The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Above: I found a roadkill fashion site. Lovely.

My post on the abuse of automotive icons at church camps has turned up the most amazing things.

I was informed (by a source who will remain annoymous) that church camps have the strangest of hazing rites (and here you think writing about cars leads to nothing more than a surge of testosterone).

About a year ago, on an April afternoon, Al Wolter drove to his neighbor’s house in Sandstone to help with a controlled burn. The neighbor, Cynthia Gamble, a wild-animal trainer, was his best female friend and the two regularly shared cocktails and sang karaoke together on his home machine. “She had an earthy sense of humor,” he said, an affectionate way of indicating that Cyndi could tell a good dirty joke. Gamble seemed to be most comfortable with male friends and often phoned Wolter to let off steam about personal problems. Lately, the problems had been mounting.

It was a midmorning in August when the rooster went native in South Minneapolis. The city department of Animal Care and Control hastened an officer to the scene. The rooster, while inflicting no physical damage, had brazenly disregarded the matrix of propriety that binds people together and, more important, keeps them apart. An anonymous caller had described ruffled feathers and grave concerns: “Well, he has been eating at some of the neighborhood gardens,” she said. “But that is not really why I’m calling. I’m just concerned that he’ll get hit, or a dog will catch him.”