Winter Carnival update: The ice at Lake Phalen is too thin to harvest blocks for ice sculpting, and the forecast for this Thursday, two days before the Grande Day Parade, is calling for temperatures near 40 degrees. It hasn't been this warm in advance of a carnival since the late 1800s, when an ice castle or two melted because of global warming.
It was in the mid-30s when I bought my Winter Carnival buttons at my gas station. I buy the four-pack and throw them into a big box in a closet on the off chance that someday a kid will root around in there and be able to put the buttons on eBay and make a fortune by advertising them as still "in their original packaging.''
Then I buy a couple more to actually wear, and, at the end of the carnival, they go into the box as well, along with ribbons, press passes, newspaper articles, programs, photographs, key fobs and baubles. I've been trying to play catch-up ever since I learned my father had given away all his carnival memorabilia literally the day before I called to ask him if he had any.
"What are you telling me?''
"I'm telling you that I gave it away, to a guy in Stillwater.'' This year the four buttons feature Boreas, Vulcanus Rex and the Queen of the Snows. The fourth button confounded me. I was calling the Winter Carnival people to ask them who the fourth button was when a fellow stopped at my desk and pointed out that each button is identified in extremely small type. The fourth button is Klondike Kate, although not nearly as Rubenesque as the real gal.
The Kate button, like the others, is a bit on the chiseled side. It's almost as though along with all the other changes the carnival is bringing about, the buttons feature characters from the legend who now appear to have signed a contract at Lifetime Fitness.
Boreas, for example, does not at all seem to be affable, ample, happy or even daffy. He looks like an outdoors-hardened woodsman from the wilds of British Columbia, coal-black hair, hollow cheeks, eyes locked in a steely glare. What's the deal? Boreas has always been a fat guy who has had trouble pushing himself away from the table. Even the crown worn by Boreas in the new button is worn at a jaunty angle, as though he might have to reach up, rip it off, and use it as a weapon.
And where the Queen was also once fairly, well, sizable, soft around the edges, clearly kindhearted and giving, this new dame looks like she could cut you off your feet with just one look. She, too, is squinting, like she and the king are two new superheroes who will eyeball us into submission. Her hair clings to the side of her hard face in points, like white-hot flames on the side of a motorcycle gas tank.
As I said, Klondike Kate is so different I didn't know who it was and thought it might have been a character from Peter Pan.
Poor Vulc, oh, poor Vulc. The true King?
Boreas and the Queen and Kate are all represented with a head-slightly-forward position, assertive and confident. The new Vulc button has the Vulcan tucking his chin into his neck and recoiling, as though he is being scolded, which, of course, he has been. He wears goggles but they are clear, and while his features are as chiseled and workout-ripped as the rest of them, I think we are to get the idea that he is a dandy and not Mephistopheles. He's got that David Niven mustache thing going and a barely visible goatee.
But, most telling of all, after years and years of devilish and impish glee, the new button shows a Vulcan in the throes of culture shock, a Vulcan who is startled by the stark realities of the 21st century. A Vulcan who, this year, will have to wear a name tag.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474.
Copyright 2006 Pioneer Press.