A Lingering Feeling

Like all good criminals, I am returning to the scene of the crime.

By the early afternoon, I will pull my rental car into Duluth, Minn.

Ah, Duluth.

On the phone the other day, a writer for the Duluth News-Tribune and Herald said I was a "folk hero".

Truth is, I'm more of a "folkvillain," but the writer, being a Minnesotan, was simply too polite to say that. Folks out there are really kind and decent.

Duluth and my escapades there catapulted me into a brief moment of celebrity. The odd thing about it is, if you had asked me, I never would have thought I would become famous for calling people names, much less for calling an entire city names.

Truth is my friends aren't proud of me for my claim to fame. Or my family or anyone, including me. They think it's funny. I've got over two dozen copies of Gore Vidal's Duluth at home. They make great joke gifts.

Sorta like a ginsu, only more personal.

The entertainment editor of a Duluth paper is taking me out on an all-expenses-paid cultural extravaganza tomorrow. He wants to show me the highlights of a town I once said "had no appreciable culture."

I quote from memory. Pardon me if I don't get the words just right. It's the spirit that counts.

Just ask Carisa Heltne, the 10-year-old girl who wrote me after my visit to tell what a great place Duluth was and how she would invite me over to dinner to tell me about it, except that she thought my table manners weren't up to her parents' standards.

That same local entertainment writer wants to set up a meeting between the two of us. Me and her, like the rubber man and the bearded lady. Wonderful. If he can find her--and I've got my fingers crossed that he can't--I'll play the fool. It'll help out a fellow journalist.

And journalism can be very rewarding. Except when you cease reporting and start to be reported on.

So today I return to Duluth.

To the Duluth Arena where over 5000 people once yelled my name, where the scoreboard flashed obnoxious messages about me. Where people spell "Wurf" correctly on the very first try.

Where the weatherman said I was pathetic on the 6 o'clock news. Where I made a name--a bad one at that--for myself.

I return not to seek redemption, to try to rewrite my own saga, or simply to report another pair of hockey games.

I'm going back to take another look: to see if I made the right call 21 months ago, to see if I was a snob.

I know there's a cardinal rule that journalists aren't supposed to admit a mistake or to back down. Unfortunately, I have this lingering feeling I was wrong.