The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Type-A All The Way

    On the first day Pat Awada met with The Rake, she mentioned a behavioral analysis test she had taken in 2001, prior to an Eagan City Council retreat. Our writer was amused to be told about the test, but did not expect much more than that. Then, three days later, she arrived at her weekly deputies’ meeting with the results. She handed them to a secretary and asked for four copies: one for each deputy, and one for The Rake. When she placed a copy in writer Adam Minter’s hands, he stared at it, looked up at her, and instinctively asked, “Are you sure you want to give this to me?” Tony Sutton, Awada’s deputy for communications, looked like he was going to pass out. “It’s kind of fun,” she said with a carefree and confident shrug. “It’s me.”

    “For me, this was one of the moments where I developed an understanding of Pat Awada’s character and confidence,” Minter says. “In the end, I think she comes down to this formidable confidence in herself. She really sees no reason why she should hide anything from someone trying to get to know her.”

    An excerpt:

    “Based on Pat’s responses, the report has generated behavioral statements to provide information on her natural behavior. That is, if left on her own, HOW WOULD SHE CHOOSE TO DO THE JOB. Use this information to gain a better understanding of Pat’s natural behavior.”

    “Pat tends to have a ‘short fuse’ and can display anger or displeasure when she feels that people are taking advantage of her. She is forward-looking, aggressive and competitive. Her vision for results is one of her positive strengths. She enjoys authority, independence and the freedom that goes with her aggressive approach to problem solving. Some would see Pat as an initiator. She is a dominant, forceful and direct person who wants to be seen as an individualist. Pat embraces visions not always seen by others. Pat’s creative mind allows her to see the ‘big picture.’…

    “Pat challenges people who volunteer their opinions. She tends to influence people by being direct, friendly and results-oriented. She likes people who give her options as compared to their opinions. The options may help her make decisions, and she values her own opinion over that of others! She likes people who present their case effectively…. She has the ability to ask the right questions and destroy a shallow idea. Some people may feel these questions are a personal attack upon their integrity; however, this is just her way of getting the appropriate facts.”

  • The Real Pat Awada

    It’s late afternoon and State Auditor Pat Awada is negotiating southbound traffic on 35E in her white Jeep Cherokee, one hand on the wheel, the other occupied with a Marlboro Light that she ashes out her open window. She brushes a length of long blonde hair from her deep blue eyes and considers the impact that a fast rise through Republican politics has had on her family. “I haven’t tried to protect my kids from politics. I never tried.” She speaks with an even, calm tone. But her pitch drops noticeably when she describes the reception her children occasionally received during her tenure as mayor of Eagan. “They’ve suffered negative things because some parents don’t like me.”

    Pat Awada is 36 years old. She is the mother of four children. During the last four years she has become the most controversial woman in Minnesota political history (with the possible exception of Coya “Come Home” Knutson). Her epic battles with the Metropolitan Council over the development of low-income high-density housing in the suburbs earned her the everlasting enmity of suburb-hating urban liberals. Her activist approach to the state auditor’s office has positively unnerved Minnesota’s local government establishment. The Star Tribune’s editorial board has yet to find an Awada position with which it agrees, and when they are not busy attacking the policies themselves, they provide an astonishing amount of space to anti-Awada letters to the editor, many of which verge on the personal.

    Shrill. Aggressive. Inflexible. Tough. Awada smiles when presented with the list of adjectives opponents apply to her. “The bitch factor,” she summarizes, matter-of-factly. “I can’t worry about that. A lot of executive women get that. Maybe not from liberal Democrats, but they get it.” A moment later she smiles and softens, but her voice tightens defensively: “I’m certainly not shrill. Am I tough? Yes. Opinionated? Absolutely.” She pauses, thinks it over. “Maybe some women are less likely to be that way than men? I don’t know.”

    Despite its name and status as a state constitutional office, the Minnesota Office of the State Auditor has very little to do with the $26 billion that the state of Minnesota will spend during the 2002-2003 biennium. The job is actually much larger than that: Minnesota’s state auditor monitors the spending of 4,300 units of local government, including school districts, municipalities, counties, port authorities, redevelopment authorities, even police and fire relief associations. That’s $17 billion of oversight this year alone—a significantly larger amount of money than the state spends itself.

    The auditor supervises a staff of 150, including 90 auditors who perform approximately 250 audits each year. Most are housed in a diamond-shaped brick building a block from the Capitol. On the fourth floor, surveying the Capitol itself, is the chief auditor’s spacious corner office. When Pat Awada took her new job in January, she ceded that desk to one of her deputies and chose instead a small, first-floor room near a door and reception area used by rank-and-file staff. “That way I get a better sense of what’s going on,” she explains as she wheels back and forth in her office chair, sitting on one leg and rowing herself around with the other, a file folder tamping down her skirt. It’s a spartan space: There’s a desk, a small table, some bookcases. The few items that might hint at her personal or past professional life are either in unpacked boxes or scattered on the cluttered bookshelves. “If you really want to know about me, learn about my family,” she says with enthusiasm, as if recommending a good read. “They’re crazy.”

    Awada’s mother, Betty Anderson, is a self-described “adventurer” and former parks administrator. On family camping trips, “She was always the first one to jump off the bridge into the river,” Awada remembers. “That was our role model.” Awada’s father, Henry, is a trained forester who retired as a machinist at Northwest Airlines. Both parents enjoyed the outdoors, and it’s a passion they instilled in their children; with a shudder, Awada remembers childhood camping trips in the Boundary Waters—in the middle of the winter. Still, the outdoor adventures seem to have made an impression on the whole family. One of Awada’s three brothers runs the Iditarod, the world’s most famous dog-sled race, in Alaska. Another jumps out of airplanes for fun. Awada reflects that her mother’s adventurous streak instilled in her not only a confidence that she could handle challenges, but that she should seek them out.

  • Little Strip Club on the Prairie

    I didn’t know stripping was such a sore spot in rural Minnesota, until I nearly hung for it. Since my move two years ago from East Los Angeles to my boyfriend’s hometown of Cannon Falls, I had little to talk about with all the country wives. I had no recipes to exchange when we sat around the kitchen while the men played foosball in the rec room downstairs. I was the only one drinking the men’s beer, while they preferred wine coolers or hard lemonades. I was the only one who dyed my hair darker than my natural color, the only non-Lutheran. But it wasn’t until my boyfriend hosted a bachelor party that the subtle differences came into high contrast, and things got ugly.

    I had cloistered myself inside as the men commandeered their fun outside. They’d golfed, jet-skied, played volleyball until pregnant storm clouds swelled over the lake, forcing them back to the house with lightning flashes snapshotting their way. I watched from the window as our lawn became a mudslide they’d careen down, attacking each other with high-school wrestling moves. I watched them laugh and stumble and slap arms around each others’ shoulders as the beers and the Jägermeister and the nostalgia slid back. Watching out the window, my disdain for the brutish ritual softened as they became a pack of muddy drunk boys celebrating the time when they were a team, and girls didn’t matter. When the best man slopped in and handed me a smeared business card for exotic dancers, I agreed to call without much thought. It seemed like ordering a clown or an inflatable trampoline. A party favor. Lame, perhaps, but inoffensive. In my book, ordering a stripper at a bachelor party was no crime other than the transgression of predictability.

    I requested the strippers for a 10 p.m. arrival and quickly called a few of my boyfriend’s sisters for what I hoped could be theatrical remedy. The plan was, after the strippers performed, we’d enter dancing in full regalia: Slouching padded bellies, blackened teeth, curlers, signs around our necks that read “After.” If they were going to pleasurably mourn the disappearance of eroticism in marriage in a staged send-off seduction, then we would complete the dubious morality play with a tragic 10-years-later conclusion. We giggled on the phone, scripting our theater of de-seduction, a flurry of whips, torn fishnets, and banging cookware and party favors of aspirin, fake Viagra and Rogaine.

    I was pulling costumes from my closet when the bride-to-be called, tipsy with her lady crew, but voice hawk-like to hear how her fiancée was ferreting. “It’s so cool,” I reported, an aide-de-camp giddy with our plan. “We’ve got your back. After the strippers come, then Bob’s sisters and I are…” But the phone quaked with a scream: “Whoooooo called strippers?!” California fault number two: Addictive straightforwardness. “I did,” I admitted.

    The phone muffled for a moment and another woman was on. “Listen, Miss footloose and fancy-free Californian,” she hissed, accent strong. “These are our husbands you got there. And my Jason isn’t even allowed to have a Playboy in our house. You call yourself a feminist, well I’d just beg to differ. You couldn’t give a nickel for women nor for our men, who have evidently fallen into your godforsaken hands! I pray for you. I just do.”

    The phone is passed around for more berating until the bride gets back on and demands to speak to her groom. I tell her he has nothing to do with it and apologize for not knowing their feelings. I lean out the door, calling, and a couple perk up as if I’m now the Bachelor-Cruise-Director and will announce strippers on the main deck at 10, but it’s my emergency voice.

    The recess bell has toned. Muddy men pause mid-wrestle, brake a mudslide, squelch a Jäger slug. They file in as the phone is passed around from man to man in a chain of reproach. A best friend of the groom gathers his things to go home, sheepish in his goodbyes. Another urges me to cancel the strippers immediately. The men barnyard the floor as they pace with the phone, attempting damage control.

    “No,” one pleads, “I knew nothing about it. I swear. I wouldn’t have stayed.” I’m at the kitchen table, rubbing the question place on my forehead. “I just don’t get why you asked me to call strippers,” I say, “and didn’t tell me that your wives were so opposed.”

    Eyebrows go up, shoulders shrug. “Well,” someone says, “we thought you knew.”

    Turns out I didn’t know that Minnesota is having an identity crisis when it comes to erotic dance. Of the 44 adult entertainment clubs statewide, only two have escaped litigation, and only one has gone without painstaking challenges from its city council. In the last year, Minnesota country strip clubs made exotic national news: Elko, population 472, an 82-year-old Ojibwe man declared his strip club a sovereign nation; Nicollet, population 800, a 20-year-old co-owner opened his club to the local high school in protest of city ordinances requiring dancers to be scantily clad; Litchfield, population 6,577, required their only strip club to operate on Main Street downtown in full view as a tactic to strip customers of their anonymity and thus shame them; and in Cosmos, population 267, prostitution charges are pending. Other cities currently involved in litigation with respect to adult entertainment are Monticello, Little Falls, Hopkins, St. Louis Park, Crystal, Apple Valley, Mankato, Winona, Hermantown, Arlington, Forest Lake, Elko, Coates, and Eveleth.

    Clearly the skin war in Minnesota has high stakes for both sides—good old Christian morality versus First Amendment rights. And while Minneapolis experiences a degree of peace hosting Rick’s Cabaret, the only publicly traded gentleman’s club in the nation, the Twin Cities are hardly a no-fly zone: As the ruralization of strip clubs continues, a backlash has developed that may help explain how a proponent of conservative values ended up in the governor’s office. Just as a bachelor party broke down in apologies and bitterness, the body politic of Minnesota is still plenty confused about how to let its people undress.

    The first thing I learn is that it’s hard to square Minnesota’s conflict with the sexual state of the union. Despite our puritanical roots, America has a lascivious appetite: The $4 billion that Americans spend on pornography is larger than the annual revenue of the NFL, the NBA, or Major League Baseball. Americans pay more for sexually explicit material than for movies, more than for all the performing arts combined. Sexually oriented web businesses, which account for only one-fifth of the porn industry, are the only dot-coms that have managed to expand after the collapse. It’s difficult to identify the 700 million porn-video rentals with 700 million perverts nationwide. It gets even more confused when you consider that two of porn’s most prominent vendors, the Marriott (through in-room X-rated movies) and General Motors (who recently sold satellite DirecTV to Rupert Murdoch) were also principal sponsors of the Bush-Cheney Inaugural. With about 3,000 strip clubs nationwide—doubled since the 80s—strip clubs carve out a billion-dollar business, constitute a quarter of total porn consumption coast to coast, provide substantial local and state taxes, and employ more than 200,000 wage-earners.

    And yet, even though we are all naked under our clothes, many believe the skin trade is not what Minnesota is about. The League of Minnesota Cities, which provides city members with sample ordinances to restrict adult-oriented businesses and insures against their litigation fees, has received 314 requests for adult ordinance packets since 1998. Tom Grundhoefer, general council for the league, says, “The issue of how to deal with adult-oriented businesses is significant for cities and is shown by the number of cities trying to get prepared.” The porn industry is not us, say many religious groups that operate in Minnesota, such as the American Decency Association, the Community Defense Council, Focus on the Family, and numerous local churches of a conservative stripe. Turn your head the other way, and you’ll hear a different tune: The First Amendment Lawyers’ Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, Feminists for Free Expression, and local liberal churches believe the progression of sexually accepted norms is us. The only thing we agree on seems to be that the issue of sex is causing a persistent burn in the chest of the heartland. It’s the word of God against the letter of the law. I set out to hear both.

  • Too quick on the draw

    May 28, 2003

    I wrote a column last November about a Democrat fund raiser I’d attended with Al Gore. At the time, I noted that I thought we were in for a long period of Republican rule, because the Dems were such inept marketers. Well, the Republicans, at least in the Minnesota Legislature, (who, unlike big shots Coleman and Pawlenty, don’t benefit from the direct intervention of Karl Rove,) have recently proven to be just as inept.

    When the Republicans ran their very effective campaign of 2002, they hammered on their “No New Tax” pledge over and over, until all of us who don’t like paying tax, (and that’s all of us,) put them in control of state government. What they didn’t mention much was their insidious plans to limit abortion rights, put more guns on the streets, and put the true burden of the state’s financial squeeze fully on the Democratic strongholds of northern and urban Minnesota. The word insidious comes from the Latin word meaning ambush, and that’s just what the Republicans pulled off.

    If you don’t believe it, just remember how the “Personal Protection Act” was passed–through a parliamentary maneuver that had to be voted up or down with little debate. And, if you’ve ever heard Senate sponsor Pat Pariseau, Republican of Farmington, you’ll know it was also passed so quickly she didn’t have much time to read it herself.

    The Dems couldn’t have wished for a better poster child for the gun bill than Senator Pariseau. Pat Pariseau is about as articulate as a domestic turkey, and she backs that up by being irresponsible enough to sponsor a bill that she hadn’t read, or by being so bold as to lie about what was in it. (If you listened to her on MPR last week, you could only come to one of those two conclusions. On Katherine Lanpher’s show, she denied that there was a provision which required “personal notification” of potential gun-toters, and denied that the bill prohibited cities from banning guns from public buildings. So, she was either lying when she said she had read the bill, or lying about what’s in it. There is a third possibility, which we shouldn’t discount, is that she’s not bright enough to understand what was in it. Actually, on further consideration, I’m going with the “not very bright” explanation.)

    (Further evidence on the liar vs. dimwit question can be examined with even a perfunctory Google search. Pariseau said last week that she’d reconsider her stance if she could be shown "even two" instances of permit holders who violated their permit responsibilities. We came up with over 5000 in about 10 minutes. The links to some of those stats are below this article.)

    Thank God, Pariseau’s now a state senator, instead of a nurse, like she used to be. How would you like to have her reading a doctor’s instructions and administering medicine to one of your family? You’d probably want to have a Beretta under the hospital pillow to protect yourself from that.

    So, today we have Governor Pawlenty backtracking on the gun bill as fast as he can. He signed the bill in record speed after it was passed, in an attempt to leave no time for public reaction. But he, too, now admits to a less than careful reading. His staff says Pawlenty’s current attempt to rush through an amendment during the special session is only to correct a “drafting error” which requires the personal notice.

    But let’s not forget that Pawlenty is a lawyer, and that he undoubtedly has several of the same working for him, so the “drafting error” explanation doesn’t hold much water.

    What Pawlenty really missed in his perfunctory reading of the bill was the implication of having thousands of "No Guns here" signs and thousands of “personal notices” all over the state reminding people every day that he, Pariseau, and their ilk have wrought another fundamental change in Minnesota.

    And what the Dems didn’t miss is that, finally, the Republicans have miscalculated and shot themselves in the foot with their quick draw gun bill. How ironic is it that business owners and fervent church goers, those natural Republican constituencies, are today putting up what amount to DFL campaign signs all over their shops, restaurants and sanctuaries?

    Now that’s marketing.

  • Fold, spindle and mutilate

    Print this out, and no matter how you fold it, somebody’s getting bent.

    You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the file. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it here.

  • Guns ’n’ Alkyhol

    Who says our new Republican majority isn’t capable of bipartisanship? After passing a law that encourages Minnesotans to carry guns (despite the fact that the only people demanding it were apparently carpetbagging NRA lobbyists and the usual exurban crackpots in tinfoil hats), the legislature is now passing a kind of quid pro quo for lefties. Feeling alienated from a government you didn’t elect? Feeling like the only way you can air your complaints is through lawn signage? You may be a good candidate for later bar-times!

    It’s astonishing that this proposal, which would have yanked Minnesota into the modern age the first time it came up, oh, like 50 years ago, has taken so long to get serious consideration. (What’s next, car lots open on Sunday? Oh, the depravity.) Minnesota is among the last four states to require bars to close before 2 a.m. The tourism and convention industries have been arguing for decades that our pubescent curfew on nightlife was a repellant to business. While we can think of a few other reasons why Minneapolis might lose out to San Francisco, New York, or Santa Fe, a nice cocktail would certainly help us forget.

    We live in difficult times, and they’re taking their toll on good people in powerful positions. Still, maybe a stiff nightcap will only exacerbate the problem. Our old friend Katherine Lanpher would love to forget her little scrape with the law in April, and we would too. All we can say is that the hardest-working woman in broadcast journalism has certainly earned the right to a few kamikazes at the end of each work-week. As far as we’re concerned, the only real crime here is that Bill Kling still hasn’t hired her a driver; we hear the Star Tribune’s Eric Ringham may be available. In fact, he hosted “Mid Morning” the other day, giving the star a well deserved vacation day. We think he’d make a great sidekick, judging by the way he handled calls on the touchy subject of… er, alcohol legislation.

    The proposal to loosen up on bars is the perfect antipode to our shiny new conceal-and-carry law: So few people supported the latter, while so few oppose the former. Only a vocal minority argues against 2 a.m. bar time, mostly on some reflexive fear about drunk driving. We don’t get it. If people stay later in order to get drunker, and still drive—which they won’t necessarily do, according to various studies, but bear with us for a moment—it certainly would be to everyone’s advantage for that to happen when there are fewer people on the road, yes?

    And another thing: We aren’t at all clear on why lawmakers would abandon the off-sale folks so quickly and decisively. If the main concern about loosening alcohol laws is the car-bar connection, why wouldn’t they encourage more people to imbibe responsibly at home—by making it easier to buy beverages at the package store? Why did they refuse to even consider the idea of extending the mandatory closing time for wine shops? One of the not-very-quaint aspects of life in the Twin Cities, as compared to other major cities, is the clumsy rush to the liquor store, which is often closed before dinner is even over. (On the other hand, it’s pretty encouraging to see that the growler may become legal—allowing takeout of the area’s great brewpub beers. So even if the packie is closed, maybe we’ll be able to run down to Herkimer or Town Hall for a to-go cup of the really good stuff, the way they do out in Oregon and Washington.)

    Not to dis Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but the state’s restaurant and bar owners are a pretty muscular bunch with logic and numbers and now the state legislature on their side. Anyway, if we were really serious about putting an end to drinking and driving, then why does every bar around here have a parking lot? That’s a little like having a gun-rack in every car. Hey, wait a minute…

  • Bullet Points

    Confused about the new conceal-and-carry law? Here’s all you need to know, in one convenient location.

    How do I get the permit?

    • Take a “gun safety” course from a recognized gun safety instructor. The law specifically recognizes the National Rifle Association as a provider of such instruction (in case you weren’t clear on who sponsored this legislation).

    • Apply to your county sheriff, who must issue you the permit unless you are prohibited from possessing a firearm by being a convicted felon, being under 18, being mentally ill, or several other special situations.

    • The sheriff may also deny the permit if he believes that the applicant is dangerous, but he must prove his suspicions have “substantial” grounds. Be assured that if you happen to be a law-abiding member of Al Qaeda, who is here on a resident student visa to attend flight school, or if it’s been at least three years since you last were caught beating up your spouse, you’re good to go.

    Where can I carry my gun?

    • Unless specifically asked not to by property owners, you can carry one pretty much any darn place you please, except the Capitol building and schools (preschool-12). Most publicly owned spaces, like city halls and parks, are specifically prohibited by law from banning gun possession on the premises. In other words, that pesky city clerk who wants to deny your permit to build a backyard gazebo better keep in mind what kind of permit you might already have.

    • The University of Minnesota can prohibit its students and staff from packing heat, but not any visitors. Referees at Williams Arena are advised to remember that.

    What if someone asks me not to carry my gun on their premises?

    • The maximum penalty for carrying in a prohibited space is $25. Your gun cannot be confiscated. So, for less than the price of one box of good ammo, you can pack at the grade-school Christmas concert.

    • Before you agree to stow your gun in the car, be sure their request is “reasonable.” This means that they have posted a sign “prominently” at every entrance to the building that says “the proprietor BANS GUNS IN THESE PREMISES.” (The alternative wording, “I’M COMPLETELY DEFENSELESS BECAUSE I AM NOT CARRYING A GUN” was rejected after a short debate.)

    • Be sure the sign is posted within four feet of the door, the bottom of the sign is from four to six feet off the ground, the lettering is at least 1 1/2 inches high. It is in the Arial typeface, and printed on a bright contrasting background at least 187 square inches in area. (You might also want to carry a concealed tape measure.) And, just so you don’t give up your heater without legal warning, here’s a sample of the Arial typeface for comparison: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

    • Any building operator must also “personally” ask you to not carry a weapon on the premises. So, remember, when you are at the turnstile about to enter the Vikings game, if you can’t see the signs, or if the ticket taker doesn’t say, “Welcome to the game. You don’t have a Glock under those Helga horns, do you?,” you don’t have to worry about that $25 fine. You can spend that money on beer.

    • If you rent an apartment, your landlord cannot prohibit you from carrying a weapon at home. If your landlord is concerned about potential gunplay in his property, reassure him with this important feature of the law: Tenants who are drunk or stoned at home are required by law to take off their guns.

    Why do we now have this law?

    The answer is simple and contained right in the statute: “The legislature of the state of Minnesota recognizes and declares that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms.” For reference, here is the entire text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Presumably, the state will be around sometime later to sign you up for the “well regulated” militia.—Oliver Tuanis

  • Eat Your Ouija

    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, a Greek restaurant in St. Louis Park. I drove on over, explained my situation, and she kindly offered to help. At 55, she’s dashing, slim, and disarmingly candid.

    “I see you are obese,” she observed right away, before she even read my palm. When I sat down at her table, she went into more detail. Ruth explored a miniscule bump in the palm of my right hand with her thumb and discovered self-esteem issues in my past, and a current need for my wife and I to have another baby. “Actually, that’s a piece of glass that’s been lodged under the skin right there for years,” I told her.

    “I wish it was, but it’s a little girl that your wife wants. She’s ready to raise another baby.” Well, maybe she is. But I was ready for something to eat. Could Ruth forecast what I would order? “No,” she said. “I’m not going to forecast what you would choose. I’m going to forecast what you would like.” So I decided to have Ruth order for me.

    Having divined that I had snacked recently, Ruth went with an appetizer plate. At a glance, it looked like two strikes against her; there are few things in the world I dislike more than eggplant and red caviar, and this plate featured both. A third strike came when she had the waitress fetch a glass of Nema, a red wine from Corinth. Apparently, she had not received the Retsina-seeking wavelength I had been transmitting since I walked in. But when the plate arrived, I found that the caviar had been whipped with a smooth cheese-spread topped with capers. It was salty and smooth and went nicely on the cucumber and pita wedges served with it. Next to this, I found a generous scoop of feta spread, a favorite of mine wherever it can be found. The Nema turned out to be another pleasant surprise. Light bodied, a little fruity on top with a tannic finish, it washed the cheeses down perfectly.

    The next thing that happened made me suspect that not only had Ruth chosen well, but that she was also exerting some sort of occult influence on me. I kept involuntarily snagging my little wedges of pita in the repulsive-looking eggplant spread. I liked it. It balanced the richness of the cheese and gave the wine another nice counterpoint. Ruth’s psychic power was the only explanation, and with a second glass of Nema I became a believer, at least regarding affairs of the stomach. Another daughter, though? Not telling. Just keep your eyes peeled for Mpls.St.Paul’s cover story on food critics’ babies.—Joe Pastoor

  • Speedy Recovery

    With the economy stalled in first gear, strip-mall stalwarts like Kmart have left cavernous buildings in the wake of their demise. This is bad news for shoppers, of course, but good news for motorsport enthusiasts. Built inside one of these defunct discount centers is Brooklyn Center’s Thunder Alley, the nation’s largest indoor go-kart track. Business there is booming, showing little respect for the recession.

    The other night, I found myself strapped into a bucket seat and prepared to burn rubber in my maiden go-kart race. I was nervous. It might have been the exhaust fumes choking the air. It might have been the three high-testosterone teenagers revving their engines behind me. Especially the one with the all-star wrestling mohawk and the pentagram necklace.
    Though teenage drivers dominate the ranks at Thunder Alley, it’s worth noting that the all-time speed record is held by a gentleman who races under the moniker Ol’ Sarge. He’s 74.

    So it was with trepidation that I eyed the grey-haired father next to me, whose personal fan club leaned against the chain-link fence (just under a sign warning “do not lean on the fence”) screaming “daddy, daddy, go, go, go” before breaking into a chorus of dog howls. He assured me it was his first time “on this track.”

    REO Speedwagon blared in the background (“take it on the run, baby”), and I strained to hear 17-year-old race marshal Tony Richter. “These are race cars, not bumper cars. Take your first lap slow. After the straightaway there’s a hairpin curve at the end. Slow down! Hittin’ the wall at forty is not fun.” Indeed, the 6.5 horsepower Honda engines can rocket the tiny machines to 40 mph with an involuntary twitch of the ankle.

    “If you see me waving the yellow flag, slow down, there’s a crash. Blue means let the kart behind you pass. You all know what the checkered flag means. The black flag is the penalty flag. If you see it, pull over; I need to talk to you about your driving,” Richter bellowed his over-rehearsed lines to us with a lackadaisical authority. If a driver declines to follow the rules or has a panic attack, all of the cars are equipped with a computerized system that allows track officials to slow down or stop any car from a keyboard.

    One by one we peeled out of the pit. Leaning back in the low-riding kart, I jetted down the straightway with a visions of trophy girls on my arms, their breasts heaving, in the winner’s circle. The fantasy was quickly nixed, as my go-kart fishtailed and threatened to eject me into the blue and yellow barrier lining the first hairpin corner. I recovered just in time to crank a hard right, wheels squealing.

    I managed to work my way through the snaking passages and suddenly found myself jockeying for position with two of the kids. Setting them up on corner number three, I went wide before diving inside. They were soon eating my dust.

    Just as I was basking in my future NASCAR glory, the senior driver nudged my kart, deftly lapping me. We were only halfway through the race. Humbled, I realized the memory of Dale Earnhardt was safe from my driving prowess for the time being.—John Tribbett

  • “A Small Half-Domesticated Polecat”

    It’s a beautiful spring afternoon and there’s a costume contest going on at Eagles Aerie Number 33 on St. Paul’s East Side. The contestants—an Indian, a bride, a hillbilly, and a witch—are decked out in gorgeous homemade finery. Their handlers hover nervously, while judges with clipboards move in for a closer look.

    My personal favorite is the hillbilly, with his patched denim overalls, straw hat, and curly wig, but, predictably, the judges go for the showier Indian, with his regal feather-decked headpiece à la early Village People. After the ribbons are passed out, the witch squirms out of her peaked hat, and the white-veiled bride slumps dejectedly, like a skinny, beady-eyed Miss Havisham.

    “Isn’t this the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” asks Barbara “Grandma” Martin, leaning in to pat the winning contestant, a furry, pointy-nosed ferret named Kinsey. I’m at Ferret Funfest 2003. It is a gathering of ferret enthusiasts and a fundraiser for Minnesota’s only no-kill ferret shelter, a place called In the Company of Ferrets. Hardcore ferret enthusiasts call themselves ferreteers, and this crowd is definitely hardcore. The games now finished, dozens of ferrets snooze in specially designed hammocks, rest on shoulders, or scamper around the hall on leashes, making skritch-skritch noises on the polished wooden floor.

    This annual event is the brainchild of Laura Palmer—not the cheerleader from that creepy TV show Twin Peaks, but the founder of both the shelter and a nonprofit ferret club called FROLIC (Ferrets Require Our Love, Involvement and Companionship). She is arguably Minnesota’s leading ferreteer.

    “Old-style ferret people tend to be alternative types,” says the husky-voiced Palmer, on a cigarette break near the back door. On second thought, she does seem jaded in a David Lynch kind of way. “Now there’s a whole new generation of ferret owners—yuppies and soccer moms who don’t understand that having a ferret is like having a two-year-old child.” Palmer’s shelter is actually more of a network of foster-ferreteers willing to care for abandoned animals in their homes. She started it seven years ago, after Petco began selling the animals in their 18 Minnesota stores and the state’s ferret population began to skyrocket.

    As the local ferret count rose, so did the number of animals abandoned at the humane societies, in parks, and even on the side of the road. “Ferrets are not a good pet for someone who’s anal-retentive or germ-phobic,” Palmer says. “They’re little hellions. They will trash your house. People who tell you that ferrets are easy to care for, like cats, are all wrong. They’re practically a full-time job.”

    In the United States, ferrets are domesticated animals, and on average they live to be about 7 years old. (They are prone to certain cancers, often escape from houses, and can even be killed by hairballs.) Ferrets are also notoriously difficult to housetrain. Each year, a few of the shelter’s ferrets are adopted, but many are too old, frail, or unstable to move. “Our vet bills run around $10,000 a year,” says Palmer, who keeps the oldest and sickest animals in her Stillwater home.

    Vicki Collins, a slim, soft-voiced woman with short, spiky hair, loaded her family and her four favorite ferrets, Cami, Kinsey (the Indian), Romeo, and Naughty Tawney, in the car and drove all the way up from Osceola, Wisconsin, for the Fun Fest. “There’s no pet better than a ferret,” Collins says, her eyes glittering enthusiastically. “But they are a lot of work. They’re not something just to be pretty and looked at. They’re like little children. They train you.”

    Deb Carlson, a tall, flushed woman also known by her fellow ferreteers as “Big Deb,” takes a break from her duties as master of ceremonies. “I got a new man in my life,” she says, her voice hoarse from yelling over the din. “He came over to my house and I gave him a ferret to hold. He’s like this,” and she pantomimes a man holding a ferret gingerly at arm’s length. “I said to him, ‘I suggest you bring that ferret close to you because if you want to be with me, you better get used to having that little fucker around.’”—Andy Steiner