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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.

Best known for the Hitchcock-filmed Strangers on a Train and her series of books about psychotic aesthete Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith was motivated by a muse of bitterness, amorality, and disgust—not necessarily a bad thing for a crime novelist. She died mostly forgotten in 1995, but a full-on revival is ongoing with this her most prominent year yet. Shadow is only one of three forthcoming biographies, and John Malkovich’s film version of her Ripley’s Game is garnering good reviews. Though Highsmith was highly intelligent and a terrific writer, Beautiful Shadow makes clear her many faults. She drank. She nursed a lifelong resentment of her mother (who had attempted to abort her by drinking turpentine). She could be mean-spirited, cheap, manipulative, and bigoted, so often unpleasant that even her admirers say things like “I liked her incredible bitchiness.” Of course, this makes her life story all the more compelling.

In a few weeks I’m boarding a van in the middle of the night with the man I love and five of the six children we share to drive for fifteen days from Minneapolis to Lake Ontario and back again. We’re going to take the S.S. Badger car ferry across Lake Michigan, ride a dune buggy on the gorgeous sands of Silver Lake, don raincoats and hats to feel the drenching raw power of Niagara Falls on the Maid of the Mist, spend a few nights in a rustic cabin on a remote privately owned island in Lake Ontario, parasail on Lake Huron, eat fudge on Mackinac Island, and pay homage to the greatest lake of all as we wend back home via Highway 2 along Superior, hitting Bayfield and Duluth on the way.

I hope I get some good stories out of the deal, because I can tell you that despite the thrills and overconsumption of fun and fuel, none of us are going to “find what we’re looking for” as we paddle toward the sea any more than we find it sitting in traffic on University Avenue. This truth goes back to the disillusionment of cactus and dust and angry bees on a summer day in childhood.

I was nine, living on the outskirts of Casper, Wyoming, with nothing but a six-foot cedar fence standing between my backyard and the wild open expanse of sagebrush, tumbleweeds, and prairie dogs leading up to the foothills of Casper Mountain, which loomed purple in the distance. Mostly this arid landscape was flat and uninspiring to a girl who’d not so long ago left the rocky majesty of Lake Superior.

I started riding my bike out behind the fence, as far as I could go in one direction and then another, learning to notice the humble beauty of various cacti and flora. And one day, I stumbled on the impossible, the wondrous: a gorge in the land, with two steep walls and a bottom, along which a pitiful but real trickle of water inched sluggishly along.

A hill, a stream—it clutched my heart with buried memories of home. I wanted to claim it, stick a flag in the ground, make it mine forever. It would be my secret place, my personal canyon, where I’d commune with the big sky and beyond. I’d return the next day to spend the whole afternoon, alone with myself and the world, snug in the safe crevice of earth that had found me at last.

I did return, my bike basket laden with the picnic I’d packed for a day in paradise. My heart thumped with anticipation and the happy exertion of the ride. Hot noon sun pounded down on me as I unloaded my goods and hauled them halfway down the dirt slope, scoping out a little bare spot to sit. I chewed a few dry bites of a peanut butter and honey sandwich, swallowing hard. I wasn’t really hungry, so I wrapped it back up and sipped orange juice from a plastic thermos. Sweat ran from my hairline into the corners of my mouth. The hard dirt was uncomfortable, the sun punishing, the cacti pokey. I didn’t feel magical. I felt sticky and itchy and awkward and dense and I had no idea what to do next. But to leave so soon would be to fail, to admit I’d been duped, that fairylands were make-believe and our cardboard house with its tin shell and flooded basement and scabs and boils was real as bone. And then, on cue, the bees arrived, swarming in for the honey and juice, and I grabbed my stuff, kicked up the dusty slope and pedaled home, heavy with a disappointment I could never have named.

The mindful among us would say, “Wherever you go, there you are.” But could I have understood then what I want so dearly for my own kids to hear now? That as summer’s limitless possibilities start popping like soap bubbles in the air around them, and the panic sets in, and they scramble to fend off the loss with more of something—anything—that wherever they go, and whatever they buy—there they will be, that to feed a monster only makes it hungrier? That those who can’t find satisfaction from others must turn to things—goods and services, toys and travel—to fill the emptiness within? That as Jack Kornfield writes in After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, “Socrates, who lived a simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, ‘I love to go and see all the things I am happy without’”?

That I grew up dirt poor and money is better, that the tin house is thousands of miles past, but I’m still here, that life is tough but they can love it anyway, and that they are never going to find what they are looking for in the mall or even behind the cedar fence because The Wizard of Oz is absolutely a true story and they should listen up as fast and often as they can.

The true north is Canada, of course. But we like to believe that we’re essentially a northern people. True, that knob on the very crown of our state qualifies as the northernmost point in the lower 48. The legend on the street has long been that a mapmaker zigged when he should have zagged, creating the Northwest Angle before getting his bearings straight and heading off again on the 49th parallel.

That myth is an oddly pleasing one, because it rings with pitch-perfect Minnesota modesty—especially for anyone who’s tried to find a portage in the Boundary Waters substituting map and compass for hard experience. Still, the myth isn’t very likely. The most common explanation as to how we got that little bump on our arrowhead is that anyone on the U.S. side who cared about where to draw the border back in 1783 wanted to include the northwestern-most point of Lake of the Woods, just in case it turned out that the mighty Mississippi River originated there. (The other theory—mundane but most likely of all—is that the cattywampus line was drawn in consideration of commercial fur-trading routes, the only germane travel that was going on in the area, decades before white men laid eyes on Lake Itasca.) The border was fixed for good in 1818, and never seriously challenged, until a few years ago. Back in the summer of 1998, Northwest Anglers were threatening to secede if legislators didn’t work out a thorny fishing-rights dispute with Canada. It just goes to show you that some of the things we hold most dear are subject, like everything else, to change. Borders move in funny directions, and to a Canadian, even Minnesotans are soft-headed southerners.

There was a time when Minnesotans could count on death, taxes, and summer road closures. Despite rumors, the grim reaper and the taxman aren’t taking a vacation this year that we know of. But we have noticed considerably less road work. This is gratifying, until we realize that the taxes we might have paid to sustain Crosstown Commons will now go to replace our prematurely blown struts and shocks. Funny how everything is connected, but the price stays the same.

We’ve enjoyed about all the fireworks we can tolerate on the roads and highways, and now there is no need to drive in any direction other than the nearest supermarket to buy the formerly illegal stash of firecrackers, Roman candles, and bottle rockets that used to be the pleasure of Wisconsin and South Dakota roadside merchants. Yes, we swell with pride when we consider the far-reaching social ramifications of recent legislative sessions.

We supposedly embrace change, at least when it comes to seasons. Summer is upon us, and if we can resist complaining about the heat and the bugs, we might remember the bitter cold that is but a few months behind us. (And ahead of us.) In the north, we have a growing season that would not likely sustain local populations. There would be long nordic faces indeed if we didn’t get sweet corn from Georgia in June and from Iowa in July.

The closer you get to true north, the less self-sufficiency you find. One would think this realization would encourage a sense of global, or at least continental, citizenship. But selfishness—like love and now fireworks—recognizes no borders. Is life in Minnesota becoming meaner? Does it worry you? We come from ethnic stock that hates to ask for help or directions. And if boorishness becomes our lot, we can probably expect a few more bumps on the head before we find our way.

On a recent Wednesday evening, hundreds of overdressed teenage girls gathered outside Southdale’s MegaStar movie theater. Squeezed into their tightest jeans and tiniest tees, they hummed with excitement as they waited for Josh Hartnett, the movie star and Minnesota native, to arrive. Hartnett was making a rare appearance to raise money for a local charity called Cornerhouse, an agency that assists sexually-abused children. Crazed, er, loyal fans and self-respecting do-gooders alike had paid $35 for a sold-out sneak-premiere of his latest movie, Hollywood Homicide. It was 7 p.m. Some of the girls had been waiting for more than six hours.

We don’t get many premieres around these parts, so here’s the rundown: Hartnett was going to stroll through a traditional “red carpet” reception to say hey to the public and the press, introduce the film, and then sit down to watch it with his family. He doesn’t like Hollywood premieres, Hartnett told The Rake later, but this was different. This was for a good cause.

He was to arrive at 8. The swarm of girls continued to grow. A dozen girls killed time and burned off some pent-up steam by taping an exploitative promo for Channel 5, in which they claimed that, while they liked Josh, they loved Channel 5. Let us tell you: They were lying. When Hartnett, dressed down in a long-sleeved black shirt and casually scruffy jeans, climbed out of a black SUV and onto the red carpet (really), he was welcomed by pure, unadulterated, insane, mad lust. Cameras started snapping, flashes started blinding, and the crush of the crowd tightened. The sheer hormonal energy of the crowd, expended primarily through ear-splitting screeches and screams, was powerful enough to curb this state’s dependence on oil. Instead, we could be living on the love of teenage girls. We haven’t seen such convincing local evidence of this untapped resource since the Beatles played Met Stadium back in 1965.

The shy Hartnett took the adoring mob’s attention in calm if uncomfortable stride; the 25-year-old’s normally Chunnel-deep eyes did appear slightly more deer-in-headlights than previously suggested by the star’s magazine cover shots. (That was him on the cover of last month’s Teen People, you know.) Arms crossed over his broad chest, Harnett headed to the right side of the carpet, where reporters were roped off and kicking like bulls. He answered a few questions and then crossed to the left side, where he scribbled away his signature’s eBay value and presumably lost some of his hearing. Zigzagging his way down the line, he reached the theater door in 10 minutes. With a tight-lipped smile and a stiff-armed wave, he disappeared into the depths of the theater.

Brief as it was, the excitement of Hartnett’s appearance far surpassed that of the crowning of the state’s fattest sow at the State Fair, although it might be rivaled by the opening of the fourth lane on 494. (Commuters are really going to have to get their numbers up, though.) These girls, some bearing “I love Josh” across cheeks, chins, chests, and possibly elsewhere, were so high-energy that this Rake correspondent didn’t tell them the guy owns a home on Lake of the Isles and can be found drinking at The King and I nearly every weekend. —Katie Quirk

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 accept the mantle of the defunct, classic, koan-like El Camino?

Actually, the laughable-yet-venerable Chevrolet El Camino was itself a knockoff. Ford was first with the Ranchero, a short, boxy coupe in the front with a pickup bed on the back, launched in the 1957 model year. With the cat-like agility for which Detroit was then known, General Motors had a copy in showrooms by 1959. Ranchero production ended in 1979 around a half-million cars (or are they trucks?), but El Camino the imitator kept going for nearly a decade more, delivering more than a million vehicles to customers bewitched by the car/truck enigma.

Now, more than 15 years after the last El Camino rolled off the line, General Motors has treated the public to the spectacle of the Cadillac Escalade EXT waddling down the street, wagging its stubby little tail of a pickup bed. I called General Motors to see if they could tell me how this self-inflicted caricature of a truck came to pass. But first, I wanted to find out if there was any truth to the rumor that Chevy was bringing back the real El Camino.

“To be honest with you, I’ve not heard anything like that,” said GM spokesman Tom Beaman from the bucket seat of his Pontiac, Michigan, office. “I’ve not heard that rumor.”

In the interest of full disclosure, readers should know that I started this rumor myself. But what’s going on with all these SUVs with truck boxes stuck on the end, I asked Beaman? It turned out to be about mulch. “We call it the ‘family tree,’” he explained, “and it all springs from the basic full-sized truck architecture.” He went on to elaborate about the many lifestyles that can be accommodated by mating different configurations with one basic truck frame. “You want to be able to take five people across the country on a family vacation, but when you get back you want to be able to get mulch and peat moss and stuff like that in the back. An Escalade buyer often times, honestly, they may not put anything in the back. But it’s good to know that it’s there if they want to use it.

Subaru spokesman Rob Moran was much more definite about who’s supposed to be driving their little mutant Baja. “What’s different about our customers is that they are more inclined to outdoor activities. Things like mountain biking, kayaking, outdoor sports, climbing, that kind of thing.” In other words, GenXers are supposed to be walking out of Mountain Dew commercials in droves to shell out more than $20K for this little buggy. Might it also be the spiritual heir of the El Camino, I asked?

“I don’t think so.” Moran pointed out the four seats and some distant Subaru ancestry in the Brat, a truckish little unibody that Subaru smuggled under the chicken tax into the American market in the 70s.

But the lower, cuter, car-like profile of the Baja left a persistent afterimage in my head of the original ugly ducklings of those bygone days. I found a guy with a lovingly restored 1972 Ford Ranchero. Joe Anton, an amiable General Mills machinist, kindly agreed to drive with me to a Subaru lot and park it next to a Baja to see if they would resonate on the same frequency. Side by side, they looked like an unlikely pair. But whatever hooked this guy on the Ranchero was, in some form, present in the Baja. “This thing is so cute,” he said to Morrie’s Subaru General Manager Charlie Rassouli, who had generously provided the Baja for this experiment. “When I see one of these, the first thing I think, is ‘I want one!’” This, of course, makes perfect ad copy and could not have been planned better. Joe did not, however, offer his coveted Ranchero for trade.

I asked Charlie who is actually buying the Baja from him. Is it a Gen-X car for extreme sportster dudes? “I would say the demographic right now is older than that. We’re finding a lot of part-time gardeners and things like that,” said Charlie. Mulch again.—Joe Pastoor

Tom Hazelmyer may not be the first guy you’d think of as an art gallery owner. An ex-Marine and gun collector, his greatest claim to notoriety is Amphetamine Reptile Records, the Minneapolis-based punk-rock label he founded that defined the angriest and most abrasive wing of the hardcore movement of the 80s and 90s. AmRep built its reputation on furious, working-class acts like Helmet, the Melvins, and the Cows.

Hazelmyer lived and breathed the DIY ethic, not just running the label but designing most of the artwork. And one of his marketing brainstorms—putting the AmRep logo on a Zippo lighter—grew into a full-fledged side business: FlameRite, which distributes Zippos that have been embossed with designs chosen by Hazelmyer from a who’s who of underground artists including Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

As age, boredom, and the death throes of grunge made AmRep a chore, Hazelmyer scaled back to a nearly 100-percent back-catalog operation. Instead he concentrated on raising his three kids and the family business—the three Grumpy’s bars in Minneapolis and Coon Rapids. FlameRite continued as much for fun as anything else. But with his instinct for spotting a cultural trend, he soon realized he was onto something bigger—the ground floor of the burgeoning “low-brow” art movement, a pop-culture melange of collectible toys, retro commercial art, motorcycle decals, underground comics, graffiti, and Japanese anime. Many of the names most often checked—Shepard Fairey, Frank Kozic, Kaz—also grace FlameRites.

It’s art, to be sure, but from artists who drink Budweiser because they like to, not because they’re trying to be ironic. Putting their work on a lighter wasn’t just a sales trick, but part of the whole point. “Merchandising in any art was, for god knows how long, just verboten,” said Hazelmyer when we looked in on him the other day.

This style of art wasn’t getting much play in local galleries. But Hazelmyer’s always been good at punk rock’s Andy Hardy routine: If your favorite work isn’t getting seen, put on the show yourself. “Like Kozic. For years he was doing shows across the entire world—Europe, Japan, Los Angeles, New York. Totally accessible guy, and no one ever bothered to bring him to Minneapolis,” Hazelmyer grumbled. “He’s a friend of mine, and I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. We’ve got the bar downtown, we’ve got the side room.’ I just started doing it.” And in March, he moved the art showings to Ox-Op, a tidy red-and-white gallery converted from garages in Grumpy’s back-lot in downtown Minneapolis. (“The rent is right,” he notes dryly.) He’s also recently collected the FlameRite designs in the trim and groovy book Scorched Art.

Hazelmyer has gleeful sarcasm for the mainstream gallery world’s tendency to enshrine “a piece of string with a rock on the end of it” as a major work. But graphic design has always been a big part of his life, and of course punk’s look is nearly as important as the music itself. In that sense, the move from punk pioneer to gallery owner is a completely natural progression, with the Zippos as the bridge.

“The two have gone hand in hand, doing the art gallery and the lighters,” said Haze, running a finger down the gallery’s upcoming schedule. Most are artists with whom he’s created lighters. “They trust me, they know I’ll pay. I say, ‘You want to come to town and do an art show?’ They go, ‘Shit, no problem.’ Versus just calling somebody up in L.A., they have no idea who you are, and you’re trying to talk them into coming to Minnesota in January. Not an easy task. I always promise them lots of liquor and we’ll go shooting.”—Christopher Bahn