Car Wash In Hades

Winters are severe in Minnesota, but cars must still be washed. So, the self-serve car washes in Minnesota have adapted to the cold weather: the bays are not open to the weather, they are closed. The bays have overhead doors.

When I lived in Minnesota, I usually washed my car at night.

Push button for door to roll up, drive into self-service bay, and have the door roll down. My car is snug inside, protected from the cold winter outside. Insert coins and start squirting my car with the hose.

That’s when my eyes and ears notice things.

The car wash has eerie sodium-vapor lights. These lights make everything a shade of gray. There is plenty of water vapor in the air, blurring everything in the building. In the other bays, people are washing their cars, talking to each other. I cannot figure out what they are saying because the echoing din of high-pressure water against metal muffles all human sound.

I figure this is what Hades must be like: eerie, gray, blurry, muffled.

I rinse the car. The door in front of me rolls up, and I pull out into the winter night. In two minutes, I have gone from Hades to what Hades would be like if it froze over.

I stop the car, and jump out to frantically wipe down any drops of water remaining on the exterior of the car. I do not want the drops to freeze to my car.

One-by-one, I slam each car door, and then the hatchback. This keeps the doors from freezing shut. Now I am ready to head out into the winter night.

I drive with a sense of satisfaction. I faced the elements, I triumphed, and now I get to drive a clean car when it is below freezing in Minnesota.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Across The Wide Missouri

The history books tell us that Lewis and Clark’s first stop in the new Louisiana Territory was the village of St. Charles on the Missouri River.  The villagers were French Canadian, and they welcomed Lewis and Clark as they started their westward exploration.  The villagers welcomed Lewis and Clark by holding a ball for them.

As part of Lewis and Clark Heritage Days in 1998, I was asked to recreate the ball.  It was quite an honor because I was asked by a descendant of William Clark.

It was a formidable task:  The history books do not say exactly what dances were danced at the ball.  However, both Lewis and Clark grew up in Colonial Virginia, where they would have taken dance lessons.  Because of the US Bicentennial celebration, a lot of the dances popular in 1776 have been well documented.  I bought a book of dances from 1776, figuring that the French Canadian villagers may not have known these dances, but Lewis and Clark would have been familiar with them.

It was a Saturday evening when I headed off to St. Charles with a book of Colonial dances, a boombox, and a couple CDs of dance music.  I parked by the Missouri River, crossed over a slough on a wooden bridge, and came to the encampment.

Participants in Heritage Days had camped out for the night.  The pavilion where the ball was to be held was filled with teenaged campers, mostly members of fife and drum corps.  They were enthusiastic musicians: they were fifing and drumming as I approached.

I wondered how I would ever get these teenagers to stop playing so I could set up my little boombox.  Then I listened to their music.  It was Colonial music.  Danceable Colonial music.

I forgot about the boombox and recruited the fifers and drummers to play their favorite music.  The campers came to dance: crafts people, merchants, pirogue makers, cannoneers.  The pavilion roof amplified the music.  It was just a block away from the restaurants on Main Street in St. Charles, and some diners drifted down to the pavilion to watch us dance.

I was making progress going down the list of dances I had prepared, when the dancers started chanting.  “We want the Paddle Dance!  We want the Paddle Dance!!”  I had never heard of the Paddle Dance.  Suddenly, control of the dance passed out of my hands and into the hands of the dancers. 

The Paddle Dance was quickly explained to me: you have a line of men facing a line of women.  The man at the top of the line steps forward holding a canoe paddle.  Immediately, the 2 top women form up beside him, one on each side.  The man hands the paddle to one of the women and then dances down to the end of the line with the other woman, leaving the woman with the paddle behind.  Immediately, the 2 top men form up beside her, one on each side.  The woman hands the paddle to one of the men, and…

It was clear that the Paddle Dance was an endless loop.  Luckily, the teenaged fifers and drummers were showing no signs of fatigue.

I was also clear that I was no longer needed.  I slipped away, walking past the tents of the encampment, stars overhead.  I felt that I had provided what was requested: chance for people to do some dancing with a historical flavor, reflecting the memory of the ball held in St. Charles 194 years previously.

When I got to my car by the river, I could still hear the fifes and drums.  I looked at the Missouri River; I was sure that the dance music was loud enough to be heard on the other side, across the wide Missouri.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Flying Dog Biscuits

St Louis, Summer 2011. When you open the door to go outside, you are hit by a wall of heat, a wall of humidity, and a wall of noise. The wall of noise makes my hearing aid complain.  It is the same wall of noise that I remember from Summer 1998, thirteen years previously.

When I was a kid, I knew all about plagues in Egypt because I had seen Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”.  However, the movie did not prepare me for being in the middle of a plague of 13-year cicadas in Missouri.

I wonder if I am the equal of these insects.

They have a mind.  They know that exactly 13 years have passed, and then they emerge.

They emerge in vast numbers. They are everywhere. They smash against windshields.  They cluster on trees so that you think there is a second layer of bark.  If you brush against a branch, you release a cloud of cicadas.

They look prehistoric, and stare at you out of beady protruding eyes.

They make a sound that is not of this planet, an extraterrestrial sound. So loud, they can sometimes be heard in a car when you are driving along with the windows shut and both the air conditioning and the radio on.

And, they are tasty.  

Sierra, our Australian Shepherd, considers 13-year cicadas to be snacks, something akin to flying dog biscuits. She happily munches on cicadas that she finds on the sidewalk.

Apparently, humans think they are tasty also.  A small shop in Columbia, Missouri, went out and harvested a bunch of cicadas, removed the wings, boiled them, covered them in brown sugar, and folded them into ice cream.

The ice cream shop thought it would be a joke, but the joke was on them when the first batch sold out quickly. The customers liked the crunch and clamored for a second batch. However, the State Department of Health stepped in. They discouraged the further production of 13-year cicada ice cream, even though the State of Missouri has no statute on the books about serving cicadas to people.

Besides munching on cicadas, Sierra the Australian Shepherd also likes munching on worms. She only eats worms that have dried up on the sidewalk, not fresh worms. Maybe I should contact that little shop out in Columbia and suggest they make dried-worm ice cream. 

Should have a nice crunch to it --- and you don’t have to wait 13 years to harvest more dried worms.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

From Four Cannon To Four Diamonds

At the start of the Memorial Day weekend, it was time to splurge.  After thirteen years in St. Louis, I dined, for the first time, at its best-known four-diamond restaurant.

It was an experience in flawlessness.

We did not get a waiter; we got a crew. The crew made sure that everything was perfect: pushing chairs in, flapping napkins open, serving food with panache from carts that rolled out from the kitchen, and seeing that beverage glasses did not go empty.

I was eager to test the common wisdom: you could not take one single sip of water here without your glass being refilled.  I decided that the restaurant had changed its policy: it was three sips before the crew refilled my water glass.

As a nice touch, the owner of the restaurant came by, said hello, and gave us his card.  Looking at the guy, I thought he could easily fit into any television show about the Mafia.  Maybe he gave us his card because he thought we were talent scouts for CBS.

The food was impeccable: stuffed zucchini flowers, chilled white asparagus, lobster albanello, and chocolate torte with toasted coconut ice cream.

Halfway through my lobster, I realized I was getting full and I panicked. Surely it would be uncouth to ask for a doggie bag at a four-diamond restaurant. My buddy Randy had to ask for me, and they did bag my lobster - not in an elegant four-diamond bag but in a brown paper bag, just like the bags my mother had used for packing my school lunches.

Brown bag aside, it was a remarkable way to start Memorial Weekend.

On Sunday, I went to a Memorial Service. This was for the 21 St. Louisans killed at the Battle of Fort San Carlos.  I was not sure that many people knew about this battle besides myself.

It was the westernmost battle of the American Revolution, when the Spanish ruled St. Louis.  The British, hoping to gain control of the Mississippi River, gathered hundreds of Indians to attack the village.  However, the village was forewarned, and had enough time to build a watchtower, with four cannon on top of it.

May 26, 1780.  The palisade around the town held fast.  The grapeshot from the cannon scared off the Indians.  The attackers retreated, but not before killing 21 people who were working the farmland outside the palisade.

Who would come to a memorial service for these unfortunates?  I looked around and saw lots of ladies wearing hats. Why, the Daughters of the American Revolution, of course.  There was a keynote speech by an archeologist, and a nice wreath-laying ceremony with a bagpiper.

I spoke to the archeologist after the ceremony. She had never heard of the Battle of San Carlos until she was asked to be the keynote speaker. The ceremony’s goal was to raise public awareness, and had certainly raised her awareness.

Then I became aware of a connection between Friday’s lavish dinner and Sunday’s somber ceremony. Where the watchtower stood in 1780 is exactly the same spot where the restaurant stands in 2011.  From four cannon to four diamonds.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com