Eddie Cochran, the fifties rock and roll star, had grown up in Albert Lea and I can goddamn guarantee you that he was not thinking about the city when he wrote Summertime Blues. Marion Ross, of Happy Days fame, had also spent some time there. But they were the far and few between of the town. The majority of the population were employed by the packing plant until they would eventually be run out of their jobs by vicious labor strikes, carpal tunnel syndrome, the red meat high cholesterol hysteria, and cheap Mexican labor.
It didn't help that only twenty miles away was the
town of Austin, the home of Hormel which is the
birthplace of Spam - the all time leading seller in
the canned crap food aisle of your local grocer. It's
the meal made up of pig and cattle intestines, lips,
assholes, and scrap meat the janitor shovels up off
the floor, all packed in a tidy little brick and shoved
in a tin can with a glob of gelatin to preserve it.
Traitors in Albert Lea bought the shit up and fried it
in the pan for Sunday morning breakfast adding to
the overall stench of the town.
Humid and as hot as the gates of Hell in the
summer with mosquitoes buzzing in your face
constantly, it then got down to freeze your nuts off
cold in the winter, the place was no picnic to live in.
With weather conditions like that, the main source
of entertainment was alcohol, and lots of it (along
with suicide since Nordic blooded people just seem
to love to shove a shotgun in their mouth in the
winter - Finland has nothing on Minnesota in that
department). Beer for hot summer days, vodka and
whiskey for the cold and dark winter nights. The
folks of Minnesota are known for their hardy stock
and love of liquor. A relative of mine had been
known to crawl under Model-T Fords back in the
day and drink the alcohol used for anti-freeze
straight out of the radiator.
Savvy Minnesotans who didn't relish the
taste of gun oil in their mouths to hasten their quest
for the big sleep had many other fun options.
Snowmobiles became popular and along with the
booze came high speed accidents involving barbed
wire fences and decapitations, a sort of polar Jayne
Mansfield accident if you will. Drunks drove their
cars on to the frozen lakes to ice fish and wound up
falling through open holes in the ice, some not seen
again until spring found their bodies bobbing to the
surface. A lunatic decided to blow a car through the
ice with dynamite when the local country club put
the junked auto out there for a lottery - a Minnesota
tradition, the person who picks the day and time
wins a prize! The dumb shit didn't know how to
handle explosives and blew his ass all over Fountain
Lake. The owner of the ambulance service, a four
hundred pound mouth breather, uttered the quote -
most likely bullshit - retold around the town for
years when he scooped the man's brains up off the
ice and asked "Does anybody want a set of brains?
Never been used."
It was then and still is, a dead end town. The
typical southern Minnesota town half full of
churches, the other half bars and strip joints. Sneak
in to the Aragon Bar or The Name of the Game - a
filthy beyond belief bar with the biggest
cockroaches I had ever seen until I got to Hawaii -
on a Saturday night to watch sad eyed and coked up
strippers wearing g-strings and pasties as they
humped the fire-pole and then you could
conveniently go listen to the reverend the next
morning and forget all about how your old lady
screamed so fucking loud the glass in the windows
almost busted out in the trailer and you had to sleep
on the Sears not paid for couch when she
discovered you had shot your wad in your pants
after you had gotten so worked up and had blown
half or all of your paycheck that you earned
slaughtering hogs and calves on some cheap sluts
from Minneapolis shaking their asses. Sins
absolved! Just like that.
You know that kind of town if you're from
that godforsaken part of the country. The kind of
town freezes that it's ass for eight months of the
years just waiting for (hopefully) four months of
spring and summer. Summer brings on fishing, long
walks, movies at the drive in, root beer at the A &
W, and the county fair with it's dangerously unsafe
rides, rip-off games, demolition derbies, and
suicidal sprint car drivers racing on the old beat up
old horse track while the fans bombed on 3.2 beer
watch intently just hoping that tonight might be
their night to witness a fatal crash.
Afterwards they stagger out to the midway, pausing only to barf their
beer and foot longs behind the Tilt a Whirl (built
locally just down the road over in Faribault), to
catch the Chez Paree strip show imported to the
town by the tattooed covered carnies. Just like the
burned out whores uptown in the bars only these
gals is different. They come from Iowa or
Arkansas! Foreign gals. Ten bucks for a blow job
after the show. If you don't get your head bashed in
for your wallet first by her carnie pimp.
Goddamn! I was sure going to miss the
place.