For a while in the early 1970s, I lived in a re-purposed Slavic Baptist Church in the Seven Corners neighborhood of Minneapolis. The Church was across from a flophouse run by ex-state senator, Ralph Mayhood. The senator never truly got elected, however, we always referred to him as the Senator. The year prior to my arrival, good friends Stew and George blew into town and turned the Church into a waterbed and leather goods store. And crash pad/commune/hangout.

Cheap stogies and shoe polish

Next door to the Church was a shabby apartment building where Harold had a room. We didn’t know exactly how old Harold was, but we knew he was old; at least in his 70s. He had liver spots. His hair was blackened with shoe polish. He always wore a dark, threadbare suit. His clothes smelled like cigars. And pepper. We called him Harold to his face but when he was not around he was Hal to us. Hal smoked over a dozen cheap cigars a day.

I have a dim recollection of going to Hal’s apartment one time to tell him that George was waiting to take him to the store. He didn’t offer me entrance, but I noticed tall stacks of old newspapers against a wall. Although it was a fire hazard, Harold thought he needed the papers for reasons never fully explained.

A previous life

Hal, who now weighed about130 pounds, still wore the overcoat of a 300-pounder, which at one time he had been, a lifetime ago when he was a troubleshooter for Big Bill Thompson, Mayor of Chicago. He also ran errands for the Mayor of Cicero, Ralph Capone, Big Al’s brother. Now he was was hanging with young dropouts and dreamers.

Quite the cook

Hal liked to cook, though he had relinquished his taste buds to a lifetime of smoking progressively cheap cigars. In order for him to taste anything at all, he used ridiculous amounts of pepper in his cuisine. And hot sauce.

A couple of times every month, Hal cooked for Church residents and visitors. His go-to dish was stew, which of course pleased Stew. George or Stew would drive Hal to the market to shop for the stew ingredients, always with Sherlock in the back seat. You could sense that Harold thought it was undignified to be in the back seat with a Bassett Hound.

I locate things

But Hal, who had a business card that identified him as a “locator,” was living on dimes and he had the moxie and class to never complain. When asked what it was that a locator did, Hal would wave his arms and puff his cigar and make it very clear that he did not wish to be asked such a stupid question. We thought it had something to do with real estate though never did we actually witness his locating skills.

He had another card in the bulging wallet that he kept in the breast pocket of his comically large suit that showed a cartoon-ish man with a bulge in the front of his pants. The caption read: the man with the plan

Gimme the hot sauce!

We learned to be wary of Hal’s stews and soups and would try to get the chef to hold off on his final spicing until we’d each filled a bowl. But then Sherlock would start barking or there would be a senator spotting, or a customer wanted information about a waterbed and we’d take our eye off the stew pot. That’s when Harold, still dressed in his overcoat, would empty the hot sauce bottle into the impending dinner.

Gasping

His go to recipe was simple: Equal amounts of potatoes, carrots, onions, meat and pepper with a pinch of salt. That meant three pounds of potatoes, three pounds of pepper…you get the picture. First timers’ eyes would bulge from the basically inedible pepper heat. Choking. Gasping. We thought it was funny in a cosmic joke-y way, thinking—here we were in the Church basement eating scorching meals prepared by an old guy with shoe polish in his hair.

Oliva is on second with a double

Sometimes Harold would venture to the bus stop bench on the small concrete island in the middle of the Seven Corners street jumble. On a warm summer day, he left his un-air-conditioned apartment to listen to the Twins game on a transistor radio held to his ear. If you passed by, to make sure he was doing okay, he might tell you that Oliva was on second with a double. He talked loudly because he was hard of hearing and there was often a bus going by.

The pointing finger

To supplement his social security, Hal made signs for the Band Box Café, the greasy spoon on the Corners. Each sign featured a pointing finger, the kind you would now find in clip art. The Box, though it had only two tables and 4 stools, had about 40 Hal signs with the pointing finger. Tacos 3 for $1.00. Hamburger sandwich 35 cents. Coffee 25 cents. He also made signs for the church.

Sad

Sometimes Stew and George would take Hal on errands or for a bit of a joyride and once in a while Harold directed them to pass by a prim Saint Paul neighborhood where, in a little one-story house, lived Hal’s daughter. We never saw his daughter, but he liked to point out the house. “My daughter has a beautiful house,” he would say. He never wanted to stop. Maybe he was embarrassed to be in the back seat with a drooling hound. There was something wistful about this.

stew…Stew.. Pepper Stew.

There is an endearing quality in an old man who wears shoe polish in his hair, which was his nod to vanity and a glimpse of what he must have been like at Ralph Capone’s joint in the 1930s: a slick operator smoking stogies and running sorties for the mob.

With a flophouse of alcoholics across the Corners, and Hal making appearances at will, we lived in a stew of humanity. George, Stew and I have always been intrigued by characters. Hal could have had his own comic strip.

We believed in magic

We labeled our existence: Magic. We were in a land of magic. However, you can’t stay in Magicland forever or you’ll quit believing in magic. George hung onto Church life the longest. I peeled away and came back a couple of times then departed forever. Stew left somewhere in there. We all miss Hal and often when we now connect, we relate Hal stories.