Edmund Callipeaux – artist, college professor, lives in St. Louis Park.
Jan Hammerstein – cowboy, bank robber, lives in 1892 - St. Paul, MN.
Guy Cheblo – chef, corn expert, adventurer, lives in New York, NY.
Leadership 5 – woodworker, camping enthusiast, day trader, lives in Missoula, MT.
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Edmund Callipeaux – 1 May 2009, 11:00am
Back when I was in high school, I had this great 1977 Canary-Yellow Chevy Malibu. It was a huge boat of a car and my friends and I had great times in it cruising around town and raising heck.
Not long after I bought the car, and the thrill of owning my first automobile was still fresh in my mind, the St. Olaf College Choir gave a performance at my high school.
The Highland Park Senior High auditorium was packed with noisy students as the choir members began to file out onto stage in silence. A hush overcame the space as we watched roughly eighty St. Olaf students file out from stage right and assemble into bank of performers, three rows deep. They were graceful, calm, and collected; they were college students; and they were dressed neatly in semi-formal attire.
However, one dude stuck out in this cadre of merry singers.
About midway through the choir’s procession onto stage, a guy emerged – a fantastical dude wearing tattered blue jeans, long hair, and a canary-yellow Cheerios t-shirt. He was like a yellow flag in the middle of an army of brown and grey. I remember that he walked with a slouch and his long brown hair swayed down about his chest like a yoke as he shuffled along in an unassuming manner.
My friends and I were immediately intrigued by this rogue hippy in a sea of bowl cuts and Khaki pants. As the performers shifted into formation, he briefly turned his back to the audience to reveal the word REX printed on the back of his shirt in dark bold letters.
He was amazing.
So, I named my massive 1977 Malibu: The USS REX. – In his honor. – EC
The USS REX
Editor’s note: As of publishing, there are no known photographs of The USS REX. Until such time that a worldwide search reveals an existing photo of the beloved car, a stock image of this ceramic cat will accompany the story. – KPT
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Jan Hammerstein – 1 May 1892 – 3:15 p.m.
As a child, Edmund Callipeaux was unusually imaginative for his age. When he was four years old, he thought that Peter Pan would be a great name for his yet-to-be born youngest sister. By the age of five, he had discovered how to make a cool waterfall by peeing against the uplifted toilet seat while watching the falls run down around the porcelain - and mostly into the bowl.
In 1977, when Edmund was eight years old, we met via the US Postal Service. Somehow, a letter addressed to me found its way from the distant future and to the year 1857 – and right to my very doorstep! Back in those days, I was eight years old myself, and Minnesota was just one year away from becoming the 32nd State in the Union.
It remains a mystery as to how the mailman has managed the necessary time travel needed to deliver our correspondence or the years. I guess you can trust the postal service to do what needs to be done once you stick that stamp to an envelope. I’ve learned not to question certain things in life; if it works, it works – just as a whole mess of things work on their own, regardless of my understanding as to the exact hows and the whys of the matter.
It’s been wildly amusing to be pen-pals with Edmund. In a way, we’ve grown up together. Through his descriptions, I've learned a great deal about life in the 20th and 21st centuries. And I've tried my best to describe my times to him. However, there are some things that pose a bit of a puzzlement to me from reading Edmund’s letters - and I find these to be surprisingly odd.
Let me extrapolate a bit: one thing that has repeatedly struck me in Edmund’s letters is just how uncreative future peoples seem to be in particular areas. It's as if there's some sort of strange disconnect between invention and inventiveness. For instance, back in our first correspondence of 1857, Edmund said that he had just seen Star Wars. Given how amazing it must be to witness the stars at war with each other, it struck me right off that the name for the war was fairly ordinary.
Although...I guess that most battles are mostly named for the places where they were fought. It’s just that I had imagined that the future wouldn’t be so similar to my time. For example, throughout Edmund’s correspondence, he’s told me a lot about inventions with boring names like automobiles, movies, computers, coffee makers, as well as all sorts of other wonderful devices. Things I can scarcely imagine as I sit on my horse swatting mosquitoes.
Despite Edmund’s descriptions of these incredible things, the lack of imagination in their naming is puzzling to me. Movie – Edmund tells me it’s a bunch of pictures that are strung together to look like things are magically moving, therefore: Movie. He also tells me that in the future, a computer is some sort of device that makes calculations really fast, it computes, therefore: Computer.
Toasters toast, dishwashers wash dishes, washing machines wash clothes, driers dry, airplanes fly through the air (although, I can’t quite figure out what the word plane has to do with these flying machines – unless airplanes are flat like those magic carpets in 1000 and One Nights) – everything is named for what it does. Lawn mowers mow lawns, record players play records, and mosquito repellant repels mosquitoes.
Evidently, an automobile is a big machine that a person operates with his or her feet and hands while it rolls around. It’s mobile and somewhat automatic, therefore: Automobile. From Edmund’s description, it strikes me that these automobiles are more like big fancy clocks with all their gears and wheels. And the operator steps on them somehow to make them move and stop. They should have named it Clockmobile – evidently, they even put clocks into these automobiles – which strengthens my argument even more.
I raised these points to Edmund once, and he says that he himself and people he knows assign unique names to their automobiles and other inventions (like folks who give names to ships). They come up with names like Val Kilmer, The USS REX, The Dragon Wagon, Truck 12, The General, and The Fine Mobile.
So, maybe people in the future give mundane sounding names to things because it’s expected that other people will affix secondary titles, or unique monikers to garner an air of authority to an object.
It’s like when I named my six-shooter B. Harrison in honor of our beloved president of these United States. Now when I rob a bank I say, ‘Hand over that money or I’ll fill you full of holes with B. Harrison!!!’ That generally scares the daylights out of people!
The future seems to be a strangely banal place filled with wonderful machines that do all sorts of crazy things. It seems so different from my life of robbing banks, riding horses, and sleeping out under the stars...
...Star Wars?
Couldn’t the folks of Edmund’s time have come up with a more creative name for what must certainly be an incredibly spectacular event? Battling stars?! That must be something else to see!
From where I lay, on a raft, running from the law, floating down the Mississippi, those little devils up there in the night sky are just a twinkling away (OH! There goes another one of them shooting ones!). Who’d guess that one day they’d go to war with each other. It’ll be a sight to see. – JH
Cars and their names:
Truck 12
Editor's note: Keanu (pictured center) is Edmund and LeTigre Callipeaux's traveling companion. Here we see Edmund and Keanu preparing for a cross-country road trip. - KPTThe Dragon Wagon
Editor’s note: As of publishing, there are no known photographs of Dragon Wagon. Until such time that another worldwide search reveals an existing photo of the beloved car, a stock image of this ceramic kitty will accompany the story. – KPT
The General
The Fine Mobile
Val Kilmer - as owned by Kildozer and M.C. RibEye
Editor’s note: As of publishing, there are no known photographs of Val Kilmer. Until such time that a third worldwide search reveals an existing photo of the beloved car, a stock image of this ceramic chipmunk w/hair will accompany the story. – KPT
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Edit:
3 May 2009 - This rare photograph of Val Kilmer (with M.C. RibEye and Kildozer) was just uncovered by our team of specialists working at Wilson Library on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. 10:54a.m. GMT. - KPT
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Guy Cheblo – 2 May 2009, 6:00a.m.
When I first meet Edmund Callipeaux, we were coworkers at the Monticello Bar in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was during the fall of 1989. I noticed that Edmund was riding his bike to work each morning. And as winter approached, I asked him if he had any other means of travel to the Warehouse District, in downtown Minneapolis.
Apart from riding the bus, Edmund informed me that he intended to peddle his bike to work as often as he could throughout the winter. He told me that he had just sold his car because he could no longer afford to pay for its insurance.
(The story behind this car always makes me laugh.)
The car in question was a mid-eighties era brown Volkswagen Rabbit that Edmund’s sister, Nico, had owned for several years. She had lent the car to Edmund one weekday evening and someone had run a four-way stop sign and hit the front end of the car. (No one was hurt.) The impact pushed in the bumper, hood, and front driver’s side quarter panel.
Edmund explained to me that the insurance company had determined that the damage exceeded the overall value of the car. Therefore, the VW was deemed totaled and they promptly wrote his sister a check for $3000.00 (which was the car’s Blue Book value).
They paid Nico the three grand and said that they would send someone over to pick up the wrecked car. Nico agreed and was happy because $3000.00 was more than the car was worth, with or without any damage.
Case closed.
Not quite.
Before the insurance company could send someone over to collect the VW, Edmund dialed up Nico’s insurance agent on the phone.
“What are you going to do with the car?” Edmund asked.
He was told that they were going to tear the car apart and sell it for parts.
“How much do you think that you’ll get for the parts?” Edmund innocently inquired.
He was told the parts would fetch a cool $400.00.
Edmund then offered the agent four hundred and one dollars to keep the car for himself.
And the insurance agent agreed to his terms!
Now that’s St. Paul style negotiations!
Edmund wrote a check for four bills + 1, Nico got 3 large, and Edmund drove away with a car that was a little banged up, but otherwise ran perfectly. Win, win. Everyone was happy.
So, Edmund drove this little VW Rabbit around for about eight months. He buzzed all over the Twin Cities with that car. He loved that damn VW Rabbit so much that it made him silly!
Then, one day, his crazy luck changed when he received a letter from the insurance company. Said letter claimed that Edmund was somehow paying his sister’s car insurance rates. (Everyone knows that boys under the age of twenty-five pay triple what girls of the same age do.)
They said that they couldn’t legally charge him retroactively for his past insufficient insurance payments, but if he wanted to continue to insure the car, he’d have to agree to a new, higher rate, in addition to paying them the outstanding balance retroactively for the prior months he was riding on his sister’s rates!
Outrageous!
“It’s like bartering with the devil…no matter what kind of deal you strike, they’ll figure out a way to get you in the end,” Edmund mussed as he recounted this tale to me one night.
“So why fight?” He added.
Edmund told the insurance company to go to hell and he bought himself a bicycle.
He sold the car to one of his Mother’s coworker’s sons, a lad who was an undergraduate at St. Cloud State.
Selling price: $400.00.
Edmund’s not a greedy guy. And he’s no dummy either. He knows when a claim is played out.
So, in the end, it was an even wash. Edmund had a cheap car for a while, he outwitted an insurance company (which is always nice to hear about) and then he took the money from the sale of the car and bought himself a $400.00 mountain bike.
And the guy who bought the VW Rabbit from Edmund got a good deal too. He drove the thing back and forth between St. Cloud and Minneapolis all throughout the school year and into the next fall semester.
However, one November afternoon, after making the trip from St. Cloud to his parents home in Minneapolis, the youngster parked the car over some dried leaves, the car caught fire, became engulfed in flames, and burned to the ground. – GC
The VW Rabbit
Editor’s note: As of publishing, there are no known photographs of the VW Rabbit. Until such a time that a fourth worldwide search reveals an existing photo of the beloved car, a stock image of this ceramic poodle will accompany the story. – KPT
Edmund's bike!
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Leadership 5 – 30 April 2009, 12:45pm
With all this talk of cars…if you’re in need of car repair in the Twin Cities, check out Flanery Brothers in South Minneapolis. Highly recommended. Highly recommended not only because they’re honest, fair, etc. etc.…but also because they are located directly across the street from this amazing bakery called: A Baker’s Wife Pastry Shop!
I enjoyed a Crème Brûlée Danish the last time I had a tune-up on my truck! – L5
The Crème Brûlée Danish
Editor's note: The aforementioned Crème Brûlée Danish was eaten before it could be photographed for this blog entry. En lieu of said Crème Brûlée Danish, an image of Keanu has been provided: he's not as tasty as the Danish, but he is a delicious feast for the eyes! - KPT
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