I drink coffee while everyone else is asleep. Alone in an armchair, I stare at the yellow rectangle of light coming from the kitchen. The furnace groans and floorboards creak. The house is like an old man farting. Five more years and it will turn one hundred. I think of the other families that have … Continue reading A Riverine Christmas
Minneapolis
Cawing into the Abyss
Crows assemble at this U of M tower like children around a birthday cake, hoping for the killing to begin so they can have lunch. You are fools they say, everyone is black until you pick our feathers. Each December they fill the sky along the river in flocks too numerous to count. Such gatherings … Continue reading Cawing into the Abyss
Strange Days
As a bored, pimple-faced high schooler, I read a science-fiction story about a character who gets trapped on the wrong side of the mirror. Duped by his reflection, he lives in a world not quite normal—a dimmer alternate universe populated by imposters he does not love. I could not tell you the name of the … Continue reading Strange Days
Graffiti Bridge
I decided to put the words and the worries aside and just take some pictures. The suburbanites hurtling over us in their cars had no idea about the art and the wonder below. I could leave the city, put myself deeper in debt and find a nice spot by some lake. I might catch bigger … Continue reading Graffiti Bridge
City of Bridges
Minneapolis is famously known as the city of lakes, and while that may be true, we are also a city of bridges. I cross the Mississippi River four times each working day, and it is something I always enjoy doing...something that makes this place feel like home. My favorite bridge has become the Franklin because … Continue reading City of Bridges
Positively Fourth Street Revisited
Back in 1959 there was this improbable Jewish kid from Hibbing who rolled into town on a Greyhound bus. He flopped for a short while with a cousin at a University Avenue frat house before trading his electric guitar for a double-O Martin and renting a room above Gray’s drugstore. From Chronicles Volume I: … Continue reading Positively Fourth Street Revisited
Macabre Mailboxes and a Minneapolis Murder Mystery
As a letter carrier, I get paid to walk in circles. It is not such a horrible thing to stroll through the same neighborhood every day, although the job does get dull and the weather is sometimes horrible. Like any walker, I note the banal passage of the seasons. I had forgotten this collection of … Continue reading Macabre Mailboxes and a Minneapolis Murder Mystery
Hello, Mailbox
Early on in my postal career I had this little apartment building on my route with mostly Somalis living in it. A little boy with a round mischievous face began coming out to watch me put the letters in the boxes. "Hello, mailbox!" he would say to me. This got to be his little joke. … Continue reading Hello, Mailbox
Lost and Found
On Father’s Day, I took my older boy down to where Minnehaha Creek flows into the Mississippi River. We parked our bikes by some bushes where the path eroded away into sand. My son wanted to look for lost fishing lures to place in the little tacklebox I had given him. He carried it everywhere, … Continue reading Lost and Found
The Body
One morning I ran through the tunnel at the north end of Lake Calhoun. A crowd had gathered around the Isles lagoon. I could see the flashing lights of a police boat by the trees on the opposite shore. I asked a man beside me what was going on. He told me a girl had … Continue reading The Body
