The Legend of Arnold

March 24, 2016: I originally posted this a little more than ten years ago (March 20, 2006) on a MySpace blog. It was during a kind of outburst of enthusiasm for blogging on my part, across that and this site. When MySpace decided to shut down their blogging feature, they let users download their old posts. I grabbed mine—there only were three—and am reposting them here, in the correct spot on the "timeline," but annotated to explain where they came from.

Back in the late seventies, I was a freelance artist/designer. One of my regular gigs was as the "Advertising Assistant" at the St. Croix Boom Company, a former bowling alley, turned night club on Main Street, Stillwater, Minnesota.

I had an apartment directly across the street from the Boom Co., upstairs from the printer that did most of their advertising materials. It was a handy place to be, both for access to the club and to deliver the artwork when it was ready to go. An older guy named Arnold

Anyway, Arnold was slowly descending into mental illness. He was quite open about how he got messages about his life over the radio and from the jukebox that non-existent people were coming to visit him, or were out to get him and eventually he just snapped.

It was a Sunday, and all afternoon I was hearing this kind of flat "crack" noise coming from Arnold's apartment. It sounded like someone slapping a broomstick down on a counter. I didn't know whether he had a gun, but decided it probably was better NOT to go over there and ask. So I went about my business.

Late that afternoon, a buddy of mine Tom "Jake" Jacobson who'd recently gotten out of the Marine Corps came by to visit, and I asked him if that sound could be gunshots.

"Nahh," he told me. Still, I was starting to wonder.

Jake left, and a few hours later, my roommate, Greg Johnson, got home. I heard him running up the stairs, then he slammed the door and locked it and said something to the effect of, "That crazy SOB is shooting up the place back there!"

We were still discussing what to do when the knock came at the door. We decided not to open it and to pretend that nobody was home.

After a lot of knocking, then a lot of uncomfortable silence, we heard Arnold head down the stairs toward the street. We turned off the lights behind us and peeked around the curtains, out the window.

Yes, Arnold was carrying a pistol in his hand. He took a couple of random shots at streetlights (he missed), glanced up at our window, then he went into the Boom Co., across the street.

We immediately called the bar and got Tony, the manager on the line. I asked him if Arnold was there.

"Yes."

I asked if he had a gun.

"Yes."

I asked if I should call the police.

"No, that probably wouldn't be a good idea right now."

I asked what we should do.

"Why don't I get back to you on that."

Click.

I found out later what was going on. Arnold had come into the place, sat down at the bar, and put a couple of rounds into the wall in the middle of an old horse collar that was hanging above the bar "to let them know he was serious."

Then he started rambling about how the messages from the radio and jukebox weren't letting him sleep, how he hadn't eaten for days, how people were coming over and standing outside of his door and banging pans together when he was trying to sleep, how my roommate was sneaking into Arnold's apartment with strange women and having sex with them in the shower, how he thought I was "okay" when I first moved in up there, but now he knew I was "the cabbage man," and that he knew Tony was "in it" with me.

Obviously, no one wants to hear a guy with a gun talking like that.

Fortunately, being a Sunday night with no band playing, there were only a handful of folks in the place, among them a guy we all called "Crazy Eddie." Eddie's father was a successful businessman (I think he owned a car dealership), but Eddie himself was more of a ne'er-do-well and a local character. He was the kind of guy who drank too much every night, and who might try to punch out a window at your apartment as he was leaving a party, while at the same time thanking you for inviting him. You were never quite sure what he was going to do. But he was also a fiercely loyal friend to Tony and saw himself as kind of a guardian angel of the Boom Co. in general.

So Eddie sat down at the bar right next to Arnold.

"Nice piece, Arnie. Can I see it?"

Arnold handed him the gun!

Eddie empathized with Arnold's troubles for a minute, then suggested they walk up to the Oasis Café (just up the highway outside of downtown) to get something to eat. Arnold said okay. Eddie put the gun in his pocket, and they headed out. Tony called the police.

Arnold never got to the Oasis, but presumably they fed him at the jail.

As it turned out, Arnold had a whole arsenal back in his apartment. He'd spent the afternoon shooting up a makeshift skylight he had in the ceiling there, and when he got tired of that, he shot out the window that overlooked the back roof, where we'd walk out to drop our trash into the dumpster below.

He told the police he'd shot "someone" out there, and as they came up the stairs to check out his story, I heard one of them complaining, "I don't need this on a Sunday night." I had to wonder what night would have been any better?

Fortunately, there was no body out there, it was just another of Arnold's delusions. The police confiscated all of the guns, and Arnold went away to the psych ward on the eighth floor of St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital for a couple of months.

During Arnold's stay over there, I got a call from Tony. Arnold's doctor wanted Tony and I to come over and "visit" with Arnold, as part of his treatment. We got there, and one of the things that the doctor told us to prepare us was that Arnold told him he'd been part of a "mop-up" squad during WWII, that went around knocking on doors in German towns, then shooting whoever answered.

I have no idea whether that was true, or if there even was such a thing, but the troubling part was that Arnold THOUGHT it was true, and that he'd come knocking on MY door with a pistol in his hand.

The meeting was...interesting. Arnold basically glared at us the whole time, while the doctor asked him questions like, "You know now that these fellows aren't any sort of threat to you, right?" and "You don't want to hurt them, do you?" Arnold answered in monosyllables, obviously saying whatever it was he thought seemed likely to get him out of there.

I left convinced that if Arnold DID get out, I was going to have to move. And sure enough, a few weeks later, we got word that he was coming back, and that our well-meaning landlady was going to allow him to move back into the same apartment.

Arnold was going to be on medication that supposedly would keep him "normal," and there was going to be a van that would pick him up every couple of days to take him to get the shot, since he couldn't be trusted to take that medication on his own.

Greg O'Malley who was also living downtown, at the north end of Main Street in a place that had become known as "The Ghetto," basically swapped apartments with us, because he didn't figure in any of Arnold's paranoid fantasies and didn't think he'd be in any danger from the guy. O'Malley's place was far enough away that I figured there was enough distance to keep me out of Arnold's way and off his radar.

Eventually Arnold started missing his meds and getting weird again. I heard he once again was stockpiling weapons from St. Croix Outfitters, which was only about half a block from his apartment. And legendary Boom Co. bartender Mike Seggelke, who was kind of Arnold's self-appointed minder for a while, took GREAT delight in looking over my shoulder and saying, "Oh, hi Arnie," when Arnold was nowhere to be seen.

Eventually Arnold had the hemorrhage or whatever it was that killed him, and I guess they found him under the outside steps behind John's Bar, next door to the print shop over which he still had his apartment.

The story went around for a few hours that I'd killed him, and I suppose that might have sounded believable since Arnold was found outdoors and since a number of people had heard my roommate and I promise one another (always after a few drinks) that if Arnold got the other guy, the survivor would get Arnold.

But I was a dozen miles away, at work, when it all happened. No Mark, no ice pick, and a rather mundane ending to what was a pretty unusual time.