Hardware the hard way

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada

No. 37

9/23/09

19:47

Here in the Minnesota boonies, you have two options if you need furnace springs or c-clamp batteries. You can visit one of the helpful, privately-owned ACE Hardware stores that are pleasant in theory but likely don’t have what you need, or you go to Menard’s.

Menard’s is the Minny version of Home Depot or Lowe’s. I’m not saying that there aren’t Home Depots or Lowe’s stores available here, but they tend to stay huddled in the warm embrace of the cities. And usually when I need a doorjam pump, it’s an emergency that doesn’t allow me to make the overnight trek to civilization. So I go to a Menard’s, which thrives where no other hardware stores dare to venture.

Menard’s is exactly like your typical Home Depot except for the one fatal difference: They seem to have some sort of hiring policy that strictly prohibits attractive employees of any type. It’s not that they exclusively hire hunchbacks or midgets (although there IS a healthy amount of those freakshows running around). But everyone – EVERYONE – who works there has some sort of singular flaw that is as unexpected as it is creepy. From the back, she might be a cute little blonde checkout girl who fills out her dungarees quite nicely. And then she turns around and springs her harelip on you. Gah! And I didn’t even bring a can to open!

Or the classic little old guy with the toolbelt and overalls. From a distance, he kinda sorta looks like Joe Paterno stacking paint cans. Of course he can hep you. Except you get closer to ask where in the fuck they’ve hidden the blowtorch grommets and OH MY GOD HE’S NOT WEARING AND EYEPATCH BUT MOST CERTAINLY SHOULD BE WEARING AN EYEPATCH. Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t come here to SEE YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL through a hole in your face.

Or the hookhand who acts like there is no hookhand at the end of that pale, blotchy stump and waves it around dangerously close to your fleshy face-bits as he flails in the general direction of the toilet jacks. Thanks, Inspector Gadget, but the first Terminator flick scared the bejaysus out of me and you look like you just escaped from a SkyNet lab. Please get your droid arm away from my hoo-man eyeparts.

Or the customer-service whale with the birthmark shaped like the Lone Ranger's mask.

Or the dude in plumbing who looks like a bridge troll.

Or the actual bridge troll who runs the seasonal section.

Or the otherwise attractive teenage girl rocking the unibrow and full beard. Although I think she’s actually trying to make some sort of statement, because there’s no way to not know that you look like Kristen Bell crossed with Zach Galifianakis. She’s a goddamn Conan O’Brien gag. Sorry, hoss. Keep your style politics out of the workplace. I’m just trying to buy this here hammer jacket and I don’t need to think about complex societal issues such as these.

Menard’s is all the fun of a Home Depot (constantly getting lost, nonsensical organization, youthinkyerbetter’n me redneck contractors at every turn) mixed with the Mos Eisley Cantina and a Halloween Express. But they sell coffee and DVDs, so I guess they’re ok. And you never know when you'll need a chainsaw bubbler like, RIGHT NOW.

This may not end well

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 36
9/20/09
12:43


I guess it was just a matter of time until Pepe LePew started hanging out in the yard. The over/under for time until I have to drown a certain Weimaraner in tomato juice is 2 weeks.

21 Days of Summer

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 35
9/02/09
18:47

You look up and summer’s gone.

Your summer visitors have all trickled away. Your house is clean, your grass is mowed and for the first time in months, you have no plans – no chores – scheduled for the coming weekend. You build a big stack of magazines, comic books and even a real book or two, because you WILL sit your ass in that hammock and just read and enjoy the sun. Because you know it’s fading fast. Next weekend is going to ROCK.

And then you wake up on Monday and the temperature is 39 degrees. Fahrenheit. Seven degrees above freezing. In August. You suddenly remember you’re in Minnesota, and brother, your summer might be gone.

Ok. Enough of the second-person. This isn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. But if it WERE, I’d certainly choose to step into the Cave of Time (the first CYOA book. A true classic.) and rewind to about three months ago. Maybe do some of the stuff I planned to do this summer.

On first reflection, it seems like this summer was a bigger waste than a Cleveland Browns season. Airika and I had plans. Big plans. We were gonna buy a second bike. Roll around, over and through the hundreds of miles of trails connecting our Little River Town to all the other Little River Towns in SE Minny.

We did buy a canoe. We were gonna explore all the little lakes, ponds, streams and rivers, not too mention grow a sack and put in on the Mississippi. We bought fishing poles with the names of some big-ass walleye and crappie stamped right on ‘em.

We were gonna hit every park, bluff and body of water between the Twin Cities and Iowa. Use ‘em and abuse ‘em. Make Tulip and Tilly wish they were housecats who got to stay at home and lay on top the TV.

We were gonna do a lot of things this summer. And here I find myself wondering where the eff my windshield scraper could be, because hey, there’s a goddamn frost warning and it’s not even September.

We didn’t do half the things we’d planned this summer. And that makes our first summer in Minnesota seem like a colossal bust. On the other hand, we did a ton of stuff that wasn’t on the itinerary. Things I never would have even thought to do if we hadn’t just…done them. Went to the Minnesota Zoo. Spent days wandering around the study in excess that is the Mall of America. Saved a baby deer. Watched plenty of great live music in the cities. Killed that hobo. Stumbled across the rickety old watchtower that sits atop a bluff in the southeastern tip of the state, and climbed that shit. Did some watching.

Wait. This watchtower deserves its own paragraph. We’d meant to check out Whitewater State Park, which, according to the Minnesota DNR website, has plenty of white water. Took us about 90 minutes of the usual twisty and turny Minnesota ‘highways’ to get there, and about 5 minutes before landfall, we saw this little sign on the side of the road. “Fire Tower,” it said, next to an arrow pointing, well, uppish. There are steps dug into the side of a bluff. Steep steps. 630 steep steps, by Airika’s count. Sucking wind, we crest the top of the bluff to see this not-what-you’d-call-embracing crow’s nest, sitting 100 feet or so in the air, atop 20 or so crisscrossing metal staircases. A flimsy chainlink fence surrounding the whole deal. It really doesn’t look like a place for visitors, except for the sign that says “Maximum visitors in tower: 6.” So we start up the first staircase. Which is swaying. Not even 15 feet up, we collectively decide to abort. Before we get the chance to start the long scoot back down the bluff, another party arrives and hustles to the top of this pointy metal deathtrap like it ain’t no thing. Did I mention that one member of this party was celebrating his 90th birthday? Shamed, we sucked it up and climbed the tower, swaying and praying to Jobu the whole time. And it was totally worth it. 100 feet above an already steep bluff that overlooks a picturesque little valley with a cute Children of the Corn town as its centerpiece. Smoke puffs in the distance, kids playing touch football in a clearing 600 feet down. Sadly, none of my pictures were worth a damn.

Anyway. We barely even made the park. And that’s what’s been kinda cool about this summer. Sure, all of our grand plans went up like smoke over Los Angeles (what, too soon?), but the stuff we did do turned out pretty ok. Practically all of our friends and family spent a few days with us (and if you haven’t, WTF?!), and for some reason, showing everyone around our little corner of Minny never seems to get old. Lark Toys and their awesome hand-crafted carousel, the National Eagle Center, Barns Bluff. Been there, done all that, bought the goddamn trinket. But it’s all worth seeing again, and I don’t mind having an excuse.

Still. With three official weeks left in the season, we have to really scramble to make the summer a success. Actually use the canoe that was such a pain in the ass to get. Catch at least one fish. Dip a toe into the Mississippi. Do what you’re supposed to so on weekends in the summer in a place such as this. There’s still time. We can salvage this beast.

Then there’s that huge stack of, er... literature I’ve built. There’s the hammock on the porch. Plans? Plans are for people who don’t have a place to stretch out and feel those fading rays of sunlight on their napping face. Pencil that in.