Moose Lake Star Gazette - Serving Carlton and Pine Counties since 1895

In 1957 my father had just finished building our new house. The Big Bend Dam would necessitate the acquisition of our old house down by the banks of the Missouri River where I had spent my childhood....

Jack and Jill went to bed. They sired a cat named Motorhead. Last week I shared the tales of Jack the travelling cat. What I didn’t tell you is that Jack eventually settled down and married a cute...

The 1970s in Vermillion, South Dakota found plenty of abandoned farm houses surrounding the small town. The University of South Dakota student’s dominated the area and renting a farmhouse was quite...

I bellied up to the bar at Whimp’s in beautiful downtown Burbank, South Dakota. “Hey Ken, we named our kid after your dog.” The guy sitting next to Ken slowly slithered toward the corner. “Con...

Saturday marked the end of a 42-year reign of Siamese cats in our household, although we never did own one. Early on, we learned that Siamese do not have owners; they have staff. Similar to the long...

I am a walker and I love my pedometers. Buy me a pedometer for Christmas or my birthday and you cannot go wrong. I will never have too many. A pedometer gives me an incentive to walk as it accumulates...

“Good Lord! This tastes like warm dishwater. It can’t be chicken soup,” I exclaimed. Ironically, I had no one to blame but myself. I was the one who made this homemade batch of sodium-free...

As we pulled in the yard Friday evening, my first reaction was, “Holy Cow! There’s a lot of snow here.” The driveway was plowed and the sidewalks were shoveled, thanks to our friendly neighbors....

Life threatening situations don’t have to be all bad. It sure can be a quick way to find out who your friends are. In 1997, a very ambitious, creative woman from here in the Twin Cities named Sona...

Clearly more warning signs than a summer drive down road construction on I-35 were not enough to make this blockhead aware that he may have a heart problem. The information coming from a patient can...

This is sterility at its best. A germ couldn’t possibly be hanging around here. I’m surrounded by shiny aluminum and chrome and spotless white paint. I’m strapped to a clean, crisp starched bed...

All patients should realize certain medicines like antibiotics are mandatory that you finish the entire prescription. Failure to do so may allow the nasty little creatures that created your medical...

The world continues on past December 21, 2012, and not because the Mayans made a calendared miscalculation. No, the world will keep moving forward in its expansion as long as we have humans who...

Eight years after retirement, I received my first standing ovation at the post office. By the time Tuesday afternoon rolled around at the Cliff Avenue Post Office in Eagan, Minnesota, I had...

When I was a kid, we called any gun that could shoot bullets in rapid succession a machine gun. Today they are called assault weapons. With a name like that, it makes one wonder how they could also be...

Looking for lots of time to just lay back and read? A wicked bout of pneumonia is probably not the first method you would ask for, but it sure worked for me. My wife handed me a couple novels written...

My next career may be as a professional football player in the NFL. I took my first steroids today. I’m also sporting one of those nasal strips that open the nostrils for easy breathing. You know...

Another Thanksgiving was well spent in Arizona with the weather as warm as one wanted. It actually got hot a couple of afternoons. The climate wasn’t the only reason for all the hot air blowing...

I remember the morning of Thanksgiving 2003 watching President Bush on television. He was somewhere in Iraq wearing an Army jacket and standing in front of a plate of turkey. He was living the...

Many people turned their anger toward the government after the elections of George W. Bush, so this year’s post-election anger against Obama is not a new thing. But the anger feels more vicious,...

Where have you been Wild Bill Cooper? Are you still living? It’s rumored that your cohorts from the short-lived Marijuana Air Force planted you with the cactus somewhere down in Mexico. But I...

The train from Seattle arrived in St. Paul eight and a half hours late so we were out $500 in wages. We missed the 7:30 a.m. scheduled arrival time by way too much to actually get in even a partial...

“Wick, did you charge $66 worth of pizza at Dominos?” my wife asked. “Here’s another $19 at Jimmy John’s!” The question was rhetorical for she knew as well as I did that (1) we could...

One definition of fatale is “a fatal mistake in calculations.” That is about as close of a description as any I can think of concerning some unsolicited posts I have received recently on my...

Dear Amtrak, Thank you for the complimentary bottle of champagne. It helped ease the shock my wife and I felt when we saw the size of the roomette that would become our home for the next 40 hours....