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: “Above Gray’s, … Continue reading Positively Fourth Street Revisited
Minneapolis
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
