by Howard Mohr
—“High heat wrecks the elastic in the waistband.”
—“You sure know your way around, don’t you? I hate baggy underwear.”
—“So do I, Wally. Maybe it’s a sign.”
At the Garden Center
—“I didn’t mean to brush my sweaty arm against your shoulder. I was reaching for a packet of Wacko Wonder pole beans. My name is Tom.”
—“Don’t apologize, Tom, it was wonderful. I’m Nina, and I like your taste in string beans—that Wacko Wonder is a good producer.”
—“You got that right, but they’re a little tough late in the season.”
—“That’s the way it goes, we can’t have everything. When the long brown hairs on your arm touched my bare shoulder, I was reaching for the Giant Hybrid Radish.”
—“Boy, good choice. What’s your carrot?”
—“The Orange Blimp. But they get woody if the weather is dry and hot.”
—“That’s what I’ve heard, but they say it’s a good keeper.”
—“It’s hard to find a good keeper, isn’t it, Tom?”
—“You know, Nina, I want to say something, but I’m real nervous. It’ll probably sound totally ridiculous and you’ll laugh in my face. And I don’t want you to think I just go around saying stuff like this all the time.”
—“Spit it out, Tom.”
—“I was wondering if maybe you and I could find a plot of rich earth and plant a garden together.”
—“Oh, Tom, I can see us now on our hands and knees, weeding the rutabagas, the edible-pod peas, and the okra.”
—“I don’t like okra.”
—“We can work it out.”
At the Hardware Store
—“Yikes!”
—“Did you feel it too? A spark jumped between us.”
—“You want to know what I think?”
—“Do I have a choice?”
—“That spark was caused by static electricity. It means there was a potential difference built up between us, and when we got close, electrons were transferred at the speed of light, leaving us electrically neutral relative to each other.”
—“I haven’t exactly been waiting all my life for somebody to say that to me, but it’s better than nothing.”
—“I was a little afraid, but I’m glad I let it out, ma’am.”
—“What do you say we walk around and build up some more static charges and then release them?”
In the Parking Lot of a Shopping Mall, Winter
—“So you’ve got your hood up then, ma’am.”
—“The engine goes around and around when I turn the key, but it won’t start, and I smell gas.”
—“Can I be frank?”
—“Do it. Time is running out.”
—“My guess is your automatic choke is stuck shut. See, the deal is, if that choke flap sticks down, then the engine can’t get any air through the carburetor throat, and it floods.”
—“Is there anything you can do for me?”
—“You bet. I’m gonna take your air cleaner off and loosen up your choke flap.”
—“Can I help?”
—“Yeah, sure. You can get behind the wheel then and crank her over, but your battery is pretty weak so I gotta move my Chevy up real close and hook up the jumper cables.”
—“Jumper cables? I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life and this is the first time anybody has jumped me. I suppose you’re an old hand at it?”
—“I can do it with my eyes closed, ma’am.”
—“Let’s both keep our eyes open on this one, okay?”
On the Dock of One of Minnesota’s
Ten or Fifteen Thousand Lakes
—“I’m sorry, what a klutz. I snagged your line with that last cast.”
—“Don’t worry about it, ma’am, it’s the only action I’ve had all day. Fishing is just not my strong suit.”
—“My bobber’s tangled in your hook. Let me cut the whole thing off and give you a new setup out of my tackle box.”
—“No problem, ma’am.”
—“Your sinker’s too heavy, did you know that?”
—“Where have you been all my life?”
—“Well, for one thing, I don’t usually fish this lake. Could I make a suggestion?”
—“Go ahead, ma’am, but I don’t know if I can take it. I’m already kind of wobbly in the knees.”
—“Let’s unload my boat from the trailer and cruise out on the lake together and see what develops. Who knows, we might get lucky and find ourselves some walleyes.”
—“That sounds like a pretty good deal to me, ma’am.”
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER COURTSHIP
In the later courtship stage, after the initial passionate encounter, repeated body contact can often occur, even in Minnesota. I wish I could be more specific about it, but I don’t think it’s any of your business. One thing we’re not in Minnesota is exhibitionists. You’ll just have to wing it and do the best you can.
The wedding ceremony stage of a Minnesota romance is an open book. But if you get married in Minnesota, don’t expect grade-A hoopla. We’re not big on hoopla. Bridal boutiques are not a growth industry here.
What follows is the text of a complete Minnesota wedding. There are several other models to choose from, but they’re basically the same.
—“Do you, Jeff, pretty much promise to honor and obey Julie, and take her to be your lawfully wedded wife, as far as that goes then?”
—“Yeah, good deal.”
—“And you, Julie, do you pretty much take Jeff to be your lawfully wedded husband then?”
—“Whatever.”
—“That does it, then, kids. You can kiss if you want. And let me say that I hope this marriage is a heckuva deal for both of you.”
Simple, yes, but it covers all the bases. If you get more elaborate, you can lose sight of the real meaning, and that can lead to trouble. Put on your duds, get to the church, get it over with, and drive on out of there. That’s my advice.
The Minnesota Honeymoon
Very little is known about Minnesota honeymoons or the sex life of Minnesotans in general. I mean we all know about our own, but we don’t discuss it with anybody. Ten or eleven years ago a man and woman from Harvard came out here to study sexual patterns in Minnesota. They stayed a year, interviewed over 1,200 Minnesotans, and ended up with a single page of conclusive statistics that got them fired from their department.
Another sort of touchy subject. A guy from Illinois told me one day, “You’ve got massage parlors in the big cities just like us. What makes you think you’re so high and mighty and moral?” I didn’t say a word, I just gave him ten dollars and sent him through the doors of the Velvet Curtain Massage Inn. He was back out in ten minutes.
—“You people are sick. Do you know what they did in there? They sat me on a folding chair fully clothed and then removed my glasses and rubbed my temples.”
I could’ve told him that’s what they’d do, but he would not have believed it.
WHERE TO GO IN MINNESOTA
The Missing Bedroom
[Note: I’ve seen it with my own eyes, the Missing Bedroom. I don’t know if you should make a special trip, but if you’re headed toward western Minnesota and you get to the Montevideo area, just look for the signs or ask anybody how to get there. It’s an ordinary old farmhouse, but you can clearly tell where Jack Ikeson’s bedroom used to be. It’s quite the mystery. The story reprinted below is based on interviews with Jack before he died in 1984. The bedroom turned up missing on October 9, 1977. —H.M.]
* * *
It was late when bachelor farmer Jack Ikeson pulled into his yard. He had been playing cards at the pool hall—some whist, but mostly buck euchre. He went inside and made himself an onion-and-blue-cheese sandwich and ate it with his workboots off while he read the comics. After seventy-three years, it was still his only vice, he told people. He had no use for whisky and he only smoked at weddings.
After his snack, he undresse
d in the living room and draped his clothes over the wooden chair next to the telephone-cable spool he used for a table. He took his longjohns off the hook by the radio and put them on for pajamas. He walked to the bedroom door, turned the glass knob, pushed the door open, and brought his right foot forward across the sill.
Jack’s farmhouse was built at the turn of the century and was meant to function as shelter, little more. There is a dirt-floor cellar under the living room with a trapdoor near the west window. That’s where Jack went during storms that could produce tornadoes. That’s where he stored his onions and potatoes, in sacks hanging from nails pounded into the joists. The other rooms of the house have crawl spaces under them. Theoretically a person could crawl under there, but Jack never did. There was no reason to. Mice crawled there, and, from time to time, a larger animal. Jack could have kept the mice out of his crawl space if he had patched up the rock foundation, but patching it was not high on his list of things to do. In fact he never had a list of things to do.
At night, as he lay in bed, Jack could hear the mice running around in the crawl space and cellar. They were having fun, jumping and squeaking. He tried poison, but the mice would then just die under the floors or in the walls and the smell would take a long time to go away. In the fall, when Jack would see the first mouse scoot along the baseboard in the kitchen, he would bait some snap traps with hamburger or candy bars, whatever was handy. He put one behind the refrigerator, another on the top shelf of the cupboard where he kept the sugar, and one in the bread drawer. After he ran his trap line for a few days, the mouse populace would be back in the crawl space.
Jack’s friends told him the mice would burn his house down someday chewing on an electrical wire. He said it was a chance he was willing to take.
Jack’s bare foot stepped only on air after he brought it forward through the door. The bedroom was gone. No ceiling, no roof, no floor, no bed. Nothing was left except the rock foundation and the dirt of the crawl space, eighteen inches below the doorsill. The south wall of the bedroom was the north wall of the living room and was intact. The framed picture of his parents had not budged.
In town you could hear it different ways. Some people had him surprised by the cool blast of night air when he opened the bedroom door. But that was no surprise to a man who liked to sleep where he could see his breath.
The truth was, when he opened the door and his right foot came down past where the floor had been for years, Jack’s immediate thought was that he had made a mistake of tremendous proportions. Whatever was happening, it was his fault. And then he thought: Let go of the knob and roll. He lowered his right shoulder, tucked in his chin, and managed to land on his upper back in the dirt. He turned one complete somersault and part of another before he stopped with his feet propped against the rock foundation of what was once his bedroom. He could see the stars. He could see the big box-elder tree by the chicken shed.
When he told it to his cronies at the pool hall, he said he had sworn out loud, “Where in hell did my bedroom go?” But he didn’t. He didn’t say a word as he lay there. He was breathing so hard his whole body was vibrating. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the door from the living room hanging open. He stood up, dusted himself off, stepped over the foundation wall, and drove to town in his longjohns, where he called the sheriff from the pay phone in front of the post office.
The bedroom was gone. The sheriff took a picture of it not being there. He even had his deputies looking for the bedroom, but it never turned up. Most people wrote it off as an elaborate prank.
Jack often wondered why he hadn’t just kept the whole thing to himself. He lived in the house until he died and slept in the living room on a bed made from an old feed bunker. Sometimes at night he would walk over and open the door to the bedroom and stand there looking out at the grove of trees. Sometimes it made him wish he had married.
A Big Thank-You
to Raw Bits™
Without RAW BITS as a sustaining sponsor it would have been tough going to pay all the bills associated with writing the original How to Talk Minnesotan and having it printed. I am happy to say that RAW BITS has stepped up to the plate once again. Charlie T, the CEO, laid it out for me: “Our sales increased year by year after your visitor’s guide made its debut. The bulk of our new customers learned about RAW BITS from the ads in your book and said as much in postscripts to their qualifying stories.”
If you are new to RAW BITS, you should know that it is not sold in stores and is never discounted or sold by Amazon or Walmart. To qualify for monthly shipments of RAW BITS, applicants will be accepted by invitation only from the RAW BITS Company after they submit two references and an acceptable account of a life event as determined by the board of directors.
Back in late 1987 Charlie T sent me a one-pound sample of RAW BITS so I would be able to field gustatory questions about the product from readers, since it would be promoted in my book. I like RAW BITS, especially for breakfast, and sometimes for an evening snack. Charlie T made me the first ever honorary customer, but I pay cash like everybody else, no discount or expedited shipping by FedEx. RAW BITS is a no-perks company, and that goes for Charlie as well.
ALERT: A product emerged in 2007 calling itself GNAW BITS, which you are welcome to try, but don’t forget to read the label concerning a potential gagging and sneezing hazard connected with the dried peas and ragweed seeds listed in the ingredients. RAW GRITS, another knockoff, showed up in 2010, with production by a Georgia company that also manufactures fiberboard and paneling. As far as we know, RAW GRITS consisted of a sawdust-like substance sweetened by high fructose corn syrup, okra chips, lard, and marshmallows. It is gluten free. Or I should say was. The FDA banned the product in 2011, but it soon reemerged as a quick-start product for fireplaces and wood-burning heaters.
When the state of Minnesota jumped into legalized gambling, it was off the deep end without a lifeguard, as Harold Mire likes to say. Canterbury Downs (now called Canterbury Park) was first out of the chutes as a clean, well-lit horse track with betting that had a family feel to it, but soon expanded to offtrack betting with simulcasts that made it feel like New Jersey. In 2012 Canterbury Park might as well be called a casino, since it does have a variety of card games including blackjack, Texas hold ’em, and many more. Current legislation allows Canterbury Park to have only fifty card tables and horse racing. For some reason Canterbury cannot have slot machines. I almost forgot the Minnesota Lottery, the biggest gamble of all, operated by the state of Minnesota.
There came a day a few years ago when the legislature was behind on its annual responsibility to fund public schools, with the clock running down to session end. The legislators were instead wrestling with the tough math question of how many video gaming devices bars and restaurants could legally have on their premises.
“Gambling in the Schools” appeared on the Sunday Star Tribune commentary page with a byline familiar to the Strib readers. Somebody was sticking his/her neck out once again, though I could have warned him/her that the use of irony has its drawbacks, and in a newspaper especially, irony has trouble written all over it. As it happened, several readers thought that the legislature had actually passed the bill. Several people phoned their elected legislators, furious that this had happened without consulting Minnesota citizens first. It was a learning experience for the author, the legislature, and the readers, who should have had their big cup of coffee before they turned to the commentary page that Sunday morning. —H.M.
The Education Gambling Bill
Parents and teachers who have been worried sick about finding enough money just to maintain public schools at a minimal level or better, worry no more.
The Minnesota legislature recently approved the Education Gambling Bill, which allows video gaming devices (VGDs) in K–12 classrooms.
Only two machines per classroom will be permitted, unless the class size exceeds thirty, in which case one additional VGD will be permitted for each additional ten students.
Students in math classes will be instructed in probability, statistics, and hot streaks.
The VGDs in kindergarten classrooms will operate with nickels only.
All students will be expected to do their assignments and homework before gambling, unless they’re on a roll.
Powerball and Gopher 5 lottery tickets will be sold only in the lunchroom during the noon hour. The attractive neon Minnesota Lottery signs will be permitted at the main entrance of the school and near the scoreboard at games.
Pull tabs and scratch-offs are specifically outlawed in the bill because they make a big mess, according to the powerful janitors lobby.
Offtrack horse betting will be handled in the principal’s office, with a two-dollar and five-dollar window initially, but with the option of a hundred-dollar window after the first year.
Race results from the major American tracks will be broadcast to the students on the classroom Channel One.
National scratch sheets will be available in convenient locations. The first half hour of the school day will be a “handicapping homeroom,” but students will be encouraged to arrive early if they are psyched up and have the feeling this is the day.
Each school system may publish and sell its own tip sheet or it can hire a professional tipster, such as “Gimp” Gordon or “Fast-Forward” Freddy, to be a counselor and role model.
Betting on high school sports will be forbidden, but the morning line for collegiate and professional sports will be broadcast on Channel One and posted in the principal’s office near the sports-betting window.
As a safeguard, students will not be allowed to bet on sporting contests unless they have successfully passed Math II: Point Spreads and Injuries.
Poker games will be operated as an extracurricular activity from the final bell until 4:00 A.M. The school will be the “house” and provide the dealers.
There will be a 10 percent rake-off for each pot up to a maximum of ten dollars per hand. Only 5-card draw, stud, and hold ’em will be permitted.
