ANGORA- Last Thursday, the Facebook page for the South Switch Bar and Grill in Angora was filled with pictures and comments dating back years. By early Sunday evening, everything, even the site’s profile pictures, was gone, the site stripped clean in the aftermath of an incendiary post targeting COVID-19 restrictions that was posted Thursday.
A mobile phone screen shot of the offending post obtained by the Timberjay, with a time stamp of 2:29 p.m. Thursday, immediately takes aim at “the clueless politicians in St. Paul who are doing their very best to destroy the ‘rocks and cows.’”
The phrase “rocks and cows” comes from a statement made several years ago by now-Gov. Tim Walz in which he referred to a map depicting Republican-leaning rural areas and reportedly said that mostly all that was in those areas was “rocks and cows.” Rural conservatives at odds with Walz have adopted the phrase as a rallying cry.
“The South Switch Bar & Grill is open for business,” the post continues. “If you feel you need to wear a mask for your health please do not come to our restaurant. We will not serve alcohol to any person that hides their identity. Our constitution is the very protection from ‘internet Karens’. If you are sick, ill, democrat/liberal…stay home! We cannot meet your Socialist demands. If you cannot be a reasonable human being … please learn how to cook, clean, and stay home! We are not here to support delusions or mental defects. Please consult your therapist for clarification!”
The post also complained about “poor mannered children” and encouraged people to “Have a nice day and be responsible human beings.”
Curtis Dehn, who works at the South Switch, was contacted both Thursday and Tuesday by the Timberjay, and steadfastly denies that anyone associated with the restaurant put up the post.
“To the best of my knowledge, absolutely not,” Dehn said. “How it got there, that we don’t know. This is not something the South Switch would ever put on Facebook. If you want to lose business, that would be a good way to go about it.”
Dehn said that the restaurant doesn’t post anything of a personal, political, or religious nature on the restaurant page.
“Race, religion, color, creed, everybody is welcome here,” he said. “This is not a representation of our business.”
While the original post had been deleted by late Thursday afternoon, another Facebook user had attached a screen shot of the offending post to other South Switch posts dating back to mid-2019, and numerous additional users and customers were hotly disputing Dehn’s claim that the site had been hacked. The post was consistent, some said, with past posts that they alleged had been scrubbed from the site, and therefore believed the restaurant had posted it. The Timberjay could not confirm the existence of any additional posts.
Fallout
Some commenters, who believe that restaurant staff may have been responsible for the Facebook post, said they would never dine at the South Switch again because of the sentiments expressed.
Several people claimed Dehn would have received a notification from Facebook if someone had hacked his account, and suggested he post that message to verify his claim. However, a check of Facebook’s help section reveals that such messages are not automatic – a user has to go into their Facebook settings and manually choose to receive them. An account set up by the Timberjay to verify this process revealed that the default setting for receiving notifications of logins from Facebook is off, just as described.
Following up on a suggestion that he check his logon activity, Dehn said he did so.
“I went through the account log-ins and checked the locations,” he said. “I had a couple of logins that were from the Britt area, and one from somewhere in Chicago.”
Dehn wasn’t certain how those could happen but did suggest they could be a result of the fact that he uses his mobile phone to access his account and update the page.
“I don’t know if that’s just how the phone updates,” he said.
By Friday, many of the South Switch’s posts had been taken down, a fact not lost on some visitors to the page who commented on their absence.
Dehn said he had identified “between five and seven fake accounts” that had been used to repost screen shots of the message, and that he had banned them from the page and reported them to Facebook. The Timberjay independently confirmed one account making posts as an actual Facebook user, and identified a second account that posted to the page that had no personal information and no pictures. That user reposted the screen shot and also provided a link to a post on Reddit, where the screen shot had been shared.
Additional postings were found on the South Switch listings on popular review sites Trip Adviser and Yelp.
Meanwhile, Dehn worked through the weekend to take down everything else on the South Switch Facebook page, until the page was virtually empty on Sunday afternoon.
“It started with all the community posts and then got into the bar posts, so we had to delete everything,” he said.
However, later Sunday night, two signs of life on the restaurant’s page were to be found in the “visitor’s posts” sidebar, including one that said they had seen the controversial post and would be coming to the South Switch soon in a sign of support.

Editor’s Note: The Timberjay posted an earlier version of this story online late Thursday afternoon, July 30, but removed it later that day based on reader feedback that the story neglected to report details that called into question the claim that the site had been hacked. The Timberjay strives for accuracy and fairness in reporting and it was determined the story, as initially posted online, did not meet the newspaper’s standards. After further investigation and reporting, the story has since been reposted at timberjay.com and published in this week’s edition.