Salon.com > Nick Kowalczyk

How many pets can we save?

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:30:00 +0000

My wife is a veterinarian, and we have a household of eight pets, which is more than I would’ve thought a sane young couple could have. We’re newly married and don’t yet have children, and like a lot of people we treat our pets as our kids. Currently we have three dogs, two cats and three heritage-breed chickens. Some friends call this our menagerie, the less kind ones our circus. We prefer to call it our pack. It’s a life with a lot of noise and no small amount of dander.

It began when I took my dog to the veterinary clinic where my wife works. At the time she was still in vet school and I was a first-time pet owner who’d chosen to spend most of my adult life responsible solely for my own fun and convenience. Archie, my dog, represented my first, hesitant step toward maturity. “He has a tick and I don’t know how to remove it,” I said to my future wife. Thankfully she pitied me, removed the tick, and thought I was cute enough to date. Three years later we got married with our dogs among the witnesses.

Blood, gore, tourism: The ax murderer who saved a small town

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

This is a story of murder and tourism and ghosts. Of civic failure and the illusion of certainty. It’s a Midwestern story that begins in 1912, before the state of Iowa became a patchwork of vanishing villages, before Interstate 80 and the World’s Largest Truck Stop. It is the year the John Deere company begins building tractors and Arizona enters the Union and a surprising number of Republicans believe in progressive ideals. It is the year of a new group called the Girl Scouts and two years before a world war. In this year the ocean swallows a ship called Titanic, a college professor becomes president, and Americans begin eating Oreos. And in Villisca, Iowa, it’s morning, a Monday, June 10, 1912.

The Iowa Touring Atlas has just touted Villisca, a town of less than two square miles surrounded by farmland and the forks of the Nodaway River, one of the finest cities in the state. “Metropolitan.” “A social center.” “Religious.” “Methodist.” “Presbyterian.” “Rare beauty.” “Pleasant View.” Villisca in 1912 has 50 retail stores, no saloons and banks “as strong as the rock of Gibraltar.” There is a two-story armory being built that symbolizes the community’s patriotism and pride. More men work as auctioneers than lawyers. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Line brings 24 passenger and freight trains here every day.

Embedded with the reenactors

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

“Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it." --Elwood P. Dowd, in “Harvey,” by Mary Chase

Reveille

Cannon fire woke me up.

It was sometime around seven-thirty in the morning.

For hours I had listened half-asleep through my white canvas tent to a crowd of middle-aged men confabulating about their muskets, their outfits and the costs of their campfire boilers, but it was only after that big kaboom, the great wake-the-hell-up call for war, that I began heralding the day.

Immediately a question presented itself.

Was there time for me to walk a half-mile across the park to the outdoor, cold-water only showers near the swimming pool, or would I follow the advice of my tour guide, Old Hickory, who the day before said, “We generally don’t shower at events. We tend to use baby wipes for any special-needs areas.”

I looked at my modern-day timepiece.

I had a half-hour until the festivities began.

“War really is hell,” I said, rubbing my eyes and reaching for the moist towelettes.

The Battlefield

The fake date was July 6, 1759; the real one was July 3, 2009.