Up until about two weeks ago, Mike Byard was a daytime operator of the historic Stillwater Lift Bridge. Byard is one of three seasonal attendants who keep the bridge manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week until mid-October, when the Coast Guard restricts river traffic in anticipation of winter. The bridge, built in … Read more
Every year about this time, the Noise Pollution Clearing House gets a flurry of calls about leaf blowers. Some people don’t like them, and in California, the gas-powered models have been outlawed or restricted in several municipalities. They can’t be used within five hundred feet of a residence in Los Angeles. The director of the … Read more
“Wilbert! Wilbert!” his wife yelled at the top of her lungs toward the makeshift house behind the llama cage at Behn’s Game Farm in the tiny town of Aniwa, in northern Wisconsin. “He’s hard of hearing,” she explained. With a slight limp, Wilbert slowly emerged from the plywood building, looking as though he’d just awakened … Read more
“So you’re telling me,” I ask the Pope of Witches, “that Hubert Humphrey was a vampire?” “Yes, he actually was. Hubert was a very interesting person.” So says Carl Llewellyn Weschcke. We are sitting in his spacious office at the St. Paul headquarters of Llewellyn Worldwide, the largest independent occult publishing house in America. At … Read more
Never take a self-defense class with your sisters. Especially if the class is called Training for Life, in which you learn techniques that, unlike traditional martial arts, are designed not to inflict permanent or even semi-permanent harm upon an attacker, but instead rely on a series of intensely painful, twisted pinches. Three sisters, six hands, … Read more
Lawyers are the ultimate insiders. Just ask anyone foolhardy enough to represent him- or herself in court. So just how does a lawyer get to be an outsider? Rob Lowe’s stunning 1985 haircut for his new TV series, Lyon’s Den, seems to be doing the trick for him. But around here, nonfictional lawyers do it … Read more
The other day, we strolled down Hennepin Avenue and ducked into the city’s oldest bar. In a paneled backroom where we might have expected a billiard table, a small group of mystery writers had assembled to tipple and talk shop. Writers are normally solo artists, not given to fraternizing with the enemy. But mystery writers … Read more
It started with letters in the mail. Then there were the spies. Then one day at an unglamorous neighborhood coffee shop in South Minneapolis, the phone rang. “I’ve been to your café. I know you have a CD player,” said the voice on the phone. Paul knew he was in trouble. It was true; there … Read more
When you’re married, a funny thing happens. You lose your alone time. My pal Brad, proud daddy of two, says it’s much worse when you have kids. He says it’s been months since he had the house to himself. Why would he want the house to himself, you ask? Well, this is going to be … Read more
The thing I miss most about living in the country is the very thing I eventually came to hate about it: the long snake of black tar between one place and another, the empty distances, the endless driving. Oh, my God, how I miss the driving. I miss going for days and days without leaving … Read more