Hinckley Hijinx

After the road trip fiasco, my friendship with Hauga was really strained, so I decided to go back to working flea markets and pow wows. That’s when I met Gary…he was at the flea market looking for bargains on anything of value. Gary owned the pawnshop in Hinckley, and was a real character. He had come up to the area to buy and run a restaurant on a small lake near Mora…he had had a very successful bar in the Cities (that featured world class Coney Islands). He “got wind” that a casino was going to open in Hinckley and felt that a pawnshop was a natural (which proved to be the case). He also got a law passed that there could only be one pawnshop within fifty miles of the casino…a real stroke of genius.

Gary was a big, powerful man who had been a golden gloves champion and professional boxer in his younger days. He could be extremely funny and very crude all at the same time. We developed a friendship and I began hanging out at the pawnshop, having lunch with Gary, and helping out once in awhile.

Now Gary had a serious drinking problem…and he began calling me at home telling me that he was too “sick” to run the shop, and would I work it for him today. This became more and more frequent, and after awhile we began to work it together. He taught me a lot about the business, and I taught him about buying Native American relics and “pieces of value”. I sometimes had pangs of conscience about taking advantage of people who were really vulnerable, but someone else would, if we didn’t. Most of the individuals who used the pawnshop were chronic gamblers. They would pawn very valuable items for a chance to play at the Casino and win enough to redeem their items and have a lot left over…most of the time it was left long enough (60 days) to be sold at about five times what it was pawned for. Gary was an extremely shrewd businessman, he carried a roll of bills that would “choke a horse” and made deals on the spot. His talk, mannerisms, crudeness, and size gave credibility to the rumor that he was “connected”. He was always looking for the deal, and “scoured the area” attempting to get classic cars, boats, guns motorcycles, snowmobiles, and just about anything of value. Some of these he sold at the pawnshop and some just went into his collection.

About a year after opening the pawnshop in Hinckley, Gary had his wife Dagney open a second pawnshop in Mora to handle the trade from the Mille Lacs Casino. They were complete opposites: for as crude as Gary was…Dagney was a real lady, he was huge and she was barely five feet tall and about a hundred pounds, he was extremely tough and she was very compassionate. Dagney was about five years older than Gary and her father had been his manager during the “Prizefighting Days”. She adored him and he tolerated her (he may have loved her…as much as he was capable of love). They had a son and two daughters, with several years between each of them. Enough between the two daughters, that the oldest daughter had a child the same time as her mother. The youngest daughter and Dagney’s granddaughter grew up almost as sisters because Dagney raised them both.

More about all of this later…until next time…