Muggsy's Brain

Several years ago, when I lived on the south side of St. Cloud, my landlord, who lived downstairs from me, enlisted my help moving a china hutch that he had just purchased at an auction into his house. It was an old and unwieldy piece of furniture, it was heavy, but the two of us could move it without too much trouble. We wrestled the piece out of the moving truck he'd rented and were taking a short break in the front yard before we attempted to get it into the house when we were approached by a black man somewhere in his 40s who struck up a conversation with the two of us. It started out normally enough, the weather, the fact that the china hutch looked heavy and the like, and then it took a turn into the weird. The man started telling us about all the zombies in St. Cloud and how they were going to try to take over the world, and that he was apparently the only person around who knew. "They're envious of us," he said, "because we have life and they don...

We were supposed to leave St. Joe at 3:15 PM, that would have gotten us to the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN and set up with plenty of time to spare. George took the Tahoe full of sound gear and offered Jeff and I the chance to drive his Camero -- and who would pass up a chance like that? It took some doing, but we got our gear into the tiny, little trunk and practically non-existent back seat area -- we had to put the top down to get Jeff's bass amp in the the back, but everything fit snugly and we were ready to go. Jeff ran into the coffee shop to get an iced latte for the road, when he got back to the car he was on the phone. "Take everything out of the Camero and put it in my car," he said, "we have to go back to St. Cloud to pick up the lights." So down came the top again, and out came our gear which we quickly loaded into Jeff's mini-station wagon. We drove to the roastery in St. Cloud, where we store most of our gear, picked up the lights and w...

My friend Chuck loves tequila. During trivia one year, he drank one shot per hour for the whole 50 hours, he said after a while he didn't get any more drunk, he just leveled off. I, on the other hand, don't like tequilla so much, I find the taste to be somewhat unpalatable, but I think the same thing about Jägermeister and drink it anyway. Only once did I ever have a truly exceptional tequila. My friend Jeff had been in the wedding party of a college friend who married a Mexican girl whose family business was making the stuff and each of the groomsmen received a silver hip flask filled with the family's private reserve. That stuff tasted like ambrosia! It was smooth and delicious, there was no need to pollute the taste with salt and lime. If I could get a hold of some of that again I would do so gladly. Back to Chuck. For several years in a row he would show up at my birthday party with his bottle of tequila in hand and would insist that I do a shot with him. I hated it an...

This has to have been almost 20 years ago now, it was a whole career ago for me and I was still driving a delivery van for the St. Cloud Times so I'd have to put it in the early 90s, I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I wanted to play a "pick up" gig in Montevideo, MN backing up Bob Hope. Who wouldn't say yes to that? A whole bunch of us from St. Cloud piled into a van and drove there for an afternoon rehearsal led by Mr. Hope's musical director named Jeff. We only saw Mr. hope for a few moments at the end of the rehearsal to run a gag he'd do during the song Buttons and Bows. As Music Director Jeff explained it, the gag went like this: the band would kick into Buttons & Bows and vamp the first four measures while Bob would talk to the audience, Bob would then cut off the band, tell a joke and count the band off again. This would happen as many times as Bob saw fit, and then he'd continue with the song. Near the end of the song there wa...

This is from an ad from the early 1900s that Erin has framed and hanging in her kitchen: Nervousness comes from two causes.  One is half-fed nerves. The malt in beer is a food to them; the hops a tonic.  The slight percentage of alcohol is an aid to digestion, and that means more food. Another cause is the waste that clogs the nerve centers.  That waste results from drinking too little to properly flush the system. The habit of beer drinking gives the body the needed fluid. That is why beer is prescribed for nervousness.  That is why beer-drinking nations scarcely know what nervousness is. But drink pure beer -- Schlitz beer.  Bad beer may be worse than the lack of it. Half the cost of our brewing goes to making Schlitz pure.  Ask for the brewery bottling. The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous Powered by ScribeFire .

At the end of the week I didn't have much coffee sitting around the shop. I had the usual leftovers from the previous week's roasts, but less than I typically would. Saturday morning I got a call from Jule's Bistro begging for coffee to be delivered that day! I went to my shop and fortunately had just what they needed with nothing left in my shop but a bit of Ethiopian Yergacheffe and some decafs. Sunday I met the Vorks for lunch and brought Ken 2 lbs. of the Ethiopian I had, leaving only a little over a pound. Jeff and Stacie apparently came in either late Sunday or early this morning and took the last of it. So I got here this morning and didn't have any coffee to brew unless I wanted to drink decaf, which I didn't. I called Stacie and she brought me a cup from the Local Blend while she did other errands. Yes, we have no coffee -- until I roast more.

I found this at the Gopher Bargain Center in St. Cloud, MN today. The price says it all, except maybe to add, "Good thing it's just flavored."