Part 4: Accounts of the Life of Edmund Callipeaux

Contributors:
Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college instructor, lives in St. Louis Park.
Chili Pie – taconite plant floor manager, lives in Rochester.
Leadership 5 – woodworker, camping enthusiast, lives in Missoula.
Guy Cheblo – chef, corn expert, adventurer, lives in New York.


Edmund Callipeaux – 26 January 2009, 1:00pm

I worked for a while in the early ‘90s as a prep cook at a small diner in Minneapolis. We used to make the chicken noodle soup from scratch. I hated doing prep work…it’s so monotonous. Therefore, I was always looking for a little mischief to break up the boredom. To make the soup, the restaurant would get whole chickens to boil and make soup stock. Prior to boiling them however, I would have to clean the birds – which was nasty work. One day I looked over several chickens as they were laid out on a table before me. They looked like little headless men, lying on their backs with their arms and feet in the air. I inserted each of my hands into the chest cavities of two birds, and raising my arms to my shoulders, I became Edmund ChickenHands! And then, of course, I proceeded to run around and terrorize everyone in the kitchen. - EC
___________________________________________

Chili Pie – 23 January 2009, 8:00am

For now, I’ll dispense with the story of how I came to know Edmund Callipeaux. As I have been asked to be a contributing writer to the blog that concerns the events of his life, I feel that I must begin with the tale of the first time I visited Edmund and his wife, LeTigre at their apartment in Rochester, Minnesota.

Their apartment was on Seventh Street in the historic “Pill Hill” area of Rochester. They call this part of town Pill Hill because it was filled with fancy houses, built by doctors from the Mayo Clinic. Upon entering the apartment building, my first impression was that the 1920’s era building reminded me of the ski chalet from the movie, The Shining. It had a grand entrance with a long, ornately decorated hallway stretching to the south end of the building. A marble staircase led to the floors above.

Edmund greeted my wife, Lunchikong and I at the entrance to the building. He explained to us that even though his apartment was just above on the second floor, we should take the lift. Halfway down the hall sat the elevator for the building. It was small chamber and looked to be an original part of the building. It had a gold colored gate for a door that slid to the left like a scissors when opened. Its interior was lined with red panels with a mirrored ceiling and a small chandelier for a light fixture. Allusions to the famous Steven King movie raced through my mind as I pictured a tidal wave of blood overtaking us before we reached the second floor. Edmund mused, “You don’t want to be trapped in here at three o’clock in the morning!”

LeTigre greeted us at the doorway to their apartment, whereupon we entered the space. By today’s standards, it was a large, two-bedroom apartment with high ceilings and dark hardwood floors. The space was flooded with natural light from banks of both north and east facing windows. There were French doors separating the dining room from a long, L-shaped living room that had a fireplace at one end. Arched passages led us from room to room as they showed us around. It had two bathrooms, each with ornately tiled floors that you had to step up into. Edmund had hung his paintings throughout rooms. The large living room was broken into three seating areas with vintage couches and chairs, and 1950’s style lamps on end tables. In the dining room they had a large Formica table with chairs, and potted plants lined the walls. Looking out the dining room window, I saw that the building was erected on a steep hill that sloped down to the south. This placed the second floor apartment four stories above the alleyway below, and offered us panoramic views of the neighborhood and the city of Rochester to the south and east.

Looking out these windows, Edmund explained that he and LeTigre had once lived in the small house directly below. It was one of two houses that had been built side by side, facing the adjacent alleyway. They effectively occupied the backyard of a larger house beyond. The house they had previously occupied had a small, detached garage that looked like a broken down shack. Edmund told us that he had converted this garage into the Blacksmith Bar and Grill after the famous Lafitte’s Blacksmith bar on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Since they had moved across the alley and into their current residence, they had made a hobby out of watching the tenants of their old place. First, a group of three prostitutes had moved into the house. Evidently, the police evicted them after several noise complaints. Currently, a man who they referred to as The Chud had taken up residence in the little house. The Chud was a hulk of a man who looked like a chunky Duane Allman, with long blonde hair and a scraggly beard. He had this huge old, broken-down pickup truck from the ‘70s that he was constantly trying to repair and keep running. It had more rust and primer on it than paint and The Chud’s tools were strewn throughout the trucks open bed. They said that every morning at 7:30, The Chud would fire up the beastly machine to go to work. And because the truck had no muffler, and owing to the acoustics of the alleyway and apartment building, the roaring engine would sound like a 747 jetliner was taking off in their dining room. Ironically, on the weekends, the intense smells of exhaust and sonic booms from The Chud’s truck would be replaced by beautiful electric guitar music. Evidently, The Chud was a virtuoso on the guitar and spent his Saturday afternoons playing classical music, like Bach and Vivaldi.

We all four sat down for drinks at the dining room table. Their kitchen lay adjacent to this dining room, separated by a lattice of shelves that created a doorway. As I looked around I noticed that these shelves were lined with dozens of cans and boxes of non-perishable foods. At first, I assumed that because storage space in apartments is often limited, they might have been using these shelves as a pantry of sorts. I caught sight of a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and casually verbalized that I hadn’t had Dinty Moore Beef Stew since I was a kid. Edmund glanced at me quickly and got up from his chair. Motioning toward the shelves. He said, “Oh yes! How could we have forgotten the most important part of the apartment tour. This is The Strange Food Collection!”

The Strange Food Collection was just about what the name implies. Edmund and LeTigre had amassed over the years, a collection of non-perishable foods that they thought to be strange or unique. The collection also included examples of packaging, or graphic design, that they thought to be superior to other brands. For example, they had a can of Del Monte peas. When I inquired as to its inclusion, I was told that Grandpa Simpson is seen eating a can of peas in an episode of The Simpson's television show. Edmund went on to add, "...and besides, Del Monte has a classic design." The Strange Food Collection held a myriad of weird and gross stuff. They had a jar of marshmallow Fluff that had sat on the shelf for so long that it had separated into two nasty looking tones that were visible through its glass container. There was a can of potted food meat product, a can of peanuts in fried gluten, and a jar of off-brand, sickly looking white pickled asparagus spears. They had a bottle of Navy Grog, a bottle of Tahiti Joe Skier’s Glogg, and a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup. Who doesn’t appreciate food that comes in the shape of somebody’s grandmother? There were cans of…well, some of the strangest, and grossest foods I could imagine. LeTigra explained that the collection was inspired from a large, one-gallon can of cheese sauce that she had stolen when she was a teenager working at Arby's. One of my favorite entries was a postcard they had received in the mail from a local restaurant in Rochester. The card proclaimed: "We've beefed up our lasagna with MEATBALLS!" The company thought this meat addition would be enticing to its customers, whereas the Callipeaux's found it to be bizarre and hilarious…so they hung it on their dining room wall.

They asked us if we knew of a sign on the south end of town that was for French’s Chicken. I was familiar with this sign, as I had passed by it many times on the highway. It was an old fiberglass sign that looked like a roasted chicken on a plate. It was large, perhaps six feet high and twelve feet across and the chicken protruded from the plate in dimensional relief. LeTigre explained that it was their dream to add this sign to The Strange Food Collection and hang it on their dining room wall. Edmund said that if they possessed the chicken sign, he would pray for his body to dissolve into the ether so that he would owe to nothing terrestrial that would detract his gaze from the glorious sign.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the conversation turned to Edmund’s bid for Rochester’s mayoral office during the upcoming election. Edmund was dissatisfied with some of the city’s services and he thought it to be his civic duty to run for mayor. At issue was his growing frustration with the timing of all the traffic lights around town. He had a point; I had noticed myself that I couldn’t drive more than a few blocks without hitting a red light. Edmund argued that the amount of gas wasted by breaking, idling, and accelerating cars within the Rochester city limits was egregious and he had a plan to fix the problem. His campaign was running on the platform that if elected, Edmund would revoke every citizen’s automobile license, save himself. He would then have all the stoplights in town set permanently to green. In one bold move, he would cut vehicle emissions dramatically and make it possible for him to get from point A to point B more quickly.

I told him that I was in favor of his resolutions and that I could guarantee the support of the Taconite Workers union. Many of you may not be aware of this, but Rochester has a small, but thriving iron ore industry. I have been employed by one of its leading mines since dropping out of the fifth grade in 1976. We don’t produce much iron ore these days due to the ore being pretty much played out. But back in the mid-eighties, our strong union flexed its muscles and forced management to grant its full-time employees tenure status (based on the model that university professors enjoy). So now, even though we don’t dig for iron any longer, I can still support my family with full dental and medical, four weeks paid vacation, 401K employer contributions, hazard pay on weekends and holidays…basically, I can still pursue The American Dream. We even get a year’s paid sabbatical every third year that I generally spend on lavish motorcycle tours throughout Europe. We voted recently to sell all the plant’s unused heavy machinery to finance the outfitting of the employee break room with a massive plasma television and plush sofas. And since the iron ore is gone, my fellow works and I basically spend our time surfing the internets and standing around the office complaining to management about how busy we are and how there just doesn’t seem like there’s enough time in the day to get everything done.

Sitting at the Callipeaux’s dining room table we discussed the mayoral campaign at length. Edmund confided in me that Rochester sorely needed a Chancellor of Iron Ore (C.I.O.) and his election victory would be all but guaranteed with my union’s support. Knowing Edmund’s Neo-Nepotistic agenda, I saw myself sitting in a large C.I.O. office with my name on the door. So, that night I pledged to muster our bothers in labor to get him elected! But unfortunately, as many conversations around the dinner table go, Edmund’s campaign never got fully off the ground, and he was never elected to be mayor of Rochester. Which is too bad, because he would have been a great voice within city politics. And as far as I’m aware, Edmund and LeTigre never got their hands on that old chicken sign either, which is too bad because they would have given it a good home. - CP
___________________________________________

Leadership 5 – 31 January 2009, noon

As a member of Team Action Force, I was called to Rochester, Minnesota to help Edmund Callipeaux and his wife, LeTigre, move from their apartment. It was the summer of 2004 and LeTigre had taken a job in the Twin Cities area of the state. After ten years, the two of them were regretfully leaving Rochester. When I arrived in town, Edmund laid out his plan for the move. Luckily, they had been given an allotment to pay for professional packing and shipping expenses from LeTirge’s new job. He explained to me that our main task would be oversight on moving day, and cleaning the apartment to ensure the return of their security deposit. The other members of Team Action Force were due to arrive in Rochester the next day. “But first,” he explained, “we have to see about this chicken sign.”

Team Action Force is comprised of myself, Edmund, and his wife, LeTigre, and their two younger cousins, MC RibEye and Killdozer. It is a radical, ultra-nonviolent arm of Moboxo. Moboxo is a way of life that LeTigre Callipeaux established in 2005 as method that combines all religions and all forms of martial arts and fighting into one state of being. When practicing Moboxo correctly, one looks as if they’re freaking out due to the simultaneous display of a Hindi Whirling Dervish, Korean Taekwondo, a Catholic Rosary, and 19th Century Irish Prize Fighting (in addition to all other known modes of meditation and fighting). Team Action Force has been called upon in the past to solve many a crisis, carry out insurmountable tasks, or cook some of the best Cajun-styled, blackened steaks on Earth. Presently, we were assembling in Rochester to assist the Callipeaux’s on moving day.

Given that MC RibEye and Killdozer were not due to arrive until the following day, Edmund and myself set out to the site of the chicken sign. It was situated on the south side of town across a highway from a Fleet Farm store that Edmund and LeTigra frequented. Our goal was to find out who owns it, and attempt to buy it off them before leaving Rochester. Edmund said that it was suspended at the top of two telephone poles, high above an industrial lot where horse trailers were parked. It was made as an advertisement for a business called French's Produce. However, arriving at the described site, we found that the sign had disappeared!

Standing at the base of the telephone poles that formerly supported the sign, Edmund said, "Man! I've been driving past this thing for years! Drove by it last week, in fact. And now that we're here, it's gone!" He looked around as he tried to imagine his next move. "Let's go back around over there and see if any one's in that building." I nodded and we walked toward a structure that looked like a machine shop.

Walking through a door marked Office, we were greeted by a mechanic dressed in greasy overalls. Edmund explained that we were looking for the chicken sign and inquired if the guy knew anything about it. "Yeah, I know the sign. It's laying on the ground out back." Edmund's heart lifted. "Really, do you know why it was taken down? Who owns it? Is it being thrown away?" The mechanic replied that a guy named French owned the sign. French had run a meat and produce distribution company in another part of the building for years, but he was retiring from the business and they had taken down the sign. Other than that, he had no other details to share regarding the fate of the sign. But he did have French's phone number, which he copied down on a scrap of paper for Edmund.

We walked around to the back of the building and found the fiberglass sign leaning against an old, rusty truck. It was about six feet high and approximately ten feet across at its widest. Standing there, looking at it, I knew instantly why Edmund and LeTigre wanted it so badly. It would have fit perfectly into The Strange Food Collection. Its bulk was in the shape of whole, roasted chicken sitting on a large platter. It wasn't fully three-dimensional but more of a half relief. The volume of the chicken protruded roughly two feet out into space creating the illusion that it was large and plump. The fiberglass chicken and plate had been painted to look like a nicely roasted chicken...perhaps like something you'd find in a Norman Rockwell painting. But owing to the weather conditions that it had withstood for years and years, the paint was faded and worn. This wear and tear gave the sign a patina and added to the overall uniqueness of the object.

Edmund paced back and forth in the mud of the yard that was filled with a mess of broken down machinery. “I can’t believe that we almost missed finding this thing!” Edmund muttered, “What do we do now? What’s my play here?” He produced a cell phone from his pants pocket and proceeded to dial a number. “Hello LeTigre? It’s me. We’ve found the sign, but it’s not hanging on the poles any longer. It’s around the back of the building laying in the mud. What should we do? I’ve got the guys phone number who owns it…what’s the max I can offer him?” He lifted the phone slightly from his ear and said, “What do you think L5, three thousand, thirty-five hundred? I shrugged in approval and Edmund returned to listening at the phone. He clicked the phone off, fished the scrap of paper from his pocket and immediately punched in French’s phone number.

“Hello, Mr. French? My name is Edmund Callipeaux and I’m over at where you had your distribution business. Yes. I’m interested in that old chicken sign you had hanging over Highway 63. I’m standing next to it right now. Would you take two hundred dollars for it?” Edmund’s coveting gaze washed over the chicken sign as he paused while listening to French’s reply. “Alright, thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He hung up the phone and returned it to his pocket. “He said that he’d talk it over with his wife and call me back. Evidently, he was planning to give it to one of his friends.” He looked at me and said, “LeTigre said that we’re broke and that all we could afford was a hundred bucks, but I didn’t want to low-ball the guy too much and scare him off.”

We drove back over to their apartment to attend to other key points in preparation for the move. Later that night, Edmund recounted the entire episode to LeTigre. “I guess we wait then”, was her reply. There was no word from French that night but we distracted ourselves with the business of packing up The Strange Food Collection and cooking dinner. The following day, the remaining members of Team Action Force joined us along with a giant semi-trailer truck and its movers that blocked the street in front of the apartment building. It was the hottest and most humid day of that summer and the move was grueling. Once the contents of the apartment were stowed within the belly of the great truck we set out to clean the empty apartment from top to bottom. This task took us well into the night, whereupon, we drove to the Twin Cities to await the arrival of the movers at the Callipeaux’s new home that following morning.

French never did call Edmund back regarding the chicken sign. The Callipeaux’s were forced to submit themselves to life without the chicken sign. It’s too bad too. Their new home has a massive backyard that would have housed the chicken sign perfectly. The land is located in a partially wooded area of St. Louis Park and all manner of deer and rabbits and woodchucks (and occasionally a coyote) roam about the yard freely. I can just see some deer trying to figure out if that crazy sign was edible or not. But the chicken sign that was once so closely within Edmund’s reach was forever vacant from the view of their kitchen window, and its whereabouts remained a mystery.

That is to say, its location was a mystery until late August, that very year! Once Edmund and LeTigre were settled into their new house, they drove to Northern Wisconsin with their cousins, MC RibEye and Killdozer, to attend an annual family reunion. They traveled up Interstate 35 and cross over into Wisconsin on Highway 77. As they slowed during their approach to the town of Danbury, MC RibEye screamed, “WE JUST PASSED THE CHICKEN SIGN!!!” At once Edmund slammed on the breaks of The General and pulled over to the side of the road. (They call their big red truck The General after a catfish that Homer Simpson tries to catch in an episode of The Simpson’s television show.) “I think I saw it too!” exclaimed LeTigre. In his surprise and excitement, Edmund could only utter various combinations of the words What and Where. “What? What? Where? What? Where? Where?!” Killdozer, the only one of the four who was able to maintain his composure said, “We just passed it. Or at least I think it was the sign. It was hanging in front of diner or something. It kind-a looked like an old, converted Dairy Queen.”

Edmund turned The General around and headed back toward the direction they had come from. The sign and diner came into view and Edmund captained The General into the nearest parking space. They piled out of the truck and looking up one of them exclaimed, “They painted it.” An astute observation that was followed closely by, “They ruined it!” The collective hearts of Team Action Force broke as they stood, shading their eyes from hot August sun to see that someone had indeed slopped cheap paint all over their beloved chicken sign, ruining forever the beautiful patina that nature had taken decades to procure.

They found the owner of the establishment in the diner’s kitchen. They chatted with him a bit and asked him questions regarding the sign. He confirmed that the sign had once hung for many years in Rochester. The sign had been given to him by his friend, French, so that he could use it to entice people to stop at his restaurant. They didn’t feel the need to ask him why he painted the chicken sign. Sometimes, it only leads to increased frustration to question a deed that is abhorrent, yet irreversible. They bought some hamburgers and French fries and ate their lunch within view of their old chicken sign. Edmund reluctantly admitted that the burgers were really good. They bid the owner of the diner farewell and drove in The General to meet their family at a their aunt and uncle’s cabin near Hayward, Wisconsin. The sting of disappointment and jealousy toward the restaurant owner soon wore off as they joined their family. I guess that’s what families are for: to get you through the hard times as well as the good times. Edmund later confided in me that his pain was also eased by playing cards over the weekend with MC RibEye and Killdozer. Evidently, Edmund’s little cousins are terrible poker players and he took delight in relieving them of their money. – L5

Photograph of The Chicken Sign as it hung in Rochester (Highway 63).


___________________________________________

Guy Cheblo – 28 January 2009, 6:00am

During a conversation early in our friendship, Eddie confided in me that he had recently learned that he was going to live forever. He had watched the movie Highlander thinking that it was about a guy who was from Highland Park, which was the area of St. Paul where Eddie had grown up. Seeing that the protagonist was indeed from a different part of the world (albeit with a somewhat shared name), Eddie proceeded to manufacture a belief that they had other things in common that linked their fates inextricably, mainly their mutual love of swords and fighting evil. Eddie postulated that because of these coincidences, he too is more than likely immortal. He extrapolated upon this hypothesis by outlining several near-death experiences he had been a party to and yet had thus far eluded the grasp of the Grim Reaper. Because of this assumed immortally, Eddie was fond of telling people that he had no need for life insurance, seatbelts, sunscreen, antibiotics, or bulletproof vests. - GC

Part 3: Accounts of the Life of Edmund Callipeaux

Contributors:
Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college instructor, lives in St. Louis Park.
LeTigre – Edmund’s wife, televangelist, lives in St. Louis.
Barnaby the Hedgehog – R.I.P. summer 2008


Edmund Callipeaux – 20 January 2009, 12:45pm

I drove my wife to work today. I do this almost every day at around 7:30am so that we can spend a little time together in the morning, and so that she doesn’t have to deal with the frustration of rush hour traffic. As we approached her office, we passed four or five guys half walking down the sidewalk, one half fumbling with a torn grocery bag. The man holding the bag was distributing its contents of tall beers to his companions. I hit the windshield wipers on the car to clear away the icy sludge buildup and thought to myself, “Oh right, Obama’s being sworn in today…it’s time to start partying!” – EC
___________________________________________


LeTigre Callipeaux – 24 January 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Cedar Key: Part 1

On one of our many trips to Florida to visit Kidpowertool, Eddie and I spent four days in Cedar Key. The town of Cedar Key is situated on Northern Florida’s gulf coast within a massive marine wildlife sanctuary. The town dates back to before the Civil War and many of the buildings from that era are still standing and being used. Soldiers from the Northern army had used the hotel we stayed at as an outpost during the war. It’s a quaint little town that tourism hadn’t destroyed as it has so many other coastal areas of Florida.

We arrived in town at about 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday in July of 1996. We had called ahead for reservations and were informed during our conversation with the hotel owner that as it was their down season, no one else was currently booked to stay at the hotel. In fact, the owner told us that they’ve taken to not working on Sundays and that when we arrived in town, there would be no one at the hotel to greet us. She instructed me that she would leave a key to the back door of the building in a flowerpot on the grounds. We were to let ourselves in, make ourselves at home, and someone would be by our room in the morning to check us in and see if we needed anything. I thought to myself, “Wow, this place must be in the middle of nowhere.”

We made our way into town that night, found the hotel, found the back door, found the flowerpot, and sure enough the key awaited us. Eddie and I climbed an exterior set of stairs to a second floor doorway, unlocked the door, and entered the building. The doorway opened up to a large parlor with a fireplace and couches and chairs. Doors to the individual guest rooms lined the walls of this richly decorated room. It was a beautiful, warm room with deep, intricate woodwork and soft, sepia-toned murals of the local swampy landscape covering the walls. There were bookshelves lined with books, antique lamps, and worn area rugs covering the hardwood floor. To our left was a grand staircase that led down to the main lobby of the hotel, across which was a small tavern on the first floor called The Neptune Tavern. (Eddie was especially pleased to find the Neptune Tavern the next day…it had a large portrait behind the bar of King Neptune himself, complete with trident, commanding the sea and all its creatures.)

Directly across the room from the grand staircase, and to our right, was the room we had reserved. Eddie and I stood and looked around the parlor, taking in all of its intricacies. His gaze eventually landed on the door to our room. One second after that, his gaze shifted slightly to the left and down to where it found a life-size doll that looked exactly like a four year old girl. It stood about three feet high and she had her back to the wall. It was dressed in a little pink outfit with stockings and shoes. The material that was used to make her hands and head was very realistic looking. And the expression on her face was also very natural looking. Given that dolls are usually exaggerated in some way, like having an extravagant dress, or a porcelain face, this doll lacked any kind of flamboyancy, and for all intensive purposes looked normal and somewhat plain. It was if she was a real little girl, frozen while standing right next to the door to our room. Eddie looked to me and I could tell without him making a sound that he was freaking out on the inside.

Eddie set the bags he was carrying on the floor of the parlor and said, “I don’t know about this.” He then proceeded to walk over to the doll. Crouching down, he addressed her eye to eye. “This is too much. I can’t sleep in a room knowing that this is directly on the other side of the door. What if she starts knocking on the door in the middle of the night?” We looked blankly at each other for a moment or two as I ran through my mind the layout of the town while trying to remember if I had seen any other hotels. There were none.

Reaching out both his hands toward the doll, Eddie said, “Perhaps it’d be okay if we just moved her to some other location.” He then proceeded to pick her up by her shoulders. “My god! The thing weighs as much as a girl of her age…and the weight is distributed evenly throughout her body like a real person. There’s a density to the form that isn’t soft like it would be if she were stuffed with cotton or something. This is not good.” He walked outside the door that we had entered the building from and set the doll down on the landing. He stood up, looked at the doll, looked over at me, looked again to the doll and said, “I don’t know if this works. She might get mad that we stuck her outside. What if it rains?”

Picking up the doll a second time, he moved back into the parlor and to the far end of the room…as far from our door as possible. “Hey, there’s a little nook back here that I could stick her in.” He set the doll down and stood back once again. From across the room, I watched him as the expression on his face went from mildly satisfied to worried once again. “No, this doesn’t feel right either.” Whereupon, Eddie picked up the doll for a third time and began to move her to another part of the room. I watched him go through this same exact process at about five or six other spots in the parlor.

Eventually, despite all of his attempts to move the doll to a new location away from our room, we stood a few feet apart. Eddie was still holding the doll and I was trying to hold onto my patience. Each time he set the doll somewhere, he got a little more worried that she wouldn’t be happy in that new spot, and therefore she would exact her terrible revenge upon him late that night whilst he slept. “Maybe I should just put her back where she was when we got here.” He then moved toward our door and crouched down to return her to her home. “I’ll just turn her around to face the wall though, then she’s not watching us while we’re out here.” And there the doll was left with her face toward the wall.

Our guest room was like something straight out of Gone with the Wind. It had the four-post covered bed, with mosquito netting draping down, an old-fashioned sink and washbowl, antique wooden dressers and tables. It was beautiful and extremely well maintained. There was also a door in the room that opened to a wide balcony that wrapped itself around the entire second floor of the building. After getting settled in a bit, we went out to sit and read our books on the balcony and listen to the sounds of the night. I don’t know if there where more than a couple hundred people living in Cedar Key, so it was very quite and peaceful that night. Of course Eddie wouldn’t shut up all night about the doll. I told him that he was making things worse for himself by perseverating on the matter. I don’t think that he slept much that night.

The next morning, Eddie woke up before the owners had arrived at the hotel. I awoke to see him climb out of bed and I watched as he crept toward the door. He paused at the door to listen for any sounds of life or movement within the hotel. After a moment, he opened the door slightly to see if there was anyone in the parlor. Opening the door a bit further, he bent down and with one eye he peeked out into the parlor. Immediately he stood back and closed the door quickly, but silently. “The doll is facing the stairs again! How the hell did that happen?” He stood there frozen in his underwear as he stared blankly at me. I thought back to what should be done to treat someone whose having a stroke. We then heard voices. The owners were downstairs and other people were checking into the hotel at the front desk. Across from the Neptune Tavern the noise of clinking plates and silverware emanated from the hotel dining room as they set up for breakfast. Eddie cracked the door open again and peered out. “I don’t know how we lived through the night.” Adding to his sentiment I wondered how I was going to get through the day with this madman whom I was trapped with in the middle of nowhere. – LC


___________________________________________

Barnaby the Hedgehog – 21 January 2009, nighttime

I met Edmund Callipeaux and his wife, LeTigre this past August. I burrowed a tunnel under the back porch of their house. I think that they were initially taken aback by my size and girth as I ambled along looking for nibbles in their vast back yard. Soon though, they began to give me two nice green apples each day. The entrance to my burrow was not far from where they would sit in the evenings on their patio to discuss the day’s events. Those were happy times. But then, one day, a roaming coyote ate me, and I haven’t seen either of them since. – BTH

Part 2: Accounts of the Life of Edmund Callipeaux

Contributors:
Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college instructor, lives in St. Louis Park.
Kidpowertool – unemployed dairy professional, lives in Key West.
Leadership 5 – woodworker, camping enthusiast, lives in Missoula.
___________________________________________

Edmund Callipeaux – 15 January 2009, 11:30am

I just got home from being at the grocery. An elderly woman insisted that I cut in front of her because I only had two items and she had an entire cart full of stuff. I thanked her and we chatted a bit as we waited. She said that I had to return the favor by letting someone in on the freeway, or some other similar act of kindness.

I confided in her that luckily, I had cured myself of my road rage this past summer. So, I’ve been enjoying not getting upset with other drivers and it’s no problem any longer when someone cuts me off. I’ll have to pay close attention for my opportunity to repay her in some other way. Perhaps I’ll come up with a plan to do something nice for someone if I make myself some lunch. I find that I come up with my best ideas over lunch. - EC
___________________________________________

Leadership 5 – 16 January 2009, 4:00am

I see that dawn is approaching as I finish composing my first contribution to the blog concerning the life of Edmund Callipeaux. I have known Edmund since we were children growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota. So, it’s been fun for me to think back to my experiences with him. One of my earliest memories of Edmund is the two of us riding the bus to school as children. Those were some cold bus rides during the winter months. I just looked online and saw that it is currently -20 degrees in St. Paul. Weather like that always reminds me firstly of a road trip I took to Chicago with Edmund, and his wife, and secondly, of a dog that we saw during that trip on Interstate 90.

It was January of 1995, and I had flown from my home in Missoula, Montana to St. Paul to visit my family and friends. I had seen Edmund and his wife a few months before during that previous summer. They had visited me while I was in Vermont attending a log cabin building school. As a child, I always was interested in woodworking and building things with my hands. As I write this essay, I am sitting in the log home I built for myself after learning how to work with raw timber in Vermont. That August, Edmund and his wife were traveling cross-country in their little Chevy S10 pickup truck. And one day they appeared unannounced at my door. Of course, I was thrilled to see them. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, and we had a great time exploring the beautifully wooded terrain that surrounds Montpellier. I was not very pleased however, to find a bag of hotdogs in my freezer some weeks after their departure. I have detested hotdogs since I was a child. Knowing this full well, Edmund had planted several wieners unbeknownst to me as a joke before they left Vermont for Minnesota. He thinks he’s a funny guy.

After completing my training in Montpellier, I relocated to Missoula, Montana. There I set out to build my log house. I hadn’t been back to Minnesota for some time, so once I had a break, I bought a plane ticket. I remember being greeted at the Minneapolis airport by Edmund and his wife, whereupon they informed me that we were to embark post haste on a road trip to Chicago for a little fun. They weren’t concerned that it was almost 11:00pm and it didn’t take much cajoling to convince me that a road trip was a good idea. I had lived in Chicago for a brief time after graduating from college. And Edmund and his wife had visited me at my tiny apartment just south of Wriggly Field on Clark Street at Belmont Avenue. Those were great times. I love Chicago. Standing at the Minneapolis airport, they informed me that the itinerary was all set. They had lined up a cheap hotel to stay at and the food for the two-day trip was covered. Edmund had been to the grocery store that day and bought a ton of stuff to make sandwiches with. Furthermore, they proclaimed that the best time to leave Minneapolis for a trip to Chicago was near midnight because after the six-hour drive, you hit the city before rush hour traffic.

The plan seemed perfectly acceptable to me. We piled into the cab of their Chevy S10 pickup truck and hit the road. Edmund had prepared the sandwiches ahead of time, so we were able to eat without stopping on the road. He had taken what looked like three or four loaves of bread and mass-produced these incredibly tasty sandwiches made from a variety of sliced meats, lettuce, tomato, sliced cucumbers, alfalfa sprouts, cheese, mustard – the works. They were great sandwiches. He took all these pre-made sandwiches and stuffed them back into the plastic bread bags. He then placed the bread bags full of sandwiches into empty shoeboxes, stacked the shoeboxes into a red cooler and threw the cooler into the bed of the pickup truck. I’ll never forget how the three of us were crammed side by side across the bench seat of that little truck, with no legroom, each munching on a sandwich. I can see it now. Edmund played a book-on-tape of the movie Star Wars. The factory sound system in the truck was pretty lousy and we had the volume cranked way up to hear the voices of the actors clearly on the crappy speakers. Whenever R2D2 talked, his squeaks and whistles would blast our eardrums. So, we were constantly trying in vain to predict when he had something to say so that we could quickly turn the volume down…but that plan didn’t work that well and we suffered through his chirps.

As predicted, we hit the city well before rush hour. It is at this point in our journey when we saw the dog. We were cruising along I90 coming into downtown from the west. I was watching for signs regarding our exit when Edmund said, “What’s that?” We all three looked to our left, and as we passed through a short freeway tunnel we saw the shape of a large black dog. We drove by the form so fast that we weren’t sure what to make of it. Being up all night, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the cab of a little truck, doing 80 mph across the frozen North, eating sandwich after sandwich, having your eardrums killed by crappy speakers that are competing with the constant roar of the truck’s engine can make it tough to trust your senses. But later, we all agreed that we saw a dog, a black lab to be exact, fully grown. He or she had been run over by a car. Run over by about a hundred cars, more than likely. This poor dog had been flattened by the Chicago traffic and frozen solid by the subzero temperatures. Someone had taken the time to get out of their car (probably while stuck in a traffic jam) and had set the dog up on its legs like a cartoon character – its silhouette made him look like a regular dog, but it was only a few inches thick while leaning slightly against the tunnel wall.

We drove on in silence as we exited the freeway and found our way to the hotel downtown, not far from Navy Pier. After checking into our little room, we immediately hit the town. None of us had slept that night before, but when you’re young, sleeping isn’t a factor when you’re in a town like Chicago. Before we left the hotel, I remember counting that there were three remaining shoeboxes of sandwiches. We braced ourselves against the cold and went around to all the free stuff we love to see in Chicago. I remember that it was on this trip that I first saw one of Gerhard Richter’s candle paintings at the Art Institute - an unbelievably masterful painting.

We stayed two nights in the city before heading back to Minneapolis. We saved money by eating Edmund’s sandwiches and we found a cheap bar not far from the hotel to have a few beers each night. When we left for Minnesota, we had but one shoebox of sandwiches left. Within this last shoebox, a chemistry experiment was taking place. The water from the lettuce and other components of the sandwiches had created brine that had soaked into the bread, rendering each sandwich inedible. It was a bummer because those were great sandwiches.

We returned to the Twin Cities and after about a week I flew back to Missoula. Chicago is such a great place and there’s nothing better in my mind than taking a spontaneous road trip with friends. I’ve spoken to Edmund about the dog from time to time since then. We both agree that it’s not our favorite memory of that trip to Chicago. And yet, it’s those bizarre incidents that stay with you for years. Road trips are usually a healthy mixture of heaven and hell. As an aside, I might also add that the last shoebox of sandwiches became another element from that road trip that did not fade into memory for long. Those sandwiches eventually taught Edmund a lesson about the indifference of nature.

Upon arriving home from Chicago, Edmund threw his red cooler along with everything else from the road trip into a pile in his living room. As the months ticked by, more and more junk and crap was added to this pile. Eventually, and despite all laziness and procrastination, Edmund could no longer ignore what had become a monstrous heap. So, one fine summer afternoon he conquered the pile, whence he worked his way down only to discover the neglected cooler from months past. Without thinking, he threw the lid open. Panic grabbed him as he momentarily set eyes on a fuzzy, mold-covered shoebox shape within the cooler. He told me that he slammed the lid down as fast as humanly possible, but that by then the stench was out in the open rendering the apartment uninhabitable. The pour bastard had to leave the building for a few hours to let the smell settle down! After which, he carefully brought the cooler down to the dumpster behind the building. He said that he didn’t even try to save the cooler for reuse, and due to his pretension toward thriftiness, and because he had traveled across almost the entire North American continent with that red cooler, he considered it a great loss. – L5
___________________________________________

Kidpowertool – 16 January 2009, dinnertime

Before I moved to Key West, I lived for a time as a dairy professional in Northern Florida. Florida is not known for its dairy industry and work was scarce in my profession. Times were hard, but I always looked forward to the times that Edmund Callipeaux and his wife would come down south to visit me. They had this little Chevy S10 pickup truck that I remember Ed purchasing during our time together in Alaska. When Ed bought the truck from his boss, he was wearing a t-shirt from station number twelve of the San Francisco Fire Department. Therefore, he called the pickup, Truck 12. Being a great lover of road trips, Ed had driven Truck 12 all the way down from Alaska to the Lower 48. And during the summer of 1994, he and his wife took a massive road trip through the eastern part of the country. They had quit their jobs, moved out of their apartment, sold everything they had at a garage sale, and hit the road.

If my memory serves me, they first drove from their home in Minnesota to visit me in Florida. They then made their way up the east coast, through Georgia, South and North Carolina, into Pennsylvania, over into New York, and up into Vermont where they visited another friend who was attending a log cabin building school in Montpellier. I distinctly remember them rolling into the parking lot of my apartment building at about ten in the morning one summer day and I was so glad to see them. Like I said, working in the dairy industry in Florida was rough in those days…and isn’t much better today. So, I was especially happy to see my friends. We’ve always had great times together. One memory of that time in Florida that always makes me smile – and also makes me glad that Ed isn’t planning my dinner menu everyday - was when were at a local Winn Dixie supermarket and Ed found these hotdogs.

We had gone to Winn Dixie because it was the cheapest place to get food in town. We were all pretty much broke and we were hunting for bargains. Prior to the trip to Florida, Ed had bought four cases of Creamy Chicken Flavored Ramen Noodles in Minneapolis. He and his wife had eaten them all the way to Florida and needed to expand the menu a bit. He bragged that he had bravely secured the Ramen at the sale price of 10 packets for one buck. I think there were 45 packets to each case, so Ed had 180 packs of Ramen for $18.00. He used to love the Creamy Chicken Flavored Ramen and so therefore, that was the only kind he bought on his eighteen dollar shopping spree. Of course, too much of a good thing never really works out that well in the end. Now days, Ed can’t eat Ramen. When I asked him recently as to the best way to eat Ramen, his reply was one word: Fast. Get the experience over with quickly. The flavor becomes a bit rough after years of eating them nonstop. Ed’s problem was that he never deviated from the Creamy Chicken flavor. Everyone knows that you must always diversify when you’re thinking long-term. But when presented with Pork or Shrimp flavored Romen, Ed wouldn’t have anything of it, and he always went back to that damn Creamy Chicken – the siren flavor that invariably drew him to the deadly rocks.

At any rate, we were in Winn Dixie and Ed found these hotdogs on the meat island. I knew that we would find trouble in that grocery store and I wish to this day that we had gone to a better grade store, like Publix. As I approached, Ed turned to me with his eyes practically popping out of his head as he proceeded to hold up two bricks of hotdogs with round orange stickers that read 99¢. He exclaimed: “Buy one, get one FREE!” That’s a pack of 48 hotdogs for 99¢, buy one, and get one free. My eyes rolled back into my head as I did the math. That’s just over one penny per dog (or as I check my calculator now, it’s 1.03125 cents per repulsive wiener). Like everyone alive, I don’t like to think about what hotdogs are made of…but the really cheap ones? Man, what do they put in those babies?

Ed placed his precious hotdogs on the checkout counter and slapped a one-dollar bill down and held out his hand for his penny in change. We had to beg like hell for him not to buy four packages of those damn pale links. Luckily, his wife put her foot down on that idea. Ed had seen his menu laid out for him for the next few months at the price of pennies and his wife had seen otherwise. (This is why, to this day, if Ed is perceived to have the most reasonable plan of action amongst all the people present in a group, I know that there’s something wrong and we need to keep brainstorming.) The teller gave Ed his change and we left the grocery store only to be tortured over the next ten days with every possible way of eating hotdogs. It didn’t take the fool long to realize that he could cut up the wieners into his beloved Ramen, and thus have a meal for just over 11¢. Yuck! (You’ve got to hand it to him though, eleven cents for a meal is pretty good considering that every time I go out to eat these days it seems I have to shell out at least eleven bucks.)

Crazy days. We did have fun though. Eventually, Ed and his wife left me in Florida and traveled up the coast. They camped along the barrier islands of Georgia and North Carolina, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do. I received a few phone calls from them along the way. Despite Ed’s generous offer, I had insisted that he take all the remaining hotdogs with them, and not leave me with a few spares in Florida. His wife later told me that by the time that they had reached Georgia (which was only a few hours from where I lived) the bag containing the hotdogs had leaked wiener juice out into their red cooler while it sat in the back of Truck 12. Under a hot summer sun that easily maintained 100+ degrees, the ice in the cooler had melted, mixing with the brine of the hotdogs and covering everything with the salty, stinky essence of extremely low quality meats. She said that all the soda pop cans tasted like hotdogs and that she didn’t know if she’d ever make it back to the Midwest before losing her mind. I had told him that he needed to tie that hotdog bag off better. But Edmund Callipeaux has his own way of doing things, and that generally means that he learns his lessons the hard way. - KPT

Part 1: Accounts of the Life of Edmund Callipeaux

Contributors:
Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college instructor, lives in St. Louis Park.
Guy Cheblo – chef, corn expert, adventurer, lives in New York.
Kidpowertool – unemployed dairy professional, lives in Key West.
___________________________________________

Introductions:

Edmund Callipeaux – 8 January 2009, 3:20pm

Earlier today I had long, flowing blonde hair that messaged my shoulders as I walked past many storefronts or worked in my studio on painting after painting. This beloved hair protected me from the cold and filled the sky with rainbows wherever I went. I also had a full and sensuous beard (peppered with some grey because of my age) that Thor himself sent many a thunderstorm to subdue. With this rich, luxurious hair covering a sum total of 7/8th of my head, I went to my stylist, Nell. My appointment was at 1:15pm. But before this story can continue, I feel that I must rest. All this writing and typing is making me hungry and sleepy. Bonne nuit. - EC

___________________________________________

Guy Cheblo – 1 January 2009, midnight “Happy New Year!”

I met Eddie back in the late 1980’s - not long after my life’s dreams were squelched. As a child I had planned to graduate from Harvard Law and take a position as the new ace lawyer at a little known, yet prestigious Memphis law firm. Much to my dismay, after a montage or two, I would discover the firm’s mob connections. Rather than join this salacious group, I would have heroically brought the firm to justice while reuniting with my estranged wife. However, my miserably low grade point average as both a high school and community college student kept me from Harvard and my dreams died in 1989.

When I met Edmund Callipeaux, I was working as a chef at the Monticello Bar in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It must have been the fall of 1989. Eddie was a new hire whose skills in cooking didn’t impress anyone in the kitchen. However, because of Eddie’s chutzpah, ass kissing, and ability to keep up during after hours drinking sessions, everyone soon came to love him as much as any kitchen crew of the damned can love anything at all.

Sitting on the 32nd floor of my Manhattan luxury high-rise apartment, those days in Minneapolis seem so far away. I do remember Eddie’s first day on the job at the Monticello. I forget the chef’s name who trained Eddie in as a cook, but this man basically stood Eddie in the only one-foot by one-foot spot on the cooking line where no one would need to tread. He then proceeded to yell, berate, and swear at him for eight or more hours, straight through the diner rush. He wouldn’t let Eddie touch anything or move from that small spot. After that, for a week of shifts, Eddie stood in that spot on the cooking line while attacks on his character and appearance were levied at him from the entirety of the kitchen and wait staff. Ashamedly, I even took the opportunity to say that that he was a born loser and that his hair wasn’t long enough for him ever to be a decent cook. At best, I told him, he should retreat to the grungy employee break room located in the basement of the restaurant to lick his wounds and resolve himself to quit the restaurant business forever and move to Alaska where he could live out his days in obscurity.

Despite this cruelty, Eddie persevered as a line-cook. It was determined by the staff that he took his shots well and paid his dues. Therefore, he was allowed to be the afternoon broiler cook. Eddie preformed well in this task and everyone pretended to like him. I’d love to impart a brief story of an especially challenging order that came to the lunch broiler cook (Eddie) every Wednesday at 1:30pm. I was never there to witness it, but Eddie told me the story himself. He said, “Guy, have you ever cooked for the Rare People?” I told him that I only knew of those cheeseburger people oddities by reputation, but had never had the displeasure of preparing their disgusting food. I said that from what I understood, a family of three (mother, father, and son) came to the restaurant each Wednesday at precisely 1:10 in the afternoon. They were seated, and after having received drinks they placed an order at exactly 1:30 for a cheeseburger rare, a cheeseburger rare rare, and a cheeseburger rare rare rare. The question of who these people were had vexed us for years. How come they never got sick? Why would the restaurant take on the liability of serving undercooked ground beef? Or, if they did become ill, why would they come back again the very next week for the same exact meal?

The challenge that Eddie took upon himself was to determine just how rare he could go with these cheeseburgers. He worked out the math and here follow the details: 1) throw the first hamburger on the grill, check wristwatch. 2) After 20 seconds flip first hamburger and place second hamburger on grill, check wristwatch. 3) After 10 seconds flip second hamburger, place third hamburger on grill, and check wristwatch. 4) After 5 seconds flip third burger. 5) Immediately place one slice of American cheese on each hamburger patty, cover each with lid and water/steam to melt cheese quickly, check wristwatch. 6) Count down an additional 3 seconds, remove each of the three cheeseburgers from the grill and serve on toasted buns with fries and garnish. All three cheeseburgers cooked and served in under 40 seconds! Cooked in this way, no cheeseburger from the Rare People was ever sent back to the kitchen, and furthermore, Eddie and the rest of the daytime cooks inspected clean plates each week from the Rare People before they were given to the dishwasher. There was never a scrap of food left on any of the three plates. Truly amazing! - GC

___________________________________________

Kidpowertool - 3 January 2009, midday.

I remember the first time I met Edmund Callipeaux. It was the spring of 1990 and Ed was mayor of Tent City. Tent City was a sort of campground built of platforms and wooden walkways over a swamp, or rather a bog-like terrain called a Muskeg. There were no trees apart from these small, scraggly shrub-trees that grew very slowly out of the Muskeg. Tent City was (and probably still is) located just about a mile outside the town of Petersburg, Alaska, on Mitkof Island. I had arrived in town without any friends, money, or connections, and Ed welcomed me to Tent City as a brother. It was early April and the wind and rain and cold that blew across the Muskeg surrounding Tent City made life miserable. My tent collapsed in a storm the first night I was there. And so I was invited to move in with Ed and his two traveling companions. I don’t know how we managed with four of us in that small tent. It was pretty rough. One of Ed’s friends continually ate cans of cold cherry pie filling in the tent and left the sticky empty tins strewn here and there. This despite the fact black bears were all over the place. (Tent City was just on the other side of a hill from the Petersburg town dump. And the bears hung out at the dump looking for food.) I have bad memories of the not so good smells in that tent. Soon after my arrival, Ed proclaimed to me that he was growing his hair long and thus entering into his long-haired years. He also said that he wasn’t going to change his cloths or bathe for 21 days. I took him at his word. I had no reason to doubt him.

We lived in that tent for about a month. By then Tent City had become pretty crowded and unruly with seasonal workers from Petersburg’s fish canneries. About this time, we heard of an old man named Franz who would be willing to let us camp in his backyard, away from the craziness of Tent City. So, the four of us packed up our tent and moved with a few other friends to the south side of Franz’s shed. Franz was about 90 years old and he had been one of the first people to build a house in Petersburg. I heard that they had to carry all the lumber up the hill from the harbor on mules because there was no road to the building site. Since that time though, an entire neighborhood had sprung up around him. So, it was a little strange that about eight wild-looking guys in their early 20’s were camped out in his yard. Franz didn’t seem to mind though. I never actually spoke to him. All I ever saw of him was his daily attempt to get his old tractor started. He’d go into the shed for hours at a time and we’d hear a little clinking and the sound of Franz trying to turn the engine over. He never did get that tractor started.

Life was good at Franz’s backyard. He didn’t charge us any rent so we worked as little as possible and spent our time lying around and having small campfires at night. We stayed there about three weeks until the cops showed up. The Petersburg police pulled up in their car one sunny afternoon and ordered Franz to evict us from his property. They said the neighborhood wasn’t zoned for temporary living structures like tents and we were squatters. We had to leave immediately and return to Tent City. Naturally, we were appalled and outraged, so we marched ourselves down the hill to the police station to contest our eviction.

The town police station had a small entrance lobby with a counter. As we were asking the duty officer if there was anyway around our situation, we heard yelling and slamming doors from within the building. I looked at Ed and we both started to remember the recent story in the local newspaper of the sheriff who had requested the town of 2500 inhabitants to equip his entire police force with AK47 machine guns for riot control. The town council denied the request because there weren’t enough people around to ever have a riot with. The noise grew louder as the imposing figure of the sheriff burst through the doorway and into the little lobby. I don’t think any of us spoke. I only remember yelling, and spitting, and waving arms, and more yelling as the sheriff’s face contorted and turned purple with rage. Finally he screamed: “IF YOU’RE NOT LIVING IN TENT CITY, YOU’RE LIVING SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!” and with that he kicked us out of the police station.

As we walked away from the police station we mulled the situation over in our minds. We each repeated the final words of the sheriff over and over in our heads until finally someone spoke. “You know, he is right – if you’re not living in Tent City, then you ARE living somewhere else.” Truer words, and a more accurate sentiment describing our existence and its absolute relativity to a physical location had never entered our young minds. If you’re not living in Tent City, you’re living somewhere else. With that said, we returned happily and at peace to Tent City. And from that day on, whenever I think of Ed, I think of Tent City and where I live now, and the time and distance that separates the two spots.

Not soon after pitching our tent back at Tent City, life went back to normal and we had no further run-ins with the sheriff. We did however have a great party to celebrate a friend’s 25th birthday. There were three massively huge, live king crabs, a 20 pound white king salmon, a bottle of Ouzo, and Ed almost died of hypothermia. But that’s another story for another time. - KPT

Franz's backyard


Reverse of photograph


___________________________________________