Giving Thanks: Breakfast With Ghosts

A dapper young skeleton

The first weekend in November I travelled back to Winona for a couple of reasons–one, to take my grandmother out to lunch and catch up with her;  two, to visit the Prairie Moon Sculpture Garden in Cochrane; and three, to attend my friend Kathy's Dia de los muertos celebration. 

It was great to spend time with my grandmother and catch up, I don't get to do it as often as I like, nor engage in it as often as I should. The Prairie Moon Sculpture Garden was fun; it's one of those weird slices of roadside Americana that people either find curiously fun in a kitschy way or wrinkle their brows at ask "Why?" while driving by. I'm ashamed to say I'd lived mere minutes away from it for nearly two decades, and it took two more after that to realize the place was there and coordinate a visit to it. Well, it's one of those weird slices of Americana that I find intriguing and see less as a quirky roadside road trip footnote, and more as a shrine to outsider folk art. Some of the pieces were in poor shape, particularly the coral snake, but it was a delightful shrine to one retired farmer's artistic vision. 

It's pretty impressive actually, and ballsy when you think about it. Here was Herman Rusch, a farmer, son of Prussian immigrants, who decided to keep the boredom of retirement at bey by building these bizarre concrete sculptures and having his friends make concrete sculptures of dinosaurs and animals and even a man knife-fighting a bear! In the rural farmland of Cochrane/Fountain City and the Coulee Region, that's the sort of eccentricity that would tend to serve as a red flag for Jeb and Skeeter to think maybe you ain't the way you oughta be, but hope the judicious application of work boots to head might properly recalibrate. Probably to the tune of "We don't do that 'round here." I know, I grew up in the area. Not that it's solely a haven for backwoods ignorants and Trump voters (nor am I suggesting everyone who lives in the woods is ignorant, lord knows I'm itching to join you), but casually suggest to a Cal or Rick working mandatory overtime at one of the factories keeping the town afloat that you don't eat meat, and to this day there's a bit of a straightening of the neck and a looking-down-the-cheekbone "You don't say" sort of response. But he had a yen to do this out of the ordinary thing and did it!

Here (above) is a video that gives a little detail about Rusch and his legacy. 

Later that evening I attended a wonderful Day of the Dead celebration organized and hosted by my friends Kathy VanCor and Brandon Rustke. I even got to operate the piñata! It was a great time and a call to remember and celebrate the lives that may have left us with little but memories in their wake. In fact the idea struck home hard enough to inspire me to visit my grandparents early Sunday morning. 

I hadn't been to Oakland Cemetery in Stockton since my grandfather was interred there, the day before Thanksgiving 2010. It's a small, unassuming collection of headstones; definitely a country graveyard, and it suits him to a T (though I'm still not sure what that idiom means, really). It's quiet, rural, surrounded by farmland and rolling bluffs, and, as in life, has a set of train tracks running right next to his home. 

It's a bit hard to see but Ralph has a fish jumping out of the water near his name. He loved fishing.

 The road into Oakland Cemetery is a dirt and gravel road, accessed across a field. The land where the cemetery rests is butted right up against Garvin Brook, and faces a wide stretch of Stockton valley in the other direction, a panoramic view of the humpbacked bluffs and all their various color changes throughout the year. Ralph always was an outdoors kind of person who loved country music and professional wrestling. He loved being outdoors and watching the birds and squirrels. He gets the quiet of a country graveyard now, the trickling current of the brook behind him, the direct sun above him, and all the wildlife the area has to offer. 

A few other Haedtkes are resting in Oakland as well, including my
great-grandparents.

That morning I also visited my paternal grandparents in the certainly more "metropolitan" St. Mary's Cemetery, which is in Winona proper, right next to the armory (where my senior prom was held). It's a sprawling, multi-tiered cemetery on the town's east side, not far from where my grandparents lived, actually. Bob and JoAnn lived in an amazing mid-century split-level on East Lake Boulevard, a house that I had decided I was going to own one day when my grandparents either moved into a retirement community or, god forbid, passed on. That didn't happen for a number of reasons, but it was an amazing place with some choice mid-century decor and an amazing finished basement. It sat on a hill at the foot of the bluffs, right below Sugarloaf, and overlooked the twin lakes. But I digress. 

Bob and JoAnn's headstone suits them as well. Quiet, polished, with a classic
sensibility that ties some mid-century modernism with traditionalism.

Something struck me while I was out walking around these tombstones that frosty morning. John Waters once said something (I'm paraphrasing here) about how people's homes should be filled with all kinds of "weird art" and wall colors that reflect their personalities, rather than something just picked up at Sears, hung on the ever-present off-white or beige walls. But people largely don't. I've been in a lot of homes and I see a lot of off-white and beige walls with the same Terry Redlin prints and hotel-friendly abstract art picked up at Home Goods or something. That's fine, if that's what you like, but a home, the place where someone would hopefully go to decompress and remove the normalcy filters they need to put on while out in the general public, should ultimately reflect the person living in it, right?

The same goes with tombstones. Now, I know there's more than desire and personal vision that goes into the choosing of a tombstone. For example, there's cost. Expense is prohibitive for a lot of people, myself included, when it comes to making decisions on anything. I see a lot of old headstones that are just sometimes-smoothed blocks of stone with a name chiseled into it. Then there are the obviously wealthy folks who have the massive stone angels and the large sepulchers. But as I toed my way around the headstones at St. Mary's, I saw all of these amazing headstones that reflected some aspect of the individual they stood sentinel over.

For example, this headstone with the image of Elvis and a flying monkey on it. What the hell is that all about? I want to know more about these people and why this was chosen as the imagery best to reflect the memory of their presence on Earth? It's fantastic!

Or how about this die-cut marker with the etched portrait in front of a palm tree in the setting sun? Winona, Minnesota is diametrically opposed to a tropical seascape sunset in so many ways, why was this chosen to be what this woman will be forever memorialized with? 

Or this stand up bass iconography I saw in Oakland near my grandfather:

Personally, I'm not sure I even want to be buried. I don't know, maybe cremation is the way to go. I haven't really given it much thought. There are days when it seems like a high dive off of a bridge might be the best route to take. But the trip to the cemeteries was cathartic and necessary; it had been a while since I had a chance to sit and talk to my relatives and just say hello, even if it was a one-sided conversation. It's really more of a balm for the psyche than anything else, I suppose, helping you feel like that connection is still there even if they aren't. Like Herman Rusch we all kind of want to leave something to be remembered by after we're gone, whether that's a kind impression on the people we love and hope love us back, or a concrete replica of our features, sternly watching over what we had the audacity to dare to build in life. It's a good reminder to appreciate the people that flavor our lives in a positive way, and restrict the time given to those who do not. There are a lot of things to be thankful for, whether hidden in the minutiae of our daily struggles and pursuits, obscured by the folds of frustration, or sitting in plain sight. There's nothing wrong with being happy, and pursuing that happiness by being yourself and reveling in your own interests, even if there's a lot of unhappy people who would like to take that away from you. 

As mach as it sounds like off the cuff, platitudinous pablum, be yourself and be kind. Appreciation is one of the best gifts you can give to someone, and a little goes a long way.

For clarification, I'm on the right.

Carry on you wayward spirits.

Gamblers, Brothels and Halloween in Winona

Two bits from page three of the Evening Edition of the Monday, October 30th 1893 issue of the Winona Daily Republican:

One detailing a skirmish between three drunken gamblers in a brothel on Second Street:

Another extolling the practice of observing my favorite holiday, even by intelligent people in the age of reason:

Police Shoot Ghosts

Here's a bizarre little bit of filler from the back pages of the Evening Edition of the April 27th, 1920 edition of The Winona Republican-Herald.

The House of Hebe

The Fifth Street entrance to the WPL. It was the building's main entrance until 1987
when the Johnson Street entrance was opened to alleviate congestion.

This is going to fall into the "Why would I care?" category for potential readers of this blog.

The Winona Public Library was a special place for me as a child and a younger man. When I was young, it was a place where I could be quiet–nay, expected to be quiet!–and not have to fear the oratorial repercussions from anyone regarding such, and how not running at the mouth at all times is somehow less than what I should be contributing to society as an upstanding, normal human being. (This was a frequent discussion had at me by teachers, parents, friends of my parents, parents of friends, other students, for most of my first 18 years.) It was a place where learning was fostered and exploring other worlds, other points of view, and thusly broadening and questioning my horizons as a bi-product, was de rigueur, and the other side of the mirror as far as the environment I was subjected to at home.

The second floor book shelves. You can see the little red
skull icons on the spine tags on the right. There are little
red rocket ships for science fiction / fantasy as well. 

 If you want more historical information on the building, you can read an excellent write-up here, on the WPL's own website. These pictures were snapped this past August, when I stepped inside to revisit for the first time in decades. It looked about the same, though, as the old cliche goes, somewhat smaller than I remembered it.

The glass floors of the third and fourth floor book rooms.

Before the Winona Middle School was condemned (a long overdue decision, believe me,) it was right next door, nestled up against the back of the library. When I was in junior high, as soon as the bell rang for the day, I would often walk next door and set myself up in the reading room with a small stack of books until someone could pick me up.

Statue of Hebe in the Reading Room.

The Winona Public Library was where I fell in love with dinosaurs and where I found the Crestwood House monster movie books (pictured below), based on classic monster movies from the 1930s and 40s. I must've checked each book out about a hundred times. Apparently they've become quite the collector's item, as they're going for ridiculous prices on Amazon and eBay.  It was simultaneously mind boggling and comforting to know that there were other people out there that had somehow cultivated the same tastes I had; even at nine years-old it was reassuring that the world didn't just cater to the standard set of interests that seemed to be endemic to most of the people I met or knew. Here were books that fed these interests, in a place where I wasn't judged for indulging in them, while at home I was often lambasted for liking "monsters and make-believe", when the preferred route prescribed by my parents was more in the areas of discharging firearms and riding ATVs through mud pits.

The Winona Public Library is where I met Tarzan, Johnny Dixon, The Shadow (there were cassette libraries in the books-on-tape section with old time radio shows on them), Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, James Bond, Stanislaw Lem, Charles Beaumont, H.P. Lovecraft, Terry Pratchett, and so many more. When I became interested in art–really interested, not just copying images from comic books into notebooks to see if I could draw Wolverine the way the pros did–it was where I went to learn about art: art history, different artists from different time periods, art techniques...anything beyond the ubiquitous Terry Redlin and Maija prints that my relatives and their associates seemed to believe were the sum total of true artistic expression.

Factual information and education seem to have fallen into disrepair in the world around me. I know that that's a sweeping generalization made by an aging misanthrope, but we have these alleged wonder machines in the palms of our hands that are supposed to be able to connect us to answers–any answer to any conceivable question–in mere seconds, but what we've cultivated is a planet actually utilizing "alternative facts" and so distracted and disconnected from each other, that someone actually had to create a visual calling program called Facetime, so people could actually engage in some without pulling their eyes away from their cellphones. 

But I digress.

I think it's important that libraries remain an accessible social institution. We need houses of knowledge and resources and wisdom and escape that cater to all people from all walks of life on the same level. It's important that we have impartial knowledge to pass on to future generations, should, heaven help us, they be interested in "actual facts" at that point.

Long live the public library system, and long live the Winona Public Library; the refuge for an introverted child with interests and ideas beyond counting out life in increments of factory shifts between beer binges, hunting trips and "reality television".

SBL Sunday Supplement

I am an introverted loner by nature, and a historian by proclivity. Hence this blog. Why the recent focus on Winona? you might ask. It's my hometown. It's where I grew up. True, I've not had a permanent residence in the Island City (which isn't really an island, by the way) in fifteen years, and haven't lived there for closer to twenty; and for a plethora of reasons that aren't important to this post, I don't foresee myself moving back anytime in the near or not-so-near future. When you're a child you don't necessarily think about place and existence beyond "this is where I live because it's where I was born and it's my town" and you simply exist and your life happens and that is your world; but when you get older, for some of us, we find that life isn't a plot of land where existence simply flourishes around you, but rather a roller coaster track of dubious construction that twists you and pulls you until you find a cart of reasonable comfort operating at a tolerable speed, and you nestle in, hoping that the wheels stay on the rails and that you don't spend too much time puking over the side. But I love history and research, and thoroughly enjoy excavating lost artifacts of my hometown's past. I miss many things about the town, both geographic places that have garnered a personal patina of sentimentality in my mind, the the few people still there with whom I am lucky enough to call myself friend. I now live on the East side of St. Paul, our state's grand capital. I've never been an urbanite. There are many things I now take for granted living in a metropolitan area that I never could have experienced staying in a small factory-and-college town, but I definitely prefer the small town quality of living compared to the chipped concrete-coated sprawl I find myself now maneuvering around. But I digress.

Here are a couple of ads from the Winona Daily News for programming on KNWO 1230 on the AM dial. It was Winona's first local station, going on the air in 1938, and solely remained "The Talk Of Winona" until 1957, when KAGE joined the broadcast family. 

I became a regular listener to KWNO during my days in junior high and high school. As a chronic insomniac, I would often find myself up at all hours of the night, either unable to fall asleep or fall back asleep should I have gotten up to use the restroom or something. It's a problem that persists to this day. At the time, KWNO broadcasted Coast To Coast AM with Art Bell from midnight until two a.m. (it was a three hour show), and then the first two hours of the program were looped again until five o'clock, when local news or right-wing talk radio would come on the air. The when and where of Kiwanis Club luncheons or the views of Rush Limbaugh have never been of particular interest to me, but an all-night radio program devoted to the bizarre, which gave equal opportunity to experts, skeptics and plain-bonkers sociopaths, was right up my alley.

I thought, being about radio, this was a perfect segue into the second episode of my Secret Basement Laboratory Radio Theater program. Last time, in episode one, I presented a couple of radio programs featuring wisecracking detectives. This time I thought I would provide a show of weather-appropriate programming, meaning short-shorts. Short radio programs were essential for padding out scheduling blocks back in the day of old time radio. It was essential because they could fill out local news and weather breaks, and ingenious because, though the programs ran only from ten to fifteen minutes or so, they could be serialized adventures divvied up into several episodic chunks, which might hook listeners and keep them tuning in to hear the other parts of the play.

I've compiled a nice assortment of programs for you here. We're starting off with a Believe It Or Not minute, a fifty-second or so program created sans-commercials by Robert Ripley as an extension of his then-booming Ripley's Believe It

Robert Ripley and friend.

Or Not brand of sideshow entertainment where two bizarre–and "true"–factoids are related to the listener. I've selected one that briefly relates the attempts to poison Thomas Overbury, the English poet and essayist who was thrown into the Tower Of London after raising the ire of James I (King of England) and a scandal ensued. Here he is dubbed "The Iron Man" for surviving the poisonous diet he was fed and survived.

Second, we have an episode of Blackstone, The Magic Detective from Nov. 28th, 1948. For more information about the personnel behind the show–no, Blackstone the magician wasn't actually playing himself–go to this excellent write-up with mp3s of many more episodes. The particular episode I've chosen for inclusion here is episode nine: "The Ghost That Wasn't."

Thirdly is an eight minute quickie from Calling All Detectives, a one man operation by personality Paul Barnes, who does all the voices. And it shows. This was a novelty show in that Barnes would call a listener to try and get them to solve the crime before revealing the whodunnit. This episode, "Morgue Nightclub Is A Setting For Death" is episode No. 366, originally broadcast on February 3rd, 1949.

I've included another Believe It Or Not in the intermission, this episode (no. 6) about a witchdoctor who had to wear a mask to change his identity. Talk about government red tape!

Cugi and cocktail.

Next we have a musical program! Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands, a Coca-Cola sponsored big band program ran for fifteen minutes, Monday through Friday for a brief period starting in 1941. Each episode featured a "spotlight" on a different band. The one I've chosen features a personal favorite of mine: Xavier Cugat. Cugi was a Spanish bandleader who moved to Cuba and became the Rhumba king of the American music world. He's also famous (or infamous) for thrusting Charo on an unsuspecting world. 

Finally, I present to you a Ripley's competitor–Strange As It Seems, also based off of a syndicated bizarre minutiae factoid comic strip, presented by illustrator John Hix. Unlike Ripley's, which invited you to "believe it or not", Hix claimed that all of his bizarre facts were "...verified by a minimum of three sources." The show was sponsored by Ex-Lax, which will be evident as the commercial at the beginning of the program takes up a good minute-and-a-half, trying to convince you of all the chocolatey wonder that is everyone's favorite laxative. This particularly interesting episode is about a baby spy during the French revolution. The spy wasn't really a baby, but a 23" tall dwarf named Richebourg. He did in fact exist, and is listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records as "Shortest Spy".

As a bonus treat, I've rounded out the program with two tracks from Xavier Cugat. "Flute Nightmare" was released in 1954, utilized in the film The Americano, starring Glenn Ford and directed by William Castle of all people! The other is the b-side to a Mercury Records single released in 1952, titled "Jungle Flute."

Enjoy!

Flying Saucers Attack Winona!

"Flying Saucers Bombard City; Alert Air Raid Warden Recovers One" reads an article from the July 11th, 1947 issue of the Winona Republican-Herald. Did UFOs really descend on my hometown one post-war summer day, darkening the bluffs with their fleet and sending the townsfolk into a panic?

No. As quickly related in this gimmicky PR piece for the Civil Air Patrol vis-a-vis Major Joseph Parks of Minneapolis, "liaison officer between the army air corps and the Minnesota Civil Air Patrol, who happened to be in Winona on business." Parks and his "aides", consisting of Lieutenant H.C. Aakre, commander of the Winona unit of the CAP, and Sgt. Robert Reynolds, army recruiter and CAP public relations officer, bombarded the city of Winona with novelty pie plates stamped 

Join The 

Civil Air Patrol

Army Recruiting Station

Post Office, Winona, Minn.

Parks clearly had tongue firmly in cheek when visiting to bolster CAP recruitment numbers. The "saucers" were taken to Parks and his aides who, after studying the alien object for a half-hour, "emerged and announced that they, too, would swear that the missile was a pie plate IF they didn't know about the 'flying saucers.'"

"We are, frankly, disturbed that our cosmic visitors are so acquainted with our pattern of life," Parks is quoted, "but we appreciate the publicity...." Clearly. The piece, puff clearly provided by Parks that rides the line between eye-rolling and damn entertaining, goes on to promote "aviation training opportunities available to youths...between 15 and 18..." to become cadets in the Air Patrol, and take what I have to assume are supervised flying lessons. "CAP instructors and members only need to pay for the gas and oil, which runs about 95 cents an hour."

Well, flying saucers must have been either in the air, or on the minds, of Americans in general–and Winonans in specific, for the purposes of this post–because tarnation if that very same issue of the Winona Republican-Herald didn't have a second saucer-centric article in it. This one from a surly Winonan who diagnoses the then-prolific saucer sightings in Blair, Wisconsin (about 45 mins NE, across the Mississippi from Winona) as hallucinations of taunting, empty dinner plates, brought on by rising food costs. Being truly Midwestern, and perhaps-not-entirely endemic to the upper portion I've spent nearly four decades in, a wisecracking auto dealer adds his 2¢ with a loaded jab about some stolen wheels. Leave it to a Minnesotan to make a tongue-in-cheek reference to his woes as a passive-aggressive way to complain about/add humor to a larger issue.