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Have You Met the Neighbors?

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Since we’re all friends here, I’ll share an official letter I’m sending out today!

Dear Director Mueller,

First of all, congratulations to the FBI for catching that ring of Russian spies masquerading as ordinary Americans in ordinary American places like Yonkers and Montclair. It was a real shot in the arm for all of us here in suburbia to learn that the FBI is watching the neighbors to determine, once and for all, what they’re up to.

I’m impressed that you figured out these spies were sending messages with shortwave burst transmissions and invisible ink and by switching identical orange bags on the train. That’s amazing. The thing with information encoded into ordinary photographs on the internet – who knew? You did! You guys rock. We probably have some of that same high tech chatter going on out here in my neck of the woods, but I think the bulk of the secret communication is being done in more mundane ways.

At the first and second houses to the west of me, for example. These guys are out mowing their lawns a LOT, and often at the very same time, which is highly unusual. I’ve noticed that my immediate neighbor, B.M., will wave with his right hand to M.F., who lives at the second house down. And M.F. responds with a nod. But last week B.M. waved with his LEFT hand and M.F. nodded TWICE and winked. Was it some kind of a joke or top-secret choreography? And the tone of the mowers was different somehow. One sounded like a small airplane and the other was more like a vuvuzela. Can you send coded information that way? All I know is, the very next day Medvedev showed up in D.C. Coincidence? Doubtful.

The women are involved too, of course. C.F. spends a lot of time gardening in planting beds in front of her house. I’ve noticed she sometimes leaves the rake leaning up against the tree, and at other times it lies flat on the ground. Clearly it’s a signal. After she messes around in the dirt for a while, she’ll wipe her brow and head inside like she’s thirsty or tired but that’s just a cover for what happens next. The moment she’s in the door a “rabbit” comes out from under a nearby shrub and “visits” the work area. Microchips, anyone? I believe they are delivered inside “pellets”.

And C.M. next door is always driving the minivan somewhere. Children of various shapes and sizes appear seated at different windows during all these “trips”, many of which last only a few minutes. If they were pixels instead of 8 year olds and you could back up far enough to see the different journeys all at once, these tousled heads in their alternating configurations would no doubt spell out a message, probably in Cyrillic characters. I have pictures, but I haven’t been able to arrange them properly as of yet.

Perhaps you have a lady spy in a tight fitting trench coat who could assist me? We could do our work on the front porch. I wouldn’t want the neighbors to get the wrong idea.

Sincerely,

Special Agent D.C.
Minnesota Subdivision

Which of YOUR neighbors is a secret agent?

99 thoughts on “Have You Met the Neighbors?”

  1. now that you mention it….. i do remember seeing very questionable behavior both at my house and here on the blog.
    does “rise and shine” mean it is a morning for a meeting at the corner to pass messages by putting your hand over your visor and squinting off into the sun?
    and i think if you reference the past. that means something too in the spy business doesn’t it? like the next sentence should be filtered through the secret decoder ring in the desk drawer.
    watch out babooners. its a dog eat dog world out there.

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    1. speaking of dogs–in my neighborhood it is the dogs running loose and sneaking into garbage and garage and having clandestine meetings in the brush
      or the birds, flying all over

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  2. my neighbors mow messages into the hay they are cutting – Mike, of the large hands (OTLH), likes to mow really, really fast and into the dark (that immediately is suspicious – isn’t it “make hay while the sun shines???”) and i hear cow-like sounds during the night, but i’m sure no self-respecting cow would be up that late. and it’s in Morse code “mooo mo mo mooooo mooo” so who knows what that’s saying….

    Catherine! i emailed you in response to your blog comment – did you get it??

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  3. Fab. I’m laughing out l0ud here – the dogs are confused.

    I think my neighborhood must also be a localized cabal. I’ve noticed that my neighbors just to the north always sit out on their deck for dinner in the nice weather – but only the nice weather. And he always sits in the same chair at the table. My neighbor to the south leaves the house every day at exactly the same time every day – except Saturdays and Sundays. And the neighbor across the street always looks up and down the street before picking up the paper off her front porch every morning. I wonder what they are all up to.

    Great fun this morning Dale!

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  4. I have been noticing the small b a the beginning of your name; looks Russian.
    Aand timtypes in pre code ofsone kind no dobudt im sre arent youall

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  6. barb, did indeed get your email and have just replied back.

    Now, as to the nearer neighbors-the east side SAYS he is a marathon runner, trains every day and was gone the weekend of Grandma’s in Duluth, but we all know–these people will go to any lengths.

    On the west side is our adopted Grandma, who SEEMS to be a great gardener, but what is she really having the s&h digging for???? last summer, she had him putting together what appeared to be a decorative little red wagon that sits next to the decorative little radio transmitter (I mean windmill).

    Then there is the Hmong granny across the alley, who takes one of the children out for walks a couple of times a day in a wheelchair-she’s gotten a thriving garden going in a matter of weeks——-

    And that is just my side of the street!!!!!!

    Have I mentioned we are strategically located midway between the airport and downtown St Paul, along 35E?????

    Dale, could you please post “What’s he building in there”? or whatever the real title of that song is?

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    1. Hi Catherine,

      Mike Pengra and JASPER just played this on Radio Heartland. What are they up to? And here’s a video from You Tube.

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      3. I have an ex-brother like that, severe paranoid, untreated, who thinks all his neighbors hate him, spy on him, kill his plants. Scarier to listen to him than this. But thanks Mike and Dale. Fun

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      4. Thanks Dale. I’d thank you too Mike, but I know you had nothing whatsoever to do with that totally random coincidence.

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      5. This is creepier now than it used to be. Maybe its the video – never saw it before. It always used to crack me up and still does.

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      6. i heard this as i was heading out the door and wondered if mike was responding the babooners. its kind of like getting a wish granted. now mike can go back in the bottle

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  7. I’ve already blogged about my neighbors. If fanatical lawn-tending is a tipoff that the person is a spy in deep cover, I’m up to my eyebrows in Russian spies here. I’m told that the high number of Catholic families on my block is due to the close presence of the most respected Catholic school in the Twin Cities. There are several women on the block here who reliably produce a new little Catholic every ten months or so, so you know what their lives are like. I got in trouble with one of them when she complained to me that her daughter had been eating my landscaping and had consumed a mildly toxic plant. As the one whose landscaping was being grazed, I thought I was the aggrieved neighbor, but that sure wasn’t her view. Other than that, we all get along fine.

    Or we have, at least, since the Hollyhock Lady died. She was a woman who believed there weren’t enough hollyhocks in this world. The Hollyhock Lady would sneak up and down the alleys at dusk, making lightning fast forays into people’s lawns to plant more hollyhocks. She’s gone now. I was gonna say she’s pushing up daisies somewhere, but we can hope it is hollyhocks.

    Good morning Babooners! I think today is a day for photography.

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      1. Tim — I’m going to photograph the Cafesjian Carousel in Como Park. I have a love affair with that old thing. I photographed it several years ago to document it for the National Carousel Association. Then I had a computer disaster that wiped out half of my images, including all my carousel photos. Time to shoot a new bunch.

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  8. Alas, here in Maine, I fear *I* am probably the Russian spy everyone in the neighborhood talks about. They KNOW I’m a PFA (Person From Away–and no, I didn’t make that up). Their evidence:
    *I leave the garage door up at night
    *I spread out acres of black weed block on the “lawn,” leave it for years, and then, in a burst of labor, rip it all up.
    *I sit on the front stoop with a computer, chuckling maniacally.
    *I go around the neighborhood distributing “homemade bread.”
    Evidence against me is probably being assembled, even as I speak.
    Gotta go…there’s someone at the door wearing a trenchcoat.

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    1. Reading this, I realize it sounds mean. Honestly, I have the most wonderful collection of neighbors a PFA could ever dream of. We’ve been welcomed into this ‘hood with open arms. I think we get “street cred” because we’re from Minnesota, as opposed to, say, Massachusetts or Connecticut.

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      1. Lisa… love that there is an acronym for out of towners. Six years ago my daughter and I vacationed in Maine… went for the Blueberry Festival in Machias. I had met a woman online a few months before and we had emailed a bit. So at the end of the festival, we went over to her house for a couple of hours. Blueberry bread, coffee and conversation. During that 2 hours, TWO different people called her up to see whose car that was in her driveway. I swear I am not making this up. Small town life at it’s best!

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      2. I worked one summer in Brunswick, ME at the music theatre. My immediate supervisor was a Mainiac through and through and I have never felt more like an immigrant. People weren’t inhospitable, just discriminating as to whether or not you were “one of us”

        I did get street cred for going right into the ocean without flinching in June (which has a lot to do with my Minnesota roots).

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  9. I sealed my fate with this neighborhood within weeks of moving here. A neighbor had put up a sodium vapor security light to cast an urpy pink light over our alley as a way of preventing crime. To my mind, it was a crime to have something that ugly on all night. We had a neighborhood meeting right after I moved here. Someone said it was expensive to run that light, so would we all feel like paying money to a good cause? I said I’d pay a fair amount to turn the thing off, and with that single statement I identified myself as someone with suspicious values.

    Homemade bread sounds good right now. Lisa.

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    1. Bwahahahahahaha. You only THINK it sounds good. Wait till you ingest that tracking device with the first slice!

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    2. i moved into a house with my mom and dad in the 70’s and after a couple of months the next door neighbor (an electrician) came over and told us the vapor light he had installed for the old neighbor had been on since the old neighbor moved and maybe we would like to shut it off. we told him we thought it was his since it did a much better job of lighting his back yard than ours (turned out that was exactly the type of neighbor that would light his yard on your nickle)and we had turned off all the light switches at night every night. he showed us a light switch he had installed ankle high behind the tv set in the basement where the neighbor had been aware and we had not. the electrical bill went down by more than half.
      so steve did the neighbors collect money, shut off the light or dismiss you as the new neighborhood subversive?

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    4. A similar “security” light was installed in an alley near me. An inventive neighbor had feelings about it that were similar to Steve’s, but this neighbor was less outspoken and way more devious. He devised a system of lights and reflectors to shine from the attic of his garage onto the light sensor which caused the security light to fail. The proponents of the security light and the city employees couldn’t figure it out for a long time, until one night someone finally saw the tiny beam of light reflecting from my neighbor’s attic.

      He did other things too, but I won’t mention them here. All of you could be spies.

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  10. I’ve always suspected the reclusive elderly woman on the corner, or else the cheery and large family just behind us who attend the Evangelical Free Church. They have a perfect cover and think that no one would suspect them.

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  11. Dale looks just too all American, sort of plastic, sort of, well, you know . . .

    I live in an association, which is a polite term for snooping. Everything belongs to us, meaning them, right up to the sheetrock on our walls. So we can look up and there are neighbors leaning against a window shading their eyes so they can look in. One morning at 8:30 my wife awoke looking out an open window with the shade up at three men having a conversation right by our window. We have rules for how many plants you can have but but not for privacy. Then of course there are bi-monthly morning coffees we do not attend, so you can guess we are a favorite topic of conversation. We have a common email group for association news, which now includes everyone’s gallstones, whether they want to be on it or not.

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  12. Good Morning Spy Watchers.

    Well, maybe McCarthy was right and should have been allowed to continue his investigations into anti-American activities that he conducted in the 50’s. Is the FBI doing us a favor by showing us how anti-American spys can be found almost any where? I will try to be more aware!

    I don’t know what to say about this problem of spying. Are some of the people in my small town covering their spying activities by putting up all of those American flags to seem super patriotic when they are really a nest of anti-American spys? Maybe they are really very patriotic and are keeping their eye on me as a potential agent working againest the government. I know one thing, which will probably put me on the FBI watch list, some times it is the FBI that should be watched to be sure they aren’t the ones who are interfering with our freedom. Oh, oh! Who is that ringing my door bell?

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  13. Greetings! Like Steve and Lisa, we’re probably the suspect ones in our neighborhood.

    *We’re all inside playing with computers.
    *Our lawn is mowed at irregular intervals in a haphazard fashion by teen boys in a hurry.
    *When we leave the house at night, we wear martial arts uniforms and carry large bags with obvious hand weapons.
    *We don’t engage in small talk with neighbors.
    *We’re Democrats in a Republican area (6th District/Michelle Bachman’s domain)
    *A turtle named Sarge appears and disappears for no apparent reason.
    *Our comings and going do not follow a regular schedule.

    Geez — I better check for wiretaps and other forms of surveillance in my house!

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  14. The NPR coverage of this story is almost as much fun as our blog. …Turns out that the spies can’t even be charged with spying because they didn’t learn anything. They are being charged with failing to register as agents of a foreign government. Sounds like a charge that could apply to Topo Gigio or the staff of a Chinese restaurant.

    Carry on, comrades!

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    1. you only knew her a short while before you were married. maybe shes been hiding her exchanges of information with mr big from you. when the feds check they will obviously focus on youletting her off the hook and free to carry on. try the tape on the back of the door trick. it always works on film noir.

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  16. I confess to living in a weird neighborhood for this century, as we do all pretty much know each other, at least to say hello. Had a lady from down the block ask me one night, as she was walking the dog and I was on the porch, if I minded if she nabbed some of the raspberries on the alley fence as she went by.

    I figure if you plant raspberries along your alley fence, it’s an open invitation.

    I did have the thrill of living in Alexandria, VA when the spy couple who did their business after PTA meetings was caught. Greater DC is such a rarified atmosphere.

    Steve, what a great day you have ahead of you! I hope you get some pictures of the organ as well as the pretty ponies. I will be stuck inside all day with smell of freshly baked bread, as usual (could be worse!).

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    1. Catherine — I’m seriously in love with that old carousel. I think there is not a physical object in the Twin Cities that can match it for integrity and craftsmanship. To appreciate that, you have to know something about the cheating and pretense that usually go into most carousels. That’s a small, obscure area of ethics . . . carousel honesty.

      Where do you bake?

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      1. Yes, Catherine, where?
        Steve, the mall here has an old carousel in the food court. Decent one I think. nicely.

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      4. I have fond memories of taking my son on his first carousel ride at Como as soon as they would let him on. He likes looking up at the works. Also took my then 80-year-old aunt, who had very fond memories of it from the Fair.

        I leave the baking to the professionals at the commercial bakery where I am the order girl (and believe me, in this industry, I am “the girl”). I enjoy baking at home, but this time of year, I avoid turning on the oven. We’ve done pizza and cinnamon rolls on the grill, but that takes time and planning. Building an outdoor bread oven is on my list–it’s a long list.

        (I can hear it now-what’s she baking in there?????)

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      5. Here is what the mall says about it: “Take a break from shopping and ride our fabulous and unique carousel. Featuring several types of horses, a cat, a zebra, and even a rabbit! $1.00 per ride.”

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      1. Sin in an outdoor oven–torrid!

        I have an imaginary outdoor oven. It is my heart’s desire to have a real one.

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      3. Lisa–you sinned a dozen times? Shame. My ataxia usually makes messes not funnies. Where are you in Maine? I did some of my graduate work in lit on the local colorists such as Sara Orne Jewett. Such a put-down term for them, especially her. She is not one of the greats but a fine writer. I read books by a man who writes about his woods in Maine.
        Catherine–It’s Nora Batty, played by Kathy Staff, who thus spent 30 years in rumbled stockings.

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      4. Are you quite sure those stockings were not rumpled by all that rumbling going on in them? (But thanks for the correction, even if it seems more accurate my way).

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      6. That is over the top cool. First the Hobbit man lived on an Eastern Island and now Nora Batty Woman lived in Yorkshire. Too much for my day.

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      7. there was a documentary on pbs of a guy who is the johnny appleseed of bread ovens. he needs a fistful of bricks 100 ish and a spot to do it. t makes killer bread i have seen it in the last 6 months . i will see if i can post a link

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      9. I wasn’t saying that she is nut case because she bakes this way; I meant she is a nut case who bakes this way. No cause and effect relationship known.

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      10. Thanks so much Clyde, for straightening out the causality or lack thereof between outdoor bread ovens and madness.

        Renee, constant vigilance–those people bear watching!

        Steve, do you put the radio transmitters in the potatoes, or are there nanobots in the mayo?

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  17. On the NS we lived in the perfect nieghborhood for ten years, until she to the north ran off with he to the south. We had a mix of all ages who got along very well. Lots of people in their 70’s and 80’s. Used to have neighborhood potlucks down on the beach in a little cove. Everyone’s cat and dog ran sort of loose and were friends to everyone. Little old lady down the way would feed our kids cookies and lemonade, Ingeborg Stesgaard Larson, retired teacher of 46 years. All of whose first graders, such as my sister, ended up with a vague Swedish accent for awhile. A wide mix of skills to be shared–electrical, mechanical, wood-working, lumber jacking, baking, gardening, etc. It was great for our kids to be around all those older people, and the neighborhood kids were great for them.

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    1. Clyde — that sounds idyllic. You paint a lovely, loving picture of that time.

      I used to rent a home on the North Shore in a resort at Little Marais. On the 4th of July the resort owner would cut down a big tamarack tree for this big bonfire along the beach. Everyone would sit on blankets on the beach. When it burned, the tamarack would explode and throw off sparky branches. “Nature’s fireworks.”

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      1. I know which resort from your pix!! Road from Little Marais to Finland is one of my favorite drives. The NS Hiking Trail is wonderful in that area.
        Ingeborg Stensgaard Larson was under 5 feet tall, had almost smooth skin at 90, talked at a very rapid pace in her Swedish lilt, remembered everything, was interested in everything and everybody in the best way, even loved being in a nursing home the last three years of her life; a joy to visit. Belongs in the teacher hall of fame.

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      3. I have done 2-300 hundred miles, but much of it over and over again, never all of it. I am now doing a pastel of an overlook of the lake from near Beaver Bay.

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    2. Clyde – I think this wonderful woman was my great aunt. She is probably finding it humorous that you think she has a Swedish accent when she was 100 percent Norwegian! I would love to hear more stories about her from a non family member

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  18. Hmmm, out here in the boonies ‘neighbor’ can be anyone within a 10 mile radius of our house… there’s only two families that live on this dead end road and we’re a mile away from each other. But that couple couldn’t be better neighbors; she’s an artist, he’s a doctor; they travel often (and when we pick up their mail I always find the most unusual magazines!), they work odd hours…… hmmm… well; now you’ve got me thinking. Going to have to give them the evil eye next time; see if they flinch.
    And some of the other neighbors; can’t even see them; they’re across the valley and through the trees; probably only 1/2 mile away and on another road but we hear them sometimes (and I’m afraid they used to hear me yelling at the cows… [wince] …)
    How about the homes off to the East a mile. I’m sure we look at each other with binoculars… is that wrong? Who’s spying on whom then?

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  19. We have a retired neighbor who’s been “refinishing furniture” in his garage for years now. His garage door conveniently opens onto the alley where he can see all that goes on in the neighborhood. Every few hours he goes into his house, undoubtedly to send messages to the Russians (or wouldn’t it be the Taliban these days?) about all the crucial national security information he’s gathered from the heart of St. Paul, Minnesota.

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    1. Reminds me of the stories I’ve heard about my great-grandmother, who sat at her front parlor window crocheting away and keeping her eyes on the doings of Belle Plaine. She knew (and had an opinion on, no doubt) everything.

      My grandparents found it especially rich that she had no clue her boarder (my mother) and her grandson (my dad) were dating.

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  20. Rise and Shine Babooners!

    This “losing your internet at home” thing is really inconvenient. I’m at work now so I can check in with the Booners. It had never occurred to me, though, until I read Dale’s post today, that the neighborhood spy probably tampered with my internet service. I am entirely too trusting…Hmmm.

    Our very paranoid neighbor to the back of us must be the spy. Over the years she has become increasingly, well, odd. First she planted a mass of trees and bushes around the house to obscure visibility and put up shades that resemble WWII Black Out strategies. After a few years the place looks like Snow White’s castle with the forest and brambles. Then she put up a fence and obtained two ginormous, crabby dogs. Just last week she expanded the fenced area to include more of her yard, but it’s starting to look like some kind of Stalag with a maze. I suppose the barbed wire will go up next.

    Two years ago our neighbor from Morocco was deported. We suddenly had INS agents in the neighborhood, then the poor man’s relatives followed seeking for his whereabouts. His partner sat in the back yard smoking and sobbing for months. Never thought about the spy angel there either. Guess I’d better tweak my paranoia and look under some rocks.

    Great laughs today. Enjoy the sunshine–it’s a plot but an enjoyable one!

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    1. Maybe we should intorduce your neighbor to my exbrother.
      Today is a waiting day for me at work, for tech fixes etc, and in life–nothing to do but kill time chattering here. Chatter chatter chatter.

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      1. A very famous anarchist who lived in the US in the early 1900’s. Also known as “Red Emma”. Was known for her advocacy of free love, birth control, for her outspoken support of labor unions and rights for women. She dreamed of a world in which people lived in harmony without the imposition of government imposed rules. She was deported and stripped of her citizenship for her anti-war stance during the First World
        war.

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      1. No-but he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the mid-70’s. That makes him even more suspcious than if he were Russian!

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  22. My mail carrier used to love delivering my mail because I was on a wide range of mailing lists I did not want to be one. I would receive both right wing and left wing mail, NRA mail, gun-control mail, proabortion, anot abortion, religious, antireligious. I bet she reported me.

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  23. Hmmmm, I read the post about refinishing furniture, and suddenly I remember (and Lisa from St. P knows this too): my father spent his non-work hours avoiding pesky children and refinishing furniture in the basement during my entire childhood, and then started a locksmithing side business, also from the basement. I now know he was USING THOSE KEYS to infiltrate the agents’ homes in western Minnesota. Adding to my suspicion is that he is a Mason. We always wondered what went on in those goofy Lodge meetings. It’s all coming together now.

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    1. Clyde — I have already written the NCA to ask if they know about this one. The photo you supply is dark, but it tells me this is a carousel. Thus it should be registered. And if it is old, there will be real cause for celebration at the NCA.

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      1. Best photo I could find online. I will bring my camera there in the next couple of days and get a pix for you. It is fun in the mall. $1 a ride but if the child is small the adult rides free. All kind of cool.

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  26. Techie was just here at the office dealing with an internet connection blinking issue that cannot be tied down. I now have a phone that works online and is part of the company phone system in St. Cloud and Shoreview. But it blinks and loses it conmnection and I lose customer calls. So for 2-3 days I have to limit my online activtities. So won’t be on much during the day.

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  27. OK, anybody still on? (Death in Husband’s family, so I’ll be on sketchily this week.)

    1. Our Spy Neighbors moved 3 years 8 months ago, but before that they kept track of ALL illegal activity on our premises, from my unleashed cat to my son’s bong… It was such a pleasure to know we had our own private police dept. right next door.

    2. I don’t have an outdoor oven yet, but I do set up a summer kitchen right outside back porch so I can cook when it’s really hot (no a/C). Have an extension cord and an old cabinet that holds a hotplate and a toaster oven.

    3. Steve – does the carousel listing include the one in Story City, IA? I’m so glad that’s still there…

    4. Clyde – maybe your ex-brother knows Husband’s ex-sister – they sound equally paranoid. It’s going to make for a very interesting week here.

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  28. Wow! I am out of internet exile. What a bunch of neighbors we have. Does any Booner live in my neighborhood? Do any of you think I am the spy?

    You are all IN ON IT!

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  29. Welcome back Jacque. I think we are not neighbors except when you are working.

    I have a terrible tendency to go OT, so I figure it might be safe to do so in the evening when there are fewer people to offend. With the Fourth of July coming up, I want to share a recipe for tasty, easy, healthy potato salad.

    It is built from PSUs (Potato Salad Units). Each PSU is one medium boiling potato (peeled, boiled and diced), one egg (boiled, peeled and diced), one stalk of celery (diced) and two scallions (diced). Multiply as needed. A modestly sized potato salad would include 6 PSUs; 9 or 10 PSUs will serve a lot of people. Additionally, you will add one or two diced green bell peppers and as much mayonnaise as you like.

    Prepare the salad. The only tricky part is getting the potatoes boiled just right, not too soft and not too hard. Blend the PSU ingredients together and add some diced green bell pepper for flavor and color. Now start adding mayonnaise and gently mixing the salad until you barely have enough mayo to pull the salad together. The less mayo you add, the healthier the salad will be. As a finishing touch, I like to add about two tablespoons of Dijon mustard and, of course, salt and pepper to taste.

    For the Fourth, just add fireworks and enjoy. Kaboom!

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    3. Oops, sorry — keyboard malfunction. Father-in-law makes the BEST potato salad. I think he adds radishes or something as well — not sure what’s in it — just that it’s really good! I’ve never tried making my own, but your proportions sound good.

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    4. My secret potato salad ingredient is a little bit of brine from a jar of sweet pickles. Use just enough to add flavor, but not enough to make it soupy. While you’re at it, chop up a few pickles too.

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  30. How handy of you all to reveal your networks…now I can report back to Mosc…er…um…How lovely that you all know so much about your neighbors. My neighbors seem to think I’m mostly harmless (and a good source for tools if they don’t have the right one) – so clearly my cover…er…clearly I am not a spy. Nor have I ever been.

    Off to go ride the carousel. At night. With red carnation in my lapel.

    (Steve – Daughter and I cannot go to Como without a ride on the carousel. I love it, and have since I was a kid and it was at the State Fair. During its brief stint in downtown St. Paul I would go ride on my lunch breaks…)

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