When I was growing up on Eau Claire’s west side, my house was within walking BMX stunt-biking distance of not one, but two different corner grocery stores. I probably only visited them a handful of times, but when I imagine my childhood ...
Raise you hand if you’ve heard of Cornucopia, Wisconsin. OK, all three of you can put your hands down now. For the rest of you, I can assure you, Cornucopia does exist.
First of all, let me say that, for those of us with active imaginations, walking through a swamp on the way to your deer stand at 4:30ish in the morning is an experience somewhere between spooky and crap-your-pants terrifying.
Halloween gives us that strange and amazing mixture of fear and excitement that can only happen once a year when we’ve eaten enough sugar to kill a zebra.
I like to invent stories about the people who seem to contribute most of the recipes to church cookbooks because they’re an overbearing, frilly blouse-wearing, control freak church ladies. I’m talking about you, Millie Knutson.
When people learn about how good I am with my thumbs, they often say I should enter international videogame tournaments or high stakes twiddle-offs. (You may be thinking the very same thing right now.)
I did not grow up taking walks. I grew up eating an entire bag of microwave popcorn after school. In fact, my childhood pretty much coincided with what historians believe to be the golden age of microwaveable popping corn.
I never did a lot of the “normal” college stuff. I never lived in the dorms. I never played Ultimate Frisbee. I never “studied all night long” so I could “get good grades.”
For some unknown reason, every breed of ant the universe has ever bred stopped by apartment. My kitchen sink was like the friggin’ alien cantina in Star Wars.
A lot of drivers pull halfway into a space and think, “Screw it. Close enough.” They promptly leave their car to enter Best Buy and purchase a Celine Dion box set.
Humming along since 2002, Volume One is a magazine, a website, an event production company, and a retail store based in Eau Claire, WI