In the early days of the Iron Range, most iron ore miners lived in company location towns where alcohol sales were restricted so that the miners would not drink too much. To defy their bosses, and also to drink vast amounts of alcohol and visit with, uh, professional ladies, these miners would trek across the Range to the city of Gilbert, the wettest and wildest town on the Range. At some point, a trans-Range trolley was installed, ostensibly as public transit but logistically as a way of getting miners to Gilbert on their day off. To date, the long line cut through the woods of the Iron Range for the long-defunct trolley tracks remains visible to the naked (no pun intended) eye.
Years later, a 16-year-old pizza delivery driver would hand an order of chicken drummies to a stripper ON STAGE at the Gladiator Bar in Gilbert. That pizza delivery driver would grow to become a “man.” A “man” with a “blog.” This blog.
Guess where I’ll be Wednesday night? (TONIGHT!) Any guesses? Gilbert y’all!
Gilbert Public Library. 6:30 p.m. Book lecture.
Did I say “book lecture?” I meant to say “book smackdown” or “passionate book lovin.'”
I’ll be reading from my new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range,” discussing the Iron Range, talking to you and signing books. Do I just read from the pages? No. I make the pages come out of the book and party like its 1907 and we don’t yet know that the steel trusts will crush our strike. Will there be coffee available? Yes. Much better coffee than when the industrial barons crushed the 1916 strike. Will I attempt to be humorous? Yes, the way it was humorous that the heavy handed anti-labor tactics of the early 20th century paved the way for solid pro-labor politics on the Range in the 20th and 21st centuries. Will my humor succeed? Just look at this post. Maybe. Maybe it will succeed. Did I mention there will be coffee?
Aaron Brown’s Overburden Book Tour
Lecture, Reading and Book Signing
6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 19
Gilbert Public Library
19 N. Broadway Ave.
Gilbert, MN
FREE TO ATTEND! (Books cost 16.95 plus tax, all proceeds go to my shadowy network of business associates)
Can’t make it? Buy online.
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