Waabigwanii-Giiziz (May) niizhwaginzo (it is the second day of the month) niiwo-giizhigad (Thursday) 2019

               Milton Mayhem

                                                              I wonder if Goo-Gone will work?
                                                  

Osnabrock: "There's No Place like Home."

L.B. Hartz Store in Milton, ND, with John Wayne Memorial window

I was coming back from a funeral in Osnabrock when I stopped in Milton to take another  photo of the old L.B. Hartz Store a.k.a “The John Wayne Memorial,” which I had taken a picture back in 2007. Coming from the wide open almost treeless high plains between the two small towns, Milton seemed like an oasis with its tall gleaming grain elevators, farm service business, and well-used railroad tracks. A few still functioning businesses line the main street, including a community theater and the single-truck fire station.

So after taking the picture of the John Wayne Memorial I cruised down to The North Forty Bar on Main Street for a beer before I started home, forgetting all the while the car I was driving was my daughter’s old Ford Escort wagon with all them Pro-Life/ LBGT/ Equality stickers on it.

Now it was Saturday afternoon in that sleepy North Dakota village, in a place where men is men and there's no in between, if you know what I'm saying. But I felt comfortable in there as I was dressed the part, wearing my Carhartt jacket, cap, cowboy boots, and jeans. My Photo-gray glasses were almost black from the brightness of the snow, it was all the gear I needed to fit into the place despite the fact I was wearing my dark hair in a long ponytail.

So I was just finishing a longneck of Labatts Blue ('men' don't drink Rolling Rock) and was thinkin' about heading out when two, out of the four deer hunters in florescent-orange camo overalls and caps stuck their heads in the bar and hollered,  "WHO THE HELL IS DRIVIN' THIS L'IL RED PIECE OF SHIT OUT HERE WIT' DEM GAY AND PRO-CHOICE STICKERS ALL OVER IT?"

I didn't move. I looked at myself in the bar mirror and sipped the last of my beer as though, "... it sure'n hell isn't this cowboy." Well, the bar emptied, I tell you. Everybody had to go out and see "... this li'l red piece of shit out here wit' all dem blasphemous non-heterosexual Pro-Choice stickers all over it," cept me--(because I've read 'em all a few times)

I wasn't concerned. So like the mean hombre in “Pale Rider,” I finished the last dregs of my beer, gargled, spit the backwash into the brass spittoon near my feet, and with my spurs a-janglin' agin the wooden sawdust-covered floor pushed my way through the crowd and opened my car door without saying a damn thing, the gawkers hot a-gin me back, hecklin' me all the way, callin' me a gay rights- lover and abortion-rights activist.

I sat down heavily, looking steely-eyed at them like the outlaw Josey Wales would've done, a toothpick stickin' out between me lips (primarily because I don't smoke) and started the car. It sat idling there, making its little “Whiff-whiff-whiff” rubberband motor exhaust noise--not the roll of 'prairie-thunder' so familiar in that country and can be heard for miles echoing from twin stack glass-packs.

I pushed in the CD I was playing, without thinking what was in there, the volume up all the way, when it blasted out "TODAY FOR YOU, TOMORROW FOR ME!!!" from 'RENT' that my daughter had in her car's CD collection when she gave me her car. I so wished it had been Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings--or at the very least Garth Brook's Greatest Hits.

The bar crowd standing near the four-wheel drive pickup with several deer legs sticking out over a bloodied tailgate, started chanting,
"JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY, JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY,
JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY, JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY...

Then they broke into two teams, one on either side of my car, and then, in rounds, started shouting, "JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY,
JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY,
 JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY,
JUST PRETEND IT'S ALL OKAY," one group singing soprano and the other, falsetto (which I thought real odd for a bunch of Nort’ Dakota deer hunters--unless it was, in fact, the Bismarck Mandan Civic Chorus on holiday..)

Tiring of all this theater over a bunch of silly stickers on a car that my daughter used to drive at college, I started to close the driver's door when some guy shouldered the door open as his hand shot under the left side of the driver's seat and retrieved--with immense glee, I might add-- this little pink Leatherman case I had never seen before in my life.

This little pink case I had never seen before in my life

"What the sam hell?' I said, "Gimme that back!"

"LOOKY DIS!!! ' the creep in camo said, dancing away, "YOU KEEP YUR TAMPONS IN HERE????"

Then ripping it open, he sees what it is an' lets out a big ol' belly laugh parading through the crowd with it. Everybody was laughing their fool heads off,
"HERE'S HIS TAMPONS!! 
"HERE'S HIS TAMPONS!!
"HERE'S HIS TAMPONS!!

He sees what it is an' lets out a big ol' belly laugh

  When the li'l bastard came back past the car, I came off the seat like a bullet out a quick-draw revolver, grabbed him by the lapel of his heavy coat, snatched the Leatherman out of his deer-blood stained hand, and whacked him in the face with the closing car door at the same time. I threw myself back behind the steering wheel and slammed the car in reverse, its front tires spinning wildly.

Speeding out from the curb, I nearly ran over three of the soberer patrons who, with arms outstretched against the rear of the car, wheeled out of its way, slipped and fell down in the snow their drinks in hand. Turning the wheel sharply, I braked, the car whipping broadside onto Main Street, then I slammed the gear shift it into first, second, and third gears out of town never seeing fourth and fifth, til nearly 70, when I met the snowplow headin' in my direction--but that's another story.

I’ll give her Leatherwoman when she comes home for Christmas...