Larry Buege

Bear Creek Larry Buege

Bear Creek in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is best described as a cross between The Little House on the Prairie's Walnut Grove and Garrison Keilor's Lake Woebegone. The year is 1923 and prohibition is in full swing. The Ladies' Aid Society from the local church plans to close the Snake Pit Saloon.

The town's influential men meet every

morning at Barker's Hardware and Feed Store, where they plan strategies to

protect their moonshine from their meddling wives. In their spare time, they

organize MACHO nights (Men Advocating Completely Hedonic Outings) in which they

play poker and drink moonshine while hiding from their spouses.

In this rural paradise arrives a quixotic

Methodist pastor. The Rev. Hooper was apprehensive about his assignment to the local

church, feeling it was a vindictive appointment in revenge for Rudy's

disparaging comments concerning the Bishop's wife. He had expected a

run-down parsonage in some God forsaken land filled with tsetse flies and

cannibals, not an idyllic community such as Bear Creek. The Bishop didn't

mention the previous three pastors were weaving baskets in downstate

sanitariums. Nor did the bishop warn Rudy about the obsessive-compulsive beaver

that came with the parsonage. Rudy would discover this soon enough.