Welcome to a very special BONUS episode of Minnesota Unknown!

This is a companion piece to our first episode, which covered a bugle-playing chimney sweep named Skunky Norton who was a beloved local celebrity in St. Paul at the turn of the 20th century. You don’t necessarily have to have heard our first episode to understand this one, though we do hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t already.

Our original edit of the first episode was about twice as long, mostly because we went on a long digression into the broader history of chimneysweeps. We talked about the evolution of the profession from its origins in the 1500s through the 20th century, and looked at regional differences between chimney sweeping in Britain, the US ...