The Adventure of the month!
Hmm… Hello human, I see you have stumbled across my blog, well hopefully we can become more familiar with each other. I am Quirkachu, a rather quirky Quirkachu, and you are? … Yes, but of course of course. You seem like quite the amiable chap, yes indeed.
Come now, come into my den. It shall be glorious.
Why does it look like the set from Masterpiece Theater? BECAUSE IT IS! Don’t mind the man in the corner there, he is a ginger and therefore has no soul so it’s cool. Now let’s settle in, I shall light a fire and tell you my adventure of the month…
It all started a few weeks back, on a perfectly lovely Friday afternoon. It was the last opportunity for taking pictures for the college yearbook, and I expected that to be the climax of my day. Little did I know.
I was called by my dear friend, who I shall call “Ellie” and asked if I wanted to go on an adventure to see her younger sister cheer at a football game. It was her younger sister’s first time cheering, and Ellie had once been a cheerleader and was so very proud of her.
It was a long drive (I didn’t realize how long till we were actually on the drive) but I accepted. And then we were off. It was a long drive, lots of freeways, the usual. We had an incredibly deep talk, all that stuff. Then, it happened, we realized we were in the middle of nowhere.
Now, living in a highly populous area, you would think we were exaggerating. I. Am. Not. You know those old windmills? The one you only see in period pieces involving the early twenties in the midwest?
Yes, those. Windmills, windmills everywhere! And they were old, and rusty, and there were actual barns. Ranches, and things you can only imagine.
When we finally reached the school, we were starving. Yet, I must say this, across from the school were abandoned houses. That’s right, not just one house, houses. ABANDONED. Full on pieces of walls missing and roofs caved in. After seeing this, we went up to buy our tickets to get into the game.
Did I mention I live in California? Yes, California, home of Hollywood and Los Angeles, and one of the most populous states in the US. Yet, I felt like I was in the middle of hickville. In line, there were, I kid you not, an obese man riding a “courtesy” scooter and other guys who were either truckers or just plain hicks. The ladies selling tickets? One was wearing a shirt that had American flags all across them and the other one looked like she was 9 months pregnant. This is when I finally decided we had truly reached the middle of nowhere.
We bought our tickets, and then pretty much begged to know where the nearest place with food was. The ladies pointed in a vague direction and said it was the main road and there was a grocery store. When we got to the “main road” it was made of dirt. Yep…
Anywho, the true adventure starts when we find our Nirvana. A RESTAURANT! YES! A glorious altar to the food gods was there! Ellie parked, we jumped out of the car and ran towards the door and- It had a closed sign on it.
After wailing in agony for a full two minutes, a woman walks up and says in possibly the weirdest drawl I have ever heard “Oh she’s still open baby, just you walk on in.” So we checked, and sure enough, the door was unlocked. Our hope was restored!
We walked in and let the woman go ahead, since we needed to look at the menu. The lady at the counter was rocking back and forth, to which the other woman asked “What the heck you doin’ Betty?” She responded with “I HAVE TO PEE REALLY BAD!” That was where the true encounter of a lifetime began.
After this, the woman who was ordering (whom we shall call Marge) literally would go back and forth with her order, leaning out the door and talking to her brother, Bob (yes that is his name). Bob came up with his dog, from his truck, and was wearing a shirt that said “Will work for gambling money!” Marge, then proceeded to go to the bathroom and told us to order while she went. Yes, MARGE went to the bathroom, not the cashier.
We ordered our food, and then the cashier told us that the lady working on the frier was the owner of the restaurant and 75% deaf. She then made some motions to her and the lady grabbed… Ziploc bags. Yes, out of the freezer she grabbed ziploc bags of food. Not the industrially sealed kind, just regular ziploc bags. They contained fries, meat, veggies, you name it. Suddenly, my appetite started to wane.
At this point, me and Ellie started exchanging glances and continued trying to contain our delight in the ridiculousness of the situation.
Then he came. It was glorious.
An old man entered the restaurant, and forever cemented my opinion of that small town. You know those old mountain men? (The one as pictured above) The ones that supposedly died off with another era (much like the windmills)? He embodied them to a tee. His beard was down to his belt, his hair was unkempt and gave the air of “I don’t give a f***”, and distributed throughout his beard and hair was a thick layer of leaves and twigs. Though, he did seem like a legit and majestic mountain man, not one of the psychos that runs off to a cabin in the middle of the wilderness and writes their manifesto.
While waiting for our food, Marge, her brother Bob, his dog, and the old mountain man decide to surround me and Elli in a semi circle, leaving us pinned between them and the counter that had most likely never been replaced since it was built in 1954. We were trapped, completely utterly trapped. Marge began to ask us about where we went to school and why we were down here in a place like this. We eventually got around the topic of her young 12 year old daughter, Marge then went into how she smart she was and helped her “figur’ out the math to pay the bills. She is just so dang smart, they may move her up out of pre-algrebra and into algebra 1.” She then commented on the lack of her own intelligence and made retard sign on her chest.
Fortunately, our food could not come at a more opportune moment. We said our goodbyes to our new friends (and I got a wink from the old mountain man) and we walked rather hurriedly back to the car. Once in the car, needless to say, we laughed our asses off. Amidst the laughter, we also realized how hungry we still were. So we drove back over to the field.
We had a blast from there, Ellie got to see her little sister cheer and we got to watch the dry lightning storms off in the distance. It might have been a weird adventure but it was a great one.
5
