It was Friday, July 15, 1988.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was hot.\u00a0 Blazingly hot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’d been out biking since early morning.\u00a0 Not the kind of fast, purposeful riding I do today getting to work or going places, mind you – more a sort of aimless rambling about the metro.\u00a0 I went up to Northeast Minneapolis, by Broadway and Stinson, meandering about the tangle of roads that, today, are a thriving shopping center, but back then were just…well, it’s hard to remember.\u00a0 There wasn’t much there, there, back then.<\/p>\n
I ambled down Broadway down into the presidents (north-south streets in Northeast Minneapolis are named, in order from west to east, from Washington through Coolidge (including the little-known eighth president, Central, responsible for the Central Doctrine if I recall correctly).\u00a0<\/p>\n
My level of motivation was dropping by the day.\u00a0 Oh, I was trying to keep my brain moving; I’d bought a cookbook, “Cooking for One Or Two” – either a supremely optimistic title or a very depressing one – the other day.\u00a0 I’d spent a few hours getting a big pile of beef and veggies cooked and stored in the freezer of the old wreck of a fridge in the house on Fry and Minnehaha.\u00a0 That way, I could just grab as much of these staples as I needed to get a quick, modestly healthy mean for one (or two!\u00a0 I mean, it could <\/em>happen!) ready in a hurry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Baby steps, I figured.\u00a0 Hang on to some semblance of normalcy, and normalcy will return.<\/p>\n And on I pedaled.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is nothing more miserable than a concrete vista on a hot, miserable, humid day, I thought.\u00a0 The only way it could be worse was if I was walking, I thought, as the scorching mid-day turned into a steamy, humid morass of a late afternoon. I started pedaling home.\u00a0 Gotta take a shower and get ready for another night at City Limits.<\/p>\n At least I had all the fixings I needed for stuffed peppers.\u00a0 That’d be a nice treat.\u00a0<\/p>\n I got home.\u00a0 Wyatt was “entertaining” upstairs – probably one of the bartenders from the bar he was working at.\u00a0<\/p>\n We had a new roommate, by the way, since early in the month; Shane, a singer in a speed metal band.\u00a0 He was nineteen, about 5’6, wore his hair in a white trash afro (long, frizzy and all over the place) and looked every inch the metal dude.\u00a0 He was a nice guy, though, and paid his bills on time.\u00a0 This became important, later.\u00a0 Anyway – he was off practicing with his band.<\/p>\n It was about 4:30.\u00a0 I went to the fridge.\u00a0<\/p>\n I grabbed the handle. It felt kind of funny, but it didn’t register before I pulled the freezer door open.<\/p>\n Warm.<\/p>\n A blast of warm, dank, rank air met me as I looked into the freezer; a freshet of filthy, stinking water sluiced out onto the floor at my feet.<\/p>\n It was at least 120 degrees in the “Freezer”.\u00a0 All the meat I’d cooked and frozen was warm, suppurating, and worse than inedible.\u00a0<\/p>\n I spent half an hour throwing out ruined food, and then went to the sink to wash my hands, grumbling about the $40 worth of food I’d lost – a\u00a0 lot of money for me, back then…<\/p>\n …when I felt a drip from the cabinet above the sink.\u00a0 I looked at the cabinet; a little stream of water was oozing out from under the cabinet door, collecting, and dripping into the sink.\u00a0 The water looked brown, and smelled…also brown.<\/p>\n I opened the cabinet.\u00a0 Filthy water was leaking into it from…<\/p>\n ..above.\u00a0 The bathroom.<\/p>\n So I’d lost a cabinet AND a freezer full of food.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was adding up to be a great day.<\/p>\n