"Okay, well, where to first?" I asked.
"Plywood Minnesota, just off Highway 12. You know the place?"
"Sure." Everybody knew the place. There were a thousand commercials a day for Rudy Boschwitz and their stupendous, amazing deals. The business was an icon in Minnesota.
"I called yesterday and they'll give us a good price on the lumber we need. They said they'd deliver it first thing tomorrow morning to the stage back entrance, but I needed to stop in today to pay the bill."
And we were off, slipping and sliding along the narrowed and sometimes unplowed streets of the metropolitan Minneapolis area. We parked the car in front of the white one-story building with colonial pillars, the biggest building-supply company in town.
The warmth of the open atmosphere of the building and the smell
