STMcC@McCarthyCountry.Pix [Part 4 Of 4]

.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3:
.
Although the weather dudes had predicted partly cloudy skies and periods of sunshine for Friday, they got it wrong . . . again . . . naturally. It was dark and cloudy all day with spitting and sneezing skies. (A few things I’ve found that are universal all across the country regardless of town population or location: 1. The weathermen get it wrong. 2. All radio DJs sound exactly the same. 3. Tattooed women driving pickup trucks are yakkin’ on cell phones from behind the wheel. These things are universal and, unfortunately, never absent. Do I hate America? Let me count the ways: One… Two… Thuh-reee.)
.
The winds were fierce on Friday, so I spent the morning going to a couple of craft and hobby shops, looking for leather strips to make a wind strap for my Stetson. I found the leather but couldn’t find an appropriate bead with which to fasten the straps, so I just knotted the thin leather strips under my chin and went to visit Joe’s gravesite one last time.
.
There I drank one last toast in my silver cup - an airline bottle of Grand Marnier (or “Gramar”, as I call it) - to “Brother” Joe McC, and I sought to photograph my cowboy hat and silver cup on top of his headstone. But the wind caught my Stetson immediately and blew it toward the bluff overlooking the Fox River behind Joe’s grave. I ran to retrieve my hat, figuring I would have to climb down the steep embankment to the river below, but to my surprise, both the Stetson and its wind strap had caught onto an old metal stake protruding from the earth which suspended my cowboy hat right at that point where the land falls away to the river below. (Good ol’ Joe, he still had me covered!)

.

.

.
After this second and final visit to Joe’s gravesite, I parked my car at Super 8 and walked to downtown Appleton, thinking I might really tie one on and be incapable of driving back to the motel. (As it turned out, I really didn’t drink very much after all.) The winds were crazy mad, but I heel-toed it to downtown anyhow – a forty-five minute walk each way; a walk that would have killed a younger man.
.
Along the way, I stopped in at The Glass Onion Bead Company and purchased a brown stone bead I could use as a “fastener” on my Stetson’s wind strap. While I was in the store, an employee presented me with a certificate (suitable for framing), declaring me to be the store’s first male heterosexual customer. Then they took my picture (which I imagine is already hanging on their Wall Of Fame), and I was again heel-toeing it on the road to downtown Appleton.
.
Once downtown, I went into Senor Tequila’s and ordered a margarita (the pale green variety) and a cheese quesadilla. Although I was the restaurant’s only customer, it seemed to take forever for the cheese quesadilla to be delivered to my table. At first I figured someone was probably at nearby Lamer’s Dairy, milking a cow to begin the cheese-making process. Still later, with no quesadilla in sight, I began to suspect I was being held hostage. I had no cell phone on which to dial 911. Finally the quesadilla arrived and I took the opportunity to ask my waiter for the check. (After all, it was already 4 PM on Friday and I had a plane to catch at noon the next day, and I didn’t want to run the risk of missing my flight.)

.

.
The margarita and the quesadilla were good, and the waiter was pleasant, but I overheard him mention to another customer (who had entered sometime between hour two and three of “The Great Quesadilla Wait”) that he was originally from West Hollywood, and I believed him. If you don’t know what that means, that means that my waiter wasn’t ever going to get a certificate (suitable for framing) from The Glass Onion Bead Company.
.
I dinked around town a bit and then stopped in at the Déjà Vu Martini Lounge for my traditional “Vacation Martini” (I hadn’t had one yet on this trip).
.

.

.
The interior of the Déjà Vu Martini Lounge is every bit as cool as its exterior (even cooler, in fact), but I didn’t take a picture inside because I didn’t want my flash bulb to interfere with the fabulous atmosphere of the place. My waitress, a very nice but blonde and thoroughly tattooed wannabe Hollywood makeup artist, asked me what I was doing in Appleton. Remembering the words of Jesus warning us not to cast our McCarthys before blondes, I simply told her that I had wanted to get out of the heat of Airheadzona and so I flew as far East as I could afford to go. I told her that I would have gone to New York City but I ran out of money. She bought that. And I bought the martini.
.
Then I walked the forty-five minutes back to Super 8, against the wild, wild wind. And although I kept my hat on and my head down, I still wound up with a whole face like W.C. Fields’ nose.
.
Back in Grand Chute, I took a picture of a roadside sign that had tickled me for four straight days. In order to get just the shot I wanted, I was forced to hack my way through thick underbrush and thick overbrush and to fight off

eight-legged bugs as big as your ass! If you readers had any idea of the lengths I go to in order to get just the right photos for my blogs, you’d appreciate me more! But in the end, I got my picture:
.

.
If you ask me, any parents who would name their son Hupy ought to be sued for “personal injury.”
.
Alright, it was evening now, but I truly needed to know: had it only been The Van de Kamp’s/Weinhard’s Effect, or were those chile rellenos at Toros really as good as they’d seemed the night before?
.
So, I went back and ordered them again. Same pink margarita (the waiter says it’s a secret Toros recipe, but I think I detected pink grapefruit juice in it and perhaps a splash of orange juice). And the same chile rellenos. Although I wasn’t nearly as hungry as I had been the night before, they were still damn fine chiles! OK, I was convinced: Toros knows what it’s doing when it comes to chile rellenos and that’s no bull!
.

.
Well, the trip was over – dang it! - and it was back to the three-digit dog days of Airheadzona Summer for me the following day.
.
The next morning, on my way to Appleton Airport, I would stop at the Barnes & Noble in Grand Chute and buy a second copy (now available in paperback) of ‘BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY’ by M. Stanton Evans, so as to have one copy I can loan out to friends and acquaintances who wish to learn the truth about the wrongly maligned Senator from Wisconsin.
.
I got to thinking about how I, having now paid my respects to Joe McCarthy at his gravesite, was as good as Ann Coulter. That chick ain’t got nuttin’ on me! Well, you know what I mean.
.
I packed up my shi— “stuffs” that night, watched a little TV and caught the phony weather forecast for tomorrow from those misguided meteorologists. They were calling for sunshine all day tomorrow. Yeah, I’ll just bet!
.
Outside it was raining Hupys and Abrahams as I fell asleep nestled all snug in my bed, while visions of Sheboygan shakes danced in my head.
.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
D-FensDogg of the ‘Loyal American Underground’
.
YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

.