The House That Jack Built

Tennessee got a bad rap with me because it was the place where I discovered I was broke. So I had to try extra hard to make it fun. This began by going to the Jack Daniels Distillery, of course!

If you ever go to Tennessee, I highly recommend hitting up Lynchburg. Well, okay, maybe not Lynchburg - it’s a dry town (a dry town with the most famous whiskey factory ever!) and there’s really not much to do except buy Jack Daniels souvenirs, but the distillery itself is really interesting. And it’s FREE! Screw “love”, “free” is my new favorite word. There is a museum there, where you can learn all about the early days of Jack Daniels, and then the factory tour is just as awesome. The guide will take you inside the distillery and let you stick your face inside the fermentation vats! You could get drunk on the smell alone, it’s very strong. Actually, some little boys tagging along with their parents had their shirt collars pulled up over their noses for most of the tour. Each new room we walked into, they would sigh, “EWWWW, it stinks!” Personally, I thought it smelled awesome, like maple syrup and whiskey soaked up with warm cornbread. I wanted to scoop a fingerful of the mash and taste it, but I didn’t feel like paying for a full 5,000 gallon vat of ruined Jack Daniels. Jameson, maybe, but not JD.

Some interesting facts about Jack Daniels:

- He stood only 5'2" tall and wore a size 6 shoe. There is an Italian marble statue of Jack Daniels in the lobby/museum of the visitor’s center, but that statue stands 5'8" tall and wears a size 9 shoe - because a size 6 shoe would not be able to support the weight of Italian marble.

- He died of an infection that started when he was trying to open a safe in his office and couldn’t. He had gotten to work early and the man with the key would not be there for hours, so Jack kicked the safe. In doing so, he broke a toe, which became infected, causing him to lose his whole leg, and eventually he died of blood poisoning stemming from that injury. The safe is still in his office to this day. The moral of the story - don’t bother getting to work early, it’ll kill you!

- Jack Daniels started apprenticing as a whiskey maker at the age of seven and bought his first distillery when he was only 13!

- He would only allow 99 bushels of corn to be processed each day to escape a higher tax bracket. If he had processed 100 or more, the distillery would have had to file as a different type of business.

I loved the tour! The only thing that made me sad was all the graffiti on the barrels in the warehouse from other visitors to the factory. It’s like, must we all know that Karisha and Nicole wuz here, ‘02? Or that Mickey loves Angela? I mean, a bathroom wall I can allow, but these are barrels of whiskey. That’s almost a sacrilege.

The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share in its joy. Pr 14:10

That late summer rain tapped on the window like a timer. Now I just write letters to you that I never send to a home I was never a part of, I just press them into pages of Bibles in drawers of cheap motel rooms - Proverbs is my favorite - and write stories about the people who will find them months from now. And I play this game where I pretend that you pretend you give a damn. But just like leaves in autumn that show their true colors right before they die, you crystallized everything into shades of ruby and sienna when you slid into car, not bothering to look up as you mumbled goodbye.

"There's Something Exhilarating About Failure..."

The next morning I awoke in the driver’s seat to a pounding on my hood. It was Richard, holding a steaming mug of coffee. "Right on time!" I mumbled.
"I told ye I’d give ya a wake-up call!" he giggled.

He left for work and I braved the sulphur showers. It was bad. There were a few times while under the water that I thought I would throw up. I obsessively smelled myself as I dried off, my skin, my hair, my hands, then marinated in perfume. I felt like Mr. Way Too Much Cologne Wearer from the Bud Light commercials, but I’d rather smell like an overpowering lavender bush than rotten eggs. Later on, getting a haircut in the town beauty salon, I asked the nice, large woman if my hair smelled like sulphur.
"No, actually, I was just thinking it smelled very good!" She was so sweet, even sweeter if she was lying.

I did errands, laundry, got the haircut - it was really fun! The sulphur shower had turned my silver ring a tawny shade of tarnish, and I had to spend seven dollars on polish for it. Still, the man at the hardware store was very kind, explaining the differences between the brands, and let me back into the warehouse to polish my ring in the sink, "to make sure it works". I caused a stir at the laundromat as everyone laughed when I opened my laptop. The repairman, there to fix a dryer, asked an old woman, "Hey, where’s your laptop computer?" The stylist at the hair salon told me about her 24-year-old son, how she told him to go out and get him a nice wife and give her some grandbabies. When he came home after spending $5,000 on a bronco horse, she told him, "You got the wrong thing, I said a wife!" He said, "Momma, this was cheaper than a wife!"

After my whirlwind tour of downtown Jasper, I went back to the campsite to be boring and write. While perched at the picnic table, Mr. Ed, Marie’s husband, rode over on a golf cart. He is 81, with a sparse patch of black hair atop his head, and four yellowed teeth spread through the front of his mouth. His smile was so sweet as he stopped the cart and said, "You kin come over an’ visit any time you want. We’re just sittin’ on the porch."
"Okay, thanks! Do you mean right now?"
"Anytime."
As he drove away I marveled again at the kindness of every person I’d met in Arkansas. I decided to stay another night.

I headed over to Ed and Marie’s a few minutes later. They gave me a warm welcome as I walked past the various four-wheelers, careful not to trip on Bailey, their Jack Russell terrier under my feet. "That was fast!" Ed said from an easy chair set on the porch. "You wanna beer?"
"Sure, thank you."

Marie came out onto the porch after hanging laundry on the line. She put an empty cardboard box next to the easy chairs for empty cans. The porch was comfy, if cluttered, with end tables set strategically around stacked with random items - magazines, books, broken blenders. It was as though someone had set up a living room outside. It was awesome! They told me about their little plot of land, how they’d lived here for more than thirty years. I told them about my misconception of Arkansas and how pleasantly surprised I was by every aspect of it.

Their grandson, Ty, was milling around, a sharp kid with a thick Southern accent, white blonde hair and blue eyes. He’s only seven years old and can drive an ATV better than most adults. He has his own mid-size Honda four-wheeler, which he still looks tiny on. He easily chimed in to our conversation every now and then, in between playing with Bailey. Richard popped over after awhile, before leaving to help someone move. It was just like when I was in Indiana with Frank, sitting on the porch with a cooler full of pop-tops at 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, cracking one open and saying, "Yup." Just like in ‘King of the Hill’.

Ed and Marie’s son called them at one point. "You’re early," Marie said, looking at the caller ID. Ed leaned over to me. "Our son calls us every day at the same time. I guess he’s early today." I blushed the color of the peonies in the garden when Ed took the phone and told his son, "We got a girl from New York stayin’ in the back and she sho’ is pretty! She’s gonna move to Mill Creek, you just watch! She’s gonna lahk it here so much she’s gonna stay."

I excused myself after about an hour and a half, before the beer made me too sleepy. A couple hours later, deep into a David Isay book and a pot of instant mashed potatoes, Richard and Ty rode up on their ATV’s. "We’s goin’ out ridin’, you wan’ come?" I didn’t go, Ty was antsy and I didn’t want to make him wait while I finished eating and did dishes. I heard shots up the mountain and figured they were shooting at armadillos again. About an hour later they came bounding back down the hill, as I was putting up my tent. "We brought you a present!" Ty shouted, standing up on his four-wheeler, smiling like an imp.
I believed him, like an idiot. "Really, sweetheart? Thank yo—" Then I saw Richard drive up with a huge grin, holding a dead snake with a hole in its head. It had obviously been shot in the face. It was about five feet long, a common black snake.

I was pissed! Black snakes aren’t poisonous, there was no reason to kill it!

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! THAT SNAKE IS A GOOD SNAKE!!!!"
They laughed hysterically. "But it was in the middle of the path!"
"SO WHAT?!"
"So! Girls walk back there a lot. And they git scared of snakes."
That made no sense to me. "So! Girls get scared of mice, too, and those snakes eat mice!"
Ty attempted to be the voice of reason. "They’d git more scared of snakes than mice!" His accent made it sound like "mahce".
Richard was still laughing, overjoyed at my reaction. "Get that away from me," I said. "You’re disgusting. I hope that snake haunts you."
He promised to give me another wake up call the next morning before driving back to his cabin.

Later on, he came back to apologize. "Ah’m sorry Ah upset ya. It’s jist what we do here, we hunt. Here, I brought ya some real presents." He handed me a blue mesh trucker hat with a picture of a tractor trailer on it. Blue letters said, "Pittman Hauling", with a phone number. "That’s my business. It’s got mah number on it, case you ever wanna call." He also handed me a large print of an intricate drawing of a barn set in a woodland scene. It was beautiful, and I told him so. "Thank ye. Mah brother drew it, he’s an artist. Well, he’s also a lawyer, but he likes to draw." It was pretty sweet of him to do that, just because I was upset about a snake.
He woke me up like clockwork the next morning, right at 7:00. He gave me a hug and told me to keep in touch.

Mr. Ed rode up on his golf cart as I was finishing loading the car. "You just come on back whenever you want to, alright? Make me a promise."
"Of course I will," I said, giving him a big hug and kiss on the cheek.
He blushed just like I had the day before. "Awww, you’re welcome back anytime. You’re very kind. And sweet." He smiled his big yellow gap-tooth smile that I love and rode back to the breezy spot at the foot of the mountain to read.

I poked my head in to the house to say goodbye to Miss Marie. She was ironing the clothes that had dried on the line the day before. I hugged her as she told me to hurry back to Mill Creek. "Arkansas sure likes you!" she said.
"I sure love it, too."

I got back in the car and staggered up the gravel hill, hugging those same hair pin turns as I made my way into Jasper for breakfast. Jasper had turned out to be so inexpensive - 75 cent washers and dryers, 20 cent ATM fees, and ten-dollar haircuts! - that I figured I could splurge on breakfast at the Ozark café, the little restaurant in town. I got eggs, bacon, toast and coffee for three dollars, it was excellent. Heading up to the register, I made the waitress ad cook go cross-eyed when I told them I’d never had sweet tea. The cook, a sweet lady with blonde hair under a baseball cap, wasted no time in pouring me a small cup. It was so sweet, she didn’t have to do that!

And so it went through Arkansas, all the way into Tennessee. I loved every minute of being there - what’s interesting is that I’ve spoken with a few other people who live outside of Arkansas since then, even friends of mine, and they’ve all said Arkansas is their favorite state. By the time I got to Memphis, however, it was swamp-ass hot. I had tried to look cute but the heat made sure I was a sweaty wreck, bangs sticking to my forehead and my jeans pasted to my legs from inside. I also checked my account balance - I had $306.76. To last me til god knows when. Suddenly, the trip wasn’t fun anymore.

Knowing my funds were that low made me absolutely panic. I skipped dinner, figuring I had filled the tank and that was the only money I could spend. I couldn’t find a campground and I ended up locked in a cheap motel room in Bolivar, TN, crying my eyes out and cursing myself for spending those five extra dollars on breakfast, or springing for the motel room in Kansas or whatever other stupid money I had spent stupidly. I could only beat my own ass for punishment by making myself do the advanced, 1-hour segment of my work out DVD three times.

The next day was a little better. I felt a little more in control having slept on the fear of failure through the night. A Patton Oswalt quote kept running through my head: "There’s something exhilarating about failure because, for a second, you were shooting for just that." It’s true - I was shooting for this. I was banking on waking up in a cold sweat, knowing that I would have to choose between filling my tummy or my gas tank... I just didn’t know it would be this hard.

The only remaining evidence of Dahle, Nebraska, annexed by Milford decades ago. 

Nebraska's version of OCC - Outlaw Cycle Chuckwagon. 

The welcome board at Roth's Restaurant in Milford, Nebraska. I got a snapshot of this three years ago when I drove from New York to Los Angeles, and now I have a digital one! 

Joke Amanda Told Me That Made Me Laugh Out Loud In A Coffee Shop And Cause A Scene:

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?


A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

These next three shots are of the sunset over the Ozarks in Jasper, AR. 

 

 

Richard, who is awesome. Don't call him a redneck! 

Billie The Cow, right before my face smacked into her flank. I so rock.... 

"ARE YOU READY, SISTER?!"

I made it east through Kansas on I-70 to Missouri, passing completely through that state and keeping close to the Kansas border on Rt. 71 South. I drove through Kansas City and was going to stop, but decided not to, trying to make good time. In St. Louis, I stopped at an ice cream place called Braum’s that actually ended up being a grocery store as well, and very reasonably priced. I got two apples, a bag of hot dog buns, and a big bag of broccoli, carrots, and snap peas for $2.75! It was awesome! The other thing I noticed is that everyone was very nice, not like the suspicious stares I got in Nebraska. People said hello and asked how you are doing. I really enjoyed it, and thought back to the days of living in New York City, when my friends and I thought if a stranger was cordial it must mean they want something from you, or they are mentally disturbed. Nowadays, it’s how I judge my liking of a certain state or town - the nicer the people, the more I love it.

I also stumbled on a Goodwill store that was featuring a sale - everything in the store for 95 cents! I bought two sweaters for those Wyoming nights! Well, whenever I get there. Still, you can’t beat that deal. While paying, I asked the sweet cashier, "What’s the deal with Branson? On the map it’s a small town but I’ve been seeing signs all over for it and been getting emails for the past two years telling me to come there. What’s the fuss about?"
She looked almost embarrassed for a split second. "It’s not small, it’s getting really big. There’s been a lot of money spent to redo it, like, millions of dollars. The state is trying to build tourism there."
"Why Branson?"
"Um, I don’t know."

I was about 150 miles away and still couldn’t drive 15 feet without coming across another billboard advertising different shows and hotels. Branson seemed to be the Las Vegas of the Mountains, but a cheesy, watered-down, family-friendly one. No gambling, no sex shows, but it still had it’s own "strip" and featured tons and tons of shows. Many were bluegrass bands, gospel and country singers, although no one I had heard of. There were comedy billboards too, plastered with pictures of the hokiest-looking men I’d ever seen - guys with huge surprised looks on their faces, mouths wide, wearing overalls and fishing hats, some with plastic axes or spitting flowers. It almost seemed as though they were going for a Redneck Vaudeville style show. "Remind me to miss that," I reminded myself.

Speaking of Branson comedy, Yakov Smirnoff has his own huge theater built on the outskirts of town, just for himself, featuring a huge mural of him visible from the highway. In other words, Yakov Smirnoff is the Celine Dion of Branson, Missouri. Now, maybe I’m being to harsh, but that whole hokey-pokey comedy thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I like my comedians irreverent and subversive. I’m a Dane Cook girl. A Zach Galifianakis girl. A Lewis Black girl. And since we’re on the subject of Lewis Black, I will quote him to illustrate my experience driving to, through, and away from Branson, MO: "I had to put my fist in my mouth to keep my teeth from reversing and chewing out the back of my skull!"

71 finally got me through Branson and dumped me out into the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, also known as the Ozarks. I have to say, I was quite pleasantly surprised by Arkansas in general. I was honestly expecting it to be a bunch of hillbillies with shotguns and bushy beards yelling, "Get off mah land!", but what I found were some of the most wonderful people - and beautiful landscape - I’ve ever come across. I wanted to find a campsite in a town called Buffalo - my map said there was one - but the sun was setting quickly and I couldn’t wait any longer.

After pulling in to a few campsites that were closed for the season, wondering if I could just strategically hide my car behind a bush (I was scared of being ticketed for trespassing) I kept driving down Rt. 7. It’s really a gorgeous drive that cuts right in and around the mountains. It was raining, so fog clung to many of the trees and made seeing the beautiful views past the edge of the road difficult, but every so often a clear patch would offer a glimpse of miles of pine lining the Buffalo River. I also saw two smashed armadillos, which I didn’t realize lived in Arkansas. Driving the hairpin turns on wet roads made going any faster than 30 mph difficult, which made the native Arkansasians (Arkansese? Arkansasoids?) a little ticked at me, but not as ticked as they were when I braked and made a hard left into the driveway of the Mill Creek Campground, the only place open in all of the Ozarks, it seemed.

Two log cabins sat to the left of the driveway, a broken-down double-wide trailer to the right.
No signs pointed a way to an office, so I just kept pulling in, over the slick gravel "bridge" that was really just a road in a creek, with a pipe through it to let the creek flow past. Five fat ducks sat in the middle of the bridge and honked loudly as I roused them from their places. Later, I apologized by feeding them two of my hot dog buns, which the females ate from my hand. Past the ducks, I pulled into a large open field ringed by huge oak and pine trees. Picnic tables were scattered along the treeline and a stone building, painted white, sat towards the back of the field.

As I grabbed my purse to find the office, a wrinkled old woman drove over the bridge on a golf cart, accompanied by a blond, middle-aged man with a thick mustache. I spoke first. "Hi, where do I pay?"
"Raht here!" the man giggled. "I’m Richard! An’ this here’s Miss Marie, you pay her."
"Great!"
They showed me the bathrooms, the showers, and the electric outlets. "Now," Richard warned, "they’s sulphur showers, so they maht smell a lil’ funny to ye, y’know, like rotten eggs or whatnot, but they’s alraht."
"Oh, crap... um, am I gonna smell like that when I finish showering?"
"Awww, no, not’a-tall! It just evaporates, it’s fahn" Their accents were very thick, making it almost hard to understand them.

They went back to their cabins, my six-dollar check in hand, and I began the nightly debate with myself over whether to pitch a tent or sleep in the car. I also mused at the gorgeous sunset that was exploding over the treeline, clouds glowing gold and pink against the grey of the passing storm. Right as I chose the car, because it had been raining heavily, Richard drove up on yet another ATV. "I was ‘bout to go check on some cattle, you wan’go for a rahd?"
"Uh, sure!" I grabbed my camera as he rooted around in the back of the ATV for a can-coolie.
"Here y’go," he said, handing me a Busch Light.

We drove up the hill on a shoddy path, as he told me, "Be on the lookout for deer an’ stuff, they’s errywhere!" Right as he said that, we noticed two tawny fawns standing stock-still in a pile of brush. As we rounded a corner, going higher up the hill, a large doe crossed our path, standing between us and the babies. The way Richard got excited about everything, the pure joy in his laugh, made me giggle too. "Awww, look’a them babies!" he squealed. His accent made it sound like "bauybees".

About a half-mile higher on the hill, around a turn, we came into a cow pasture dotted with trees. Thirty-four head of cattle did their best to ignore us as we maneuvered through the sparse trees and hooves. Two belonged to Richard. "That there’s my ol’ Billie!" he said, pointing out a tan and white cow. "You wan’ take a picture?"
"Sure!" I said, hopping off the ATV and up to the animal. She took off walking at a fast pace.
"You kin chase’er!" Richard called.
"Um, okay!" I hollered back, uncertainly, awkwardly tailing poor Billie.
"You jist watch out ‘cause sometahm she’ll stop on a –"
Billie stopped. I was listening to Richard and not looking. And thus I walked face first into a cow.
"On a dime?" I asked, rubbing my cheek.
Richard laughed so hard I thought he’d fall out of the vehicle. "Weeee-heeee! Dat dere was ‘bout the funniest dang thing I err’seen!"
"Well," I said, climbing back onto the four-wheeler. "Glad I could be of service!"

We followed the path out of the trees and into a large open pasture. A huge white horse was grazing just past the treeline, hidden by brush. When we came through the fence, she reared up, whinnied loudly, and ran off into the dusky meadow. I gasped; it was so beautiful. Richard laughed as I asked, "Can I ride her?"
"She’s ‘bout thirty years old. Not even mahn. She b’long to the man who live up the hill, I cut his hay for’im. He’s the one that owns the rest’a them cattle. I’ll take you up’ta his place later. He’s on vacation raht now." (At least I think that’s what Richard said. His accent was so thick it made him sound like Boomhauer from ‘King of the Hill’.)

We drove through the meadow, passing the bull and the new calves. Some of the calves were quite curious and walked in front of the ATV, sniffing us and watching us closely. As we traversed the field, Richard said, "I’ma take you down’ta the bluff on Cottonmouth Creek." We crested a small cliff and drove down the bank of a dried-out creek bed.
Ever the ignoramus, I asked, "Why is it called Cottonmouth Creek? Do people smoke a lot of pot back here or something?"
"Nah, it’s ‘cause all the cottonmouths that live down here."
"Cottonmouths?"
"Y’know. Water moccasins." (A snake just as deadly as a rattlesnake.)
"Hey, great!" I said.
It was nearly dark when we parked and Richard grabbed two beers from the cooler. We stood there for a good half-hour, just talking. It was awesome. He was kind and not at all creepy.

Some memorable points from our conversation:

"Are you much into politics?" I asked him.
He laughed. "Awww, man. I just started votin’ about two, three years ago. One a the state politicians told me I should run’fer office! But I ain’t much into all that. But I did get into it wit’ him a little. He was comin’ round, tryin’ to get votes and asked me what I thought about taxes. I tol’ him just what I thought - see, Tyson Chicken is an Arkansas-based company. But they’s runnin’ all over the country, registerin’ their trucks and most’a their machines in other states, like Oklahoma. That’s bullshit! They just don’t wanna pay the Arkansas taxes, an’ in the meantime cain’t nobody make a dime here. I tol’ that man that, and he said he’d see what he could do about it. Then he told me I should run’fer office! I ‘bout laughed in his face! Kin you ‘magine a hillbilly like me in the state house?"
"Maybe. There’s one in the White House right now."
"Awwww, yeah, I ain’t much for the president."
"Me neither. But what did you think about Clinton?"
"Well, he’s from right down the road. Before he moved to Hope, he lived up this way. He went to my junior high."
"Oh, did you have classes together?"
"Girl, how old you tryin’ to make me? I meant when he was runnin’ fer gov’ner, he came to the school an’ answered questions from us kids."
"Oh. Sorry."

At one point he finished a sentence with, "I’m just’a ol’ hillbilly."
"Really? You consider yourself a hillbilly? You don’t find that offensive?"
"Naw, not really. You kin call me a hillbilly, you kin call me a good ol’ boy, or a mountain man. The one word I don’t like a’tall is ‘redneck’. Don’t call me a redneck."
"Why not that one?"
"It gits a bad name. Jeff Foxworthy’s ‘bout the worst thang t’ever happen to Arkansas. Makin’ us look lahk a bunch’a dang fools. So I don’t like ‘redneck’. It means stupid."
"Agreed."

We finally pulled out of the creek bed and back up into the pasture. Richard put the parking brake on and got up out of the driver’s seat. "Get up, now, girlie," he said.
I looked at him quizzically. "Where are we goin’?" Two hours in the South and already the accent was rubbing off on me.
"Wherever you want to. You gone’ drive."
"Okay!"

He showed me how to work the gears and soon we were barreling off into the pasture, with only the light of the gibbous moon and a set of headlights to guide us. "I gotta New York woman drivin’ my Polaris! I’ma be the talk’a the dag-gum county!" I noticed how he never cursed, he only said "dag-gum." "Pull up here on this hill and turn ‘round," he said. "I wan’ show you these mountains." The Ozarks rose like darkened breasts, stretching from east to west under the now-starry sky. A fog was rolling in, coating the horizon with haze. I told Richard about my run-in with the owl the night before and he told me ghost stories about the spirits who lived in the surrounding woods. For once, I wasn’t scared, thanks to a "How To Deal With Ghosts" cell phone pep talk from my good friend, John, back home.

"This place is very haunted. We’re sittin’ right on the Trail of Tears. Lots of Cherokee here. Sometimes you kin still find arrowheads if you’re tillin’ the hayfield. An’ right down there, see that space between them trees? One man shot another man there years back over one foot a’land. The man’s fence was one foot over the line, so the first man shot’im."

We drove up another crest in the pasture. I was getting sleepy and wanted to go back, but Richard was anxious to show me the hay barn. "Awww, you gotta see the new tractor! Come on, this’a way!" The barn smelled of sweet hay, freshly cut and dewy in the humid air. Sure enough, a new John Deere was parked square in the middle of the barn, surrounded by a half-circle of hay bales stacked to the ceiling.
I acted polite. "Wow, you’re right, that’s a nice tractor. Okay, ready to head back?" I had to go to the bathroom.
"Awwww, naw, you gotta sit in it! Come on, climb up there! It’s still got that new tractor smell!"
It did.

Pulling away from the barn, Richard wanted to drive. "There’s one more place I gotta show ya ‘fore we go back, alraht?"
"Okay," I mumbled, trying not to pee my pants.

However, it turned out to be worth it. Richard maneuvered the four-wheeler down into another bend in the creek, but this one was not dried-up. "See the minnas?" he asked, pointing to a crag in the shallow limestone. The ATV’s headlights illuminated the tiny fish darting back and forth, making them look like floating shards of silver. The creek was divided in parts by higher levels of limestone, making pools. "That part over there’s ‘bout 10 or 12 feet deep, we cain’t go over there!" Richard told me. "But watch this!" He pulled the vehicle strategically to a point by one of the limestone juts. "Put yer seatbelt awn."
I obliged.

Then he shouted "ARE YOU READY, SISTER?!" and gunned it through the creek, laying on the gas pedal and making the Polaris bounce over the beds and send huge plumes of water in every direction, again illuminated by the headlights. I screamed, delighted, and Richard laughed his belly laugh. "You a crazy thang!" he shouted, turning a tight donut in the center of one of the pools.
"Me?! You’re the one drivin’!"
"You’re right!" he hollered, taking off just as fast in the other direction, soaking our jeans and spraying mud on our shirts.
He did it about three more times, until we were thoroughly drenched, and then gave me the wheel to turn back home.

As we drove, he said, "I knew right when I looked atcha that you was a crazy thang!"
"What do you mean?"
"Awww, just full’a life an’ havin’ fun! That’s you, ain’t it?"
"Hell yeah!" I shouted. "I didn’t know there was any other way to be!"
"There ain’t, really."

As I drove over the flat part of the pasture, I noticed an armadillo waddling along, almost blending in with the grass. "Look, an armadillo!" I pointed.
Richard hates armadillos. "FOLLER THAT DILLA!" he shouted into the night, reaching behind him into the storage rack of the ATV. "You don’t mind if I shoot it, do ye?"
"Uh...uh.....I....um..." I didn’t want to play God with an armadillo’s life, but I didn’t have to. By the time I had turned the cab to face the animal, Richard had pulled a huge shotgun from the rack and shot right from his seat. The sound was deafening. I watched as the poor dillo was lifted off its feet by the bullet and flown three feet to the right. But it didn’t die, it just scurried off into the darkness.
"Why do you hate armadillos?" I asked him.
"They’s just like rats. Come in and dig big ol’ holes in the dag-gum field, then the calves get stuck in’em and break they ankles. Or the hay rake’ll sink in there when we’s balin’. Don’t serve no purpose, don’t eat no insects lahk spiders do. They just worthless rats. Done migrated here from Texas!"

When we got back to the campsite, Richard turned a huge halogen light on for me near the bath house. "So the ghosts don’t gitcha."
I asked him to walk over and wake me up before leaving for work the next morning. "I’ll bring ya some coffee!" he offered. Then he said, "I’ve always wondered how New York girls kiss."
"Keep wondering. Goodnight, Richard."
"‘Night, lil’ missy."

out of sight and out of mind. or, I wasn't expecting it to be this lonely.

I never knew
I never knew that everything was falling through
That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth
But that's how it's got to be
It's coming down to nothing more than apathy
I'd rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who's still standing when it clears

Everyone knows I'm in over my head
With eight seconds left in overtime
And suddenly I become a part of your past
I'm becoming the part that don't last

"Guuuurrrl, what'chu know about so' food?" Enough to know that this is some awesome catfish! 

Haunted Forests, Shakey Jakes and Gentle Bens.

The morning after the Goat Races, Denny woke up early as always and wasted no time in razzing me about my antics the night before. "You were a dancin’ fool!" he said again. I was still comatose on the fold-out bed of the camper. "I’m going to get some coffee," he said.
"Hey, that’s a great idea," I mumbled. "I’ll go, too.... in a minute..." A minute turned into almost three hours as I went back to sleep.

When Penney and I finally got up too, we joined Denny, Darcy, and Penney’s brother outside on the patio. It was a beautiful Minnesota summer morning. In the midst of conversation, Darcy mentioned someone bringing over a box of stuff. Later, when I went inside to hunt down milk for my coffee, I saw a cardboard box filled with crisp root vegetables, just pulled from the ground. There were turnips, fresh carrots, and some other goodies I didn’t even recognize. "I want to live near a farm..." I thought.

Penney, Denny, and I went to Sunday breakfast at - where else? - The Sports Cabin. It was excellent! Sue was behind the line, Kandee and her husband were anxiously awaiting biscuits and gravy, Kathy and her daughter were eating at the bar and Justina was bouncing nervously in her seat, smoking a cigarette. I tried biscuits and gravy for the first time and it was awesome! (I’ve always been somewhat frightened by white gravy.) Denny showed me the way to eat a pieces of toast with an entire jelly packet on each slice and we recounted the madness of the Goat Races to everyone there, especially what an idiot I made of myself. "So when ya leavin?" was the question asked several times, and by the time breakfast was over I had decided not to - I had so much to write about, so much to do, that I couldn’t justify creating more adventures and getting more backed up. (See, even now I’m only just now writing about this and I’m in North Carolina. North Carolina!)
"I think I’m going to stay for a couple days. Y’know, camp at the park, write a lot, get caught up. If you don’t mind seeing my stupid face around town for awhile, that is."
"Whatever."

Penney and Denny were dog-tired, as was I, and went home to enjoy a lazy Sunday afternoon. "I’m gonna watch golf," Denny told Penney, in a way that almost said, "Honey, is it okay if I watch golf?"
She answered, "You can watch all the golf you want ‘cause I’m gonna be asleep on the couch."

We walked outside, the three of us, after Denny once again paid for my food. I thanked them again for the awesome time they showed me. "You’re very welcome. We’ll see ya around, I’m sure." They climbed in the Explorer and I dragged myself, full of eggs, bacon, gravy, biscuits, hasbrowns, and toast, back to the car. I drove straight to the shooting range, where I could finally get some cell service and check my email. After making the necessary phone calls, I look a quick look over the map, to see just which way I should take to get to North Carolina later in the week. And about crapped my pants.

There was no straight shot, unless I wanted to drive the interstate the whole way, and even then it would be quite a distance. Interstate highways make me fall asleep easily, so I definitely wanted to stick to state and county roads as much as possible. Judging from the mountainous terrain that stretched from Arkansas to Asheville, North Carolina, it looked like it would take longer in those areas. "I can’t wait around," I thought. "I have to leave now."

Skip forward to 11:00 that night, on the phone with my friend Amanda, scared out of my mind, camped out in a field in central Nebraska that I am sure is haunted. Leave it to me to be the only person at a campsite that is unmanned and very removed from civilization, and not scared of serial killers or thieves but of ghosts.

I did stop into the Sports Cabin one last time, to say thanks and goodbye. I saw Kathy and Sue, met another lady in town and her daughter, Harleyanna, got the bar’s address, and drove out of Garretson again, leaving that tell-tale trail of dust behind me. I was sad to leave South Dakota, but I hope to make it back soon.

Passing through the lower southwest corner of Iowa, I made it all the way to Milford, Nebraska by 7 o’clock - I was hoping to make it there, having passed through that town once before on my way out to Los Angeles in 2002. I was all gung-ho to have dinner at Roth’s Restaurant, a little place with excellent blueberry pie that I’d stopped in years before. Unfortunately, it’s closed on Sundays. Driving around the town of Milford, I was surprised to find that I remembered my way around. The town itself hadn’t changed a bit, even the same rusted fixtures were on the side of the road. In Milford’s early days, it bordered a town called Dahle. The only remaining visible signs of Dahle’s existence is a rusted-out motel complex that sits right off of Rt. 80 as you grab 16 to go to Milford. It was one of those Sleep-In-A-Room-Or-Sleep-In-A-Teepee places, the kind that can’t even spell "tipi" right. A rotted wooden billboard to the left of the tipi shell welcomes you to Dahle, Nebraska.

I camped at a place called "Riverside Park" which is neither a park nor beside a river. (Discuss!) A ranch-style house sat near the entrance with a sign on the porch that read, "OFFICE". Children’s muddy sneakers sat under the sign, alongside a Razor Scooter. A handwritten sign to the side of the front door said, "If no answer, call this number: ***" No area code was given. I looked up Nebraska area codes in my quick-reference guide and called. There was no answer. I was about to give up when I finally got through to a sweet woman who said, "Oh, yeah, I’m at the State Fair right now go ahead and pull into the back. The water and electric sites are all the way to the back, about a mile."

Pulling in, I passed a fair amount of run-down cabins, a playground, and three chapels.
Apparently the campsite serves as some sort of Methodist retreat, and Christian references were all over the grounds. The metal airplane jungle gym at the playground was the "Fellowship Flyer". Storage sheds looked like little prayer huts, painted with crosses. Bibles and hymnals lined the shelves of the chapels - I know this because none of the doors were locked. I let myself in to almost every building, just to check it out. One of the cabins was filled with random junk - children’s toys, broken bicycles, pieces of aluminum siding, and ladies’ purses, some still with receipts and deposit slips inside. Some sort of animal in the wall let me know that I was not alone, scratching and scurrying loudly each time I took a step. "Okay!" I told it, "I hear you! You stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine!" Oddly enough, the noise stopped.

The next cabin was severely run down. A vintage 1950's refrigerator and stove set sat in the tiny kitchen, as did the skeletons of several mice and one bird, tiny leg bones sticking out of a tuft of broken feathers. Venturing into the bedroom, I noticed holes in the threadbare mattress where little teeth had chewed through the lining, burrowing deep into the center. As always, I wondered what these cabins had seen in their glory days, if families had vacationed here or couples had filled the rooms with muffled sounds of love-making. Who had slept on the mattresses before rodents slept inside them?

Even though I’m far from a regular church-goer, I was sad to see the chapels themselves in such disrepair. The large one was perhaps the most in need of care, with large holes in the ceiling. However, the filtered afternoon sunlight did shed a fair amount of wistful light on the splintered pews, while white draperies floated and dipped along the rafters, making an X. Christmas lights were strung along each rafter, wrapped around each pole. I tried plugging them in, hoping to see a spectacular scene once the lights were all ablaze, but the electricity to that area had been long turned off. I entertained myself instead by poking in and out of other buildings and eventually found myself swinging on the playground. What I didn’t know was that these swings hadn’t been sat on in god knows how many years, so after jumping off I was the proud owner of a thick coating of dust, dirt, and soot plastered across my butt. I didn’t realize that until I was across the Missouri-Arkansas border.

I was fine, not scared at all, until it got dark. The full moon cast a wonderful glow, but my campsite was back in the trees. I was petrified. I heard a low "OOOOOOOOOO" noise emanating from the treeline and every bad horror film I’d ever seen, every cheesy ghost story I’d ever written, came back with a vengeance. I called my friend Amanda to keep me company while I braved the bath house and ultimately decided to sleep in my car, because in my mind glass and steel offers better protection from meddling ghosts than nylon and canvas. Don’t ask me, it made sense at the time.

The next morning I woke up and was more than a little embarrassed when I went to the office to pay and the owner, the same lady who I’d spoken with the night before asked, "Did you see our owl back there?"
"Uh, no, I didn’t, but I wish I had, because I heard it..... *my eyes dropped down, amusingly mortified*... and I thought it was a ghost."
We both had a good laugh at that one. "Don’t worry," she said, "my four-year-old thinks it’s haunted back there, too."
"Uh, thanks. I think."

I went to Roth’s Restaurant for breakfast, fully expecting the open-arm welcome I had gotten years before... and was severely disappointed that everyone in central Nebraska seemed to have taken Rudeness Lessons from people in west South Dakota, graduating with minors in Staring. I took my same seat at the counter and tried to make conversation but it was worthless. I ended up taking my coffee and setting up to write at a table in the corner, ignoring the holes being bored in the back of my head by the staff and all the customers. "I used to love Nebraska," I emailed a friend. "What changed?"

I continued on into Kansas, driving through the Lower Brule Indian Reservation in central Nebraska. I thought about stopping at the Tribal Courthouse, but decided there was no time. In Kansas, where I’ve never been, I was surprised to see beautiful hills and green valleys while traveling north to south. I guess it’s only east to west that the terrain is pancake-flat. I stopped for the night in Junction City, where I realized just how long I had been in the upper Midwest when I thought to myself, "Oh, my! A black person!"

Junction City is one of the larger interstate towns on Rt. 70, with a rich military history as it is the closest town to Fort Riley, which is now the foremost army base for Operation Iraqi Freedom training. I drove through, not really knowing where I was going, and ended up at a Budget Inn right near the highway. The owner was desperate for business, having to compete with both the Ramada and Best Western next door, and let me name my own price. I happily plugged in and settled in to write.

Hunger got the better of me after awhile and I ended up driving through the main streets of town in search of cheap food that didn’t come in a styrofoam box and/or wrapper. I chose a tiny hole-in-the-wall called The Hickory Inn. It was Southern, serving only soul-food - catfish, pit beef, pulled pork and sweet tea. I ordered the catfish, half-price because it was probably on the verge of expiration, with beans and yams. The only other customers in the joint were two young soldiers in BDU’s, one black and one Creole. "Guuurrrl, what’chu know about so’ food?" the Creole asked me.
"Not very much," I answered. "That’s why I’m here."

The place itself was awesome, cheaply decorated with plastic pigs and Polaroid pictures in wooden frames of people who had eaten there before. Most looked dated from the late 70's and early 80's, from cook-offs and barbeque festivals. Men with mullets and trucker hats posed in front of large smokers and pigs on spits. Black men smiling, holding up huge catfish. The owner, a large, sweet black woman named Bea, chided me when I couldn’t finish my fish, beans, and yams. "Chiiiiild, it wadn’t dat much!" she teased, handing me a to-go box.
"I know, but it was so good I ate too fast!" It was true, it was some of the best soul food I’d ever had.

Driving back through the center of town, I again noticed that three of the main businesses on Main Street, nestled in the historic district, were strip clubs. Exploring the different blocks, I noticed many tweakers, people addicted to crystal meth, wobbling down the sidewalks and huddling near the payphones, their eyes sunken back in their heads. Some were very bad-off, reminding me of the zombies from "28 Days Later". Junction City seems to have lost some of its earlier brilliance, no doubt in part to the economy and introduction of methamphetamines.

I ducked into a bar called The Club Coyote - "Featuring Dancing 7 Days A Week" - because it was the most well-lit place I could find. (It was NOT one of the strip clubs) The happy-hour crowd was sparse - myself, a jovial older man, a young girl with him, two young soldiers, a true redneck if ever I saw one, wearing a Tim McGraw goatee, an open denim vest and cowboy hat, and the female bartender, a German girl with a blonde bob. A Kenny Chesney ballad blasted through the speakers, drowning out the pre-season NFL game. "Won’t you play me some-ting faster!" the bartender shouted to the DJ in a Prussian accent.
"Sho’ thang!" he shouted back in a thick Southern one.

I got roped into a conversation between the soldiers and the redneck, listening as they traded stories back and forth, as though they were competing to see who was a bigger hick. ""Y’know that song ‘Red Neck Yacht Club’? Well, Ah know where Party Cove is an’Ah been there!" one would shout.
"Oh, yeah?" the soldiers, hometown friends, would counter. "Well, on Fourtha July we floated a love seat down the Choctaw to our campsite!"
"I went to a goat race," I chirped. "And the goats were dressed up in costumes and they raced on trailers and we ate walking tacos and it was really fun!"
They fell silent. "You went to a Goat Race?" someone finally asked.
"Uh-huh!"
"Wow.... okay, you win. That’s the hickiest thing I’ve ever heard of."

Later on, one of the soldiers, Jake, told me that walking tacos were nothing new, that they had actually been served as school lunch back in Iowa.

The other soldier’s name was Ben. They were staying at the Ramada on Uncle Sam’s dime, paid trainers for incoming recruits on their way to Iraq. "We’re making so much fuckin’ money!" they said. "I’m gettin’ a jet ski next paycheck - with your tax dollars!" Jake teased me.
I didn’t find it funny, I actually thought it was quite depressing. "Awww, don’t look all down!" he said. "I’ll let you ride on it, since you paid for it!"
"Gee, thanks."

I had to leave, but they said "Stop by Room 237 at the Ramada later if you get bored, okay?"
I trusted them. "Okay, sure. And I’m in 225 at the Budget if you get bored. But I don’t have anything to offer you except some leftover catfish."
"Thanks, we’ll keep that in mind."

I went back and wrote like a demon until I heard a knock at the door. It was Ben. "Hey, you wanna come over to our place? We’ll just be chillin’, watching TV."
"Sure, give me a few minutes."

I went over and found them on the balcony, yelling at the tweakers stumbling through the parking lot. "Get away from my truck and get off the meth!" they shouted to a thin man lurking in between parked cars. He obliged. The guys are in separate rooms but it seems Ben’s room has become the hang-out room, stocked with folding chairs, booze, and a huge bag of... shredded cheddar cheese for some reason. They made me a vodka and Red Bull and we settled in to watch The O’Reilly Factor. I tried not to vomit. Thankfully, Ben turned it off to show me pictures from Iraq.

Jake, only 21, has not been to Iraq yet, but Ben, who is 28, spent almost two years there, civilly engineering what needed to be civilly engineered, like new water mains and drainage systems.

"The sad part is," he said, "that it actually is a beautiful country. And most of the Iraqi citizens are good people. You could vacation there if it weren’t for the bombs."
"Fuck that!" Jake said, ever the picture of young male hostility. "I just wanna go over and kill some m*ther-f*ckers!"
Ben looked at him like a father looks at a rowdy child.
"There’s no need to. I had the chance a few times. But what will that solve, dude?"
"A lot!"
"Not really. All you’ll do is make them hate us more." He turned to me. "A lot of people over there love us, but not if we run around shooting whoever we feel like."
"Do you regret joining the Reserves and being sent over?" I asked him.
"I did sometimes. Off and on. But one day we were walking the streets and I got to give a little girl a Snickers bar. She’d never had chocolate before. And that smile she had on pretty much made it worth everything." Throughout the rest of the evening, Ben referred to her a few more times, calling her "my little girl".

"Have you ever killed anyone?" I asked.
"No. I don’t like using my gun unless I’m 120 percent sure the person is 100 percent evil. If there’s even a slight chance that he’s not the bad guy, I won’t shoot. I got shot at, actually, but I didn’t return fire."
Jake and I started talking at the same time. "FUCK THAT, DUDE! I would have shot him twice for good measure?" "Him shooting at you didn’t prove he was 100 percent evil?" "Dude, if that’d been me, holy shit! You’d have a dead terrorist!" "Where were you?" "Why’d you let him go, dude?!" "Yeah, why did you let him go?"

Ben laughed heartily. "He was a terrible shot. He missed me by, like, 20 feet over my head. I just laughed at him! And I figured if he sucked that bad, he was gonna get taken out by someone else eventually, so it didn’t have to be me. And I can sleep easy knowing I don’t have someone’s blood on my hands."
"Gentle Ben!" I teased.
"Yeah, I guess," he said.

"Do you like Bush?" I asked Ben at one point, after Jake had gone back to his room.
He paused, taking a deep breath before answering. "He’s alright," he finally said, flimsily. "I mean, he’s pretty much my boss, kinda. It’s hard being a soldier and saying, ‘Yeah, I hate the Commander in Chief.’ It’s very looked down on. But is he my favorite guy? No. Will I do what he says? Yeah, I have to. I promised when I joined the Reserves."

"How much more time do you have here?" I asked.
"At Fort Riley? Two years. I hate it. I wanna go home."
"I bet. What did you do before you got called up?"
"I had my own business. A trucking company. See, Jake’s all hyped about the money we’re making, and really we are cleaning up. But I took a hell of a pay cut - I’m losing about $2,000 a month just being here and not working for myself."
"That sucks."
"Yeah, but I didn’t have anyone to do my laundry for free when I was home. Or clean my house. Or reimburse me for my ATM fees."
"Shut up! The feds reimburse you for ATM fees?!"
"Girl, if you knew how good we got it, it’d piss you off for sure."

Confused? So Was I.....

I have decided to make a glossary of terms that I have heard since being in the Midwest and South. Enjoy!


Hayburners: Horses

Belly-Rubbin’ Music: Slow-dance songs

Dingus: Dumbass

Chislic: Little chunks of beef or goat meat that are battered and fried or grilled

Honky-Tonk Buh-Donka-Donk: A country girl with a nice butt

Trailer House: A mobile home set on a permanent foundation

Loyal To The Green: A farmer who only uses John Deere tractors

Dilla: An armadillo

Yankee: A Northerner in the South

Damn Yankee: A Northerner who stays in the South

Snipe Huntin’: A joke played on a newcomer in west South Dakota. If a cowboy ever asks you to go snipe hunting, politely decline.

Grain Rats: Prairie Dogs

Walking Taco: The Most Brilliant Invention Ever. Take a small bag of Doritos, smash the chips up a little bit, then throw in taco meat, sour cream, cheddar cheese, and lettuce. Then fold the top over, shake the bag, and boom! Eat out of the bag with a fork as you walk down the street! How great is that?! Many thanks to Denny and Penney for turning me onto these!

BIAP: Baghdad International Airport

Milo, the Farm Co-op Goat. 

Pebbles and her handlers. 

One of the races. You can see Jeff and Ralph blocking them from behind with the aluminum paddle. Jeff has a headset on to talk to the announcer and tell him which one crossed the finish line first. 

One of the pink dress goats racing. As you can see, Jasper Lanes offers Prime Rib on Friday nights. 

Color Guard at the Jasper Goat Race Parade. 

Clayton saluting the flag. 

Beautiful Penney at the parade. 

My second-favorite picture taken so far. I shot this candid one of Denny at the parade. 

The Jasper Knights of Columbus. 

The next three pictures are from the street dance! 

 

 

Me and a lady I met at the Goat Race whose name I don't remember.  

Some Things You Have To See To Believe. Like A Goat Dressed As Pebbles Flintstone.

The next morning I was up early, eager to drive the 250 miles back to Garretson by noon in time to meet Penney and Denny. It was Goat Race Day!

I thought I would make good time, with maybe an hour to spare, but I forgot about the time zone change and ended up having to gun it all the way. Have you ever seen a Honda Civic do 100 mph? Well, you would have.

I made it to The Sports Cabin just in time, and when I walked in the door Kandee was sitting at the bar ready to give me hell. "You’re in trouble." she said curtly, although a smile was lurking around the sides of her mouth. "Get over here."
"What? What did I do?"
"What’s this you wrote on your website about South Dakota being boring?" Penney and Denny were finishing lunch at the end of the bar and I shot them a look like, "Do you know what she means?"
"What? No way, I never wrote that. Maybe I wrote that people are under the misconception that South Dakota is boring, but I’d never actually say that!"
That seemed to suffice. "Okay," she said. "You’re off the hook."

I told them all about Sturgis, the bikers, the prices, and how glad I was to be back in lovely Garretson. One thing I forgot to mention about Garretson - on two separate occasions while I was there, people told me I should move there. "Is there a law school nearby?" I asked.
"Yep, University of Sioux Falls!"
"Well, I’d be the only law student living in a state park..."
"Oh, no, we’d get you a house!"

We’d. We’d get you a house. You have to love that. How often do you hear that in New York City, or even Laurel?

"You ready?" Denny asked.
"Sure am!"
We climbed into their new Explorer, an SUV so nice I felt underdressed riding in it, the same way I feel in my friend David’s Beamer, and drove the handful of miles to Jasper, Minnesota. I told them about love on the road, or lack thereof, how my parents took out a huge life insurance policy on me before I left (much more than is needed to bury me.....hmmmmm...), and they told me about growing up in the Midwest. "How exactly do these goats race?" I asked.
"On flatbeds."
"What do they chase to get them to go?"
They laughed. "They don’t chase nothing, they just blow a horn behind them and hope they move! Sometime they gotta push them!"
I couldn’t wait!

When we got into Jasper, we passed the main street of town en route to the parking area, and sure enough, there were people already leading or pulling their goats down the square. The street had been blocked off by orange plastic fencing and admission was $1.00. Some goats were dressed in costumes and it was too adorable! There was a large one with yellow ribbons and bows on, a small black one in overalls, and two in little pink dresses. There was even a tiny one dressed as Zorro - complete with a little mask, cape, and hat! "I wonder if Wesson’s gonna dress his goat this year?" Penney wondered to Denny and another lady, Penney’s sister-in-law, I think. (Forgive me, I met so many people that day, most of them related to Penney in some way, but I’m having trouble remembering all the names.) "Remember last year, when he and the goat matched?"
As if on cue, a tall young man dressed as Fred Flintstone blew into the square, carrying a goat dressed as Pebbles. She had a little bone sticking through her brown wig. A little girl tagged along behind him, dressed as Wilma, with hair spray-painted neon orange. It was hilarious!

I spent about twenty minutes just looking around in awe, laughing hysterically. I bought a shirt (pink, what else?) with a picture of two goats running. I also got a bumper sticker that said, "Let’s Be Silly, Race Your Billy! GOAT RACE, Jasper, MN" I haven’t put in on Toby yet, but I may stick it in the back window when I can afford to buy some tape. Penney also bought me a Goat Race can-coolie. I was set!

We grabbed seats on the front row of the bleachers set up alongside the track. Just as Penney said, the track was elevated, made of flatbed trailers lined end-to-end, with metal fencing blocking the sides so no one fell off. Throughout the races, the Red Hat Society judged the goats on a number of different criteria - the prettiest, the stinkiest, best costume, who traveled the farthest. I think a racing team from North Dakota won those honors.

The races started soon after, following a "Parade Of Goats". The announcer said into the microphone, "Now, if you’re a bettin’ man, this is your chance to pick your goat!" Three little girls sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ into the mic and as everyone looked at the flag, I looked around. The sounds of children singing the national anthem made it almost cliche, but it was such a wonderful moment. Each person had their hand over their heart. A goat bleated during the "Oh!" part. "Look at where life can lead you," I thought. "This is amazing. I never dreamed I’d be here."

When the first air-horn sounded, the first heat of goats were less than amenable to running down the track. They ran in pairs, and many times had to be pushed with a large aluminum paddle. I wish so badly that Blogger.com could host Quicktime video, because I got some great ones! Sometimes the races took minutes at a time, even though the track was only about 20 yards, if that - the goats kept trying to run the opposite way, so the handlers and air-horn-blower and giant-aluminum-paddle-pusher would have to form a human wall, and even then some slipped through people’s legs and ran back towards the starting line! It was HILARIOUS! Everyone had said, "Go to the Goat Races and just laugh and laugh," and it was true. I didn’t stop laughing until it was over.

The Pebbles goat didn’t want to run, and each time it was her turn to race, people said, "Oh, god, how long will this take?" Penney’s nieces and nephews races a goat named Skywalker that won every heat except for one. The tiny Zorro goat, whose name was Mr. Bojangles, was incredibly fast but still only took second place, losing to the yellow ribbon goat named Button. Later on, I almost bought Mr. Bojangles. More on this later.

Denny and I got hungry and went over to the food booth, where I popped my Walking Taco cherry. Let me just say this: I have seen the glory, and it is good. It comes in a bag of Doritos.

Seriously, have you ever had a walking taco? It is The Most Ingenious Idea Of All Creation. You put taco meat, lettuce, cheese, sour cream and taco sauce in a little bag of Doritos, close it, shake it, pound it, and eat it out of the bag with a fork! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?! When I told my friend Scrappy about it, he said, "Man, that is straight ghetto!", but this is coming from a kid who has a pet soda bottle named Bob Dole, so he has no room to talk.
I think I blushed continuously off and on all day, because Penney and Denny really spoiled me. They wouldn’t let me pay for a thing. "Save your money for your trip," they said, over and over.
"Thanks," I would mumble into my shirt.
What I didn’t realize when we first got there was that the Goat Races involved much more than just the races themselves. There was also a Peddle-Pull (like a tractor pull for little kids, where they peddle little trikes), a parade, a big supper, and a concert in the middle of the street, with dancing. It was great!

When the races finished, the three of us went into Sanow’s Pub, the one bar in Jasper. It was packed. I imagine they do their most business during the Goat Races, even moreso than St. Patrick’s day. Penney, Denny, and I grabbed a table with one of Penney’s sister-in-laws, Lois, Penney’s brother Jeff, her sister-in-law Darcy, and another friend of theirs named.... Sheila. Or Sherry. Or Shelly. She was very pretty, whatever her name was. When she sat down I thought she was about 28 or so. Later on, she was telling a story about becoming a grandma. I laughed at first, because I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t. "I thought you were, like, 28, though!" I said.
Her face broke into a huge grin as she reached over and hugged me. "I love you!" she cried.
"No, I’m 37," she continued. "My daughter is 19 and I have a 3-month-old grandbaby."

I met Darcy’s son Dustin, who seemed cursed with that terrible ennui that strikes teenagers in small towns, poor guy. Speaking of teenagers, it made me a little sad that some of the younger people in town weren’t very nice. For instance, I was walking down the street with Penney and some girl said, "You fekkin’ Bearbie!" as I passed. There’s no need for that, really. I wanted to take a page out of Jezebel’s book and say, "Honey, you don’t even want your man, so why would I?", but I held my tongue. Later on, during the dance, when I was good and tipsy, the same girls kind of razzed me in the crowd. It was sad. I don’t understand why people need to act that way.

That is not to say that most of the people in Jasper weren’t wonderful and kind, because they were. I had so much fun just sitting in the bar talking to all of Penney and Denny’s friends, trying to piece together the family trees and little histories of the town. It was definitely one of the best days I’ve ever had, both on this trip and overall.

We didn’t go to the Peddle-Pull or the supper, choosing instead to visit in the pub, and by the time we went to the parade at 6, I was well on my way, if you know what I mean. We watched it from in front of Darcy’s house, with Penney’s family. When the color guard walked by, we told her nephew, little Clayton, "Salute the flag, hon!" Police cruisers were following the color guard, lights flashing.
"Do those police arrest you if you don’t?" he asked. We all had a good laugh.

After the parade, we went back to the square for the dance. The band was pretty good, they were called Eclipse. They played some Top 40, some country, some oldies, and people danced in the street. Penney and Denny both sat on the sidelines, freezing, while I jumped around like an idiot in my Goat Race tank top, sweating like a gross pig. "You’re a dancin’ fool!" Denny said. I was. I was so far gone I didn’t care.

While the band took a break I got started talking to a young guy about my age. I recognized him as Mr. Bojangles’ handler. "I love your goat!" I told him.
"Thanks!"
"Are you gonna race him next year?"
"Maybe. If he makes it through the winter."
My mental capacities were slow. "Um, is he sick?"
"No, I might eat him."
I gasped. "NO!" I shouted. "Why?"
"Because. That’s what you do."

I ran back to Penney and Denny, all upset. "ThatguysayshemighteatMr.BojanglesandIdon’twanthimtosowhatshouldIdoohgodthatlittlegoatissocutelet’sgooverthereandtellhimnotto!"
"Or you could just buy it," someone joked.
"THAT’S A GREAT IDEA!" I shouted, running back to the guy.

"How much for Mr. Bojangles?" I asked, putting on my "ready to do business" face.
"80 bucks. Are you gonna give him a good home?"
"Well, for starters, I’m not gonna eat him. But I live in a car."
"You what?! Oh, he’ll eat up your upholstery!"
"I know, but I just don’t want you to eat him."
He got surly. "Listen. 80 bucks or get the f*ck out of my face."
"What?" I got surly right back. I only get surly when I’m drunk or dirty and, unfortunately, this was one of those times.
"I said give me 80 bucks or get the f*ck out of my face!"
I was about to give him what-for when I noticed a tiny little blonde girl watching our exchange, wide-eyed. I watched my mouth and leaned into his face, until we were almost nose-to-nose.
"You’re. Not. Very. Nice," I said emphatically, then walked away before he could zing me with a comeback.

Walking back over to Penney, Denny, and the gang, a very buzzed me made sure to let everyone know, repeatedly, what a piece of shit Mr. Bojangles’ handler was. Penney said, "We’re very glad you didn’t buy that goat, because you would not have been bringing that thing in the trailer." She was referring to Darcy’s camper, parked in her driveway, which the three of us stayed in that night, not wanting to drive after all that partying. Walking back to Darcy’s, Denny said, "I couldn’t really see you dancing, I could just see your hair swingin’ all over the place! Wild!" Yeah... that’s me. I was sore and sweaty but happy. It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful day.

The geekiest cowgirl South Dakota's ever seen.... many thanks to Robyn for taking this picture, even if people did think we were lesbians going into the bathroom together.... 

The Stroppel Inn, Midland, SD.