Page 110 - NIXBOOK

When we moved out of the old PD station and into the newly-built city hall building nearby, we discovered a pleasant geographic
bonus in our favor; we were close (less than 500 feet away) from the world famous bakery in the middle of Front Street. On some
early mornings the air around there would be saturated and infused with the smell of warm freshly baking pastries. And I mean
saturated. The bakery made all the usually expected things one would find in a bakery; breads and rolls and muffins and all
kinds of flour-based and sugar-coated treats and sweets and cookies and lots of donuts including their special “Viking Donut”
which were super-sized basic glazed donuts that would take almost two hands to hold to hold it up to one’s pie hole. The bakery
also made a fair amount of Scandinavian treats like Lefse and Krumkake and other things I didn’t care about as much a Viking
Donut or two. (Just kidding. Nobody could eat two of those things.) The PD was close enough that sometimes the police parking
garage will fill up with bakery smells. And sometimes the restaurants on Front Street would contribute to the flavors later in the
evening; the smells of good fish and chips might waft over and through, or smells from the Italian restaurant in the evenings, or
in the mornings sometimes the distinct smell of fresh buttered pancakes, complete with syrup. No, I don’t know how they did
that but it was not my imagination. But the bakery…let’s stop and savor this moment to really appreciate this because I don’t
have a scratch and sniff sticker here; you’ll need to use your imagination. Ready? The air. Sometimes. Was heavy. With the sweet
surgery aroma of. Cinnamon twists and blueberry donuts and Danishes. And Bear Claws. And cookies. Or freshly being-baked
Cinnamon Raisin Bread. All being produced by a certified world-class master baker. Now this wasn’t every morning; the weather
conditions had to be just right for the aromas to fill up our parking garage. When it happened though, one could gain weight
just by eating the delicious air. Not surprisingly, having an established bakery like that a half block from the police station made
it pretty convenient for appreciative citizens to bring us treats; I’d say we’d got a box or two of bakery donuts dropped off for us
at the rate of once a month, easily. More during the holidays.

Drug addicts. I met more than many, in their cars in parking lots all over town. Nodding off and in zombie mode, alarming other
citizens. One guy I caught had been, of all places, passed out at the vaccuum cleaner station at a car wash. Myself and another
officer roused him, questioned him, and arrested and searched him. The whole time we were out there we had to deal with
several completely oblivious car wash patrons who drove up next to us and turned on the vacuum cleaner machines to loudly
suck the dirt out of their cars. It was like just about the worst place in the whole city to try and investigate a crime by asking
questions and listening for anwers, with vacuum sucking machines roaring full blast on either side of us.

Adult intramural soccer game is in progress on a Sunday, out on a school field. One of the players got a little too serious about
the game and decided to start punching one of the players, resulting in a 911 call. His teammates did not want to testify against
him, making my investigation longer and more complicated than it should have been. Extra frustrating was that one of those
“didn’t see nuthin” witnesses was a local newspaper reporter who was not fooling me in the slightest; I knew godamn well he
had seen what happened. But he refused to provide me any helpful information.