Supper Club, Country Club, and Learning to Drive.

So, here's the thing.  The thing is, it's kind of pointless to visit the Valley Inn supper club just outside of Elroy.  I mean, don't even bother.  This place used to be the showplace eating establishment of Juneau county, years and years ago.  It was built, according to my Pa, by ol' Art Overgaard, who owned the rock quarry a couple of miles outside of town.  He wanted a place for fine dining, and he had the money, and he built it, and people came.  The food was good, the decor was pleasant, with a dark and quiet bar/lounge area.  It was a professional-type joint.

But now?  Well, the outside still looks much the same, except that the old sign that had the longhorn motif is gone.  To his credit, the current owner did try to save it.  But a windstorm tore it up when some work was being done.  But ya know, that's about all the credit I'm gonna give.  The inside of that place has been shoddily and tackily remodeled.  The lounge is too bright and has too many big and loud televisions.  And ya'll know how Gus feels about the teevee.  Remember those stories about Elvis shooting out his television screen?  He wasn't crazy.

So anyway, the lounge.  I don't know, it just doesn't have the feel of a lounge, of a dimly-lit place to have a quiet drink and to socialize a little.  The dining room, well, that's fine, I won't rip on the decor there.  It's mostly windows anyway.  But the food?  All that comes to mind is, "Meh."  It's mostly from out of a box, dropped onto the griddle or into the fryer.  And speaking of fryers, who ever decided that it was okay to prepare fried potatoes in the deep fryer?  I've seen that a few times too many, and the Valley Inn is no exception.  And it's a sad thing for Gus to hear people looking at the menu while they sit at the bar and exclaiming, (for instance) "Oh, the shrimp dinner is really good here!"  Well, look, it's the same shrimp dinner that a million other bars serve, pre-breaded, pre-cooked, then portioned and frozen so that all you have to do is drop it into the fryer.  It's not anything special!  They're praising food that has never been touched by human hands!  Why have people become so uncaring about what they eat?  I just don't get it, but there it is.  Folks are happy if you give them a lot, no matter what the quality is.  So, once again, I wouldn't bother going there if I were you.  And if you do, just go without any great expectations.

So, I'm gonna leave the Valley Inn and head on up the country, way up on a hillside past Overgaard's quarry to Babe's Country Club.  At first glance this might seem like an ironic name for this unassuming little place.  But it was started, according to the bartender, with every intention of becoming a country club/resort.  The original owner bought up as much land around there as he could and then built a bar.  His intention was to also dam up the creek and have a lake just below.  But alas, one man would not sell, and so the lake never happened.  And so Babe's never got beyond the tavern stage.

The first time I ever heard of Babe's was when I was just learning to drive.  Dad and I went out in his old '63 Mercury Comet one evening.  He wanted me to learn to drive a manual transmission.  The Comet had the old three-on-the-tree shifter, up on the steering column.  The car was rusting and underpowered, with a little 170 engine under the hood.  We backed out of the driveway and ended facing uphill.  It took me about five tries to get that car moving forward, and then I was gunning it and kicking up dust on that old gravel road.  I eased up and shifted clumsily.  The car jerked and faltered, but we were on the level and were able to keep some momentum.  "We'll have to work on that," said Dad.  "Let's just keep on up to the four corners."

Everyone in high school knew about the four corners.  That's where parties happened, mostly underage and after bar time.  We didn't live far from there, but I'd never gone to any doings.  I was pretty sure that if I did, I'd get beat up.  When I look back on it now, I'm pretty sure that was an irrational fear.

I drove up the the intersection, and Dad said, "Turn right here, and we'll head on down this road.  Don't forget to downshift when you turn."  I tried to drop it into first, but the old Comet didn't have a synchronized first gear and only made a lot of grinding noise when I tried.  "Second is fine," said Dad.  And it was, once the car finished stalling out.  Here Overgaard road wound through the close forest for a couple of miles.  On the left were momentary flashes of open farmland seen briefly through the trees.  To the right was only dark woods as far as I could see.  The gravel of the road clattered off the tires and against the wheel wells.  Dust trickled into the car through the rotted old chassis.  If you drove on any of these roads in this car for very long, you would be feeling the grit of the roads between your teeth.  On a hot day it would stick to your skin in a fine coating of dust.

Dad guided me along these roads for some miles, telling me when to turn, and when to slow down.  We turned onto the highway and followed that for a while.  Then we turned up another narrow gravel road to another intersection, up another hill past a small farm where a herd of about twenty cows were just being let out of the barn.  Then we suddenly plunging into another wooded area.  After a mile, Dad said, "Now up ahead it opens up.  And it's the real purty view."  I seldom heard Dad comment on aesthetics, and the word, "pretty" didn't come easily to him.

Sure enough, the woods ended suddenly, opening up to a broad open vista of rolling hills and farms as far as we could see.  The sun, getting low in the west, shone on a small cemetery beside the road overlooking the valley.  "Wow," I said.  "That is nice."
"Yep.  Take a left at this stop sign."
We followed that road along the hillside until we came to an old red barn that sat beside the road.  There was a lit "Old Style" sign attached to the barn, and a long driveway the led down the hill.  "Turn down here," said Dad.

We pulled up to a long one-story building that looked more like a house than a tavern.  I don't think there was even a beer sign in the window, only a neon "Open" sign.  I followed Dad inside.  The bar was dim and quiet, and the bartender was the only other person there in the middle of the week.  He recognized Dad, and we sat down.  I had a Mountain Dew (jeeze, did I really drink that stuff?) and Dad had a Pabst.  He and the bartender talked, I don't remember what about.  I know he mentioned that he was, "...teaching the boy to drive," but to tell the truth, that's about it.  I was busy looking around at the dim dancing area, with the booths lining the far wall, and reading the silly little signs posted behind the bar, things like, "I woke up grumpy this morning.  I should have let her sleep."  We stayed long enough to finish our drinks and head back home.

That was almost forty years ago.  I still stop at Babe's now and then, and, except for the first names of the customers, it hasn't changed much at all.  They don't serve food there, only drinks and snacks.  The only television is a small one up in the corner on the wall.  The booths are still there, the silly signs behind the bar are still there.  Babe's looks the same as it did, I'm guessing, when Babe built it back in the sixties.  It's a good place to sit and relax and have a Pabst or an Old Style, maybe a frozen pizza or some chips.  On weekends it gets pretty rowdy sometimes.  Halloween can be especially eye-opening there.  Yes indeed.  But for the most part it's pretty mellow.  Old farmers still come in to discuss the price of corn or what's wrong with the world today, and more often than not they seem to know what they're talking about.  And in the evening, after a quiet couple of beers, you can walk outside to the sound of the night birds in the woods and the distant lowing of cows and look out over the deep valley and imagine that the tops of the trees there are the lake that Babe dreamed of when he built his country club.

The Corner Pub Saved My Life

Does Gus even want to talk about the two-hour ride with his mother to Lacrosse and back?  Well, no.  But I’ll do it anyway.  The trip up wasn’t as terrible as I had anticipated.  The conversation was circular.

           “Where are we going again?”

            “To Lacrosse.”

            “Why are we going there?”

            “For a checkup.”

            “Boy, it sure is a long way.”

            “Yep, it sure is.”

            And then repeat every ten minutes.

There’s an old oak tree along Interstate 90 between Sparta and Lacrosse.  That oak tree always catches my eye any time I drive up there.  It sits alone on a small hill, sturdy and gnarled, surviving the storms and the seasons for many years.  I imagine it’s been there since long before this road was built, when all of the traffic was on Highway 16, a mile away across the valley.  I like that old tree.  This day, with the light blowing snow, the tree looked ghostly gray and distant.  I had a brief feeling of being out of sync with this time, of not quite being in touch with the world of high-speed interstates.  Then it was gone.

The testing was a hard and bad time, the worst Gus has seen in two (that long?  Yep, I guess so) years of testing.  She couldn’t follow simple directions, trying to add strings of numbers instead of just repeating them back.  Halfway through she was crying in frustration.  The doctor was a kind woman, and patient and gentle.  She somehow had Mom laughing again, though still teary-eyed by the time it was done.

When we were leaving it was raining.  I had her wait by the door while I ran to get the car.  And I did run.  It is feeling less and less like a safe thing to ask her to wait for any length of time.  But she was still there when I pulled up.  She didn’t recognize the car.

We drove over to the food co-op for lunch.  They have a café there, a really nice one, upstairs.  Mom likes it because you can look over the balcony at the store below, at the colorful produce aisles and other displays.  I ordered for her and I think I did a good job of it.  She ate it all without complaining.  And then we headed back to Reedsburg.

The ride wasn’t too bad at first, except for some brooding about the testing.  But as the road rolled away behind us, she became more and more restless.  The ride was taking too long.  The weather was bad.  We should be home.  Where are we staying tonight?  Does Dad know?  Why aren’t we going home?

I fielded these questions as well as I could, but by the time we got to her residence she was awfully contentious.  I told her that we could at least go in and use the bathroom.  That got her attention.  Making sure there is a bathroom nearby is getting to be more and more important to her.  As soon as we got in there, she knew where she was.  She even forgot the last couple of miles of wondering where I was taking her.  She started talking to a couple of residents and forgot that Gus was there.  This was both a relief and very, very saddening.  I said my good-byes, and she answered in a distracted way.

Gus is not ashamed to say that he drove, he fled, to the Corner Pub.  It’s kitty-corner from the four-plex theater, on the corner of Main Street and North Webb Avenue in Reedsburg.  The owner, Pete, brews his own beer there, and does a good job of it.

I parked the car and got out and suddenly felt just how drained I was.  My feet were dragging and I was slouching.  I stopped and stretched a moment, straightening my spine.  I practiced smiling.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  Gus has heard that it takes only 17 muscles to smile, and 42 to frown.  That’s a lot of muscles fighting the smile.  I decided to not look at it that way.  I smiled and went in and ordered a porter. 

That porter was dark as ebony, with a thick chocolaty head that one could eat with a spoon.  It had a dark dry malty sweetness and, Oh, that first long swallow went down very nicely.  I sat back and looked around.  The booths along the far wall were filled with older folks lingering over their late lunches.  There was only one other person at the bar, a guy in his mid-sixties, I’d guess.  He was sitting at the other end of the bar from me, but as soon as I glanced at him he waved and started hollering over at me.

“I got my voting done early!” he said.  “I tell ya, that whole ‘voter ID’ bill is a crock if I ever saw one!”  I said yes it is.  All he needed was an opening.  “Boy, that recall is really something, isn’t it?”

I agreed with him.  His voice carried pretty well, and a few people looked over at us.

“Yeah, that Scott Walker, he thought he could walk all over people.  He’s got another think coming!”

I didn’t disagree, but more people were looking at us.

“Yep, a million signatures is a lot to argue with.  Why, there’s folks that voted Republican signing to get him outta office.  Where are you from?”

I told him.

“Oh, my boy just bought a house there, right by the library.”

I knew the house, right across the street from me.  And I realized that I had met this man’s wife a month ago when I signed the petition to recall the governor.

“Well, how about that,” the man shouted.  “Sure is a small world, isn’t it?”  It sure is.

 The waitress carried a basket of French fries to a table across the room.  The man watched her and then said, “You know, I used to work at the McDonald’s in Madison, back when they made their own fries.”

Is that right?  They made their own fries?

“Yep.  I was the manager there, down on Park street.  We got in bags of potatoes, and had a peeler there, a mechanical peeler.  And then we’d run ‘em through the slicer, parboil ‘em for three and a half minutes, then drain em.  And they’d be all ready for the fryer.  I didn’t live in Madison though.  I lived in Mount Horeb.  And I used to rent this camper from a guy who owned a gas station just up the street from the McDonald’s.  He let me use his bathroom to wash up in, and I’d help out at the gas station if he needed it.  It was more of a service station, so he’d need someone at the till now and then.  Yep, it was a pretty good arrangement.”  He had some papers and clipboard in front of him.  He shuffled the papers, clipped them in the board and stood up.  “Well, I guess I’d better get going.”

After he was gone, M came over.

“He’s our local Concerned Citizen.  I hope he didn’t bother you.”

“No, not really.  Just a little loud is all.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Oh, that was nothing.  It’s a good thing the other Concerned Citizen wasn’t here.  Let’s get you another beer.”

That was back in February.  It’s now the end of March.  The snow is gone, and the ground is dry.  Since that time, Gus has not earned enough to put fuel in his little pickup truck, let alone food in his belly.  The only thing that keeps Gus out of the poorhouse for now is feeding his increasingly mad elderly neighbor, and driving her to various appointments.  That is the way of it sometimes.  On Monday Gus dug up a garden and trimmed branches for some beer money.  In the meantime, the calls from Mom have gotten more frequent.  And that’s not a big deal, for the most part.  If Gus has a joke book beside the phone it helps a lot.

But then there was Tuesday’s visit, when I asked her if she wanted to go for ice cream.  She thought that sounded like a good idea.  We drove downtown, about a five minute drive.  The ice cream was very good, and perhaps Gus had a little too much of it.  But it was the Zanzibar Chocolate!!  Mom had the mint chocolate chip.   She said she liked it.  But she was very restless about getting moving.  “We have a long way to go,” she said.  Uh-oh.

On the way back through town she told me that if I saw a rest area, we should maybe stop.  “Well, we’ll be at your place in just a few minutes,” I said.

“Oh.  But then we’re going home, right?”  Gus had no idea at all how to answer this.  He pointed out some pretty houses and drove faster.  He said, “Look, I have a harmonica!”  I keep a harmonica in my ash tray.  I played “Oh, Suzanna!” over the space of a couple of blocks.  Mom laughed.  And then I saw her residence on the horizon.  “Here we are,” I said.

“Where’s this?”

“It’s where you live.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a bathroom you can use here.”

“Oh, good.”  I pulled up to the door to let her out.  “I’ll park and be right in,” I said.

There was a small musical group setting up in the public area of the retirement home.  It appeared to be a 40-ish woman and three teen-aged girls, ranging from about twelve to fifteen.  I walked down to her room, and she was looking around for what she should pack.

Oh, man.

I said, “Well, there’s some music getting ready to play.  I’d like to listen.”

“Okay,” she said.  We went back down the hall and took a seat.  Attendants brought more and more people out until the open area was filled.  Mom introduced me to the same people I meet almost every week.  Some of them remembered me, others didn’t.

The music started up, and I was amazed to hear these kids cranking out “Orange Blossom Special.”  The oldest girl stepped up to the mic and just belted out the first verse.  Her sister followed with a fiddle solo, they sang another verse, then the youngest did a solo on the mandolin.  She played with a look of fierce concentration, while her glasses kept sliding down her nose, and Gus found himself smiling.  Later on, this same kid took out the spoons and played as if she’d been born with them in her hands, slapping out a rhythm that clattered like shining silver droplets of dancing bright sunlight across all of the people and down the halls.  Uncle Gus wanted to laugh out loud at the sound.

The group took a break after a while.  I walked with Mom back to her room and explained to her that I had to leave.

“But where am I going to stay tonight?”

“Well, this is where you live now.”

“I know.  But…this isn’t really.”

“No.  I know.  And I’m not even going to pretend I have an answer.”

“Yeah.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say.  We walked together back down the hall to where they were getting ready to start again.  I told Mom that I was going to take off now, and she had suddenly forgotten I was there again.  She said, distractedly, “Okay.  See you,” and then started talking to someone.

Gus fled back to Pete’s Corner Pub.  Things were quiet in there.  M was tending bar.  I asked her how her day had been.  “Hot and greasy,” she said.

“That sounds very sexy,” said Gus.  Sometimes Gus doesn’t think first.

“This is as sexy as it gets these days, honey,” she said.  “Visiting your mom?”  It seems that’s the only time I get to Reedsburg these days.

“Yep.”

“Well, here, you'd better try this.  Freshly tapped.”  She filled a glass with Bourbon Scotch Ale without asking what I wanted.  It poured almost nut-brown, with a tan head, and when I took a long pull on it I could taste a mild sweetness and a hint of bourbon fragrance.  “Oh, man.” I said.

“Nice, huh?  I’d have one, but I O.D.’d on it already.  And now it’s four o’clock.  I’m done.”  She waved at the other waitress.  “I’m done!” she said.  She started mixing up a margarita.  “I have to meet my husband, and my daughter, and her kids, at Pizza Hut.  I hate Pizza Hut!”  She raised her glass to me, and then downed it in a couple of minutes.  “Oh, mommy needed that!”  She started mixing another.  “Oh, it’s okay.  This one’s only a single.”  She took a sip.  “Mmm-hm.  Mommy will be there soon.  Let me buy you another before I run.”  My glass was still half-full, but it was too late.  She set another beside it and drank her glass dry before she ran out the door.

That was two days ago.  Mom called again last night, not remembering why.  But I told her about my work day (digging more garden, cutting more branches, setting up a bird house) and the story about M slamming her margaritas before she had dinner with her family.  That all worked out fine by the time we hung up. 

Today I drove the neighbor on some errands.  When I got home I saw that Mom called.  Again.  I haven’t called back yet.  And it looks like rain on the way.  That seems like a good thing.

Nowhere, man.

So here it is, the thirtieth of January, and Gus has not been any more than twenty miles from home since he left The Cities.  I have gotten a lot of walking in, all of it down in the frozen-over wetlands outside of town.  They've been good hikes, and they help me to feel better about being so isolated.  I think I mentioned before that Gus needs people.  Yes, he does.  But as I said, the hikes have been good.  The dog and I are able to walk across the frozen beaver ponds and the marshes that we would normally sink into.  The beavers have been very busy along the river, and have left behind fields of stumps everywhere.  We haven't had much snow this winter.  In fact, all told, I think there are about six inches of it out there right now.  Nor has it been very cold.  The small ponds have been frozen over, but the river is still open.

We went out one afternoon while the snow was falling heavily.  We crossed two ponds and then reached the river where we stopped and looked around.  There was no wind, and the falling snow was so thick that it muffled the sound of the distant highway.  The snowflakes falling on the dry marsh grass was louder than the faint hiss of cars.

Another afternoon we were hiking along a well-packed track and I noticed a spindly winged insect walking on top of the snow in the sunshine.  Further along was another one, flying, and it was so light and delicate that it was caught up in the wake of my passing by.

Gus did get away for an hour or so to a town about fifteen miles from here.  There were errands to be run, and cat food to be purchased.  Oh, and there was a six-pack of a really nice porter to be purchased.  I have told myself that I can not open one until this posting is complete.  Cruel Gus.  And on the way out of town I decided to stop in for a beer.

And here is where I run into difficulty.  The thing is, I go to certain drinking establishments that I would just as soon keep anonymous, unless I'm going to write a review of them.  And in this instance I am not.  It's a hangout for me.  My friend J and I stop in for a few beers and bar food and to unwind.  ("But Gus," you say.  "What do you have to unwind from?  Your life is idyllic!"  Well, yes, it seems that way on the outside.  But nobody knows Gus's inner turmoils.  Oh, the pain!  The pain of being Gus.)  So yes, we unwind.  Sometimes we mock, sometimes we commiserate.  Sometimes we fall down if we're there too long.  But those times are few and far between.

The place was quiet, except for one guy lecturing another about how to make cheesy cauliflower.  "See, the trick is to not cook the cauliflower all the way through.  You cook it until it's still crunchy, but really hot, and then pour the melted Velveeta over it.  I usually go through a whole brick of it."  "A whole brick?"  "Well, yeah, or it won't be cheesy enough!"  I sat down the bar a ways before any other recipes got burned into my brain.  The guys voice carried though, and his friend seldom had a chance to respond as he jumped from topic to topic, an expert on all of them.  They were both drinking Lite beer.

I had thought the stool beside mine was unoccupied.  There was an empty glass on the bar, and nothing else.  The barmaid came over and muttered something along the lines of maybe I want to sit at a different stool.  Before that had a chance to sink in, the door of the ladies room opened and a slightly drunk woman came out.  She was not bad-looking, but very skinny, with, I'm sure, augmented breasts.  Not that Gus pays attention to those things, except as details in the picture.  Her hair was straight and blonde, and her pants were awfully tight.  The two men turned and watched her.  She seemed more drunk as she got closer and pulled up the stool next to mine.  The barmaid was pulling a mug of beer for me, and gave me grimace of sympathy.  She set the beer in front of me and started to walk away, but the girl stopped her.
"Hey, I'll have another one of those...drinks."
"You sure?  I thought you were done?"
"Nooo!  I'm walking home anyway, okay?"
The barmaid shrugged and mixed a gin and tonic and set it in front of her.

I get along pretty well with this bartender.  We used to compare notes about driving our parents to their appointments.  Oddly, our fathers died within a few weeks of each other.  I remember walking in there a month after and asking her how things were going.  She said, "Well, my father died."  I told her mine too, which seemed like an awfully dumb thing to say, but I didn't know what else to say, and we ended up telling funeral stories.  We both made an effort to keep the stories light, in spite of how we both felt.  It was comforting in an odd sort of way, and I always hoped that it was for her too.

The drunk girl looked at me in the backbar mirror.  "I'm getting a divorce," she slurred.  I saw the barmaid cringe.
"Well," I said.  "Um...is that a good thing?"
"Yeah, it's about time.  All the time he thinks I'm off...effing someone, and I'm not."
"No?"
"No!  I'm not like that!"  The barmaid smiled to herself at this.  She was putting away glasses behind the bar.  She looked across the bar at the back door, then over to the front. Something about her looking seemed furtive.  The girl sitting beside me did the same thing, though not as smoothly.  She had to turn on her stool, focus on one door, then the other.  Without meaning to, we were suddenly eye-to-eye.  Well, one eye.  Her left eye turned in suddenly toward her nose.  "Shit," she said.  With an effort the eye seemed to pull back.  It was disconcerting.  We both turned back to face the back bar.

"Yep, he was always checking on me.  Won't let me do anything.  Always picking fights with anyone I talk to..."  I glanced at the barmaid.  She was nodding in the affirmative.
"Well, that's not good," I said.
"Do you do that to your girlfriend?"
"No."
She was suddenly leaning in closer to me, breathing gin in my face.  The barmaid looked a little panicked and looked at the doors again.  The girl next to me glanced as well, then slowly focused back to me.
"You're expecting him, aren't you?" I said.
It took her a long time of thinking before she finally said, "Well, no, I don't think so."  But it didn't matter to me one way or the other.  I told her, "You know, I think I'm gonna go down there and get some popcorn.  I'm waiting for someone anyway."
I got halfway down the bar when the front door opened.  I jumped a little, but took the nearest stool and acted nonchalant.  But the person who came in didn't seem to know the girl, and sat down a few stools away from her.  He had his beer in front of him, and was looking at the bar menu when the blonde girl leaned across toward him, looked quickly at both doors, then said, "I'm getting a divorce!"

Buster's

Uncle Gus finally made it out to an actual night spot last night.  It was a tough struggle, an internal struggle.  I had promised myself that I'd treat myself if I finished a certain project, a written project.  Well, I did, though I'm not completely happy with it.  It will need rethinking and editing.  But it is finished.  Does that count?

I pondered this while I cooked some dinner (when did I start calling that meal, "dinner"?  It was always "supper" when I was growing up, and "dinner" was synonymous with "lunch."  Only rich folks called it "dinner.") and then took a shower.  Gus hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and was looking homeless, which really I am only a short step away from that condition.  (Why do I keep wanting to refer to myself in the third person?  Is it because of being cooped up with two dogs?  Alone in a city filled with people, and so I've had to become my own companion?  Uncle Gus just ain't certain.  But rest assured, there will be no volleyball with a face scrawled on it in Gus's future!)  So, all the parenthetical comments aside, I got cleaned up, shaved, and found some decent clothes to wear.  It's not a healthy thing to live in solitude, not for Gus anyway.

The dogs were looking at me, knowing full well that something was up.  I told them to behave.  Of course, they weren't going to behave on their own.  I had to put dining room chairs on the couch, close doors to rooms they didn't need to be in, raise the window blinds so that doggy noses didn't wreck the slats, make certain there was no food on the counter, or even a dirty plate, and make certain that dogs could not get to the garbage.  Having done these things, Gus ventured out into the steadily colder and very windy evening.  And walked almost a half a block before he came back for the keys to the minivan.

I parked a block away from Buster's so that nobody could see the minivan.  Not that it's anything to be ashamed of.  Beggars should not be choosers.  But still...

Buster's was busy.  I had thought that on a Wednesday evening things would be fairly quiet.  But this was not the case.  If I had been there to eat, there would have been a wait for a table.  As it was, I was allowed to pull up a stool at the bar.

I should say right now that I've eaten at Buster's before.  I've never had a bad experience there.  Their fries, their burgers, even trout on cedar slab, they're all amazing.  But that's back in the day when Gus wasn't on such a tight budget.  Oh, those were the days, of hanging sheet rock all day and then stopping in hungry and thirsty, and being able to just toss a couple of bills out on the bar and say, "Feed me!"

Anybody who knows me knows that I like to sit at a counter.  I like to be able to watch the action behind the bar, or the counter, to watch the people rushing back and forth, and gracefully keeping out of each others way..  It's a magical thing, this dance they do around one another, keeping orders in their heads.  There seems to be a sort of Zen to it, a certain state of mind.   And that's what was going on tonight.  From where I sat, I could see four people cooking.  There were two who were working the grill and the fryers behind the bar.  And there were two more working in the kitchen.  The bartender was right there with a beer list, which was easier to look at than the twenty-odd taps that lined the back bar.  I ordered a stout from Bell's.  Oh, man, that was a good choice.  It had a nice thick brown head on it, one I could have spooned and eaten.  This beer had a lightly smokey flavor to it that worked pretty well with the chilly wind outside.

There was a guy sitting next to me who seemed to be hitting on a girl, and she didn't seem to mind.  They went back and forth for a while as he tried to convince her that she could even move in to his building, there was a vacant room.  "It even has its own bathroom," he said.  It didn't seem to work.  But the conversation stayed light, and they seemed to part as friends when it was time for her to go.  He wandered out a little later, after she drove away.

I decided, even though I had eaten, that I should at least have a snack.  I ordered some onion rings.  And you know how in most places they just grab a bag of frozen onion rings and dump some into the fryer?  And then they serve them up, and people eat them and say, "Oh, they have good onion rings here!"?  Not at Busters.  This guy opened up a container of sliced onions and another container of batter, and dipped those rings in the batter and then into the fryer.  When they came out a minute later, they were gorgeous, a perfect golden brown.  The coating was crispy, the onions were sweet.  They have good onion rings here!

The grill was busy, with burgers and steaks and sliced beef all sizzling away.  The cook stood there, sliding his stainless steel spatulas across the cook top, scraping the fat into the little trough at the front, turning the meat, and dropping toppings onto the burgers.  At the same time he kept the fryers full of freshly sliced French fries, sweet potato fries, and more onion rings.  His movements were smooth, and unhurried, but he got everything out quickly.  It was a pleasure to watch.

A couple of women took up the stools that the couple beside me had just vacated.  The one closest to me was an older, kind of frail-looking gal.  Her companion was white-haired, but robust.  She sat down and asked me what I was drinking.  I didn't realize that she was talking to me at first.  But then I woke up.  "Ummm..." I said.  "I don't remember."  She laughed heartily.  Her companion seemed a little confused.  I got the feeling that she wasn't accustomed to taverns, as if the other person was kind of attending to her, showing her something new.  I suddenly remembered that I was having the stout, and I told her.  She decided that it sounded good, and went back to helping her friend choose a drink.  Her friend ordered root beer.

And the entire time I was sitting there, watching all of the activity going on around me, I was thinking, "I should ask them if I can hang with them while I have a second beer.  We could just talk about stuff, ask each other questions, etc.  But I didn't.  I should have.  I don't see how it could be a bad thing.  Do other people have that same...well, impulse?  Or is it a yearning, to just say hi, just for the conversation, to find out about a total stranger or to only connect?

I ended up finishing up my beer and my onion rings and heading back out into the cold.  I looked back as I put on my coat and saw that my space had already been cleared, and the two women had picked up their menus to see what looked good.

Random Search

As you might remember, Gus is house/dog sitting this week, up in the big city of Minneapolis.  This is a fine thing, a change of scenery is good.  As I may have mentioned, some real work would be cool.  But this will do for now.  I mentioned that there was a full supply of liquor here.  Well, sadly, I've barely touched it.  I had expected to down a few bottles of wine by this time, but so far managed to finish only one since Saturday.  And I haven't opened a single beer.  What is wrong with Gus?  Normally he'd be hungover or something right now.  But no, it's these dogs always keeping me busy.  Or perhaps it's "maturity"?  I don't know.  I'd rather not think about that one.

So yesterday I decided that I was going to go to the canoe builder's supply store in St. Paul. Did I mention that I'd been building a canoe?  Yes, I've got one all stripped out in a relative's workshop.  And that's as far as Uncle Gus got before he ran out of cash.  You know what I tell people about that?  I tell them, "Yah, when I have the money, I don't have the time.  And when I have the time, I don't have the money."  And that's just the way it was with this canoe project, this Labor of Love that I had expected to have finished and floating by this past summer.  But no, the work dried up before I was able to purchase the fiberglass and epoxy.  I worked off and on during the summer, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a stretch.  But it was always just enough to catch back up, never enough to get ahead.  But seriously, that's just the way it goes sometimes.  I've worked in cubicles, I've worked in factories.  I miss the regular paycheck, but still feel bad for those who are trapped in that treadmill lifestyle choice.

I went on the internet and got the location and directions for Northwest Canoe, and wrote it all down.  The store is in a big warehouse building in downtown St. Paul, according to the website.  Then I took off from here.  I took the road that follows the Mississippi to St. Paul.  It was a nice quiet drive, much easier, and probably closer, than if I'd taken the interstate.  I drove along and then got to downtown St. Paul and reached over for my directions and they weren't there!  And in my mind's eye, I could see them, right beside the door where I had set them down while I put my gloves on.  Sheesh!

I picked an exit at random, and drove up through the older part of town, where the warehouses tower huge and blocky over the streets.  These old buildings cover a city block.  They're made of brick and stone.  They cast shadows over the streets.  None of them seem to be warehouses any longer.  They've all been converted into stores, and fancy loft-type apartments with doormen and security.

I thought, maybe I can find this place.  Maybe if I just take my time and drive around I'll come upon it.  Yes, that's pretty naive, I know.  Sometimes I'm a naive and trusting soul.  So I drove down one-way streets, then up others, winding around and getting lost, then finding my way again.  There were streets being worked on, so there were detours that took me way out of the way, and I'd have to drive and drive until I found a place to turn and double back.  And I'd have to say that the good part of this was that there was nobody with me saying, "Turn here!  Turn there!"  I was able to get lost and then found all on my own with no worries about anyone getting exasperated with me.  Not all who wander are lost.  And I went on like this for about a half an hour, winding my way along the shaded streets and the traffic.

I finally decided to stop and walk around.  I pulled into a short street that ran along a big red brick warehouse that filled a city block.  It was quite tall, and quite old.  I saw an open parking space and pulled in.  Then I put money in the meter and went for a stroll.  I walked quite a few blocks from there, past coffee shops and taverns, fancy restaurants, and dive cafes.  All without any luck.  I finally decided to go back to where I parked and put some more quarters in and go into the coffee shop that was on the first floor of that big red warehouse.  I knew they'd have wi-fi, and I could use my iPod to figure out where I was.  I went in and was about to order some food so they'd let me stay there.  I thought I could order a bowl of soup and chunk of bread and just relax for a bit.  But at the last second I told the gal at the counter that I was lost.  And she was really nice, and asked me where I wanted to be.  And I took a long shot and said, "Well, I heard there was this canoe builder in St. Paul."  I mean, why would some chick in a coffee shop know anything about a small canoe building shop?

But she did!  She said, "Oh, that's downstairs, at the other corner of this building."  What???  You mean I walked around town for almost an hour and it was right here?  And so it was, right around the corner from where I had parked.  A few short steps.  I was there all along.  It just amazes me how that can happen sometimes.

I walked around the building and down a short alley, and there was a big garage door with the name of the business.  I didn't see a regular door, but there was a sign on the garage door that said, "Forget Minnesota Nice.  Don't knock.  Just raise the garage door and come in!"  Okay.  So I did.  And there was dog standing there, pushing his nose into my crotch and wagging his tail happily.  Nice doggy.  I heard someone call him, and he trotted off.  His work was done.  I pulled the door back down behind me.

There were two guys working there, a guy in his mid-to-late fifties, and a guy about thirty.  That was it.  There were two canoes being repaired, from the looks of them, and one canoe just being built.  The forms were set up and there were a few strips resting on it, ready to be placed.  And the older guy dropped everything to help me out and answer all of my questions.  I explained how far I had progressed on my canoe, even to the point of telling him that money was the main reason I had stopped.  And you know what he said?  This guy said the same thing I often say, and just now mentioned at the top of this page;  "When you have the time, you don't have the money.  And when you have the money, you don't have the time.  Yeah, I know how that goes!"

I told him that, money aside, I was really nervous about the fiberglassing part of this project.  He walked me through the fiberglass procedure better than any book I've read about it.  He even drew a diagram of how to apply fiberglass cloth to the canoe.  Then he explained that I could buy enough this week to do the outside, then order the rest in a couple of weeks if that would make it easier financially.  He figured out how much I'd need this week if I did it that way.  I tell you what, it's good to meet people like that. 


So I'm going back there later this week to pick up enough to seal the outside of my canoe.  Unless someone magically dumps a couple hundred into my checking.  And then I'm going back up to that cafe where I was kindly given directions, and I'll have myself a bowl of hot soup, and some coffee, and watch the cars and the people and I'll plan for the day when I can feel the canoe finally sliding over the open water.  I know it will be good.

The Angry Catfish

Uncle Gus is in Minneapolis this week, for a whole week!  Why?  Because I got this sweet house/dog sitting gig, that's why.

Okay, I know, that is just so pathetic.  Yes, it is a house sitting gig, but to tell the truth I'd rather be working.  I like to work.  Heck, if you give me a shovel and ask me to dig a ditch, I'm happy.  Well, so long as I'm getting paid.  But I'll tell ya the truth, things are pretty slow right now, and I had the week free.  Well, I actually have the month free.  How sad is that?  So when I was asked if I could stay for a week in a house stocked with food and liquor, I decided to not turn it down.  I also get cash!  And I do have a review of Gus's Trip Up the River to here, but this one couldn't wait.

Today, after I dropped the homeowners off at the train station, I hiked over to the Angry Catfish coffee shop/bicycle shop (4208 28th Ave. S).  The coffee was fine, but the people working behind the counter were just useless hipsters.

"Hi, I'll have a 12 oz coffee for here please," I said to the guy behind the counter.  He was a young guy, trying to grow a beard.  But so far it just looked like patches of dirt on his face.  And really, that ain't a nice thing to say.  I might even be exaggerating, I'll admit it.  So what?  It was a bad experience.  Okay, forget I said anything about his beard.  My dad used to say, the first time I tried to grow a beard, "Huh.  Put some cream on that and I bet the cat could lick those whiskers off."  Pretty funny guy, my dad was.

Where was I?  Oh, the barista guy.

"What kind of coffee?" he asked.
"Whatever's darkest." 
"They're all light roasts."
What-ever!  What's the point in having a choice if they're all the same roast.  I mean, sure one might have come from Kenya, one from Ethiopia, another from your ass!  So why don't you have roast choices?  I didn't say this, though I really wanted to.  Instead I told him to "Give me the Ethiopian."
Then he took my money, I put a buck in the jar, and he wandered off.  At least that's how it looked to my untrained and uncivilized and un-hip eye.  I stood and waited, and waited while they did some stuff back there around the sink area, and I finally said, "Hey!" to this one chick who was walking around back there.  She looked at me.  "Hey, I don't want to sound ignorant or anything," I said.  And I stuck with Uncle Gusford's Rule of Politeness ("Always be polite.") "But do you have any mugs for my coffee?  Where do I get it?"
"Oh, we're brewing it back here, we brew it fresh and then we'll call you."

And that was fine, but it took her a long time for her to get the words out, as if she was hoping I'd stop her in mid-sentence so she wouldn't have to continue with the painful Sisyphean task of "speaking."  Maybe texting her reply would have been easier.  A smile would have been nice too.

But ya know what's funny?  Every coffee shop, like every tavern, has its own personality.  Some coffee shops are so warm and inviting, and the people are so nice that you want to take them home.  And it's genuine.  But others are cold.  And it's not just one person in the shop, but all of them, cut from the same cloth of cold indifference.  Here's your coffee, please leave me alone, I can't believe you didn't tip.  And really, that's how I felt about this place.

But, like I said, the coffee was good, very good, and very strong.  I like that in a coffee.

What else did I see?  Well, I was sitting at a counter in the window, and there was a lot of foot traffic in that neighborhood.  There's a bar next door to the coffee shop.  Buster's.  It's a freakin' nice place with really good food and lots of good beer choices.  There is also a row of booths that are nice and private, where you can sit and have some beers and not be seen by anyone.  I like that too.  There is nothing bad in that bar, except for too many teevees.  And it's a Saturday, so it's really busy there.  I didn't bother going, probably won't tonight.  It'll be elbow to elbow.  Anyway, there were lots of folks coming and going from there.  I saw a working-class guy and what looked like his pre-teen aged son coming out to his truck, an older Chevy half-ton pickup, in which a puppy waited.  The guy took forever to get out of his parking space, as if he couldn't judge any distances ahead of behind him.  He'd move an inch, turn the wheel, back up an inch, turn the wheel, over and over until he got out.  It was awful to watch.  I thought guys who wore Carhartt clothing knew how to drive.  And then after he left, an expensive-looking car pulled up with two women in it, younger women.  And that gal tried and failed miserably to park there.  She finally saw a triple-car space open up further down the street and drove as quickly as she could to that.  She did manage to park there, but it was still crooked.  And the whole thing is, this is the 21st century, isn't it?  I mean, the human race has been driving cars for a hundred years!  And there are people out there who still don't know how to drive!!  What's up with that?  What happened to "evolution?"  I guess you don't die from not knowing how to parallel park, so they keep reproducing.  Darwin is only relevant in the wild.

I also saw, as I walked along the residential neighborhood streets to the coffee shop, a big tree branch that had been mounted on a steep-banked yard as a landscaping ornament.  I had helped to carry it up there over a year ago when I just happened to be walking by and saw two guys trying to get this big awkward four-legged branch off of a trailer.  The one guy had seen it broken from a tree and picked it up to surprise his wife because she likes landscaping.  Anyway, it was last year that I was walking by and offered to help, and the branch is still there, so his wife must have liked it.  It looks like some sort of creature, but it's really cool.  I'm glad my work wasn't for nothing.  The more I think about it, the more I like the idea that something creative that I helped with is still there.  And perhaps that guy thinks from time to time about the stranger who came walking by one drizzling day and helped him and his friend carry a branch, and then moved on.  I know, that's hopelessly romantic (just as "hopelessly romantic" is hopelessly cliche) but there ya go.

Target Bluff

Let's face it; when it comes to dining along any interstate highway, there just ain't much for choices if you want a good meal.  Between Chicago and Minneapolis, I can only think of two.  One is the Norske Nook in Osseo.  But that's not exactly on the interstate.  The other is the Target Bluff German Hous in Camp Douglas. (german-haus.com).  And I'll tell you what, the Target Bluff is, to me, everything a "supper club" should be.  The bar is staffed with professional bartenders who know how to mix drinks and carry on a pleasant conversation.  The food is prepared the same way it was forty years ago, from scratch with love.

Camp Douglas isn't a very large town, only about 600.  When I have driven through it, it's a pleasant-looking town, though it's looking as run-down as many small towns are these days.  But I am thinking now that I will have to check it out some time.  There are a few bars there, and of course they will be needing a visit.

Target Bluff isn't in town though.  It's at the foot of a huge bluff just off the interstate, in a strip along Highway 12/I-90/94 that is lined with a couple of gas stations and a hotel.  I had gone there long ago, back in the seventies and I recall being struck at how good the food was, even in an age when McDonalds and Hardee's were taking over the scene.  But then I moved away to a different life, and for many years the only time I saw Target Bluff was in passing along the interstate.

Then last fall my friend, J, called up and told me that we had to go there.  "We have to go this week.  They're having smorgasbord!"  And I don't know about you, but the thought of "smorgasbord" always conjures up the taste of instant mashed potatoes and dried-up meat and canned gravy all set out in a hot table for hours on end.  I was skeptical.  But J insisted that it was good, and some of his relatives were coming along.  They were always a good time, so I decided that they would all make the ride worthwhile even if the food was bad.

We got there early, as was the plan, solely to hang out at the bar for a while.  "You can't do the supper club thing without sitting at the bar first," J's niece told me.  When we walked in, we were greeted by festive German music.  I recognized it right away as the "Pennsylvania Polka".  If you've ever seen "Groundhog Day", you'd know the tune.  I was feeling better about this already.  (Oh, I hope I have the name of that polka right!)

The bar area was quiet, but the two bartenders looked as if they were expecting and ready for a crowd.  There were six of us, and we lined up along the bar and ordered.  I decided that I wanted an Old Fashioned.  And really, in so many places if you ask for an Old Fashioned, you'll see the bartender pull out a bottle of mix and a bottle of brandy and serve it up.  But not here!  The bartender--who the women in our group called,"Raoul" for no reason I could think of--asked me what brandy I wanted, and then recommended a good one.  Then he mixed the drink right there, with sugar and spices and a cinnamon stick and some garnish.  It was a work of art that he had ready in seconds, and it tasted at least as good as it looked.

The "Pennsylvania Polka" ended, and a waltz came on.  We all sat back with our drinks while people started filling up the large open dining room.  I could see waitstaff moving quickly and efficiently around in there, and the hot tables were all set up and steaming.  One table after another got up to join the line of diners filling their plates.  We all sat and finished our drinks, then ordered more.  At one end of the bar, two old couples sat down with their shots of brandy and glasses of St. Pauli girl.  I realized that they were speaking in German to each other, though they looked like retired local farmers.  They are a breed that I was familiar with when I was growing up, the men and women who had worked without electricity or indoor plumbing, who had raised and butchered their own meat, grown their own food.  They have a look about them that's unlike anything you see today, a hard but friendly look.  I hate to generalize about any group, even if it's a family of brawlers--and there are some of them that I have known--or even people who go into business or advertizing.  I'm sure there are good and bad in any of them, and they're not all alike.  But there is a generation, one that's disappearing here, of people who grew up and made a living, and even retired, on a hundred acres of land.  I've known many of them.  And they value hard physical work, and family, and neighbors.  They put their names on their mailboxes so people could find them if they had to.  They shared labor at harvest time, they helped one another in bad times.  My own father was one of those people.  I found that out a few years ago when I ran into a neighbor in town who told of my father coming over to help him with chores after his wife had died.  I never knew about this, I was too young.  But that meant that my father would have had to milk his own cows and take care of them, and then drive over there, morning and night, for as long as he felt necessary.  Forty years later, this man remembered what I had never known.

Where was I?  Yes, at the bar.  We had a couple of drinks, and visited, then finally told Raul that we were ready for a table.  One opened up in a few minutes.  We took our drinks in and then went to the food.  And I'll say right now that this was no banquet for a vegetarian.  Everything here was meat-centric.  There were trays of cabbage rolls (cabbage leaves rolled around meat and veggies) and meat rolls (thin-sliced meat wrapped around vegetables).  There was saurbraten, bratwurst, pork hocks.  There were mashed potatoes, and German potato salad.  And the food was prepared there, not out of a box.  The potatoes were fresh, as were the meat.  This was all basic German food, nothing fancy, but not really simple either, not to be this good.  It took time to slice the meats for the meat rolls, time to stuff the cabbage leaves, to mash the potatoes.  It was worth the trip (and I was so glad that we had a designated driver!) to be able to get food this good, and service this good, and an atmosphere that was just happy all around.  I don't think it was just the time at the bar that made me feel this way.

I seldom order the buffet.  I never eat enough to make it worthwhile.  But this time I went back for seconds.  The waitress kept our drinks full, kept the water glasses full, and stayed really cheerful.  I don't know how they do that, but I admire that ability.  We all decided at once that we were full, and retired once more to the bar.  Raoul was still smoothly serving up drinks.  A group of military kids from Camp Williams/ Volk Field, which is just across the interstate, filled a table.  They were mostly drinking light beers, as far as I could see.  It seemed like such a waste, with the good German beers that were stocked here.  But there ya go.  We sat and relaxed with another cocktail while our designated driver looked a little annoyed/amused at the womenfolk who were getting kind of loud now.  He was in for a fun ride home.  I planned on napping the whole way.