”

    For two years, Herzog conducted services in an Uptown-area living room. But today, thanks to a growing assembly of worshipers, his church has been blessed with a permanent home in the sub-basement of a strip mall. The congregation calls itself the Uptown Fellowship, and the name fits. It is made up of a few dozen ragtag members. One recent Sunday night, I noticed a tattooed and pierced schoolteacher, an African-American man in a Nike jumpsuit, a homecoming queen from my hometown (she was a year ahead of me), and a mop-haired guitarist who fronts the church band. (This last congregant I thought quite attractive, until he shared his thoughts on the importance of freeing ourselves from lust. Busted!)

    The band jammed off-key as parishioners shuffled in for the service. There were coy waves and earnest smiles. As coats were hung and diaper bags stashed under seats, personal Bibles came out. This being a special spontaneous service, however, the Bibles were soon set aside in favor of making a great noise with the house band. Parishioners jumped to their feet, clapped their hands, and swayed their hips. A middle-aged guy in the front row, wearing a Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt, shouted “Praise Jesus!”

    A church elder stepped forward, and the music lulled. Then the room was filled with the odd clamor of someone worshiping in tongues. The elder closed his eyes and raised his voice. “I think there’s someone here who needs to be healed,” he said. He brought forth a parishioner whose chronic illnesses were well known to the congregation, and he beckoned others to place their hands on her shoulders. Then the keyboardist complained of knee pain and two parishioners knelt in front of her, laid their hands on her patella, and prayed. Soon the bulk of the congregation was splintered into several small huddles, each murmuring prayers. The band provided instrumental ambience. The elder now shouted to be heard: “I’m feeling that there’s someone here with neck pain! Is there someone with a digestive problem?”

    As the commotion settled, John Shank opened his Bible to the book of Isaiah, as instructed by Herzog. By day, Shank is a professional animator. Here, he is a church elder and Bible-study leader. A person worshiping next to Shank would notice that he has devised an elaborate highlighting system that divides and subdivides biblical texts into blues, yellows, and oranges (only prepositions are left behind). He followed along as Herzog dissected a passage on King Hezekiah, the Old Testament king who died young as punishment for pride and bitterness. Not being burdened by traditional notions of theology, Herzog speculated that premature death is thus evidence of certain kinds of sin. “Humpf,” said Shank, closing his Bible at sermon’s end.

    After the service, everyone moved to the back of the room to eat tacos, coo over babies, and make a visitor feel welcome. One of the Fellowship’s rising stars, a twenty-six-year-old fashion designer, described it as “a charismatic-type church” and admitted to tempering that definition in accordance with Uptown attitudes. She related a dream in which she was anointing the sick with oil, and she was excited to have realized that dream earlier in the evening, before the sermon. As she told her story, I began to see what binds this hip young woman with golden highlights in her hair to the congregation’s eclectic mix of tightly permed sixty-somethings and burned-out Gen Xers. It’s not so much the literalist reading of Scripture, which she and other parishioners didn’t want to discuss over dinner. Rather, it’s a taste for mysticism and a belief that Herzog provides a special link to the divine.

    Even Shank, regarded as the most academic in the bunch, said he thinks Herzog is specially attuned to demonic spirits and has a gift for warding them off with prayer. After a youth spent in more traditional Christian settings—places he called “dead churches”—and dalliances with Hinduism, hatha yoga, and psychedelic drugs, he’s all too happy to be following Herzog’s flamboyant path to God. “After being in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I’d find it insulting to be in a dead church,” he said.—Christy DeSmith

  • The Mechanic at Rest

    The other day, Northwest Airlines informed the union that it wished to lay off six hundred mechanics. In recent years, Northwest has had a near-perfect record measured on the only scale that really matters—mechanical failures leading to tragic crashes. Some thanks is surely due to the men and women who are responsible for keeping things shipshape under the hood. It was not always thus.

    Plenty of Twin Citizens remember the early days of the airline industry, a racy time that bred giants. In the late forties, Howard Hughes led Hughes Aircraft and Trans World Airlines with the fastest and latest aircraft. Juan Trippe of Pan American pioneered and charted new flight routes with Charles Lindbergh. But in March 1950, Northwest had no giants of its own, and it was in big trouble. The next thirteen months would be very rocky indeed.

    On March 7, 1950, the snow and wind howled. Howard Huber was tending bar at his tavern near the airport. The regulars heard an aircraft that was too low and too close. When they heard it a second time, apparently making another approach, Huber said, “That plane is in trouble but he’s not going to make it this time.”

    The plane was a Martin 202, a sexy model for Northwest in 1947. It was new and fast and quickly set some impressive speed records. It brought the age of air travel to cities such as Eau Claire, Sioux Falls, Bismarck, Rochester, and Helena. Within a short time, the company was flying twenty Martin 202s—more than forty percent of its total fleet. In an effort to fight the glamorous publicity of Howard Hughes, who at the time was canoodling publicly with Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner, Northwest hired Yvonne DeCarlo as its sultry spokeswoman. (She would later become famous as Lily Munster on The Munsters and star in horror films like Satan’s Cheerleaders.) The Martin 202 also marked the birth of the Northwest red tail as an enduring symbol of the carrier. Some employees speculated that the primary purpose of the paint scheme was so emergency crews could find the often waylaid aircraft. They had good reason.

    On that day in March, Mrs. Patricia Knowles was shoveling snow and wanted to stay ahead of the snowfall. She glanced up at the Washburn Park Tower and noticed an airplane wing “floating down like a feather.” In seconds, Northwest’s problems would come crashing down into three Minnehaha Parkway residences.

    The crash of Northwest Airlines Flight One summoned thirteen fire engine companies to the scene. Amid a sea of blowing snow, smoke, and ash, neighborhood heroes pulled survivors from the burning houses. But when firefighters set up their ladder to rescue two children from the second floor of a house on the eleven-hundred block of West Minnehaha Parkway, the flames were too much, and the house collapsed in front of them. The children had just been tucked into bed while their parents watched the Minneapolis Lakers game on a television downstairs. The disaster claimed the lives of all thirteen passengers and the two children on the ground.

    From August 29, 1948, until January 17, 1951, Northwest endured six fatal crashes and, astonishingly, lost five of its twenty new Martin 202s. In other words, twenty percent of the fleet had been destroyed in crashes.

    Later, in the spring of 1951, one hundred Twin Cities businessmen celebrated Northwest Airlines’ twenty-fifth anniversary. Hosted by Radisson Hotels, the fare included Alaskan salmon and “Broiled Guinea Chicken Croil Hunter,” named after the sitting president of Northwest Airlines. The guests were startled when the intercom system roared, “The twenty-fifth anniversary flight of Northwest Airlines is ready for departure. Captain Croil Hunter and Captain Tom Moore at the controls. All aboard please!”

    The spring of 1951 was indeed a perilous time for Northwest. With its planes grounded, its crews and the general public afraid to fly, the government agency doing the comprehensive investigation was led by a man named Donald Nyrop. His top-to-bottom review of the carrier’s safety record, maintenance, and pilot training led him to declare the Martin 202 “a basically sound airplane.” This surprising confidence made a profound impact on Northwest’s board of directors, and they began a determined three-year courtship to get Nyrop as its president. When he accepted on September 27, 1954, Northwest had its industry giant and its future would be secured.—Tony Nichols