The Minnesota Toad (or, The Rich Landord)

The Minnesota Toad

(The Rich Landlord)



I was told, in so many words, that the wisest if not slickest (perhaps cleverest) Landlords in the State of Minnesota was this man they called “The Toad”, bred and lived in the city of St. Paul, nearby where I lived. Not sure how that came about, but I’m still here to say I heard it: and that fellow said, “You can take your pick of fellow Landlords anyplace in the State, and bring him here and we’ll talk wisdom, and money, and I’ll back The Toad up, he’ll come out number one every time. This old Caretaker said—“I’ve told everyone who wants to become rich and have wisdom, to come here, this is where it’s at, he owns several places in town, he’ll tell you how he did it.”
He then, introduced me to this wise and rich Landlord, his first name was Oscar, I can’t tell you his last name, and it would be telling a secret. When I had met him, he pulled up in a big white automobile, and I asked, “Oscar how is it you’ve become so rich (I left out the wise part), in all your dealings here in Minnesota?”
And this is what he told me, “Friend,” he said in a mellow tone, his arm over my shoulder, as if I was his son (he was about sixty-five years old, white short hair, small man, round form, perhaps too round and too small, and he had a girl hanging on his shoulder as he pulled up, and told her to get lost and she went someplace, and that was that), “Friend, the secret of being wise and making money out of the Landlord business is: you bend all you can, let the whores have a room in the basement for the male tenants, and pay off the inspectors when they come around, and make false claims to the insurance company, and then you rent all your rooms to whomever you can, the niggers, and wops, and Mexicans, and Asians, and what you don’t rent, you rent out to the whores or drug users, and what they don’t rent, you live in! It has nothing to do with sweating, boy; you hire the people you rent to, and take them to bed when you can, or if they can’t pay, and in-between you make them dependent on you.” Then he started laughing, as I was looking at his gold rings and thick gold chain around his neck.
This was an old timer; I was the young buck back then. I don’t recall how long it took him to stop laughing and settle down, but it was a while, and I waited. He took a liking for me he said, and asked me to buy him a drink at the local saloon. And I did. Figuring he was a penny pincher, but only to find out he was broke. I asked the bartender, “What is it with this old coot, he’s rich, driving a big car, and I got to buy the drinks?” Oscar had gone to the bathroom.
“It’s those young fillies,” he said, “He wants every young thing he sees, wanting all the time, he only collects half his rent, he takes the rest out in trade.” I had noticed he was taking his good old time about going to the bathroom, and then I noticed he came out with two young fillies, one black and one Vietnamese. He left them at the end of the bar, and joined me at the other end. Then on his cellphone he called at this one woman’s house who was married, saying to me on the side, “She’s married, but suited for me, a young filly first-rate,” and he gave me that laugh, and put his funny looking hat on, it was gray but reminded me of those 1920s, Laurel and Hardy movies.

No: 700/ 10-29-2010)
(More truth than fiction)

Ebony Cameo (a short Macabre story)

Ebony Cameo
(or, “A Sinister Night in San Francisco”)






My stay in the city of San Francisco occurred during a period of my life no less faint and dubious, contrary to than the city itself, and the misty bay lying thereabout. I have little recollection of the long train ride to this locality—I had been drinking heavily—I only remember when I got to the place, got situated—(I was to be found: that is), I was perplexed, my mind disheveled (back in 1968), and when I sat that first evening by the fog-enfolded inlet that flowed out into the Ocean, its walls and wharf: now that I think of it, they were mortuary clanging sounds, I surmised that I was impending an eerie evening if not tantalizing—it was my first night in an international, cosmopolitan metropolis, I was a young lad from a Midwestern capital—thus, here I was situated, placed at the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On reaching the Golden Gate, this colossal bridge that crosses the bay, from San Francisco to a sister city, I could have continued at will, on this road, leading out to a lesser troublesome city, to a remoter city, and I did set foot onto the bridge, and I saw a shadowy shape, a ebony cameo, silhouette, under the bridge was black waters flowing to and fro, joining the bay with the ocean, a silence as still as death engulfed me.
My past life at this point was dull, boring and perhaps dubious, as I have somewhat described already: all the more so, that I had to investigate this mystic silhouette—because of my need to live, be alive, perhaps for forgetfulness of those dull days, who’s to say, I mean, my perseverance, and persistence at this time, my search for oblivion, was unrecorded—only in time does one learns it is all vanity.
Anyhow, there I was, forgetting the death of my Midwestern soul, slain this very moment, I had sinned, and the deed was done within my mind, now only to be acted out with my body. And my erratic temper, my unruly tetchiness—was mild as a kitten; she was to be my lethal poison, she laid in the somber winds of the evening against an iron cool beam on the bridge, she tortured my mind, with her sleek body, I am uncertain of her age, I was twenty at the time, perhaps she was the same, or twenty-three or twenty-six, I never knew. For years afterward I had wondered lightly on this—heeding little value on it, and full of wine at the time, and she was full of agents of oblivion, and we were available, and usable, and thus, I came close to her, somewhere in this indefinite journey, San Francisco, dim as the evening was, it was well as she, had capture me.
The moon, if ever there was a moon, that evening, had been lost for I knew not how to find it, had been lost into my subconscious, but I could see every naked curve of her body, and the shadows and the mist that fell upon it. I felt that evening mist; I heard her heavy tolling, I gave her no shelter from the night—only the covering of my body, but it seemed to her to be more than enough.

So I never crossed that long bridge, and fell to sleep thereafter the act, entered the grimly yawning of dreams, and hearing the quickening of many footsteps the following morning, only to have waken me, alone on the edge of the bridge, pants unbuttoned, the noise of the city in progress, a few people were staring at me, and I brushed myself off and zipped up my pants up, in solemn haste, as if going to a funeral, an errand look, of no delay.

The streets seemed to be overhanging one another as I walked to and fro trying to get my second day in this city under control. As I plunged among the many, along the streets, sunrise in full blossom, the memory of the previous night, every step of it came back to me, but her face. For this reason, and this reason alone, I did not look for a hotel, or bar, but sat on a stool in park like area, content not wanting to lose the evening before I put it into a vault, trying to sort out the darkness and fog, dissolve the oblivion. Could I find her this day, I think my spirit, mind, my soul would be more tranquil if I could—so I told myself, less reiterate in its all clanging to seek her out.
I had no idea how far I had gone into the city, roamed among the buildings in the night, peopled by thousands of sleeping dead, then as I looked about, I became aware of how tired I really was, and felt I needed not only food and wine, but lodging. Nowhere had my mind picked up on anything of this nature the night before, so the next person that looked at me I waved too, and he came over, he was a thin man, looked like an accountant, and I asked him “Where sir can I find some lodging, and a respectable place to eat?” He pulled out a card, after checking me out, and said, “I’ll be home at four o’clock,” and walked away. He wasn’t my cup of tea, then I noticed—and it was to resolve my issue here—a sign over the head of the passer-by, it read, “Sleeping rooms!” And next door to it was a café.
Hurrying along with the crowd, my intentness to get a room at the hotel, I saw her, I think I saw her, I followed her through street after street in my futile search for her living face, but it was her body I had noticed most, at length I tried to catch up with her, actually I had made up my mind that was her, even if it wasn’t, as I bumped this person and that person, and pausing to get a better glimpse in what direction she was turning and now there was turning heads at me: scolding me for my abruptness. Then an unspeakable chill came over me, invaded my spirit, as I came a foot away from this person, a dreadful smote, breath of doom, putrid odor—emanated from her, it was as if the smell of death, a decayed body from a tomb, a smell that had escaped the rotting of death had encircled me, this all appeared to be a bad coincidence, if not a sinister psychodrama, she stopped and turned about: she was black as hell, and had an irrevocable fatality grin on her face, she said, “I’ve been dead a long time, move away, or join me in my coffin!”
The moment had evoked the vainly wish I had ever met that person, and I now was being pushed here and there by the crowd, feverishly trying to get around me, as I was frozen in my step. Nobody else seemed to see her, nobody bumped into her. Nobody inquired what the matter with me was, just told me to get out of their way, bewilderment had filled my cerebellum.
I made it to the hotel, the building looked very old, its upper floors had thin hallways, and few lights glowed indistinctly down the corridors, I found my room 302, and locked and bolted the door, that evening the odor of that very woman came back to me, a musty odor of antiquity, of the crypt, it mounted the hallways under the doorways, it didn’t seem to attract the attention of anyone but me. Then there was a silence, and after much delay, the doors down the hallway were being opened and shut—it was all a cadaverous moment, I opened the door and peered down the entry, and then there she was again, looking at me with that ugly frowning of hers, with pompous gravity as if the wind could pick her up and bring her forth like a flying demoness.
I slammed the door, “What do you desire?” she asked outside of my door, “for you,” she went on to say, adding: “just a room for the night!” Then it came to mind, she was a lost spirit of some sort, and she found no one drunk enough to bed her tonight; evidently, the night I met her, the night before, which I accommodated her, she couldn’t find an available room either, and thus, stood down by the bridge waiting for anybody male with a drunken spirit, and low morals, and perhaps female would also do.
I had slammed the door so hard and quickly, I heard someone coming up the steps—thank goodness I thought—although the person was grumbling “Who’s making that confounded noise up there!” It was the caretaker. I wouldn’t open the door, I didn’t say a word, I didn’t respond to him, or her, matter-of-fact, I pert near held my breath.

My heart beat a hundredfold that night, and she is a menace of memory for me now. A live dream from the tombs—or better yet, a nightmare, poured out into reality; I have cursed the hour I have met her a thousand times over, and now at sixty-three years old, yes, forty-three years later, she has kept this sinister circle alive, she has somewhat entombed me—she shows up sporadically, in the frightful vitality of present things in my life—during events; always as a shadow or shape in the crowd, a outline in the side of a window: the reason always, or the reason I think she shows up is always for preparation for me to go back to that bridge, and duplicate our first meeting—god forbid if she thinks she’s found a soul mate, and I’ve stopped drinking.

No 702 (10-30-2010)

The Third Kind of Sparrow (a short story)

The Third Kind of Sparrow

(or, “The Yellow Sparrow”)


The briskly, yellow sparrow had not been born in Mr. Evens’ garden like so many other of the sparrows that patronized his little patch of land he personally made for them, but he was there as if he had been, and perhaps lingered about more so than many of the other forty sparrows and doves that lived there, or thought they lived there, and the old man, thought it was about time for the one and only Yellow Sparrow to eat something, I mean he had been there going on eighteen months, God forbid, he came and he left and he never ate. I mean, here was a small house garden, with no roof to enclose them, so they could come freely to and fro and even go over to the nearby park and when hungry and thirsty, come back for fresh water in a clean ceramic container, five weekly cleaned out birdhouses that they seemed to go in and out of like a busy metropolis, and all the fast food you could eat—the best seeds this side of Alaska, all the greenery, tall and short, a bird could play in, and a clean—weekly cleaned out, freshly watered birdbath one could swim in or just float, take a bath or shower anytime of the day, and no crows, or pigeons to eat you up in-between, and he wanted to know, why he came only to take a bath, and chitchat with his fellow birds.
I mean the bird always smiled, and for a bird to smile it was difficult, with those short faces and tiny beaks, but they can: they puff up those side cheeks, and curve up those muscles under their eyes, and those feathers appear to squeeze together, and that is there smile, in a nutshell.
But let me describe him and his tiptoeing to the birdbath: first of all he’s (I think he is a he—he could be a she) a clutching little fat yellow breasted sparrow (perhaps more wide than fat), when I say clutching, I mean he hangs onto things tightly—(perhaps all birds do) or at least he appears to, as onto the branches of the greenery in the garden, or onto the edge of the birdbath, and so forth, tightly. After his bath, he flaps those little wings to adjust whatever he’s adjusting, rigorously, and like a little wrench tightening himself up, tidy like, he’s got to be the cleanest sparrow this side of the Gulf of Mexico, and I’m in Lima, Peru. Furthermore, who is ever around, this yellow bird when he takes a bath, gets a shower free, as he briskly dries those wings of his off; funny, every sparrow around seems to automatically create a distance from him, after his birdbath, and many during his bath. But I’m not absented-minded, the premise of this story is, “Why does he not eat?”
We all have our own ideas of why this is one way and why something else is that way, and I’ve come to my conclusion of why the Yellow Sparrow does what he does, or in this case doesn’t do, what I think he should do, meaning ‘eat,’ perhaps the only one conclusion I could come up with that makes any sense to me: there are not only two kinds of sparrows in the world, such as to say, those everlasting hungry sparrows who seem to eat and fly and play about constantly, or the sparrows who like to find a peaceful place to chitchat, live and sleep— there is a third kind, a select kind, one who could careless about the peacefulness or the availability of food, he is the Yellow Sparrow kind, he is the third kind, the one I could never have told you about unless I saw it with my own eyes, the birdbath sparrow, the addicted sparrow to cleanliness (like my wife, Rosa), instead of all that other stuff—which I ‘m sure he likes the peacefulness of the garden, and perhaps when I’m not around he may find a seed or two to eat on the ground, but I’m convinced, if you gave him the choice, he’d pick that birdbath every time over eating or sleeping.

No 706/ (11-01-2010)
Dedicated to the Yellow Sparrow, Rosa Peñaloza and Enrique H.

The Worse Presidency: Obama's

The Worse Presidency: Obama’s

I can’t keep count of the articles I’ve been writing on this guy (Hussein Obama), the most incompetent, incumbent president the United States has ever had, and never should have been a candidate for presidency—if it wasn’t for the whim of the media, he’d never would have made it. He not only threatens bringing America to her knees (which he has almost already: it will not take much more of him to do the job complete), but the world at large. Since we can’t change presidents, we can change congress—and hence, change the rules, and take away that magic wane he thinks he has. He’s an Arab in sheep’s clothing, not a Christian by far as he proclaims, and the biggest fraud put on stage to entice the American I’ve seen in my sixty-three years on this earth.

Dennis L. Siluk

Across the Street (1960s short story)

Across the Street
(The Jacket and the Battle Axe, 1960)


When I leaned against the old space heater, at Roger’s house, his father, of German stock, with that old Germanic accent, I saw Lindsey, she was humming one of the popular tunes of the day, a song called “I’m Just a Lonely Boy” (by Paul Anka), Roger was wearing an old WWII jacket that had that imprinted on the back of it. She was swinging her wide brimmed hips; her face was flushed likened to her rosy cheeks, the color of newly blossomed red roses, with dark—near black hair. I lived across the street, in my grandpa’s house with my brother Mike and mother, and we had moved in, perhaps 30-months earlier, it was the fall of 1960, and it was a chilly and wet fall at that. Lindsey’s hair fell in waves, over her shoulders. She could have been a farmer’s daughter—she seemed coy like one might be, she like me, but I was kind of just getting into the dating scene, and was more on the black leather jacket, and hood side of life than the farmer side. I liked Roger’s jacket too, Roger was kind of the cool guy in the neighborhood, Larry the tough guy, Doug the brute, and me, the poet, guitar player, and—oh well, I really didn’t know who I was yet.
The moment I first saw Lindsey, she and I took a liking for one another, I was kind of afraid of her, and of my fly away feelings, and I kind of turned away from her playing the hard guy. Roger was walking back and forth with that jacket on in this four-plex house, of which his father rented out one apartments; Ronnie, his younger brother, my age was there, and his little sister, along with a few of the boys, and Roger’s father of course all talking and just hanging out.
I was walking slowly, looking at the fire in the space heater, Roger’s father had a can on it, and it was to keep the house from becoming too dry—he said.
Lindsey kept looking back at me, every few minutes, and every few steps she made, I was standing close to the fire. The air was thick, it had been raining, the fall change over into winter, it was early afternoon, not much color to the sky, more drab gray than anything.
“I’ll trade this jacket for that battle axe you got, you’ve been wanting it for a while, right?” said Roger to me, and I nodded my head ‘Yes!” affirmed.
“What in tar-nation do you with a battle ax for?” asked his father. Roger giggled, “Well, Chick, do you want to trade or not?” I had bought of all things, a year prior this battle axe, at a hockshop, I was going to buy a trumpet, and the battleaxe got to me; I remember the proprietor saying after he wrapped it up in several newspapers, “Don’t tell anyone you bought it here,” I was just thirteen years old in October, I think this was November.
I had saved up $22-dollars, and I bought the battleaxe, and my mother said nearly exactly what Roger’s father said, “What the heck you goin’ to do now, with that thing, whatever it is!” And I repeated “Battleaxe, it’s a battleaxe, ma.”
I didn’t know what Lindsey was going to do, I didn’t care for her to take off I wasn’t giving her much attention though, but I had to make this deal with Roger, so I avoided talking with her, actually I guess I pushed her away, unknowing and unthinking at the time I did it, I had wished I didn’t but I guess I did. She didn’t hate me for it, but no matter what, thereafter, she wasn’t happy.
Just as Roger reached the corner of the road on Cayuga Street, I reached for his arm, “Okay,” I said, “I’ll trade, let me wear it, and I’ll go get the battleaxe!”
I looked at Lindsey across the street, she was on her way walking home—up Cayuga Street, westbound, and she was still frightened to speak to me—so she looked, kind of tightly holding her purse in her hands, nearly trembling. I could see her breath; she looked like a newly hurt rabbit.
“Well, get going Chick if you want to keep that jacket, get my battleaxe,” said Roger.
She continued to walk away, looking back only once, I tried to think of something to tell her, but I wanted that jacket so bad.


No: 699 (10-29-2010)

One Time Offer ($50,000 Rare Signatures for $25,000) by Rosa Pentaloza

One Time Offer
On Original Rare Signatures

(All or nothing!)


$50,000-dollars valued, at $25,000
Good Investment

1) Letter signed by Napoleon, 1806, worth $13,500 or more…from a gallery out of Paris certified as original…

2) Letter signed by Victor Hugo—worth $3000-dollars; from a gallery out of Paris, certified.

3) Card Signed by William Faulkner, 1949, valued at over $1000-dollars or more, from a reputable gallery in the USA…

4) Page of a book singed by Ernest Hemingway, valued at over $2000-dollars, framed with a 1960, photograph from a rare poetry book…from a reputable bookstore, not certified out of the USA…

5) A 5 x 3 card signed by Mark Twain, valued at $1400-dollars or more … certified by a reputable signature company out of the USA, certified

6) John L. Sullivan, original picture, and a paper signed by him, certified by the Mayor of the city…valued at $3000 to $4000 dollars.

7) H.P. Lovecraft, Post Card, worth $22,000 dollars, on the Internet… assured to be original by the rarest and most reputable bookstore in America…purchased by the owner and collector…the name will be given upon purchase…

8) Nathanial Hawthorn, official document signed in red Ink, 1850, when he was working at the Custom House, and writing “The Scarlet Letter,” he was said to have signed everything in red ink… valued at about $4000-dollars…




This is a one time sale, being sold by the wife of the author Dlsiluk, Rosa Peñaloza de Siluk, out of necessity… there will be no refuntds once purchased. For those interested, I would advise you to check other rare signatures out, and their cost on the internet… This is a $50,000-dollar deal for half: Cash on deliver. Rosa

The Late Spring (1985, A Short Story)

The Late Spring
((1985)(based on actual events))


He lay on a rug, under his car, it was wet from a long winter, and late spring, ice was still on parts of the ground, and a chill in the air, the car was in the driveway, and alongside of the house, a bit hard to see under the car, but you could see his large arms and the side of his body’s frame, his legs somewhat, and the back ends of his shoes—the soles, if you were standing back by the car’s bumper—that is; he had some tools on his lap, and the car was being held by two jacks, one on the bumper in back of the car, the other under the axle, and he had two bricks under the front of the tires, so the car would not shift forward.
“Betty,” he yelled, and she came out of the house, “hand me the wrench, the one on the side of the toolbox,” he asked.
“The biggest one Jerry?” she questioned.
“It’s the only one there,” he told her, she had been drinking a bit, and he had now stopped for two years of his drinking, now near fifty-years old, thus, she perhaps was not seeing clear—he pondered, or she simply wanted to be sure.
A week ago all the trees had started to form a little green on them. The streets slush had turned into water, and was appearing to drain downward, perhaps all the way to the Mississippi, a few miles west of their home. In a short while, the full blossom of spring would branch out, the winter breezes were pert near nil. There was even a few flowers that started to sprout, from over across the street in Oakland Cemetery.
“The sky looks like it might rain this afternoon,” she told Jerry, perhaps thinking he should quite for the day, he had been working on replacing that transmission all morning long, it was close to noon.

“Were is dad?” asked Cindy, the oldest daughter, now seventeen, in the house, had just come back from the library, didn’t even notice her father was under the car, it was the weekend.
“He’s working on the car again dear, putting that damn transmission in alone, I told him to wait for his brother, Jim, but you know how he is, now or never.”
The front door was opened. Cindy dropped her library books, and raced out to say good morning to her father, yet it was close to noon. When she got to him, she could hear him clamber a bit with the transmission, trying to push it in place.
“Now what!” Jerry said, unknowing his daughter was by the car.
“You talking to me dad?” she asked.
“No, of course not, I can’t even see you,” he then tried to look out and up, as she smiled looking down at him, “It’s just this damn transmission, can’t keep it in place to do anything with it, and the car shakes every time I try to push it upward.”
“Are you going to have lunch, mom made a stew, it’s just about ready?”
“Not until I get the end of this transmission placed in right.” Jerry said.
“I just thought I come and let you know.”
“Oh, I’ll be out in a little while dear, go ahead and eat without me.”
“All right, then,” said Cindy and she went to have lunch with her mother.
“Aha…!” Jerry sighed with heat and effort, pushing this and that in place, as the car shifting and started rocking and Jerry getting more frustrated.
“Damn you, I’m missing my lunch,” he said as if he was talking to the car, or the transmission—directly, personifying it as if it was a human, then there was a growling sound, a deep growling sound, and Cindy heard it, and came out thinking her father was angry; Betty behind her.
“Shhh!” Betty said to Cindy as they snuck up to the car, putting her hand into her daughter’s hand, “Don’t make a sound we’ll see how he’s doing first before we pester him to come and have lunch, you know how he can get.”
“The foods going to get cold, we should just tell him to come, and work on the car when Jim gets home,” said Cindy, seemingly wanting to spend a few minutes with her father.
Betty stood next to the car, saw Jerry’s hand laying to the side, “What’s the matter mom,” said Cindy, not hearing any sound.
“I think you dad’s sleeping,” she replied, knowing it wouldn’t be the first time he fell to sleep under a car.
“Boo!” said Cindy, as if to wake her father up, but there was no sound.
“Boo!!” Betty said, even louder.
They both squatted down, to knee level to look under the car, waiting for him to wake up, say something, then they noticed the car was a half foot lower, and the transmission had fallen out of place and onto his chest, ants were crawling on his face near his mouth, and he wasn’t moving—or breathing, his face was pale to white, and then almost simultaneously, they both started to scream, clutching one another, and out of the house, one of their other fourteen children came running, “What’s the matter?” she asked.
Betty picked herself up, “Go into the house, your father had an accident, go and sit down in the house, I’ll be there in a while,” she told her this without looking back at the car, she told Cindy “Go in the house and wait with her,” holding her hands to her breast, “stay indoors, until I came in to talk to you all,” trying to get her composure.
“Is he really dead, mom?” Cindy cried.
“Yes,” said her mother, “I’ll be in there in a minute, a long minute.”


No: 698/10-28-2010