Hugo, Minnesota, straight up U.S. 61, the murderous old two-lane between St. Paul and Duluth. Up and down some timbered red-iron hills, around others, potholed, icy sometimes, frosty others, slick always, so deadly Bob Dylan wrote it into a song:
“God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son…’
Abe said, ‘where you want this killin’ done?’
God said, ‘Out on Highway 61’”
I lived a dozen miles away in Anoka County in a house made of Soo Line boxcars. It was tight and dry, regardless of the dubious pedigree. Anoka was Lakota for “on both sides of,” as the natives were mystified why the white man couldn’t make up his mind which side of the Mississippi upon which to build.
Rent was a hundred and a quarter and fuel oil was 37 cents. The ground was so light the sand blew in the rain, but if you laid the chicken litter on thick, you could grow a tolerable garden, pheasants cackling in the thickets, geese goosing in the sloughs and big bucks ghosting around it all. I made 10 grand that year, the wife did too. We bought a new Econoline, tricked it out for high adventure, log-chains, axes, roof-rack, screen windows, bunks and all. We bought a Grumman canoe, strapped it on top.
One late summer Friday afternoon, we threw the canoe in the lake and an hour later, the canoe returned the favor. And that’s where the adventure started.
We dogpaddled to shore, crawled up the bank wringing wet. Back at the shack made of Soo Line boxcars, we showered, changed clothes and lit out for the steakhouse in Hugo, as we liked to do the end of each week, where a loaf of homemade bread, an extravagant salad, a baked potato and a T-bone that hit the table on both sides of your plate set you back a whole 10 bucks. But my wallet was still wet. I laid it on a windowsill to dry, slipped my ID and a fold of cash into my jeans.
The joint was rocking, Pollacks and Swedes mostly, with a prodigious taste for vodka and Canadian blend. The decibels, the clattering of glasses and tableware, the whooping and hollering from the bar would have given an OSHA man the hives. I was just buttering my bread when this desperado came through the back door with a pistol.
It was a Ruger Single-Six and when he cranked a round into the ceiling, I knew it was a 22 Magnum, mess you up bad. He wasn’t much to look at but that didn’t matter right then.
He picked out this little mud-wren of a woman, gray complected, thin haired, skinny and long of tooth, put the pistol to her head, then rocked back on his heels, his eyes glazed as he looked off into Middle Distance. I was 20 feet away, my first bite of bread in my mouth. Damn, it tasted good. But I thought, “That dumb bastard is high as a ’coon on the moon in June. He’s fixing to kill somebody by mistake and spoil my supper.”
He made the woman hold a paper grocery bag. “Open the till!” he demanded, but nobody would admit to being the bartender. The bartender was not even there. He’d fled to the kitchen at the pistol shot and was frantically calling the cops. No 911 in those days. The nearest law was in North St. Paul, 15 miles away. Foiled at the till, the desperado turned to the patrons. “Put your money on the bar!” They did and soon enough you couldn’t even see the bar top for the great array of long green.
A drunk wobbled from the men’s room and stumbled into the desperado. The desperado wheeled and stuck the muzzle under the drunk’s nose, hammer at full cock. The drunk mumbled, shook his head and toddled away un-robbed, ah Minnesota.
I took another bite, chewed slow.
The bar patrons thus relieved of legal tender, the desperado turned his attention to the tables. “Oh, sweet Jesus, is this fool gonna try to rob the whole God’s place?”
Apparently so. I was first. The woman was shaking, weeping now. She held out the bag, three-quarters full of crinkled bills, like some shellshocked trick-or-treater.
He put the pistol in my face. “Gimmie your wallet!”
But my wallet was 14 miles away, drying out on a windowsill in the house made of Soo Line boxcars. The cash in my jeans was too thin to see. I slid back from the table, patted my pocket. “You already got it,” I waved my bread like he waved his pistol.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Back there at the bar, damnit! You already robbed me once!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said and moved on to the next table.
I could have shot that jackass 18 times by then. But I was a good citizen in those days. My pistol was locked in the Econoline parked on the curb of U.S. 61.
When it came to packing, there were “shall issue” states and “may issue” states. Minnesota was the latter. If you applied for a carry permit, open or concealed didn’t matter, and demonstrated “need and proficiency” to the local sheriff, he may issue to permit at his discretion. In Ramey County, with a population easily exceeding 300,000, there were exactly four, all held by professional process servers. Way out west in Otter Tail County, population 50,000 there were 1,000 or more. So, if you wanted to pack iron in Minnesota, you had to move to a place where you really didn’t need to, a curious situation indeed.
But I digress.
So, there I was, about halfway through my bread, halfway through an armed robbery that had very good odds of having a very bad ending. And I was still hungry. The desperado and his hostage went table to table and soon the bag was brimming full. Thus satisfied, he released his hostage, who promptly collapsed in a puddle of tears and urine. But there was one final outrage left in him. He stuck his pistol in a big Swede’s face, “Gimmie your keys!”
The Swede thought fast, for a Swede anyway. “But I rode vid a friend!”
“Where is he?”
The Swede pointed to a perfect stranger cowering along the wall. He was as meek as the recently released female hostage was mousy. “Dere he is!”
“Gimmie the keys!”
The man handed them over, groveling like a whipped dog. The desperado was walking backward, waving the pistol at no one in particular when two of St. Paul’s finest busted through the door, Laurel and Hardy, a short fat cop and a tall skinny one, detectives in business suits, the short man first.
Slick as greased lightning, he drew a .38 snubbie with his right hand, put it to the back of the desperado’s head. With his left in the same fluid motion, he stuck a cigar in his mouth. He bit the stogie, spit out the butt, talked around both sides with a voice like a bullfrog. “Drop it or you get it,” he said.
“Damnit all anyway,” I thought, blood and brains all over the ceiling? “Here goes my dinner!”
But no, the desperado let the Ruger slip from his fingers, one last chance to spoil supper. But it did not fire when it hit the floor, something those first model Single-Sixes were known to do. The skinny cop grabbed the shopping bag, underhanded it onto the bar and the fat cop lit his cigar. Roughed and cuffed, the desperado was out the door like a sack of russet spuds.
There were Halleluiahs and Hail Mary’s when the bag hit the bar and every Swen and Stanislaus made a snatch at it. Five thousand? Ten? No telling, but it was a lot of money that year when my Econoline fetched up $3,300, tax, license, road ready. It was gone in about 15 seconds. They sorted out the bushel of wallets later.
Then the kitchen door swung open and the waitress brought the T-bones at full stride, medium rare, just the way we ordered them. “Sorry about that,” she smiled.
“I didn’t know you had a floor show.”
She flashed me a 20-dollar tip smile. “Every other Friday.”
Then I asked her for more bread.
Note to self: Never let this happen again.
So, I would pack iron for the next 50 years.
And counting.