by Howard Mohr
Minnesota Tweets disappear into the air as soon as you use them.
Bob Humde’s Cow Pie Key
Hider Flops: An Update
The Bob Humde COW PIE KEY HIDERS, reality-based plastic replicas, are no longer manufactured. You can find them on eBay, where they are going for several dollars and have graduated to classic status in some areas of Wisconsin. Bob did not take into account the fact that his KEY HIDER was impractical for folks living in condos or apartments, or in spendy retirement facilities in Arizona whose rigid rules specify what front-door decorations are acceptable, and real or imitation bovine waste is not among them.
Personally, I think what really sank Bob’s ship was the ORGANIC COW PIE KEY HIDER. The ORGANIC COW PIE KEY HIDER was indeed organic, in that it was formed and baked with a substance produced only by free-range cows and certified by the Department of Agriculture. You never know what the public will buy, but buy they did for a six-month period in 2005. The first ORGANIC KEY PIE HIDERS sold doubled in value every month, with people fighting over them at Walmart. Unfortunately after several exposures to rain, the ORGANIC KEY HIDER had a tendency to return to its original moist form, complete with some quite unsavory sensory problems and stains.
MINNESOTA FACEBOOK—DOUG’S STORY
According to Harold Mire, his first cousin Doug on his mother’s side decided to quit one of his three bowling teams and get on Facebook because his “biological time bomb was ticking.” He put up a photo of himself shingling the garage and his dog barking at the mailman. He wrote that he lived in a small southern Minnesota town, and his main hobby was bowling, though he really liked rebuilding old tractors about as much. Doug waited day after day in front of his computer for someone to friend him. In desperation, Doug contacted Facebook and explained what was happening and that he was very disappointed and somewhat depressed and didn’t the company have a guarantee of some kind?
A Facebook counselor told Doug on the phone that Facebook was not responsible for getting him friends, and in fact the company was not required to do anything it didn’t want to do, which sounded pretty harsh to Doug, so the counselor said if he wanted the Facebook corporation itself to friend him, it could do that now that the United States Supreme Court had ruled that corporations are people, and thereby can be frienders.
Being friended by Facebook itself broke the ice for Doug, and he was soon friended by Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Dial soap, Walmart, Sears, Ford, and GMC. Doug did not accept GMC as a friend because it would’ve been like treason for a lifetime Ford guy to be pals with an organization that made the Chevy. John Deere friended him later that day, opening up the chance to talk tractors till the cows came home.
A couple of months after Doug went on Facebook, Harold asked him if any women had showed interest in him on the site, since that was the original idea. “Nope, unless you count the nice lady from Dial soap. She asked me how many times a week I showered, which I thought was kind of intimate.”
And then a week later Doug told Harold that his high school classmate Bock Joman tried to friend Doug and said he hoped they could forget the past. Ha! Doug knew that he would never forget the day Bock borrowed his mint 1949 Ford their senior year at Fremson and shelled out that great little V-8 engine at 110 miles per hour, locked up the tranny, skidded into a ditch, and rolled twice. After declining Classic Bock the Jock’s friend request, Doug was cheered up when Lay’s Potato Chips, the San Francisco Opera company, and the NRA friended him.
*Use of “per se” in Minnesotan is rare, but it has started to show up in weather talk especially, though I have to admit that it sticks out like a sore thumb, and I would not recommend its habitual use in Minnesota.
**Ned has used “whatever” since “whatever” can be construed by the listener any way he wants it, and Kyle’s “You can say that again” defuses the discussion.
Dining Out in Minnesota
Minnesota has a rich tradition of native and foreign foods, and dining out is something we do whenever we feel like it. But if you expect the kind of dining experience you might have in Ohio or Montana, you’ll be disappointed. You get what we have when you eat in Minnesota. It’s always been plenty good enough for us, so it should take care of your needs, too.
In certain urban areas of Minnesota, there are citizens who read magazines from the East in order to learn the kind of manners that will take them to the top. But this group is a minority and keeps to itself. They like to dress up when they have the big lunch. This lets the rest of us (who are in the restaurant for dinner) know that our credentials are not in order and maybe we should have our wardrobe evaluated besides.
So if you’re from a place where people put on impractical clothes in the middle of the day and have lunch, you’ll be able to find some people to keep you company, but be warned that they are proud of being strangers in their own land of 10,000 lakes. You can do a lot better. But do what you want. Just don’t come crying to me when you find out how dry they are.
Let’s get one thing right out in the open about Minnesota restaurant dining. How much should you tip? Well, not too much, really. It’s better to tip too little. A big tip only creates suspicions.
When it comes time to tip, after you’ve got the leftovers squared away in clearly marked doggie bags, you should discuss the amount with the others at the table. It’s expected. Simply dropping the tip on the table without mentioning the total or reviewing how you arrived at it is bad manners in Minnesota.
—“Now wait a minute, did you have cottage fries, Tim?”
—“No, that was Donna. I had the dipped walleye.”
—“Oh, yeah. The DW. And then here I am. And Patty, you’re the steak sandwich, right?”
—“No, I’m the BLT, with onion rings.”
—“Got it. Three milks, a Diet Coke. What’s this here? It looks like 3bS.”
—“Three-bean salad, I had a bowl of it.”
—“Well, my total is the same as theirs. What do you say, 10 percent?”
—“Sure, why not. The food was good.”
—“Maybe 15 percent then?”
—“It wasn’t that good. My steak had some red in it.”
—“So that’s gonna be $2.33.”
—“I’ve got the 33.”
—“Let’s just round it off to two bucks.”
[Note: Tip only where you see this sign displayed: TIPPING ACCEPTED HERE. If there is no sign, don’t tip, or you will be chased down the street by the waitress returning your money. As a rule, small-town cafés frown on tipping. If you tip, you’re saying that you know more about the price of the food than the owner does. If the beef commercial plate is $2.95, it’s $2.95. —H.M.]
Some restaurants will ask you how you want your steak or roast. What they mean by that is, do you want them to slice it up for you in the kitchen or will you do it yourself? Myself, I like to have my steak cut up for me. Then it’s all ready to stab with the fork and dip in the gravy. In no circumstances should you say “medium rare” or “rare,” unless you don’t mind the cook coming out to get a good look at you. They’ll do it for you, but they’ll make sure you understand they don’t approve. Well done is the benchmark for steak in Minnesota. It’s the way I like it. In fact, well done is the benchmark for most Minnesota foods. It gets rid of all the bacteria.
ORDERING
Here’s a typical exchange between waitress and customer. Individual items may vary, but the approach is standard.
WAITRESS: “So what’s it gonna be then?”
CUSTOMER: “Oh, boy, I can’t decide. How’s the meatloaf?”
W: “It’s been moving really good. A lot of people have been ordering it.”
C: “What would you order if you were sitting here?”
W: “I’ve had the tacos Italiano. They’re okay.”
C: “I guess I’ll go with the beef commercial.”
W: “Anything to drink?”
C: “What you got?”
W: “Milk, water, or pop.”
Wine or beer is only served at night in most Minnesota restaurants. If you want the native wines, ask for the hearty rutabaga burgundy or the soybean chablis. Your wine will be served with ice cubes unless you request something different. When you toast somebody, you should hold up your glass and thump it with your index finger and say:
—“Well.”
MINNESOTA SPICES
The three workhorses of Minnesota cooking are salt, pepper, and ketchup. If the ketchup bottle is not already on your table, the waitress will bring it automatically. The last customer probably used it all. We use ketchup like it was water.
FEED
Phrases
Feed cap
Seed cap
Off your feed
Smelt feed
The word feed gets quite a bit of mileage in Minnesota. Most of its uses relate to food and eating, both human and animal.
The hard pellets that smell like dead fish you pour into the cat’s bowl are called cat food. And unless your cat lives inside the house—which I think is a ridiculous thing to do with a cat—the pellets are also skunk food, groundhog food, dog food, rabbit food, and bird feed. Whatever wanders by. Don’t forget to change the water.
—“This cat food has tiny bugs in it. Should we buy a new bag or do you think the cats’ll care?”
Mine don’t.
If you raise cattle or hogs, the stuff you feed them is not called cattle food or hog food. It’s called cattle feed or hog feed. You are feeding those animals feed to make them into human food—they are destined to become steaks and pork chops. It’s a funny system, but you get used to it after a while and hardly think of it unless your animals have individual names. Where the cows and hogs live is in the feedlot.
If you never get out to the country, none of this will matter to you. It may not matter to you anyway.
Cats and dogs are not raised for food in Minnesota, although outdoor cats and dogs sometimes tangle with animals bigger than they are and end up in about the middle of the rural food chain. It’s a terrible deal, I guess.
What you feed the chickens is chicken feed. Chicken feed is basically the same the world over; it’s what most people say they won’t settle for. Chickens can make meals out of table scraps, crickets, spiders, worms, and can even thrive on the undigested portions of other farm animals’ waste products. Chickens are good to have around—they’re a walking lesson for us all.
The truck that delivers the cattle feed or the hog feed is called the feed truck and it comes from the feed mill. The truck driver will be wearing a feed cap.
Feed companies make feed, feed additives, and feed supplements that are mixed and delivered by the feed mill in the feed truck to the farmers with feedlots. The feed companies give free feed caps to all their customers. The name of the feed is on the cap.
Another cap worn here is called the seed corn cap. It is identical to the feed cap, except that there is a seed company’s name on the front above the bill: Trojan, DeKalb, Pioneer, Funks, MPS—it’s a long list. The seed companies sell alfalfa seed, clover seed, corn seed, soybean seed, and a few more besides. But the caps are never called seed soybean caps, or seed alfalfa caps. The seeds are planted and become feed for animals and food for human beings, or both.
A seed corn cap becomes nothing if it is planted.
Seed corn caps are available in summer or winter models—that is, with or without insulation and earflaps. One size fits all. Feed caps are unisex in style, although they are worn mostly by men.
People in or near the farming business in other states do wear feed and seed caps, it’s true, but in Minnesota we have made it a matter of fashion. A Minnesotan may have only one suit and one pair of good black shoes to wear with it, but he will have a rack of feed caps divided into work and good. A good cap is not worn when you are out baling hay. That’s for trips to town—after so many trips to town and so many removals, the good cap is shifted to the work pile. A work feed cap is worn until the bill falls off or your wife burns it.
A good clean feed cap can be worn anywhere at any time in Minnesota except inside the church during the service—keep it on your lap. It’s okay to put it back on when the usher nods for your row to file out to shake hands with the minister. Members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra wear feed caps during their local performances. And a colorful and moving tradition during the Minnesota governor’s inauguration is the transfer of the state feed cap from the old governor to the new. The legislators salute their new antagonist by lifting their feed caps in unison and give loon calls. Then they have a little lunch.
As in other parts of the country, funerals in Minnesota are either open or closed casket. But our other choice is with or without feed cap.
In Minnesota we know how to tie on the feedbag, we starve a fever and feed a cold, we feed our families, we feed the kids before we feed the adults, and we often have enough food at the table on Sunday to feed an army.
And if we can’t eat, we say we are off our feed.
—“I’m sorry, Mabel, I’m gonna have to pass on the barbecues, I’m kinda off my feed today.”
Off your feed is a phrase that comes from the feedlot, where when you inspect the feeder cattle to see how they’re doing, you notice that one of the calves doesn’t belly up with the others when you sling the feed into the bunker. That calf is off its feed and should be watched closely—if it keeps up, you may not be surprised some morning to find it lying on its back in the feedlot with four feet sticking straight into the air. Minnesotans who are off their feed rarely end up this way.
THE PANCAKE FEED
Hardly a day goes by in Minnesota when you can’t find somebody—a church, a VFW, a Boy Scout troop—who’s putting on a feed. The most popular annual feeds are the pancake feed, the smelt feed, the lutefisk/meatball feed, the wild game feed, and the Rocky Mountain oyster feed.
What you get at a feed is all you can eat for a single price. It’s a bargain if you’re hungry. You sit at long tables covered with white paper and are elbow to elbow with your fellow eaters, some of whom have sharp elbows. Be careful who you sit next to—some people take the “all you can eat” sign as a personal challenge and tend to shower their neighbors with all manner of food particles and liquids.
The smelt feeds take place in the spring around the time of the smelt run in northern Minnesota, near Lake Superior. Smelt fishermen are known for their bravery—they will sit outside in the cold rain in the dark, get drunk, and then wade into a fast-moving stream just to catch a pile of smelt. But I guess it’s worth it. Batter-dipped smelt can’t be beat, especially with a plate of french fries, a little coleslaw, and a bottle of ice-cold beer.
The Rocky Mountain oysters do not come from the sea. They come from the feedlot via the pig. After the pig donates its oysters, it has a more laid-back outlook on life in the feedlot. Like smelt, they are generally batter-dipped and french-fried and eaten with relish.
In Minnesota we have spring, sometimes, but we have summer every time, and it is the very season when the powerful Bureau of Tourism has smoke coming out of its ears, and for good reason. Summer is the most lucrative season for lodge owners, bait shops, sports stores, restaurants, supermarkets, and casinos in “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” By actual count made in 2012 by a crew of recent college graduates living with their parents, there were 15,732 lakes, but “The Land of 15,732 Lakes” does not have the same ring to it. In any case, multitudes of out-of-state tourists make their annual migration up to their favorite lodge on their favorite lake, as they have been doing, sometimes for three generations or more. Summer unfortunately coincides with the road repair season of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).
Some out-of-state vacationers, mostly those from the East Coast, have been lost for up to three days on detours caused by MnDOT road repairs. What is most disconcerting to the Bureau of Tourism, apart from the tedious and expensive search parties involved, is that some of the vacationers accidentally wander into Wisconsin, North Dakota, and S
outh Dakota and decide to stay and spend their tourist dollars there because they are sick of driving. One family from Cleveland heading for the Hide Yourself Lodge on Lake Winnibigoshish in 2007 ended up in Canada after missing two turns and following a farm field road that crossed the border with no customs stop on either side. Manitoba officials suggested that they might as well see the sights and do some fishing for Canadian walleyes because it was going to take a while to figure out how to get them back over the border without passports.
The Bureau of Tourism suggests to out-of-state tourists that they carry a cooler full of hydration supplies, sandwiches, two or three movies for the DVD player, and that they be prepared to stream movies on their iPhones and iPads as they wait for the stop-sign guy to rise out of his lawn chair.
In 2008 MnDOT, under new management, finally decided to beef up its reputation with the tax-paying public and untold vacationers from all over the USA by addressing the problem of lengthy detours. Nineteen-year-old video-game designer Gort and three of his gaming buddies with gaming degrees from a vo-tech were hired to create the detours.
Gort’s team operated on the theory that the more complex the detours were, the more fun the drivers would have finding their way. The MnDOT gaming team won the coveted National Video Game Award for its STEALTH DETOUR in 2009, which included an overnight stay in a bat cave near Hinckley, a raft crossing of the Chippewa River, and a confrontation with Minnesota Bigfoot* before the drivers finally arrived up to the lodge on the lake. Visitors and Minnesotans alike gave the STEALTH DETOUR two thumbs down, and several bottoms up.