A Perfect Duluth Day
by Mike Palecek
If it's happening. It's happening in Duluth.
Duluth is a micro-brewery of what is goin' on every-
where, where the people fight to have some sort of
say ... and leave it to the outlaws to come up with
something ... leave it to the guys in the jails and carry-
ing skateboards, leaning up against the light pole at
two in the morning, to come up with something.
It's the home of Piker McNuggett, Karel Kopecky, Froz-
tee Pine, Winnie Blood Feather, some Twenty-Three
Toivonens, Diamond Griffin and Penny Jones.
... Families from Minneapolis and Saint Paul and St.
Peter and Mankato and Des Moines, thundering up
Interstate 35 hit full throttle on Friday afternoon, ac-
celerating past Hinckley and Sandstone, past Pine City,
Barnum, Cloquet, to get away, to let their hair down, to
get bugs and branches in their hair. You turn your
phone to vibrate or heave it into the ditch, grenade-
style, change your radio from WCCO to "The Moose."
Up and up and around and over the hill and there it
is ... the view. Lake Superior. The Big Lake.
And there is The Lift Bridge and Morgan Park and New
Page paper plant, the bridges to Superior, Wisconsin,
the bay, the big boats.
Turn right to Canal Park for the tourists, turn left, up-
hill for those who have already decided to stay.
Duluth is big burritos and apricot wheat beer and a
parade to celebrate cold weather.
Duluth can be murder.
It's the big lake, big woods, big tradition, big, old build-
ings, like an old sailor headed back to his boat at four
in the morning, stumbling, never falling down.
It's the sauna and the secrets of the north woods. It's
schools and it's adventure and it's being able to be
yourself.
Duluth can be murder.
It's the trains, the taconite, guns, tattoos, bowling,
brawls, bigfoot and ballgames.
It's laser tag.
It's the bomb.
It's the gold.
BIOGRAPHY
Mike Palecek is a writer who lives in Saginaw, Minnesota, west of
Duluth. He is a former federal prisoner for peace; was the Iowa
Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, 5th
District in the 2000 election, gaining 65,000 votes on an anti-war
platform in a conservative district; is a former award winning reporter,
editor, publisher in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota. The small newspaper
Mike & Ruth Palecek owned and operated in Byron, Minnesota won the
MNA Newspaper of the Year Award in 1993. Mike and Ruth have two children
and recently moved from Iowa to Minnesota. The Paleceks both work for
group homes in the Cloquet area.
Mike has written several novels.
He
is also the co-host of The New American Dream Radio Show, along with
Chuck Gregory, which has been broadcasting each Thursday since February
2011.
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