King's Corner: A Friendly Surprise
King's Corner column for July 11, 2025
Lifelong friends are precious. My dad, Mark King, and his friend Stu started doing things together in their late teens. They were equally fun, unpredictable influences on each other. Right until the time they ran into something more unpredictable.
Along with their friend Merl, they hung out at the Recreation Center on 7th Street in St Paul, MN, where Stu introduced them to two new friends who went by the names of ‘Kid Cann’ and ‘Moo Moo’. Kid Cann then invited them a fishing trip to White Bear Lake, north of St Paul, where they met Al Capone. All of them caught Muskie (Northern Pike) and Mark took a picture that included Al Capone holding up his catch.
Mark and Stu’s new friends might not have been the best influences. Romanian-born Isadore Blumenfeld (aka Kid Cann) remains the most notorious mobster in the history of Minnesota, three time tried and acquitted of murder, including personally firing the murder weapon, a Thompson submachine gun, in the globally infamous December 1935 contract killing of Twin Cities investigative journalist Walter Liggett.
Stu arranged for he and Mark to get jobs at a local gasoline service station owned by Capone. The chain of stations had a fuel supply contract with the city, and quietly skimmed a few cents off every gallon sold.
Fortunately Merl was restless and loved travel, so he talked Stu and Mark into not staying around long enough to get caught up in their new friends’ other troubles.
Stu was in the group when Mark met Miriam. The night before their marriage he was busy trying to ensure Mark would be in no condition to attend. The next morning in the church, which had vestibles (small rooms or hallways) with the bride was on one side of the altar and the groom on the other, Stu was in Mark’s vestibule trying to convince him not to marry. He’d written on the soles of the groom’s shoes so as Mark kneeled it would say “Help Me”. Mark was on one foot bouncing down the steps and the organist saw him, began playing, and the bride assumed the ceremony was beginning. Despite Stu’s best efforts to then find a way to lead Mark out of the church without going thru the church, Mark and Miriam’s wedding went ahead.
Have you had friends like this? Lifelong companions who could talk you into just about anything, but at heart had your best interests in mind – at least usually. Where your youth and theirs may have contributed to questionable decisions that somehow you both survived? The type where your relationship can pick up again even after long periods away, going different directions?
Friendships often form the most valuable moments in our lives, and may even define who we become. Aristotle described true friendship as being “One soul living in two bodies”. And 2500 years ago Buddha said “Friendship is to have greater hope of the welfare of another than you do for the welfare of yourself”. Jesus summed it up perfectly when he said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Friendship can be mutual vulnerability mixed in with teasing, rivalry, and the ability to just have fun together. To hang out and say nothing comfortably, or to liven things up with the occasional prank. Or just to be there when truly needed.
A few decades later Mark and Stu had moved west, near California’s bay area and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Still sharing a love for the outdoors, they’d received permission to be on private land in fall hunting season. The location was known as Hell’s Half Acre, and Stu had a tent trailer – canvas with an aluminum door – that they setup alongside a camping stove and wood table, in a remote spot well removed from anyone. And after dinner they left the old coffee percolator – an all metal one that looked like it had been on many camping trips – in the middle of the table for the morning.
They were fascinated while sitting, looking at the stars, to see one moving, then stopping, then reversing direction and coming back, and doing this for over half an hour until it stopped. They then went into tent trailer to go to sleep, each in an extension flap on the sides with equal access to the aluminium door at the front.
They suddenly woke to several sharp whacks on the aluminium door, like someone knocking with a metal object. They grabbed guns and ran out, but saw nothing. A while later they woke to the same vivid knocking on the frame, and again saw nothing, so they each went back to their extension flap on each side of the tent. When a third heavy knocking hit the frame, they each instinctively shined their flashlights on the other, convinced the other was playing a trick. But neither were anywhere near the door frame.
They stepped outside into the windless night. One commented that at least the percolator was still there. At that moment it began to vibrate and move across the table, then fall off the side with no visible push.
They urgently packed up the middle of the night and left. Whatever it was, they didn’t want to stay and find out. Watching out for each other meant getting each other home urgently and safely.
Isn’t that what friends are for?
