The Machine on Highway 23

If you've ever driven south on Highway 23 toward Minneapolis, you may have seen it. Right near the corner where you'd normally make the turn toward Flat Rock for Tip-Up Daze, or maybe to spend a summer afternoon fishing on Lake La Pointe.

The bait vending machine that sits just outside the old gas station.

It's been there longer than anyone can remember, which in a town like ours means at least fifteen years, maybe more. No one's entirely sure when it arrived or who put it there. That's not the kind of question people ask here anymore.

The machine itself is nothing fancy. It's painted forest green, the kind of color that was probably fashionable sometime in the '80s. The front panel has a scratched acrylic window, yellowed slightly from weather and time. Inside, in neat rows, are the offerings: styrofoam cups of live nightcrawlers, containers of shiners, hand warmers in the winter months, a few cans of that smelly dip that supposedly keeps the mosquitoes away. It doesn't.

Everything you'd need for a dawn fishing trip to the lake, all available at two in the morning if the mood struck.

And someone, somewhere, is keeping it stocked.

That's what gets people. Not the machine itself. Vending machines are common enough. You find them all over Minneapolis. Those ones are big and fancy and take credit cards. Once, when we were flying to Chicago out of Minneapolis-St. Paul, I even saw a vending machine that sold scratch-off lottery tickets.

This one is different.

No credit cards accepted. It doesn't even take dollar bills. Coins only. Quarters, nickels, and dimes, I'd assume. No pennies. Apparently even a machine old enough to remember Walter Mondale has standards.

But that's not the strange part.

It's the fact that those worms inside the machine at the gas station are always fresh.

The shiners don't go bad. The plastic bags of jigs and leaders get replenished. The hand warmers appear sometime around the first frost and disappear again when winter finally gives up, usually about three weeks after everyone in Flat Rock thinks it should.

Someone is out there, regularly, making sure that at three in the morning on a Tuesday in March, if you pull up to that machine with a pocketful of change and an itch to fish, you'll find exactly what you need.

I asked Del Paulson about it once. Del runs the gas station and has for about twenty years. He's the kind of guy who notices things. I figured he would know.

"Damned if I know," he said, wiping his hands on a rag. "Comes with the lot, I guess. When I took over the place, it was already here. I don't stock it. I don't touch it. The money comes out, or it doesn't, who knows, and the product stays fresh."

"You ever see who fills it?" I asked.

"Nope. And I don't ask questions."

That's the Flat Rock way, I suppose. We've got enough mysteries in this town without interrogating every oddity. The machine works. The worms catch fish. That's enough.

Although that hasn't stopped people from having theories.

Maybe it's old Frank Kellerman, who's been retired from the bait shop for a decade but can't quite let the work go. Maybe it's someone's kid, doing it quietly, making a little money for a new bike on the side without anyone needing to know their name. Maybe it's someone from out of town, restocking it on their way through, some small act of commerce or kindness or strange hobby that only makes sense to them.

Someone once suggested Del himself was doing it and pretending not to know anything because he enjoyed the mystery.

Del heard that theory.

He didn't dignify it with a response.

I've fished Lake La Pointe maybe four times in my life. I'm not a fisherman. I know enough to understand that you're supposed to be quiet, which probably explains why I've never taken to it.

But I've pulled up to that machine at odd hours, not to use it, just to look at it.

There's something oddly comforting about it. In a world where everything seems to require seventeen steps, an app, a password with at least one capital letter and a customer service number you'll eventually call anyway, there's this machine.

Simple. Reliable.

Asking nothing but a couple dollars in change and trusting you to know what you need.

You couldn't put a machine like that in downtown Minneapolis today. Or maybe you could, but someone would add a touchscreen, a rewards program, and a QR code before the end of the week.

Ours just sells worms.

The funny thing is, nobody in Flat Rock talks much about it. You mention the machine, and people nod. They know it. They might've used it once. Someone's father probably bought nightcrawlers from it before taking them fishing when they were twelve.

But there's no gossip about who maintains it. No betting pool at Mabel's. No investigation by the Flat Rock Gazette. Nobody has ever suggested staking out the gas station overnight to finally solve the mystery.

At least, nobody I know of.

It just is, the way the water tower is, the way Jefferson Street is, the way everybody still calls the Peterson building the Five and Dime even though Peterson hasn't owned it in years.

Maybe that's the real mystery.

Not who stocks the machine, but why we've all collectively decided not to make a fuss about it.

In a town where everybody knows everybody else's business, we've all agreed to leave this one thing alone.

There's something almost reverent about it, if you think about it long enough.

Tomorrow morning somebody will probably pull off Highway 23 before sunrise, feed a handful of quarters into an old green machine, grab a cup of nightcrawlers, and make the turn toward Flat Rock and Lake La Pointe.

And somewhere, someone is making sure those worms are there.

I don't know who they are.

I'm pretty sure I never will.