Haul a well-bred, 700-pound boar to a “genetic transfer station,” put him to work artificially inseminating hundreds of sows, and he’s worth $5,000.
Haul that same high-priced boar to market and he’ll bring $105 to $140 at the slaughterhouse, a humiliating 15 to 20 cents per pound.
The life of Henry Busse Jr. has been a rollercoaster ride, with more twists and turns and thrills than most people experience in ten lifetimes. He began his wild ride at 3, when his famous father divorced his mom. Reconstructing a relationship with his absent father has been a lifelong avocation — and now it’s also his business.
His dad is a mostly forgotten man, dead 46 years, remembered only by the scattered enthusiasts who cherish big band 78s, black & white ’30s show posters and yellowing sheet music. But hot trumpeter Henry Busse Sr. truly is a legend. Al Hirt and Herb Alpert say they were inspired by Busse Sr.’s trumpet solos, particularly his rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” He and singer Bing Crosby invented the mute for trumpet.
Even a dirt-poor farm kid, mocked by classmates for his ragged clothes and brown-bag lunches, can make a million in America. That may be the paramount lesson of Floyd Palmer’s life, a life no longer endured in rural squalor because Palmer followed his instincts. “I didn’t want to live poor. I wanted to own my own business.”
Forty-year-old Sharron Moss-Higham manages Kraft Foods’ largest North American process cheese plant — and perhaps the world’s largest. It is 350,000 sq. ft. of aged cheddar cheese and 950 employees wearing hair nets. All those 22-ton trailers rumbling out of New Ulm to distribution points all over are trying to satisfy America’s long-standing hunger for Kraft process (or “processed”) cheese, the nation’s fourth bestselling product line in grocery stores. This year Kraft-New Ulm alone will manufacture and ship billions of Kraft process cheese slices, all of America’s Handi-Snacks, and nearly all the nation’s Velveeta, the kitschy cheese loaf adored by millions.
Shade permits ferns and moss to flourish, but squelches the colorful blooms many gardeners covet as backyard-brighteners.
In all its dappled degrees, shade confounded Clayton Oslund for years. A canopy formed by mature oaks around his Waseca home prevented sunlight and moisture from nourishing much of anything beneath them, forcing him to search for species that could survive or thrive in this semidarkness.
The photo on Bob Alton’s wall for all eternity shows No. 9 Bill Mazeroski smacking a fastball off Yankee Bill Terry towards the cheap seats in the 1960 World Series. Maz’s homer will be enough for the Pittsburgh Pirates to win Game Seven 10-9.
Also hanging from Alton’s office wall are sketches from 1960s golf history: a hard-charging Arnold Palmer pumping his fist after draining a putt; a 54-year-old Ben Hogan launching a 3-wood on a Par 5 at Augusta National; a thin Jack Nicklaus walking up No. 18. Go Jack!
He’d roll up his sleeves if he had any.
Mike Braun, who often goes sleeveless in summer, and his partner Brian Borth both work shifts hauling garbage and “recyclables” over the streets of Sleepy Eye and Springfield. It’s not a job for pansies. The intense heat off fresh tar can almost melt shoe soles, a whiff of rotting fish can be “most interesting,” says Braun, and the only air conditioning in either of their two facilities is an open window in the break room of their recycling center.
Duane Leach comes across as a plain-spoken, soft-spoken, uncomplicated sort of guy.
He doesn’t rely on rhetoric, doesn’t use $20 words, thinks before he speaks and shrinks the Business Facts of Life to simple terms unblemished by qualifying adjectives.
North Mankato’s Fred Lutz likes flyin’ high in the western sky in his Beechcraft 33 Bonanza, tail flaps up, headset on, sippin’ straight 7UP through a cocktail straw. It’s another ideal Saturday afternoon for a businessman who still has Uncola coursing through his veins. His 7UP-green Lincoln LS parked next to the green hangar at Mankato Airport has “UNCOLA” plates; and his Beechcraft 33 the registration number “N77UP.” Old allegiances die hard.
Lutz was a high-profile, national figure in the soft drink industry in the ’70s and early ’80s. He served as national president of the 7UP Bottlers Association and also the Dr Pepper Bottlers Association, and as state president of the Minn. Soft Drink Association. And he lobbied Capitol Hill as a board member of the National Soft Drink Association.
