Hardcore America Happening Here

 This guy here vvv is a North County legend.

He lives right on the bank of the river in Everson, about 150 feet from where the bridge washed out and the river broke through and flooded the lowlands. As you can see he lives below grade.  He had to be evacuated from the floodwaters in the bucket of a tractor, in fact.  But not to blame any de-funding of public works and services by his hero, no siree. He is holding that line. 

One of many, many American flags - flown at half mast!  What a prick! - on this dude's property is visible just peeking out of the hedge upper center.  He also flies a 'TRUMP WON I know it - You know it' flag.  As must come as a complete surprise, I know.   

This sign went up during the first election, and has remained in place, being vandalized, getting run over, being kicked to pieces, being set on freakin' fire - and getting repainted, repaired, re-dated and rebuilt - ever since.  This latest iteration?  Is made of steel I-beams set into concrete, and the signboard two pieces of metal sandwiched over a slab of cement.  He hadn't quite gotten around to doing something about this most recent act of improvement vandalism, but give his ass time.  Promulgating all this ignorance is a big responsibility.

Now here we are in Hinotes Corner:

This is out in front of the American Legion post in Hinotes' Corners.  

This is how you appropriately dispose of a worn out, damaged American flag - you take it to an American Legion hall and either hand it to a Legionnaire or put it in their drop box.

What do they do with the flags?  They incinerate them in Flag Disposal ceremonies held on Flag Day (June 14th).  When I was a kid they used to hold the ceremony at the cemetery where we were the caretakers, and they made real sure those flags were all the way gone, dumping on gallon after gallon of gasoline. They'd play 'Taps' and had an armed Honor Guard and everything.  It was a trip.  For all I know now one of the guys just takes them all home and puts them in his woodstove, but hey, you got a free childhood story out of me and it wasn't depressing!

We're in a little area called Ten Mile here, and underneath the siding of this nice little house is a foursquare log cabin, the Original Home and Homestead Property of the very first Bikers in America. (They were little tiny weird-looking people too.)

 This place is so old that the local Nooksack tribe used to attack it all the time and burn the barn down. Washington wasn't even a state then.  America was just a distant clusterfuck East of the Mississippi.  See, the Bikers came early, and they came around Cape Horn onboard ship, because that's just how badass they were. None of this ox-driven, wagon train 'crapping on the prairie' nonsense for them.

...and this very lamp is one of the things they bought for their nice new cabin.  Yup.   

Within the old limits of what was the town of Laurel is this off-the-grid family and their roadside honor produce stand.  Give it another month and there'll be product on the shelves and cars parked up and down both sides of the road.

  Once I stopped the engine, all I could hear was bees buzzing around the hives they keep up the lane, birds chirping, and the wind. So, so nice.  It's worth clicking on to get the full effect here.  

Down just above the sign that says 'YUM YUM" there is a little oblong yellow box.  That's how you pay. Something costs a dollar?  You fold up the dollar and stick it in the slot. The container is made of steel square stock and has a lock on it.  Or...

  ...you can pay like this.  Digital hippies! Ecotopia!  The future is now!   

Out in an area called Fazon is a place by the side of the road that sells chainsaw carvings.  Starting back almost thirty years ago the guy did a banging business every summer selling stuff that looked like this:

  

He'd sit out by the road with a little handheld landscape chainsaw and zip stuff like this out all day long.  He had about ten different sizes of saw he'd use. We'd stop after fishing on Fazon Lake and watch the dude. He'd take a whole telephone pole-sized log and zip out a Christian Warrior, a black bear or a Paul Bunyan in fifteen minutes and sell it to someone driving by.  

Sadly (or not, depending on your taste in chainsaw carvings) the only place the guys' work survives is inside one specific restaurant, where the above ^^^ charming scene greets the eye, because he used crappy-grade lumber, so all the outdoor stuff melted in the rain and got ate by termites.

Never a hoplite, the Christian Warrior chainsaw statue is usually an Arthurian knight with the above attributes, about nine feet high, that you stick next to your driveway so people can find your house.  Now imagine that in the style above.  Just to impress this point upon your mind, review this style NOW:

...and apply it to a nine-foot-tall Arthurian knight with the words 'Helm of Salvation' on its helmet and 'Sheild of Faith' on its shield, and...

Well, that guy died about seven years ago, and his son took over the business.  Now the lot looks like this:

As you can see, chainsaw carving has changed A Lot.  You want Mojo Jojo, a Ninja Turtle or Boba Fett out next to the driveway so people can find your house?  You can do that now in Whatcom County.

Being able to find your driveway is a real thing out here, particularly when the weather sucks. There's no streetlights and lots of tall trees. I had my driveway planting, for example. There were white rocks on the street side, and it was easy to locate during a heavy fog.

Some people have sign boards.  Here's one:

An expression of unity out by Smith Grange. The folks who live here are also off the grid. See the solar cells in the background?  That's for their grow-op.  They wholesale to a local pot shop and do custom pre-rolls and edibles.  They happen to supply my pot shop, in fact. Rock on.

A lineman lives here and wants you to know it, with his yellow hard hat and half a cut-off phone pole.   I am not going to scratch out the addos because you have no idea where this is or if I stole it off the Web or what.

Same idea at work out near Custer, only this time, someone had a maple tree blow down. (I remember when this happened, and this is the story.) Well, they said, let's chop up the smaller stuff for firewood, but take that one big section of log and let's carve a black bear out of it and set it next to the road so people can find our house.  And they did.  So do a lot of people. In fact your grandpa will be glad to make you one for a wedding present. Chainsaw carvings of black bear for your new home are a popular in-law or grandparent wedding gift.  'Here. Have a wood bear. It's for your driveway. See I put a hole so where he can hold a flag.  It's so you can find your house.'  Some people prefer Paul Bunyan, and some prefer The Christian Warrior, or an American Eagle. I've also seen a seven foot tall salmon. Totem poles are only for public buildings and casinos.  Or set back next to your house. Never on the road.  They get stolen and sold for big bucks to people who think that Real Indians carved them.  God I wish I were exaggerating. 

Here by Greenwood now.  Animal lovers and vegetarians, avert your eyes:

These are veal pens, children.  Despite what some may say.   Yes, this is how replacement stock begins life on a large dairy farm, but see...this isn't a dairy operation.  We are deep in the heart of locker beef country, here.  And even that being the case, these pens are way, way, way back along the river on an unimproved county road, because you don't go market-raising bob calves out where PETA can see you from the street. (The link goes to one of the more florid anti-veal sites.) 

This is the flipside of dairying. You have to keep the gals freshened, and that means cow sex and eventually, calves.  You can't use all those calves for replacement stock, and half of them will be male, so you either - you know, let's leave it at veal pens. 

Note:  Until today I thought the plural of calf was calfs. Now to me 'calves' sounds gross, but I am willing to suffer for the sake of your reading pleasure. I'll still say 'calfs' though.

 Here we are on Front Street in Lynden, where we see a sideways...

  

I know the Garden Club uses the understructure to make a Christmas Tree display, so this would be hanging baskets all arranged to make a cascading...Springmas Tree?  Yeah, a Springmas Tree I guess.  

This is actually a lovely idea, and when the understructure had been kept in good repair, the stray bicycles have been returned to the dump, the groundcover has been chosen with taste and it's been planted correctly, the flowers cascade down to the ground and ripple gracefully in the breeze.  It looks like a fountain of blossoms and is extremely pretty. Unfortunately, it became the pet planting of one particular Garden Club woman who appointed herself Me Only Pirate Queen of the Flower Fountain! Wavin' 'er Cutlass!  Repelling All Boarders! MY FLOWER FOUNTAIN!  ARRRRRR!' and you see it now. She owns a local women's finer resale shop and she is A Damn Trial.  Stuff like this is why I turned down all the invites I used to get to join their Garden Club.  And also why I don't shop at her store anymore.

I was going through Northwood when I saw a Barn Sale sign. Screeeech!    

As you can see, there are no barns for sale.  It's not even IN a barn.  It's in a metal machine shed. Everything here is from the 1980's.  And pigeons have been shitting on it.

If you click and look out the back doors, you'll see that this machine shed out in the middle of East Medieval Bumfuck Egypt backs on a soulless condominium development that disappears into a dystopian haze of identical buildings.

OOO here it is.    

There was one treasure, though.    

It's a headless mannequin missing it's arms, dude.       

I had to pass up this addition to my modern lifestyle, and I was bummed too.  I came very close to dragging this home.  What would I have done with it?  Not a fuck of a lot; it's a headless mannequin missing its arms, dude. The options are limited. Still.

 

Now I'm going to leave you with a teaser.  A little something to look forward to.  A little something from Munstead Wood.

You're gonna TRIP.