Anderson: Bait shop owner makes otherworldly move to gold mining in Area 51
News that Joe Kruchowski had sold his bait shop and was moving to Area 51 didn't take me by surprise, though I was unnerved when I learned he wouldn't be traveling in his '76 AMC Pacer.
Instead, he will trek more conventionally, in a motor home, behind which, on a trailer, will follow his Nissan Juke NISMO RS, a rocket on wheels.
Area 51, as you will recall, is in Nevada, and Joe and his wife, Kelly, have purchased a gold mine there.
As career changes go, this is a whopper, from peddling fatheads and shiners to crushing rocks. But then, as Barry Andrew Hay, front man of Golden Earring, crooned in "Radar Love," "Every night the newsman sang his same song."
So, who's to say in these wacky times that whopper-like life changes aren't warranted.
Baitwise, Joe has been the man since he bought Northwoods Bait and Tackle in 1993. The shop is perched hard by Hwy. 53 in Cook, a northern Minnesota burg that is home to slightly more than 500 residents. Joe might peddle more rainbow chubs than anyone in the state, and anglers vectoring north from Chicago, Kansas City and Des Moines, as well as the Twin Cities, are drawn to his shop like sinners to an altar, eager especially now in midsummer to swap creditworthy plastic or cold cash for nightcrawlers, leeches and, especially, insights into where-they're-biting.
