St. Remedius Radio: “The Last Dangerous Minyard”

Alternatives to the Local Farmer’s Market

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

Of the many things rare and unusual in the city of Dallas, traces and remnants of defunct grocery stores do not qualify. As one of the largest potential markets in all of North America, exceeded only by the ongoing grocery store war in Dead Horse, Alaska (since corporate warfare is not limited by the Geneva Convention, the Diet of Worms, the Shadow Proclamation, and Bunkie’s Rotating Holiday, that war moved past chemical weapons and left most of the area barren from nucleonic bombardment), grocery retail empires rose, fell, collapsed from within, crumbled from subversion and sabotage, and imploded from leadership incompetence. By the beginning of the Twenty-First Century Gregorian, the greater Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex resembled Fifteenth-Century Rome, with grand vistas and artifacts from the Grocery Wars stripped for parts, refitted for new retail, or left derelict, but rarely demolished and rebuilt anew.

Such was the case with the Minyard chain, a stalwart ally and subsequent satellite nation of the great Tom Thumb Empire in its wars with the Kroger Regime. At its height, Minyard successfully repelled invasions and depredations from intended usurpers such as Food Lion, Fresh Approach, and Albertson’s, but succumbed in an annexation and its territories consigned to the eventual victors. Minyard castles were abandoned, its fields sown with salt, its peoples cast out or assimilated. By 2020, the name “Minyard” followed those of Hapshetsut and Akhenaton as archeological curiosities, usually as the occasional shopping cart abandoned in area creekbeds.

Except one.

For 26 days a month, The Last Minyards is a closed and barricaded mess, its parking lots and cart corrals empty and its lot lights out extinguished. Every other weekend, though, St. Elmo’s fire envelops the curbs and lightpoles, the air above the parking lots pulse with strange and terrible balloons, and the cladding on the doors comes down to reveal the last great exonormal market in the greater North Texas area.

The rules are simple: no drugs, no weapons, no parasites, physical or otherwise. Individuals of any species or metabolic condition are free to come and go as they please. Any talk about politics or school houses, and the utterer is teleported to the deepest wilds of Flower Mound to suffer for their transgressions. Other than that, just about everything goes. Like spells and their reversal, visual emetics, medicinal cheeses, microwire Kirlian simulators, spellstone charging and repair, rebuilt and reconstituted relics from a thousand worlds and times, holy and unholy charcoal…as well as books, stones, and obscure vinyl that the buyers didn’t know they needed until they saw them.

After the disappearance of St. Remedius Medical College, The Last Minyards continued on, occasionally allowing communication with otherwise missing and uncooperative former faculty and staff. Contrary to rumor, the shopping plaza in which it is located will NOT be developed into yet another hipster playground: the rumor that the organizers have blackmail material on the property owner so brutal that its release would snuff the sun, though, is absolutely true, and something threatened every two weeks.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

artifacts medicinal cheeses St. Remedius Radio The Last Minyard