by hilzoy
Jackmormon tagged me with the state meme. It’s below the fold.
Arizona: Home of the champion in the “sentence I’m glad my life has included” contest: “hilzoy, if memory serves, at 5am, you and I were hopping a freight train…” (The person who said this can identify himself in comments if he chooses.) Scene of a lot of the misspent part of my misspent youth.
Arkansas: Has a town called Ozone. (I stopped there.)
California: LA: materialistic in the sense of being fixated on big lawns and big cars. Bay area: materialistic in the sense of being fixated on exquisite stereos and fine wine.
Colorado: Where I realized just how tall David Gergen really is.
Connecticut: They only think they’re in New England.
DC: Company town.
Delaware: Should just be annexed by Maryland; toll road drivers everywhere would rejoice. — OK, I’m just kidding. Here’s something more serious: Delaware is also one of the best places to see the Red Knot, which may become extinct within the decade, while the Bush administration does nothing:
“The Bush administration has declined an emergency request from Defenders of Wildlife and others to provide Endangered Species Act protections for the red knot. This despite the fact that the bird has seen a 90% drop in its population over the last ten years and is forecasted by scientists to go extinct as soon as 2010. (…)
“The Bush administration has ignored the clear and compelling science showing that emergency listing is desperately needed to protect the red knot,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, Executive Vice President and Former Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “If the bird is not awarded protection under the Endangered Species Act, it will likely disappear from New Jersey’s shores in a matter of years.”
Defenders slammed the reasoning behind the Service’s denial of the petition, which included the assertion that an emergency listing was not needed since the bird “seemed to have a relatively good year” and that steps were already being taken or pending that will help the bird’s numbers.
“No biologist worth their degree would suggest a species is on the path to recovery based on one year’s population count,” said Clark. “The number of red knots on the Delaware Bay has declined consistently for the last seven years and they are at their lowest point in the 20-year period of the survey. The population is now so small that something as simple as bad weather conditions on its breeding grounds could significantly impact the remaining birds.
“It is monumentally irresponsible to use data from one field season to suggest the bird is secure. Their decision is a political one, pure and simple,” added Clark.”*
Florida: There is nothing quite like the sight of a whooping crane, bristling with telemetry, wandering around the manicured lawn of a McMansion, thinking that the grass has beeen helpfully cut just to let it get at the worms more easily.
Georgia: My first ever speaking engagement was in Atlanta, at a Mensa convention. Like a summer camp for grownup nerds with no life. Yikes.
Illinois: Why can’t I think of anything interesting to say about Illinois?
Indiana: When you drive across it, it goes on and on and on…
Kansas: The land God ironed.
Kentucky: Home of Rowdy, Hardshell, Fisty, Dwarf, Dice, Vortex, and so much more…
Louisiana: The American Philosophical Association didn’t hold meetings in New Orleans for about a decade, reportedly because tons of people would come but no one ever showed up for sessions.
Maine: I spent one of the best summers of my life there, pitching hay, working in a women’s bookstore, and taking a lot of photographs. With Arizona, the best music scene I have ever known.
Maryland: My cats love it, and so do I.
Massachusetts: Jackmormon, it is not boring.
Michigan: For some values of ex-, it is a mistake to think that you can stay with ex- and the woman he subsequently married without having to pretend everything is OK when it really, really is not.
Minnesota: First place I ever encountered a highway patrol officer who took credit cards.
Missouri: Goes well with my k.d. lang tapes.
Nevada: One day, when all the fossil fuel is gone, Las Vegas will be the strangest ghost town on earth.
New Hampshire: All those contortions to avoid a sales tax…
New Jersey: I am convinced that tiny gnomes creep out in the dead of night and vacuum the streets of Princeton.
New Mexico: Georgia O’Keeffe did not invent those amazing colors.
New York: Defies description.
North Carolina: My then-boyfriend and I got completely lost on a foggy night in the Blue Ridge mountains, and finally, at around 4am, found a place to stay: a completely pink motel. Surreal.
Ohio: Columbus is nicer than you’d think, but ‘nicer than you’d think’ still leaves a lot open.
Oklahoma: If it hadn’t been about to flood in Oklahoma, and I hadn’t had all my earthly goods in the car, or if I had remembered how big Western storms are, I would not have kept driving until 25 miles shy of the New Mexico border in Texas; and this, in turn, wouldn’t have been a problem had it not been for the fact that I had been driving, without a break, since New Jersey. Do not try this. It’s a mistake.
Oregon: Hi Carol!
Pennsylvania: My great-grandfather had a house there named ‘Swastika’. (Honest. It was long before the Nazis; he was a friend of Rudyard Kipling, who liked the Hindu symbol.)
Rhode Island: Somehow, I can’t think of much to say about Rhode Island. There’s an Italian restaurant in Providence that my brother-in-law swears by.
South Dakota: Rosebud… Rosebud…
Tennessee: Graceland one day, Lorraine Motel the next; emotional whiplash for a week afterwards.
Texas: The storm described under ‘Oklahoma’ was even worse in Texas, and it went on forever. And Dallas sure is tacky.
Utah: There’s a photo of a room in the Mormon temple that is supposed to give Mormons a foretaste of heaven. Apparently, heaven is a lot like a bedroom in a very expensive, very tacky hotel.
Vermont: Mmmm, maple syrup.
Virginia: Due to circumstances too bizarre to explain, involving a wealthy couple’s disappearance into the Bermuda triangle, I got to visit a kid’s complete fantasy house in Virginia when I was nine: complete collections of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, private lake, private roads where we could drive the model Ts, yew mazes, truly everything a kid could possibly want. Nearly twenty years later, I stopped in Lynchburg, and Rev. Falwell’s church being unlocked and unoccupied, I went in and led the nonexistent audience in three cheers for the ERA, from behind the pulpit. Truly a strange state.
Washington: Great beer.
West Virginia: It looks rather nice when you’re driving through.
Wisconsin: I was very young then, and all I remember is a recurring nightmare in which I biked around and around one of the great lakes, going faster and faster without being able to stop, until I fell in. (I think this was inspired by an exhibit illustrating Kepler’s laws of motion at our local science museum.)
Wyoming: I kind of liked it before I became aware of Dick Cheney.
* Anyone who lives in any midatlantic state really should try to do something to help the Red Knot. It migrates from Tierra del Fuego all the way to the Arctic, and stops, exhausted, around Delaware, Maryland, NJ, Virginia, etc., to rest and feast on horseshoe crab eggs to prepare for the last leg of its journey. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many eggs anymore, since we keep harvesting them. If you had flown over 5,000 miles on your own steam, and you weighed less than a pound, wouldn’t you hope someone left your food alone, and even tried to protect it for you? You know you would! You can find out how to help here.
And here’s an article with pictures.
Oh, and I forgot one more thing about California: Berkeley, home of the reverse puritans. — I was once looking for an apartment, and replied to an ad, and the potential roommates suggested we have the interview in the hot tub, naked. I didn’t want to get naked with people I had known for (literally) less than five minutes, and politely said no, and was then lectured for about half an hour about how obviously a sexually repressed person such as myself was the wrong housemate for them.
Then about a week later I ran into someone I hadn’t seen since nearly a decade before, when we ere both 15, and in our first conversation after all that time, he looked at me very earnestly and said: hilzoy, do you love yourself? I wasn’t sure what he was getting at so said something like: yeah, I guess; and he said: no, I mean physically. I nearly choked on my Diet Coke.
Well, I won’t make a long list and this will be too personal:
Florida: The Panhandle was much friendlier than I expected while still Southern
California:I hit the State, head to the beach and cry. I have lived near the beach for months on end and gotten used to it, left the state, come back to the Pacific and cried. Seven times.
Arizona: Hitchhiking, got dropped off somewhere way East of Flagstaff at 3 AM. No buildings, no traffic, no lights, no sounds, flat black. Got scared of the nothing. Then I looked up.
New Mexico: Passing thru stopped at night to get gas in Deming. Just gas stations and motels and diners, nothing interesting or special. But I suddenly felt:”This is it. This is the place. Something is calling me.”
Very intense. Didn’t make any sense, so I moved on. But I think on it sometimes.
Just a few highlights in no particular order:
California: “You can’t be gay… I love you!”
Tennessee: If you have a house in hell and farm in Memphis, sell the farm and go home.
Colorado: Naropa Institute, The Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics – Allen Ginsburg trying to hold hands with me under the table then, later that same evening, parting his grey-black beard hairs, pointing at a little red “blemish” on his chin and asking “Does that look like a herpe?”
West Virginia: On a cross-country drive, late at night, hungry, stopped at a Wheeling Jack in the Box and my best friend Ralph ordered “one of everything that ends in Jack.”
Louisiana: The New Orleans Jazz Festival, morphine, Olatunji, playing guitar for change on Bourbon Street.
New York: Walking up Lexington Avenue at 5:00 a.m. and passing Richard Nixon out for his morning stroll after having just gotten a blow job in a stairwell from a 250 pound black woman named Maggie who’d said: “Honey, I’d like to suck your white dick,” and whose red wig came off in my lap during.
Oklahoma: Cow Woodstock.
Texas: Are we there yet?
Massachusetts: Amherst to Smith College to Mt. Holyoke – the true Devil’s Triangle.
Georgia: Stone Mountain “Jesus Christ, this entire gondola could fit in the left nostril of Stonewall Jackson’s horse!”
New Hampshire: Driving cross country 52 hours straight with no sleep to spend Christmas in a farm house with no heat.
Arizona: Pumpkin-sized boulders rolled off the edge of a thousand-foot-high cliff in the middle of the night erupt into a shower of orange sparks when they hit bottom and roll – but you can’t hear a sound.
Washington: Riding freight trains from Arizona to Seattle in June 1980 to see what’s left of Mt. St. Helens and to witness those endless miles of volcanic ash fields.
Missouri: Somewhere between Joplin and Centralia becoming convinced that Jesse James did indeed live to be 104 and did in fact work as a newspaperman in Grandbury, Texas writing under the alias J. Frank Dalton.
New Jersey: Clearly, I’ve misunderstood something.
New Mexico: Leonard Cohen in concert in Santa Fe then, later, drinking tequila with his dark-haired “angel” Perla Batalla.
Rhode Island: If I’d a gone to Brown, I’d probably be a doctor.
Alaska: Whales swimming into Glacier Bay.
Florida: GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!
Berkeley, home of the reverse puritans
Pretty much perfect. And the tackiness of Mormon art, let alone Mormon visions of heaven, really is a problem that the Church is going to have to look into.
Thanks for playing, hilzoy!
This is just a childhood memory, but I thought that Mormon architecture wasn’t too bad. We used to live in Clinton Maryland, and my aunt, uncle and cousins lived in Gaithersburg, and driving up, I remember the Mormon temple in Kensington as being impressive, but it might have just that we knew we were on the second half of the trip, and so probably that was what I was responding to.
If I were doing this, my list would include:
Alaska — how can a vacation where one of the participant handles logistics for a living, and nearly all of the others are well-organized, end up as such a logistical nightmare? Oh, and see the Whale Fat Follies the night before you leave, you’ll get more of the jokes then.
Hawaii — went for a wedding of 2 law school buddies. A co-worker said I was the only person who went to Hawaii for a vacation and returned paler than when I left.
Passing through: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia.
Lived: Iowa, Illinois, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Missouri.
Long enough or often enough to remember something:
Arizona: Dry heat; Flagstaff – stunning beauty.
Arkansas: Pine needle bedded forests makes it easy to find golf balls; great bar in Little Rock.
Colorado: Awesome, I could retire there.
Florida: A man could lose his perspective in the Keys.
Indiana: About 150 miles wide. Goes on and on – for about 2 hours. Try Nebraska!
Iowa: A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.
Michigan: Great airport area bars.
Minnesota: Life’s memories at Gull Lake.
Missouri: A blessing.
Nebraska: Love the name Ogallala.
Nevada: What a hoot!
New Mexico – first business trip. Gallup: pickup trucks and turquoise; Farmington – scary runway.
Ohio: Interesting time in my life. Ummm.
Oregon: It could be heaven or it could be hell.
Pennsylvania: It was a pleasure doing business there. Love Pittsburg and Philly.
South Dakota: SDSU ice cream.
Tennessee: Kentucky Lake – Oasis.
Texas: Good memories, great friends.
Washington: Breath taking volcanos; ferry to the islands; smoked salmon.
Wyoming: Weird and wonderful drives.
Sorry about the broadband hilzoy. Tripped my trigger – needed it today. Enjoy.
1. I hit 51 about 5 years ago. Went to Kentucky. Best Mexican food ever (who do you think works in the barge trade along the Ohio, and what do you think they eat?)
2. I’ve been to the USVI and the ELAPR, but not yet any of the Pacific territories.
3. Hil, where in Idaho?
4. Jack, get thee to Boston this very day. Wear an orange scarf. And nothing green. I promise you will not be bored.
Somehow, I can’t think of much to say about Rhode Island.
Really? Ask Blossom Dearie
No, Charley: the best Mexican food ever is sold out of a truck on the side of the road in Mendecino, CA. Geez, I thought everyone knew that!
Boston on St. Patrick’s Day could be interesting, but if I wore an orange scarf that would align me with the militant Protestants on a nationalist and Catholic holiday…waitaminute.
CharleyCarp: Moscow (which I have been instructed, by the proprietor of the Motel I made a reservation at, should be pronounced ‘MOSC-o’, “because Mos-cow is in Russia”.)
And Jackmormon: the best Mexican food is in Tucson. The second best is Burrito Express, in Pasadena CA.
“the best Mexican food is in Tucson.”
Yep. Specifically, (once upon a time when, you were there hilzoy, at El Minuto, but now, definitely) at Mi Nidito on S. 6th Ave.
Re: My “Meming in the Rain” above – sorry for some of the intensely personal, ribald and racy comments… particularly NY. It was late and I was on a roll. Moderators: (not that you need my permission to do this but…) by all means delete any of my comments that may be construed as violating the posting rules (or their intentions) or that you feel denigrate the site.
And, actually, as for NY, the most memorable/poignant event was being in the Village with all the other aspiring young folk-singers on the night of Dec. 8, 1980 and hearing the news – which spread through the Village like wildfire – that John Lennon had been killed then wandering zombielike through the park to 72nd & CPW (the Dakota) to stand around in shock until well past dawn.
The first thing that popped into my head while reading the description following that was “this sounds a lot like Sean Hannity’s interview with Howard Stern”.
With apologies to both you and Meg Ryan (sorry, the When Harry Met Sally thing pops into my head at the most inconvenient times): you’re the Sean Hannity in this scenario.
“Berkeley, home of the reverse puritans.”
Not really so reverse, just a different form of puritanism.
Still beat 99.9% of Generic Suburbs as a place to live though. It’s a town of 100,000, with more cultural impact on the US than most cities 20 times its size.
I like the idea of my home state being a little bit country and a little bit rock. I’m afraid it might be a little bit ethanol and a whole lot of meth lab, but maybe not yet. Iowans tend to be respectable.
Oregon where i first road over a mountain pass on a bicycle.
Montana where i did it again.
And again in Wyoming.
Yukon Territory where i lost my heart to the cold blue north.
The off shore islands for the hushpuppies.
Camping at Christmas in Big Bend, Texas.
Hiking to Delicate Arch at night in Utah.
Near miss with a rattlesnake in the Black Hills, S. Dak.
Wild sunflowers in the rolling hills of Nebraska.
Wild blueberries and bears on the UP,Michigan.
Alpine flower fields in Jasper, Canada.
Liliwaup. Skykomish and other lovely place names particular to Washington state.
How can all you articulate free-spirited folk never have been to Montana? I suppose it must be that, if you had, you would still be there and would not be trying to dredge up memories of other states.
I am very partial toMontana. I used to have the flower fields on the eastern slope of Glacier picked out as the place I wanted to go to die.
Hey! That works as a meme: where would people go to die, given the opportunity to choose?
I don’t know about the rest of them, but I’ve been trying to find an excuse to go to Montana for ages. (Who needs an excuse, you ask? Good question. I have, however, been going to other great places, like New Zealand, with excuses (a conference! in Auckland! Kant and penguins!), so that’s part of it.)
Well, this is embarassingly irresistible. hilzoy knows where I come from, so she’ll understand when I start un-alphabetically – but will limit self to 3 off-the-top-of-the-head memories. And will skip the states w/o actual resonance …
Texas: 1) Age 15 – an unaccustomed sense of dizziness as I watch a cute boy from across the room and soak up the the smell of cigarette smoke and beer mixed w/ sawdust in the Pink Elephant Bar on Camp Bowie Boulevard, while the jukebox plays Jerry Jeff Walker singing “L.A. City Freeway” (any JJW fans at ObWi? No? Damn). 2) 4th of July 2 years ago when 2-year-old nephew found a copperhead snake under a tree at dusk and picked it up – guess what happened – my first clue (I was in the house) was the sound of my father’s shotgun going off just as 2 cars started up, w/ extreme prejudice, on the other side of the house. 3) The time I caught fire at a debutante party. Ask hilzoy. (And an unauthorized 4 – Lily, you want meth labs, you come to Glen Rose, also the center of moonshining in the state, to this day.)
Arkansas. 1980. A really mean cop & $100 fine for going 60 mph (Texas license plates were charged extra). Resentment lingers.
California. Watching the Perseid meteor shower while staying in a Nature Conservancy cabin in Mendocino Country. Spent the night lying on a picnic table and staring straight ahead; felt I was falling forward into space.
Florida. Gotta love Key West. Went snorkeling w/ hangover and felt mean enough to fake out several barracuda and a moray eel.
Louisiana. “Do you know what it means / To miss New Orleans?”
Maine. 4 years ago, my crazed and beloved crusading newspaper-editor uncle died, leaving strict instructions that there would be NO memorial service. 72 hours later 200 people had nonetheless gathered in Bowdoin Chapel, and it was almost like a Quaker meeting — everyone had something to say. “Do you remember when he got us thrown out of the Brunswick Diner at 4 a.m.?” “Did you know he single-handedly stopped a nuclear plant from being built on the Androscoggin River?” “Did you ever go fishing with him?” “Birdwatching?” “Drinking?” “He was so awful, and he was so one of the good guys.”
Massachusetts. Hi, hilzoy! Remember the time I put Palmolive dish soap in your parents’ dishwasher?
Montana. God’s country (metaphorically speaking). Eagles, grizzlies, lightning storms, drama in general. I want to go there every chance I get.
Nevada. Once during a 3-hour layover from 12:00 to 3:00 a.m. I lost $35 in the Las Vegas airport slot machines.
North Carolina. Too many trees.
Pennsylvania. Barricades and patdowns if you want to go into Independence Hall.
Utah. Near beer. Feh. In Logan there used to be a decent coffee house that actually had the New York Times 3 days after it came out. I loved that place.
Virginia. Monticello is beyond lovely, until you start worrying about who actually built it. And even then, Mr. Jefferson’s grave brought tears to my eyes.
Wyoming. The Frenchman who named the Teton Mountains after women’s breasts must have been really desperate.
New Zealand – Kant and penguins AND kiwi birds and cacapos! And much more! (hilzoy, have you watched Attenborough’s “The Life of Birds?) (We have, @ 12 times)
Roberta, I was noticing the same thing.
Hil, and others looking for an excuse, mark your calendars for August 4-6: Sweet Pea in the Bozone. Really, this is worth the trip. Hell, the tater pigs (that’s a sausage in a baked potato w/ sour cream) are worth the trip.
javelina: can you forget my making reference to one of its scenes in the presence of your son, citing the wrong sort of owl, and his correcting me?
And I will remember, with delight, the Palmolive moment for the rest of my days. Along with the fact that for that visit, you brought four evening gowns, even though my parents were only going to be around for one or two of the three nights we’d be there.
And CharleyCarp: if I decide not to go here, I’ll definitely try to go there.
Jav: I met JJW working as part of the setup crew when he played Gallatin Gateway, Montana. I don’t know, but Nightrider’s Lament resonated with us better than LA Freeway. Nice guy. Liked the food I brought him.
Say, isn’t Glen Rose also the center of dinosaurs-coexisting-with-man, and is there some relation between that and more modern diversions?
(javelina: in answering CharleyCarp’s question, bear in mind that your Dad might be, in an entirely good sense, one of the dinosaurs 😉 )
I might be movin’ to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of
Dental Floss
Actually, Kumamoto is a ‘sister prefecture’ with Montana (a result of when Mike Mansfield was ambassador to Japan and Hosokawa, a Kumamoto native, was Prime Minister), so it feels like we have had the entire population of Montana come thru here. It may be the only place in the world where, if you say you are American, people say ‘Oh, are you from Montana?’
Another New Hampshire:
Live Free or Die
Well I’m doin’ ten to twenty
in the frozen Granite State
and every day I go to work
to stamp out license plates
and, every day I go to work
and every night I cry
cuz every license plate I make tells me to
“Live Free or Die.”
Chorus:
Live Free or Die, Oh lord tell me why
can’t they say “Seat Belts Fastened”
or “Oklahoma is OK?”
“Vacationland” sounds mighty great
wouldn’t mind stampin’ out “The Garden State”
it’s enough to make me cry:
“Live Free or Die.”
Well I did not mean to shoot that man
the gun just went off in my hand
but I caught him with my wife
and it cost that man his life
I’d just come home from the factory
and that guy’s sittin’ there where I’m s’posed to be
now he’s up there in the sky and I’m stuck with
“Live Free or Die.”
Chorus
So let this be a lesson
to all you married men out there
that patience is a virtue
so make your plans with care
and if you catch your wife with another man
it’s best to hold off shootin’ him long as you can
then get him in another state where they got a
better license plate…
Chorus.
by Trigger Cook & Bill Morrissey
Alabama: southern courtesy completely creeps me out.
California: I was not really a Disneyland kind of eight year old–have to see San Francisco some day.
Connecticut: New Haven is not 1/5 bad as they say, and there are advantages: $130 rent one summer in college. Bridgeport is about as bad as they say New Haven is.
Delaware: my father and grandfather once told us there was an eight piece band that welcomed you over the memorial bridge. Stayed at a bizarre Hilton, 5 minutes off the turnpike with swans in the pool.
D.C.: the height restriction causes too many of the buildings to look like parking garages, and makes it too hard to walk around. When they light up the monuments at night it’s almost worth it, but not quite.
Florida: oh my God–Long Island has been stripped of New York’s positive influence and given creative control of a whole state! Plus alligators.
Illinois: I love Chicago but am strangely disoriented being away from the east coast. These skyscrapers, and I’m not in New York? What do you mean I can drive to Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa–are you joking?
Maryland: how do the mini golf places in Ocean City possibly stay in business?
Ohio: Cincinatti has a surprisingly lovely art deco hotel whose elevators are surprisingly full of drunk, occasionally barefoot Moose-convention-goers.
Maine: my family lived briefly in Bangor, moved away when I was four, went back to Acadia many summers–It’s very strange to stand on an empty beach and realize that you remember being in this exact spot nearly twenty years ago.
Massachusetts: I’m moving this fall and probably won’t live here again, but the people’s republic (both the state and Cambridge) will always have a special place in my heart.
Minnesota: fun wedding, and based on the plane ride in they’re not kidding about 10,000 lakes.
New Hampshire: Never, never, never, never, never trust the exit polls.
New Jersey: the Garden State Parkway is what drove us to finally getting EZ-Pass–35 cent tolls every 5000 feet. Why?
New York: the capital of everything. I was born in the city, moved away at the age of two, and have been trying to get back ever since. The closest I’ve come is living in my in-laws’ spare room for the summer. Some day, some day….
North Carolina: unfortunately I’ve only really seen the Piedmont, not the good parts, but I’ll say this: Chick-fil-a is far superior to Yankee fast food.
Ohio: Cincinatti is home to a surprisingly lovely art deco hotel, whose elevators are surprisingly full of drunk Moose convention-goers.
Pennsylvania: had some good times at lakes in the Poconos growing up–wholesome family fun, no heart-shaped beds–but dude, even I can tell those aren’t mountains.
Rhode Island: spent just one night here, in Cranston at a great aunt and uncles–could’ve been anywhere.
Vermont: very pretty, but I’ve never even spent the night.
Virginia: camping in the smaller site on top of the mountain sounds like fun until you realize you’re literally in the cloud.
West Virginia: in my car for all of twenty minutes–uh, it was cloudy.
3) The time I caught fire at a debutante party. Ask hilzoy.
Sure thing. Hilzoy?
My lips are sealed.
“New York: Walking up Lexington Avenue at 5:00 a.m. and passing Richard Nixon out for his morning stroll after having just gotten a blow job in a stairwell from a 250 pound black woman named Maggie who’d said: “Honey, I’d like to suck your white dick,” and whose red wig came off in my lap during.”
Like I said, capital of everything.
Hilzoy, you still rate with the kid, trust me, because: you’re cool, you know about a place where bald eagles can be seen en masse, and you sent the bird guide.
As for the evening dresses, what can I say except that I was still a teenager and a particularly demented one, at that? Perhaps it was the debutante party fire — later that same year! — that shocked me into sanity. (No one was injured during the incineration of the maribou jacket, but more clothing was torn off in front of Fort Worth society than was desirable. And my date got an entire vodka tonic in the face. By accident.)
CharleyCarp – Yes, indeed, Glen Rose is most definitely the center of the dinosaurs-coexisting-with-man movement. Why? Because there are dinosaur tracks in the bed of the Paluxy River, both within the Dinosaur Valley State Park and on neighboring properties (the most important of the park’s trackways is actually at the natural history museum in NYC; a cast remains in Texas).
The town has been dinosaur-crazy since the 1920s when Roy Bird first announced the discovery (last time I checked checks from the local bank still had dinosaur pictures printed on them). But Glen Rose is also nothing if not Bible-Belted and Rapture-Ready, so there was upset and heart-burning from the start about any fossil evidence older than 6,000 years or whatever. Some particularly excitable folk suggested that various indentations in the limestone looked vaguely, and I do mean vaguely, human-like.
Initial result: For years, the late, unlamented Emmett McFall and a few other enterprising locals put up handpainted signs along Farm Road 205 offering to show tourists “Man Tracks” next to the dinosaur tracks, for $5. They kept this up even after Natural History Magazine ran a lengthy debunking article.
Subsequent result: The Creation Evidence Museum (Rev. Carl Baugh), just down the road from the state park, where they have a hyperbaric chamber that’s supposed to have the kind of air that Man and Dinosaur Would Have Breathed. And sort of “Biblical” pix w/ pterodactyls in it. At least they did when I went there @ 15 years ago and lasted about 25 minutes before I had to retreat, because was going to begin laughing openly. For more info I refer you to DarkSyde’s Know Your Creationists column on the place, which was posted at DailyKos in February.
How is it that this demented little North Texas town is also Moonshine Central? Goes hand in hand, everywhere! Remember, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart are first cousins. For a serious look at the kind of people who populated that country, I refer you to the dinosaur hilzoy referred to above, my own father – Goodbye to a River and Hard Scrabble. In this year of our Lord 2006 Daddy is even more over the crazed religous stuff than he was when he wrote those books – he recently gave an interview to, of all people, Christopher Hitchens, in which he said he wished he still lived in a time when people could be religious and think.
Jav: hey, thanks for the response. See, I grew up in Ft. Worth, and spent a lot of time out at Possum Kingdom, and know that part of the Brazos country pretty well.
Or did, back in the late 60s/early 70s.
CharleyCarp – Fort Worth! Possum Kingdom! Cool. Then you may already know Goodbye to a River, which is abt the Brazos. And you certainly know where my nickname comes from.
I left Fort Worth for college in 1977 and never went back to live, but still feel Texan. When Larry McMurtry got his Oscar the other week I got loudly happy enough to wake up the kid …
Jav, let’s take this offline. Had I not left FW in 1971 — and immediately skipped a grade to make up for the inferior California public school system — I would too have left in 1977 for college. I can’t imagine we don’t know people in common.
I don’t know the book.
CharleyCarp: If you do take it offline, ask javelina to tell you her full (including middle) name, which will tell you a lot about her delightfully mordant Dad, writer of the books.