The Smell of Winter Green.

    Every city has a street like this. It was once probably a main thorough fair, but never the main thorough fair in a town. It is a place where there have been car dealers and auto-part stores and restaurants past their prime. One end might be in an upscale neighborhood, and the other end might be kind of seedy. Minneapolis has Lake Street. St. Paul has University Avenue, Denver has Colorado Blvd, etc.

    Last month channel 2 showed up at our meeting doing some footage on Lake Street and the happenings that have occurred there. They will be airing the show on Lake Street in February of 1999. It got me thinking about the fabric of my universe. Growing up in west Minneapolis, Lake Street has really played a more significant part in my coming to adulthood then I had realized.

    As a kid, I found it to be my southern most border. My parents would let me walk just that far. This was ok since the Calhoun Beach Hotel was at that border, a place with a candy store, not to mention channel 11. Sitting on the steps there we might run into Casey Jones, Dave Lee or perhaps Mad Dog Vachon and his brother the Butcher. They were always good for a chunk of Bonamo's Turkish taffy or two.

    As I got a little older, the railroad tracks that ran up and down Lake Street became one of my main thorough fair. I didn't really talk about this very much with my parents, but the railroad tracks yielded the opportunity to not cross any streets but still go long distances. During the day, they were relatively safe. I remember trying to get a good view up and down Lake Street by climbing up the grain elevators behind Porky's. You could see quite a distance past the Buzza building from there. We looked for golf balls behind the Putt-Putt and turned them in for free games. On adventurous days, we would go further into the Porky's parking lot to watch the cool cars that would rotate through and wait for baldies or the animals to show up. They never really did show up but we were afraid of them all the same. You may remember that the baldies would shave their heads and wear razor blades between the soles and uppers of their wing tips. I never had a clear idea of what the animals really looked like.

    The summer after 6th grade came, and with it the need to start impressing girls. I lost my first ring, one with a topaz in it trying to play chicken with somebody at the main beach on Lake Calhoun. It is hard to look too cool in front of the girls when you've just lost your favorite ring.

    It was about that time that I stopped being interested in HO trains and picked up slot cars. Of course, slot cars were right up my alley. I wasn't that interested in sports but here is a place where I could really shine. I became the guru of rewinding mabuchi motors. Every Saturday and I some number of my friends would mount our Stingray bicycles or get on the 17 bus and ride down Lake Street to Woodcraft raceways. Usually we got off at Lake and Hennepin and had a 35 cent malted at Uptown Drug. The ritual of going to Woodcraft and then to the Woodcraft raceways next door (directly across from the present Bryant Lake Bowl) was imputable. We each had our own tackle box which had our name on it, at least when one STP sticker and any other number of decals which we had not used on models. Inside the box we would of course have a number of wheels, axles, motors, one or two of our favorite cars and of course that bottle of Wintergreen.

    Wintergreen was suppose to make the foam tires slicker so that the cars would adhere to the tract just a little better. I remember entering Woodcraft Raceways and smelling the Wintergreen. It was about as exciting a feeling as a 13-year-old boy can get before he really knows what girls are all about. The anticipation of putting your car down on the slot and cracking the controller was always high. Every week we would come with some different modification that we had made to the car which we were sure it was going to make the fastest car on the track. Most of the time I was either out of money or too cheap to spend money on actually track time and might be considered to have been a "mooch". A mooch would run a car while another car had just flown through the air. "Can I just test this car for one lap?" I usually spent most of my time working on cars for myself and my friend.

    Like later in my life, I think that working on things has been as important or more important than actually running them. The slot cars gradually gave way to go-carts. These were not go-carts that you buy from a store. These were go-carts that were made from old lawn mowers and pieces lying around. My go-cart went through at least 6 permeations before I finally decided that my Stingray bicycle (not really a Stingray but one that I had put together out of my brother's 24" frame) needed a motor. Again, Lake Street continued to be important.

    Those tracks were our proving ground. I would work all week on the bike and the confines of the basement of the apartment building where we lived and then at times speed out of the basement, down the alley and over to the grain elevators. Sometimes, we would go over to Porky's and hang out with the closest thing we had to a real motorcycle. Seventh grade had come and with it, daily trips down Lake Street to Hennepin and Lake where we would transfer to go over to Jefferson Junior High School or perhaps continue down Lake Street on the 6 bus.

    I remember one Saturday, shortly after 7th grade had started when Frosty Pearson and Doug Goodman were walking with me east from Lake and Hennepin. At that time there was a car lot right next to the alley which went to Calhoun School. Calhoun School used to be just about where the big parking ramp is behind the Hennepin and Lake Center. Anyhow, some guys that I didn't know saw Frosty Pearson and decided it was a good time to beat up someone. As they proceeded to beat up Frosty, I interceded. Thinking that this would all be done in a gentlemanly way, I expected that the altercation would simply stop, we would all shake hands and go have some ice cream. Frosty ran like hell, Doug Goodman ran like hell, and Brad O'Brien, at the time (unbeknownst to me) the toughest kid in Calhoun School decided that if he couldn't beat up Frosty, he would beat up whoever was readily available. This did not work out to Brad's best interest as, not knowing who he was or how important he was in the structure and fabric of the 7th grade tough guy hiarchy managed to require some scraps and scratches that he had not counted on. Only later did I find who he was and the fact that I should have been afraid of him. Though I did get into other fights during junior high none were with Brad, who kept his distance.

    Lake Street at that point started to show me its grittier side. It wasn't long before I acquired a Yamaha YA6 Santa Barbara 125 cc "motorcycle" which had been bent at a right angle by Carl Simer's bigger brother. My parents thought that it would be OK for me to spend 60 dollars on this, but never thought I'd get the frame straightened (it was monocoque). As I acquired the necessary parts to make the YA6 runable (with homemade sissy bar and Cadillac tail lights) I needed to go to Jim's Auto slightly further down Lake Street. Actually Jim's Auto is almost across from where we have our meetings now. At the time it was a Yamaha dealer but also it featured CHOPPERS. Pictures or choppers which I had doodled using every type of engine and frame adorned the fronts and insides and margins of just about every notebook I had.

    Though I was told to be afraid of their riders, I was befriended by two unlikely fellows named James and Uppie at Jim's Auto. James always wore a black shirt and had long blonde hair and a beard. He was slender and soft spoken. When I would show up on my English bike balancing fork tubes under one arm, he would always spare some time. Uppie, was your typical Hell's Angel type whose vocabulary was severely limited to words which I couldn't pronounce west of Lake Street for fear of my mother hearing them. Like the Eskimos who have any number of words to describe snow, Uppie had any number of ways of saying the same word with various nuances to relay his meaning.

    Uppie was the fellow who led the parade down Lake Street to protest helmets (does anyone else remember him). I still remember the jar sitting on the parts counter with a picture of a small disheveled boy no more than four with a leather jacket on and a little note that said "the little Uppie fund". Lake Street was considered auto row at the time from end to the other. There were also many motorcycle dealers including Honda Town, Bultaco dealer, BMW dealer and of course WIW. Going down Lake Street, one could also stop at Dunebuggie Supply if there was time to see the Meyers Manxs body and dream about how your going to cut down that Volkswagen frame.

    By seventeen, I had been working in my dad's store in for four years. I managed to buy a 66' Scout with plow on it. I would go up and down Lake Street hauling stuff for the store, doing some plowing and starting cars in the winter. When one of my friends wanted to buy an old car, they would call me in for consultation. I remember once telling a friend how screwed up an engine can get if the spark plug wires are switched around.

    One afternoon while studying that friend called me to come check on a 61' Chrysler convertible sitting at Grossman Chervelot. It seems that the mechanics couldn't get the car started for some strange reason when my friend asked the salesman if the car ran. Of course he had looked at the engine previously and perhaps made a few modifications. In any event, they had forgotten how to get the wires straight again and of course I was required as the unknowing instigator of the perpetration to straighten things out. I appeared with my tool kit and calmly walked over to the car. The mechanics watched from some distance thinking that no 17-year-old could correct the problem that they had not been able to figure out. Of course by this time, we had bargained down from $400.00 to about $120.00. With a few wire changes we were in business and waving goodby to the salesman.

    I later remember taking by new girlfriend out in my dad's 71 Riviera. Someone tried to turn left from the right hand lane, bumping the front of this brand new Riviera. What ensued was a five block long car chase, largely through red lights, ending in an one-Adam-twelve sort of stop where I ran the guy off the road with my dad's Riviera.

    I remember my first malted at the Hasty Tasty, by first burrito at Little Tijuana and of course, the delightful ambiance of the White Castle just beyond Sears. I remember rebuilding the gas logged carburetor floats of my 53' Oldsmobile in the White Castle parking lot in total darkness. The speed shops were on Lake Street. I remember Anson Automotive and Smith Auto. I remember almost , but not quite buying a Muntz Jet from a lot which was roughly at Emerson and Lake. I remember going west on Lake for piano lessons and east on Lake to sit trembling in the dentist chair over on Bloomington. I remember Panda Motors, Tuesday Motors and Pirkles. I remember sitting at a big round table with Bernie early on Saturday mornings at Bernie's Del and I remember seeing my first scary movie, The Thirteen Ghosts at the Park Theater. In 1984, I got married (God forbid on Hennepin) but had our reception at the Calhoun Beach Hotel on Lake Street.

    It seems only fitting that we have our meetings at Dulono's on Lake Street. Standing up there on the dumpster, addressing the masses of bikers seems like a natural to me. Riding home through its dark coolness after midnight on my Norton also seems natural. I think that if I ever move away, it will be one of the hardest things about this city to leave, however, wouldn't it be neat to be able to go to just about any city and find yourself a "Lake Street" to explore.

    Help me make a list.

Greg,

the artful bodger