Conversations on El Camino

Somewhere in the river valley of western Minnesota -- Late on a Tuesday night in November, Wayne the well-coiffed plumber swept in and saved the day. I gazed starry-eyed at the water swirling down the drain, reminiscent of Wayne's voluminous waves twirling above his gap-toothed grin. No more sewage in my kitchen cabinets! My apartment…

I've mopped the floor with my pajama bottoms, retrieved a hair sample from a phantom refrigerator, discovered where the bread was kept by tenants-gone-by, and studied what my upstairs neighbor eats for supper. 72 hours in this little Minnesota river town has been nothing short of an adventure! On Tuesday I was greeted by the…

Thursday, October 19It's raining. Well, it's precipitating. It's that indecisive kind of wetness that's too fine to aggregate into a raindrop. It hangs in the air thickly, loitering until one rogue cloud lets loose a deluge of seed drops that gather the wetness into falling rain. The kind of wetness that seeps in sideways, penetrating…