This book is a collection of short stories set mostly in the Snoose Boulevard (Cedar Riverside) neighborhood of Minneapolis roughly from the 1940s through '90s. The stories are populated by an assortment of skid-row bums, hobos, bag ladies and art students. A few of the stories are set in small logging communities of northern Minnesota during the 1940s and '50s. The characters in these stories are children and adolescents, with a few adults in minor roles. You will also find a poetic lament for a high spirited fille de joie who entertained the lumberjacks during the logging boom in the first half of the twentieth century. Interspersed with the stories, I have included a few very brief essays, on a variety of subjects, ranging from aesthetics through basic freedoms and appropriate penalties for white collar criminals to pornography. But most of the essays are simply whimsical notions all dressed up in their finest verbiage with nowhere to go.