Private Residence

 Less than an hour ago a man walked in through our front door asking if this was a beauty salon.  He seemed confused to find that no, it was the home of two astonished old people.  He seemed to think he could then stand around and ask for directions.  

Such are the joys of having a door painted screaming titty pink.

____________________________

Yesterday there was a street fair out front. It was the annual Fruitland Family Fun Day!  We awoke to find a taco wagon set up right in front of our door - not that I was complaining,  

All morning and afternoon our little  historic downtown was awash in vendors booths,  large, sunny families ambling around, hula hoop contests, miniature horses, a bar band blazing away, the park full of kid activities, the splash pool geysering water...and this was nice. Sun shining, sky blue.

Afterward?

You guys, everybody packed up and left, and there was not ONE thing left on the pavement. 

Not ONE THING.

Not a gum wrapper, no spent shells, no turkey legs or napkins, NOTHING.

__________________________________

Well enough of my ongoing culture shock.  I have a whole new cookbook haul and oh my goodness have I found some doozies.  My next post is going to be all about whether or not vampires can have sex and if so what happens when the guy vampire   nothing but food atrocities! 

See?  Now you have something to look forward to.  

Now I'm going to go smoke in the back stairwell. You should too.

A Busload Of Random

 

  This skeletal duckie, he sees you SO HARD.  Yes I mean you, ladies who work at the phone company across the street.  He sees you.  

This area is a wonderland of thrift stores, junk shops and garage sales.  And unlike Washington, in Idaho every day of the week is garage sale day! Have we been thrifting? Have we FUCK, as they say in France. 

There's all kinds of clean, gently used, respectable goods out there, which is lovely - but the good stuff?  Oh my yes, the good stuff is out there! And a lot of it is prime mid-century stuff!  It's just....it's just...OMG IT'S JUST!!!

We have seen astounding things. Complete Broyhill and Lane furniture suites.  Mod goods galore - round phones, pod stereos, Op Art radios, and all the retro stuff too...chrome dinette sets, Seventies needlework, satellite clocks and all the usual suspects.  But the thing catching my eye lately is the Manhattan Glass.

  If Jean Harlow were tableware.  

For an even more wonderful visual experience, simply search 'Manhattan Glass:  images' and OMG.  

   

Oh, how I love Manhattan Glass.

Back in Washington you rarely see Manhattan Glass, and when you do it's stupidly expensive.  Here? They're drowning in the stuff - and it's being sold at 'junk glass' prices!  In our first week here, for around sixty bucks I could have completed a full eight-piece set with all the bells and whistles!  A piece here, a piece there, a serving dish at a farmer's garage sale, a dinner set in a junkshop hoard...

At the moment, of course, I need a full set of Manhattan glass like I need a hole in the head, but it's out there. Oh yes it is.  Waiting just for me!

_______________________________

We have discovered something that seems to be an integral part of Idaho life:  Shopping at The Dollar Store.

We had Dollar Stores in Bellingham.  Two of them.  They were filled with squalor, filth and uncoolness.  It always seemed that the places were in the middle of an emergency re-stock, except the people doing the re-stocking were all mouth-breathing stacks of raw pork busy on their phones. The goods tottered in untidy columns along the grimy, stained aisles, shelves be damned, while the clientele tore through them like rogue javelinas. So not an appealing retail experience.*

Here in Idyhoe along the Snake River there are four different Dollar stores:  Dollar Store, Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree.  Each little town, no matter the size, will contain all four.

They're surprisingly fun to shop.  First off, they're clean.  Secondly, each one takes up where the others leave off. One will have a huge selection of clothes, the next one will be heavy on the kitchenware and household items, and the third will have lots of near-expiry food for sale. Number four will have all the hardware and car stuff - even lumber and residential electrics at times. As the shipments come in, this balance is always shifting, and it's important to remember that each store is already a variety dry goods  operation, so the one with all the kitchen stuff will also have case-lots of Bic lighters, parts for your Mercedes, and a selection of silk kimonos on any given day. As time rolls on, the kitchen one will transform into the spot to go for building materials and plastic storage things.  The food one will be wall to wall pots and pans and spatulas. You get the idea.

The done thing is to take a day and hit all four.  You will see the same pack of shoppers all the way down the line as you go, and that's a little awkward at first, but it's how they roll here in the land of onions. 

 

Customers will walk in and the clerk will greet them 'First time today, huh?' and everyone will laugh; because people do hit these stores three times a day,  going after the newly stocked items coming out from the back.  And this is the dirty little secret of the Dollar Stores:  each one stocks from it's central warehouse, but they also bid on lots containing online-store items that were abandoned in carts - so you can run into some very high-end goods tucked away amidst the plastic clothes and off-brand canned goods, IF you're patient and willing to dig.  

And that's how addiction works.

___________________________________

I did a thing that I have not done before.

Being new to the area, I spotted an event being held at the local library, and thought to myself 'Hey, it's a beginning' and so I attended.

  

It was a 'Ladies Night', which is a gathering of ladies, and you do crafts and then eat some cake and sit around and bullshit for awhile.  Think of it like any other all - ladies gatherings...Yankee Candle, Tupperware, The Pampered Chef, Avon, and now picture me in a group of conservative strangers, trying to pass.  At least with community events you aren't expected to buy anything.

I cannot remember being quite so ill at ease.  And it was pleasant, it was low-key, people were perfectly friendly, but...man, I did not fit in.  And I too was low key, pleasant and friendly.  The vibe just wasn't...happening, or something.

We made a dragonfly sun-catcher out of paper jute, plastic film, wire and beads; and you had to use a hot glue gun to stick all this together.

I have never used a hot glue gun IN MY LIFE.

All these other women are just whuppin' though the hot glue sticks, and the long strands of dried glue are flying, and it's all over the table and in people's hair, and they're having a great old time.

Me, I have not used a hot glue gun, but I HAVE used a caulking gun.  And the principle is the same - squeeze moderately until as blob of gunk comes out, and then ease up on it.  Yes I know that sounds suggestive. It sounds that way because I wrote it that way. And it's funny.

So I take aim and I start hot glue-ing and lo and behold, I finish my sun catcher half an hour ahead of everyone else at the table.

And then I sit there.

Everyone else has formed their little conversation groups.

Aaaaaand I sit.

So now here I am with a dragonfly suncatcher and no intentions whatsoever of going back.

                                        Not my best work, but damn is that thing glued together.

I don't know. Maybe I should keep trying.  At least at the library I'm more likely to run into someone friendly.

Next meeting we'll be making what's called 'Glamour Dusters'.

                                                                       Yup.

_______________________________________________________

*For those of you who may not know what a Dollar Store is:  A Dollar Store is a place that sells stuff, any and all stuff, for super de duper cheap, and all the stuff comes from The Mysterious East. 

HINT: People will be trying on clothes in the aisles, so watch out for the Sneak Attack Idaho Crack!!

Settling In Jitters

This is a  long one. Settle in.

________________________

WHERE HAVE I BEEN 

I have been  unpacking. 

No shit, 5:AM to 9:PM unpacking and rearranging and organizing and sorting and boxing and un-boxing and FUCK.

It is a miracle I'm still married. 

Going from 'Well, we probably just said goodbye to everything we own' to 'HOLY CRAP HERE IT IS' was a literal shock to the system. Fortunately, the two young men who arrived with the vanload were competent and professional - unlike their parent company - and our stuff was off the truck in less than an hour.

But then, of  course, there it all was.

We lost three pieces - an end table, a desk, and a lamp, completely destroyed. Insurance?  Why no. Any understanding of how cargo and transport actually operates?  Oh Heavens no. Not us. Our shit moved from warehouse to warehouse all up and down the West Coast before it was tracked down and delivered. We went in ignorant, looking for a bargain, and got jacked up and jacked around. So it goes.

But the important things were untouched, and life can go forward now, and of course that's what matters.  That and finding the asshole who crushed the desk my father-in-law built when he was in college and breaking his fingers. 

___________________________________________

SO! WHAT IS IDAHO LIKE?

THERE IS A LOT OF ASS IN IDAHO.

When you are in Idaho, you will see a lot of ass.  And it is bare-naked adult ass that you will see.  And it is not the kind of  bare-naked ass that you might see at Mr. Peenee's place, with firm, downy glutes like billlows on the ocean.  No. Not like that at all.  Idaho ass is like 200 lbs of blue cheese stuffed into a pair of nylons, and it has sweaty hair allllllll over it. 

 

I have never seen so much casually displayed ass in my life and I grew up in the 1970s.  This is not plumbers crack I'm talking about. Stop insisting that it is because it's not. Stop it. This is whole ass. The WHOLE entirety of the ass.  Bare, bare ass being revealed like Esther Williams arising from the waters in Million Dollar Mermaid; inevitably, deliberately, coming out to play from ankles to tits as our man or woman bends over, and you wish I were exaggerating but sadly I am not.  You can be in the grocery store, or the hardware store, or even casually waiting at a stoplight listening to some Robin Trower on your Sirius Radio and OH DAMN there it is, bending over on the side of the road and that ass is big, man, and it is damp and it is white, and that asscrack is HOO BOY AND THE LIGHT CHANGES 

Sneak Attack Crack, is what it is.  Damn, Idaho. Buy some suspenders.

Speaking of things you didn't ask to see, there is a fashion here among some of the post-Juggalo set where you pack yourself into a pastel tube of stretchy material meant for a much smaller and shapelier woman and then go out among your fellow beings with every crease, curl and wrinkle on casual display depending on the angle of the sun.  Always women with Hatchet Man tattoos, and always built like a stack of rubber pumpkins.  It can be really...it can be...

it's sort of...

_________________________________

POLITE AND KINDLY

The VAST and OVERWHELMING majority of the people we have met and dealt with here have been fantastic. And normal.  Not one single word about politics or religion, no attitudes, no weirdness at all. I truly mean that. We have been able to get established without a single hitch and it's thanks to the lovely people who assisted us at the DMV, the phone company, the real estate agency and others.

Just out in public there is a level of polite behavior going on that I haven't seen in a few decades. One thing that's been catching me up is the 'ladies first' mindset. Oh yes!  Here, ladies go first. Particularly old ladies, and those of us who resemble them.  Even in traffic!  Like even an uncontrolled 4 - way out in the middle of noplace, you get motioned through!  I had to take a second, but I finally worked it out, duh.  OK. Don't mind if I do. 

 

Little kids will get the door for you, and they smile at you and say 'Hi!' on the street. People offer to help you load groceries, and they mean it. Men and boys keep doing that little 'howdy ma'am' nod of the head at me if they happen to catch my eye in passing; and that one stopped me a few times. But it's a real thing out here. And that odd formal way that men talk to women in Westerns?  That's a real thing too. 

Everybody wants to chat.  Chat is expected, too.  I am not always in a chatty mood, so this has been an adjustment. I have a stock of inane observations now that I toss out whenever I'm at a loss.  I smile so much my teeth dry out. Suddenly out of my distant past has come bubbling up all of these polite mannerisms and figures of speech, and hey, if it gets me through the day, who does it hurt?  I want to be a good neighbor. 

-thing is, I also want to go out in my damn Queen T-shirt and not get peered at like I'm swinging a dick inside these shorts. Good Lord people. 

______________________________________

PARANOIA

OK fine. Do I sound paranoid? Do you catch that thread?  Because I am. I am paranoid.  This is a whole different world here. A completely different world. I had no idea how different the culture would be.  Shit, moving from Sumas to Bellingham was kind of a culture shock; this? is WILD.  The desert, the climate, history, mindset...it's cut off, it's remote...

...shit, if the cities fall and the lights go out, I'll be stuck on the side of the river with all the Fundamentalists. 

HELP.

Which leads me this next observation -

_____________________________________

I HAD NO IDEA HOW FUCKING BIG AMERICA ACTUALLY IS

Or how small the towns are in Idaho.

You see a map of the Northwest, and you look at Idaho, and there's the major cities, and all the highways marked out, and you think of it as being like what you're used to in terms of size. A major city is going to be like, say, Seattle or Portland.   You're going to go through a lot of settled area, suburbs, farms, shit like that, going from town to town.

No.

What you go through in Idaho is a lot of NOTHING.

Not even farms. 

What you drive through just getting to Idaho, from Washington and through Oregon, is also NOTHING.

Lots and lots of nothing.

No farms, no houses, for hundreds of miles.

Mountains. Prairies.

Hills.

Absolutely nothing at all.

Cross over to the East of the Cascade range and you hit what most of the American Landmass is like.

It's a lot of nothing.

The majority of the towns? Very small. Three blocks. A bend in the road. Shit, a place with a row of mailboxes next to a lone tree.

And nothing.

The town of Ontario Oregon is surrounded by NOTHING. 

You drive up through nothing, and suddenly there is a town.

It looks big on the map. You expect at least, say, a town the size of Bellingham. But no.  It's a place at a bend in the river where people have been living since the Stone Age, and it's the size of, say, Lynden WA. And I mean a very sparse, scattered Lynden.  With goats. 

Sagebrush, Rocks. Dust.

The Snake River is the boundary between Oregon and Idaho.  It's an OK sized river. Like the Upper Willamette. Very deep and swift and full of fish striking the surface.

Here on the other side is Fruitland.  Looks fairly big on the map.

It is not.

It's smaller than Sumas was, and again - a very scattered, sparse Sumas after the Apocalypse. Few trees. Little grass.

  And one mile to the east, there's absolutely NOTHING.

You can generalize it thus:  in a strip running north to south along the Snake river, from Weiser to Nyssa, there is roughly a two-mile wide strip of...something, with large trees and greeen grass and nice little h houses, to the East of which is absolutely NOTHING.

And there's patches all along that roughly thirty mile stretch that are absolutely NOTHING as well. 

Just scrubland. Maybe a cell tower.

As you drive down the highway, you look to the West, and you see, across the river, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, Oregon.

Nothing.

Rolling hills.

Open rangeland.

Sagebrush.

Tan grass.

Rocks.

Lotta sky out there.

The small towns you come across, the ones you see marked on the map, are half-dead little places the size of Everson-Nooksack, if that, surrounded by NOTHING.

It explains an awful lot about the local character of the people, how isolated still, to this day, these small communities really are.

Shit.

_________________________________________

I have done my driving and asking around, and I have done my research online.  remember how I used to bitch about Lynden Washington?  Too many churches, not enough thinking?

Oh honey.  OH HONEY.  Here in Idaho EVERYWHERE is like that.  Every religion represented here is the most extreme, or conservative, iteration of that religion. Idahoans like their religion on the controversial side, it seems.

The town of Fruitland where I live is just nine planned blocks surrounded by some meandering country properties, so say two miles long and a mile wide, this little area.  We have no supermarket.

We do have:

A huge, expensive, private 'spiritually centered' grade school just down the block

The Calvary Church

Corpus Christi Catholic Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Fruitland Church of Christ

Highway Worship Center Revival

West Valley Free Methodist Church

Fruitland United Methodist

The Church of the Brethren

These are big churches.  Lots of people attend them.  Friday, Saturday and Sundays here are really quiet.  Sometimes you even see people in modest garb and Plain Dress going to and fro. 

 This is a thing that Idaho is known for:  extreme, extreme religious views.  And open carry, which is so normal here you don't see it unless someone's actually packing a rifle (really. Seriously.)  Maybe it all settles out like this:  folks have to maintain a polite, publicly civil demeanor, with all these sharp doctrinal differences between them, or else an instant bloodbath takes place.  I dunno. They're certainly all packed up for something.

So rather than relaxing into a state of blissful new citizenship, I am waiting for that other shoe to drop.  I know me, and I know my mouth, and I know that other damn shoe is gonna fall.

Another thing that I am very aware of here:  This is a mans world in Idaho. There are expectations of behavior in place for a woman my age, and on my best behavior I barely meet the minimum standard.  The Biker says he's never known me to go so long without at least one 'motherfucker' in the wind, and he's right. Some primal survival instinct has come into play. I don't even have to think about it. I just don't swear in public now.

Now cross the river here and go into Oregon and I'm back home. Casual bad language is everyday.   A distance of 3.6 miles and a world of change, man. It's the reason we moved here, to take advantage of this border economy. No taxes on goods in Oregon. But yeah, you can go down the road three miles to the town of Ontario Oregon and get an abortion, a bag of pot, say 'fuck' in public and wear your favorite 'Queen' t-shirt with nobody worrying about whether you stand up to pee. Ontario functions out here like a combination head shop - remote crossroad trading center in the Gobi Desert, while the Idaho side is the ...I don't know what the Idaho side is. The side where most of the people who do business across the river in Oregon come from, I guess.

__________________________________________

So far this is my take on this whole area. Most folks are friendly and fairly heavily tattooed. Mexican culture is very integrated into the scene. A lot of recent, new investment has taken place along this stretch of Idaho and the area feels like it's waiting for 'something' to happen...what, I don't know. It's prosperous here. There's  jobs; and in fact we saw many signs of prosperity as we travelled. New businesses, new cars, new development everywhere. Wineries, orchards, vast fields of mint! of all things. Onions of course. Brussels sprouts, grain and lawn-grass seed crops. Big new warehouses and farm equipment, lots of trucks on the road. Very little squalor. I mean very little.  New road work being done.

Not at all what either of us had expected. Not even close.

 Talk about a leap into the unknown. Shit.

Who Da Ho?

 WE 

GOT 

OUR 

STUFF!

Making A Silk Cow Out Of A Cars Ear

 IDAHO SO FAR:

People here are unfailingly nice, polite and helpful.  I mean like 1950's small town America polite and helpful. Please and thank you, excuse me, do you need help with that, let me get that door for you. 

There's some MAGA stuff., but nowhere near what I'd expected to see. There's one MAGA barbershop and two MAGA houses, one here and one in Payette. A couple of bumper stickers. Some lingering 'fuck Biden' sentiment. I expected WAY more idiocy. Shit, Lynden WA has more MAGA stuff. Even Bellingham had more, and it's liberal. Also, no open carry.  At all. It's legal here, you just don't see it. You sure in shit saw it in Bellingham.  As they say in America, 'Wow'.

Even though religion is very very very very very big here, not one single person has mentioned it. Not even at the super hard-shell Baptist Separatists separatist primary school thrift sale, and those women and their daughters were in full modesty garb. Not. A. Word.

The Mormons are big here.  They have their own bank, they live out in the hills in fenced compounds comprised of huge McMansions, and the white SUV's with the blacked-out windows patrol the streets in the evening.  Around the corner is a Brethren church (look it up Paco, you're sitting in front of the internet) and the Patriarch and his wife, both elderly, both in Plain Dress, have taken a long, slow stroll past to peek in and see what's up.  Six blocks down is the Roadside Worship Revival church, which I'm assuming is some kind of Pentecostal set-up. Having had my fill of Ecstatic Religiosity, I intend to give their happy asses a wide berth.  Two different Catholic organizations (one from Oregon, one from Idaho) compete for those who don't have enough guilt in their lives.  Three blocks down is a Methodist church that I have yet to look into. Traditionally, Methodists have been LGBT friendly, but who knows what the fucks' up with these Idaho people.

...ooooh!  Nations is gonna sell out! Well shit yes I intend to sell out. A bitch is new in town and I want to meet people. A nice, low-key communion out this way might be just the thing. I mean come on people, trust me, I'm gonna do my research. And it's not like I'm going to rock up in a Borsalino smoking a Petit Nobel and put my feet up on the seats. 

OK maybe at the Brethren's. 

The price of living is really, really low here in Idaho ,and it's even lower three miles away in Ontario Oregon (which is where everyone shops and buys legal marijuana to take back across the Idaho line and into the waiting arms of the police.)  We've been able to assemble a nice little makeshift household for about 300.00 - and that includes all the absolute basics, like beds and sheets and a coffee maker and soap ffs.  And groceries. Now that we're actually living in our apartment instead of a motel room, the flow of blood money going out is down to a trickle. Which is a damn relief.

The area we've moved to is called Fruitland because of all the gay people who live and work here in social harmony with the rest of the residents of this humble rural garden spot 

...in the early days this was allllllllll fruit trees. Nowadays trees are out and root crops are in, chief among them onions. 

The onions are being harvested now. This entire town smells overwhelmingly of onions. It has for the past month. It does now. It smells like onions 24/7 - except when it smells like the decomposing onion gravy left in the beds of all the trucks and railcars. 

Strongly.  Nay, violently.

The local joke is 'Oh you get used to it after awhile and you just think 'Oh! Onion rings! *Tee hee!* 

- except no. That does not happen. Honestly WTF. Nobody is looking up suddenly from their mundane tasks going 'Why I do believe I smells onion rings, senor!' 

The good thing about this is, if you happen to be low on onions, just stand on the corner of 16th and Whitley (also known as Gayway Corners) and hold a sack open. The gutters are full of onions! They send out road trains full of onions from this place - three trailers long!  Who is eating all these goddamn onions????

We are in the sagebrush steppe region of Idaho.  It's generally hot and very dry, but here at the confluence of three rivers it's extremely green down along the water's edge and extending about a block inland. After that you need a little irrigation to get things rocking - and holy SHIT does it pay off. This is astounding growing country!  Folks here, when they can be bothered to try, have incredible gardens.  But as you drive through town you'll notice an interesting thing -You'll have a street lined with glorious Victorian homes and gardens, say, but one property in the row is neglected - and it will have reverted entirely back to bare gravel, sandspurs and sagebrush. It looks artificial, like one person decided to go all 'Boot Hill' with their property., but no, that is not the case. You can easily tell who in your neighborhood is a lazy chunk of fuck.

This is Louis L'Amour's' Old West.  It looks exactly like every cowboy movie you've ever seen, except 'Midnight Cowboy'. There are buzzards and wagon wheels and horses and outhouses and tin shacks; horses everywhere, miles and miles of rolling grassland and round brown hills. There really are deer and antelope playing out there. Of course the ones I saw were splattered all over the highway, so not playing. Playtime was done. Still, you got real cowboys, real sheepherders, real farmers and an entire local culture based on generations of rural life.  I never knew there was such a mindset. Some of these folks grew up with no electricity and no indoor plumbing - not because they were poor, but because they were remote.  

If you took the aroma of all the car air fresheners, all the punk aftershave, all the cheap deodorant and all the bargain laundry soap in America and mixed it in a huge vat, it would smell like every single indoor space in Central Idaho.  This smell is following us around. From outdoor garage sales to the offices of the local telephone company, from McDonalds to El Cameron Mexican Restaurant, you  smell this smell. Our apartment smells like it - I've been cleaning frantically trying to get rid of this smell. I got up at 3:00 AM two days ago and damp mopped the whole place, trying to get rid of it. It is wretched! It gets into your clothes and hair! Tomorrow  we're going to be visiting one of the pot shops over on the Oregon side to see if they have any hardcore incense we can burn! 

Honestly just incense. The cops on this side would pull our out of state plates over in a FLASH if we brought over any dank.

I like it here so far. Not the hot weather. The hot weather blows. That, I hate. But everything else is pretty good.  

Of  course, 

I'D LIKE IT A LOT BETTER IF I HAD MY GODDAMN STUFF.

And you may ask

 Well?  How did I get here?

And I would answer myself 'in a black car, with malfunctioning air conditioning, during the hottest part of the year.'

And I would be right.

Let's skip the preliminary eight day visit, and the to-ing and fro-ing between Washington and Idaho in a black car with NO AIR CONDITIONING.  And let's skip driving all over the Idaho panhandle in that same car looking at apartments.

Let's skip that.

Let's go right to the part where arrived at our motel room only to find that not only was our entire house full of belongings NOT there to greet us, "...it might not be there until next week. It's impossible to say."

That was last Thursday.

Blue-Collar Heroine

 The days are ticking past and in a matter of hours, now, we'll be packed and on the road, leaving 

Washington for good.

So given the circumstances, I did the logical thing, and bought a Barcelona chair.

And here it is, prior to my purchasing of same.  

I have wanted this chair forever. And even though I know that I am now the kind of person who owns a Barcelona chair, I refuse to feel anything but unbridled GLEE because 1. It's a Barcelona chair and 2. I GOT IT AT LYNDEN CHRISTIAN THRIFT STORE FOR 95.00 BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!! 

______________________________________________________________________________ 

UPDATE:

Well of course it's a knockoff. I got it for 95 bucks at Lynden Christian.

       

Movin' on down to Idy Hoe

We did it!  We found the perfect place! 

It was amazing. The places available for us in Idaho, we never could have set foot in here in Washington. We saw luxurious! Luxurious!! places - newly built, newly remodeled, several in renovated Victorian buildings with exposed brickwork and marble counters and deluxe appliances...honestly, if it's getting too expensive for you wherever you are, you could do a lot worse than the Idaho Panhandle region. 

Now us, we are intrepid trendsetters. Not for us conventional luxury. We went for the remodeled 1920's lawyers office in the funky little brewpub-area of

Yes, John, FRUITLAND.

And this is it:

                        Fine. This is the front door. But yes, the front door is screamin' titty pink.   

We are right in the historic downtown, one block down from the trendy brewpub, around the corner from the tattoo parlor, and next door to the Toy museum.  When we get moved in, I'll post up more pictures. This is the only one that I took that didn't come out completely shitty.

Folks, this just might work out fine.

Holy shit.

Aye d'Haoe

HOLY SHIT PEOPLE WE ARE IN IDAHO AND IT IS 

   ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET    

I am not even kidding. I have never been any place like this.  People have been responding to us based on our looks (elderly, white) and have been saying some of the most amazing things...

As for me?  Not a single shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker or tits have I spoken. Not even a damn, a shucks or an 'oh boogers'.

Have you ever seen any of those Mormon Expose' shows, where they have the immense houses on closed compounds, and their own bank and shit?  It's here. That shit is real.  We have seen some of the most virulent anti-woke propaganda signs, and stickers, and entire houses decorated in American and Trump flags, and  HOLY SHIT PEOPLE.

The TV stations here are, how do I describe this. OK. Home Decor, QVC, Religion, Religion, Adventure ( shows featuring cops, bikers, truckers, game wardens, firefighters - sounds like one of Peenee's magazines, doesn't it?) Western, Vintage (literally right now playing Ozzie and Harriet) Fox News, Real Estate TV-all listings that scroll slowly by - and one other one I forgot. I mean yeah we're in a motel right now and cable is all they have, but HOLY SHIT PEOPLE.  Oh I remembered - Law Enforcement TV, which is all cops chases, cop arrests, cop beatdowns, cop crashes, fatal crashes, fatal chases, rousting drunks, jacking up poor people and questioning sessions. 

HOLY SHIT PEOPLE.

But we have seen two fantastic apartments already!

Both of them are in remodeled historic buildings in the downtown of Fruitland. We'd be right down the street from the brewpub, the tattoo parlor and the funky resale places.  I've done the research on both, and they're not too good to be true - we just happen to be able to afford them. Just as we are able to afford all kinds of places here, for at least a thousand dollars less than we're paying now. WITHOUT getting our retirement income taxed! 

So golly gee whiz, folks, we gonna be living in the light of Jesus here in Idyhoe.

HELP

Age, Controversy and Bare-Titty Economics

Today, this morning, for the first time ever I have spoken the words "The goddamn government is fuckin' around with my Social Security check." 

I guess this is a milestone moment in my life. Like butt hair, or one's first federal charge.

This is exactly how I am focused and what I am focused on at this moment, just the minutia of my life and my petty inconveniences, because every fucking thing outside the limits of Whatcom County Washington is going STRAIGHT TO HELL. You watch the news. You know what I mean. 

Pride is going strong here. The 'No Kings' protests were well attended and peaceful.  Around the county the Trump flags have come down, mysteriously. There was even a 'Trans Rights' protest in Lynden!!!!!

   I mean, no shit. There was.   

     

We here at the El Apartmento have just officially retired. We filed for Social Security and Medicaid. The Biker quits his job in a couple of months, for good. 

And we are moving to suburban-rural Idaho.

  

Why? Because it's way, way cheaper to live in Idaho. 

But yeah. Idaho.

Believe me when I tell you that I NEVER FUCKING SAW MYSELF HERE in my advanced age, getting ready to leave the West and move inland - much less to motherfucking Idaho.

IDAHO PEOPLE

IDAHO 

I mean seriously fucking IDAHO.

And I might as well add that there is at present one person living in Idaho who has threatened to kill me. 

This person is at large right now, in IDAHO.

No seriously I am not fucking with you. This is a real fact. 

 

Of course this person is Ozzy Osbourne-level permafried from way back, and is in and out of jail pretty often, but with my luck - and you know my luck - he'll be the dude driving the moving van full of our shit, and he'll recognize me.

Those of you familiar with the regional cultures of the United States will be trippin' balls right about now wondering how my sad red ass is going to survive living in Idaho. The rest of you don't have a clue and are wondering what the big deal is, so pay attention. 

 Idaho is, and always has been, very very conservative, a few pinpricks of liberalism surrounded by miles of uninhabited rangeland, ignorance, and potatoes, most of it owned and operated by ultraconservative Big Honkin' Ag.  This is when one of you pops up with 'Well my aunt lives there and she says it's really cool and I've visited Idaho on numerous occasions and people were super nice to me so yeah YOU'RE JUST DEALING IN NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES'.  

Well of course I am.  Yet the fact remains - here in Bellingham WA it is socially unremarkable to walk around being whatever the Lord made you. In most of Idaho, it is socially unremarkable to walk around covered in White Pride tattoos.  

Why Idaho?  Frankly, this is an economic decision on our part. We can't afford to live on the Washington anymore, now that we're retired. Shit's too expensive. 

Mr. AI tell us:

The cost of living in Washington State is significantly higher than the national average, with housing being the primary driver of this difference. While some basic necessities like groceries and clothing are also more expensive, the biggest cost burden is in housing, which is substantially above the national average. 

There it is.   

Not to despair, though! (I write those words as much for me as for you, gentle reader.)  Idaho is a good compromise for us. Environmentally, Idaho is very much like Oregon and Washington. The culture there is a lot like the 'Sixties and 'Seventies we grew up in, and a lot like the Sumas we spent over twenty years in too.  At our age it's nothing to navigate our way through that bullshit, and we know how to find our own people. 

Another thing that Idaho has going for it is next to no suburban or rural 'homeless' encampments.  

I have not written about what they call 'The Homeless Phenomenon' here in Bellingham.  I am going to do that now, and you may not like what I have to say or how I say it. 

  

I have been very poor. I was on Welfare for sixteen years. I've been homeless.  I've been in shelters and on public programs. Having been a poor person, I promise you that I don't have a problem with poor people or homeless people. No. This is different. This isn't a 'homelessness crisis.' This isn't a group of unfortunate people who just need a hand and a place to live. This is a subculture of squalid, predatory, feral humans who take over abandoned properties and lay whole neighborhoods to waste. They are highly mobile. They have money.  They are not people who simply lack a certain background, or the economic 'breathing room' to be nice - they aren't nice, they don't care, they would rather take, and yes it's the bad actors who always stand out, I know - thing is, most of them are bad actors.   It is a different thing entirely from just homelessness. That's what you have to understand.  Within the last four years Bellingham has become inundated with these groups, from the wealthiest neighborhoods to the log booms on the waterfront.  They are busy taking over the apartments right across the fence from me, and my landlord has been battling it nonstop as long as we've been here. ( Remember  my upstairs neighbor, the one who was almost murdered by her boyfriend?  That's what was going on with her. That was the behind-the-scenes story of that.)

There is no way to make that pronouncement sound good, and I know because I've been trying for three days to make it sound good. I wonder if I sound like one of the old people in the Sixties who saw a hippie and started ranting about the end of the world and the downfall of Western Civilization, and I decided that I don't care because it's fucking scary living here now.  Scary and expensive.

I love Bellingham and adore the liberal culture here and would never, never leave if I could afford to stay and be reasonably secure. But, well, that ain't the case, so...we move to Idaho, and I get rid of damn near every t-shirt I own so I'm not shot at a stoplight by a Nazi.

I mean I'd get new t-shirts. I would not be sitting at a stoplight in rural Idaho bare titty. Unless someone dares me. 

Pink Soap Cowgirl Chews With Mighty Teeth

Oh my God what is this taste. WTF did I just put in my mouth. Why God Why.

_____________________________________

I am drinking the worst glass of wine I have ever had in my life at the moment. 

I am.

This wine tastes like if you rented a cabin deep in Redwoods National Park that had not been rented in several months, and this cabin had spent the prior recreational season being cared for by indifferent teenage girls. 

OK.  

You open the door and there it is, the first thing you inhale.  

That smell. That taste. 

Honestly it is this bad. Oh Lord. 

You'll want to avoid:

Two Vines, Red Blend, Wahington State. Tell your friends. 

I have never tasted anything this bad.  

Oh holy shit this is BAD.

It is so bad.

So very bad.

_______________________________

Note to the makers and purveyors of Two Vines Wine: I absolutely support you and your efforts to purvey a nice beverage. I am mostly sure that you have good intentions.

 

Shocking Cookbook Expose DANGER THRILLS BREAST IMPLANTS

                             We need to have a talk about those Fundraiser                                                               Cookbooks, people.

         You think you are getting authenticity, but                                      it's all a LIE.

               I am talking specifically about fundraiser cookbooks. Not fake titties. This is what's called a visual metaphor.

Companies that help folks publish fundraising cookbooks have been around for a very long time. Take this outfit for example. What the company does is glam up your cookbook. They provide you with a selection of features like pretty covers, household hints, weights and measures, equivalent ingredients, index, glossary, artwork, things like that. You send in all the recipes you've collected, they print them, and it all looks nice.

Thing is, those bitches in the Garden Club don't always step up to the plate and offer their own recipes because they're all talk, those broads, just talk talk talk and then nothing but excuses, and you have to put out a cookbook; and do they care? No they do not. But the publishers understand. So...

                      The publishers also provide recipes, 'standard favorites,' to pad out the content.  

And all of this is fine, except the standard content is, well, standard.  And this is what I'm trying to get across to you - 

Most of the fundraising cookbooks you run across can be 90 or even 100% standard content. 

The companies even add fake contributors' names!  

Do these programs let you in on that?  No they do not.  You are lead down the primrose path by the  Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church thinking that Mrs. Peterson of Omaha Nebraska actually contributed her prize 'Olive Tuna Ring' recipe to the Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church, when actually there is no Mrs. Peterson and that Olive Tuna Ring recipe was dreamed up by someone at a desk in Missouri who hated humanity and disliked dogs.

When I go thrifting I often see women with tall stacks of these church/fraternal organization/ etc. cookbooks, heading to the checkout, exclaiming in delight about how charming it all is, and I don't disabuse them because why take away someone's happy? But if they took the time to flip through that stack they'd soon realize that they're buying exactly the same content over and over and over again. Particularly if the books are all from the same small town,  because (and I congratulate  myself on this discovery) different agencies will tend to use one publisher whose name gets passed around on the grapevine. Like, some poor volunteer in Milton-Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon gets stuck on the Cub Scouts 'Cookbook Committee' and doesn't have a goddamn clue, so s/he calls the Milton-Freewater Fire Station or the Library or the Hospital and asks the poor person stuck on their Cookbook Committee what publisher they use, and...there you go.  Five organizations in Milton Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon put out fundraiser cookbooks that year, and all five have the same goddamn content, and most of it was written by that asshole at his desk in Missouri.

When I am out trawling for cookbooks, I'll take a stack to the Furniture department, pick out one of the cleaner armchairs, settle in and flip through those sapsuckers before I buy. Damn straight I will.  Go ahead and stare me down, nervous young thrift store employee. I know you're worried that I'll fall asleep or die or set up camp here and have to be escorted out at closing. I know you're expecting me to piss up this cushion. Suffer. I did not come here to throw my money away.

 I've flipped through literally thousands of fundraiser cookbooks over the years. You get to recognizing the signs.  I mean the publishers imprimatur is usually right there in the title page, or on the back cover, so there's a giveaway (duh, it took me ages to figure this one out, which is sad.) Sometimes there are no title pages - but after time, you learn to recognize the stock recipe lineups and get a feel for the writing style, the type and appearance of the feature pages. And a lot of times - bring your reading glasses for that fine print - you'll find that the publishing company is taking money to promote different grocery distributors, so it'll be nothing but recipes with 'Sunshine brand Margarine' or 'Hormel Brand canned brain of something'. 

No, cookbook aficionados, what you want are the fundraisers that some earnest volunteer cranked out on a mimeograph, or on one of the first Xeroxes, and another volunteer collated off a table and stapled together on one of those stand thingies.  If it has title pages or any other features, those will have been drawn by someone's kid.* Maybe it was decorated by some sincere soul with a calligraphy pen, no skill, and benevolent motives. Maybe it's made of hand-laid paper, or grocery bag stock, and hippies have been involved somehow. Maybe it was put out by a cult, a commune, or a maniac food philosopher (like Jethro Kloss), or some isolated, obscure rural organization. And maybe, if you are very very lucky, it was put out before 1950. THERE YOU GO. That's your treasure. That's the really good stuff. 

You want content that was volunteered by real people. That is where you find the gems. That is where you get the most readable, fun content. That is where you find the best food atrocities, and where you find the really good recipes too, the things that people in that time and place really ate and enjoyed and have passed down.  

So there you go. Now go grab your garage sale money and hit the streets, eager young space cadets! Answer the call of the food of our ancestors, some of whom were crazy as shithouse rats! Go forth and refuse to let this stuff die! 

106 Tarantulas in a Subaru

 I have been way, way up the ass of my current project. So far up it's ass that I fell into a stupor in front of the computer this afternoon, and had to go lie down. I had two source texts open, two maps, and was scrolling a set of manuscript images that I was enlarging.  I was juggling seven different main questions and keeping two windows clear for incidental queries, and I got so wound up in all this shit that I began to be able to read Latin.

I am dead serious. 

Not word for word, but I was getting the sense of it. I must have suddenly begun using all my subconscious crossword skills and figuring out word roots and prefixes and suffixes and tenses and shit.

However, when you begin to understand Latin, it is time to take a break.  I don't understand Latin now, and somehow I am super relieved about that. 

This is not humble bragging. Much. This is an indication of how much my ability to concentrate and focus has improved after experiencing a certain transformative event recently.

Shit I'm interesting. Right? I am so interesting.

_________________________________________________________

There are three subjects that get worse the more you read about them:

1. Jeff Daumer

2. Ed Gein

3. St. Catherine of Sienna

It seems like nobody wants to come right out and put down all the facts in one place. And maybe that's a good idea. Maybe that's why we have cops and medical specialists. We hire them to know these things so we don't have to.  Of course, I am the exception to that rule. 

I have read a lot of gross stuff in my time, but Daumer? Honestly it's enough to make you give up on humanity completely, some of the things that man did. Not just the stuff that everyone knows. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's details that were never widely disseminated, and I seem to be on a mission to hunt them all down.*  

Same goes for Ed Gein. At the very least, he had way, way too much time on his hands, did Eddie. Every time you think 'Dear God that's got to be it' though, you find out about another over the top, horrible...say, facet of his interior design philosophy. Or his fashion sense. Ahem.

Neither of them are a patch on St. Catherine of Sienna, though. St. Catherine of Sienna knew exactly what she was doing - and she was doing it to herself.

St. C of S was a perfect storm of time, place, intellect, mania, credulity, dissimulation dressed as grace, batshit insanity and circumstance. This woman was driven by things that modern medicine was invented to prevent, and driven hard, as though she was being run by terrible electrodes in her head. Everyone around her supported her behaviors, though, and encouraged them, and it all devolved into starvation, bleeding, crying, levitation, miraculous healings, extreme demonstrations of faith and obedience, and people handling the deceased and no no no no. 

There was a secular book written in the 1980s that goes into her plight. It's called 'Holy Anorexia' but anorexia was the least of this woman's issues. Under the impression that God was constantly demanding that she humiliate herself in extreme ways to purify her soul, she resorted to, among other things, eating 'corrupt flesh and matter' and you know what, use your imagination.

______

The last few weeks have been interesting like this. My back has been slowly releasing tension, and I am not the limping wreck I had been for the last five or so years.  I had been developing a misers' squint  in my right eye; that's going away. I swear to God my hair is beginning to come in thicker too. It's a trip, is what it is. I had been battling a few compulsive behaviors, nothing new in my depression/ADHD co-morbidity wonderland - those have gone away. I'd super like it if I spontaneously developed the ability to do math, or drive a stick shift.

I have lost 25 pounds.

________________________________

So why did I blow off a whole month?  Where was my ass when I should have been blogging?

Out enjoying my newfound clarity. It's just amazing. I keep on expanding outward into life, squishy as that sounds.  

I have worried that this is how dementia starts, and if I might have had a mini-stroke or something, honestly. If that's the case, I really like how it's turning out.  

___________________________________________________

*Why?  This is such a chick thing! I'm being such a typical chick! I can't get enough of those true crime serial killers, the grosser the better! Ann Rule would understand.

 

Purgatory Smith and his Ailing Leg

 Here for Jon is my next post - THE WATKINS COOKBOOK!

Is it the Rawleigh Cookbook?  No it is not. Now, I have owned the Rawleigh Cookbook in the past and I might have one now, but that would mean getting up from Command Central here and digging through my bookshelves, which I am not going to do because I am snuggled in with my modern Jazz and my Big Ballard.  Anyway I already took the pictures for the Watkins one.

                                       

              

Oh no wait it's the Rawleigh one. OK then.

So anyway, Rawleigh. It was a door-to-door sales outfit that purveyed ink, veterinary nostrums, patent medicines, cleaning agents, herbs, spices, extracts and whatever else shit.  Their old bottles are pretty collectible. I've owned a few over the years, in fact - a Beef Extract and

- well who gives a shit. Anyway, if you put in an order, they'd include one of these cookbooks for free!  

They put a lot of thought into them, too.  Rawleigh assumed very little cooking experience, expecting that new brides (who presumably didn't know squat) and cheap mother-in-laws (who couldn't be bothered to buy a birthday gift for the trollop who married their angel, oh but look I've got this thing lying around, I'll just wrap it for the bitch) would be the ones most appreciative of this offering . They also assumed total ignorance on the part of the buyer with the concept of 'flavor' - and once again, they nailed it. If you lived someplace like Pollock, California, Spangle, Washington, or Lastine, Oregon, this being the late 1950's, you were very unlikely to have grown up eating much other than Vegetation and Things in Cloudy Water.  Consequently, these recipes are dead simple.  

Incidentally, all the same things can be said for The Watkins Co. Cookbook. It's around here somewhere.

BAM SHAKALAKA we got a message from the desk of hang on. 

We got a message from the president of the company!!!  

I mean read this over. If they still wrote copy like this I'd have an empty bank account.  All these years later I'm thinking 'My, what a nice fellow.  OO and look, company letterhead!'  You can also see the date of publication - 1959.

Now let's get to the recipes and pictures. Mainly the pictures. 

This is a classic of advertising photography IMHO.  And the staging - it doesn't get more 'Heartland, home and family' than this stuff.

Let's begin with the absolutely dead basic

ROAST BEEEEEF.

Behold - roast beef!  You wipe it down and throw it in the oven. Just add a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Rawleighs pepper.

Pork done well develops it's best flavor. You know why? Because it kills all the roundworms. Nobody wants raw roundworm. You gotta cook pork well done because pork in the 1950s is crawling with trichinosis, which is roundworm, and it'll crawl out of that underdone meat while you're still chewing and eat straight through your cheeks.  Incinerate that pork so you don't die of encephalitis, which is when roundworms crawl around in your central nervous system and your brain and eyes and shit. No, like, they actually shit, and lay eggs, and chew holes in your brain, and die and float around in you. 

Why are we cutting and slashing and doing this stuff with pineapple juice to this leg of lamb?  What provoked this?  And listen - I live in Dilly freakin' Oregon. Population 301. Where do I come by Dry Burgundy out this way in the 1950s? 

Nowhere. That's where.

Let's take a second look at the finished product.  I mean...

OK this might not be a triumph of food photography.

Yikes sorry sorry sorry that was frightening. OK. Here. Look at this nice ham on this pretty dinner table. And breeeeeeeeeeathe.

 

Ah, but then....we have THIS ^^^. What the fuck is this.  Why does it look like a giant tick.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

 

Now here is Mr. Rawleigh getting all Ethnic on us. 

We are not going to dwell too much on the olive plate to the right. We are not juvenile. 

It's just an oval.

 It's fine.

Here we are back again in the Land of the Bland WTFs. I hope none of you are from Maryland. That is not how that recipe is supposed to go.

I know this is an emotional roller coaster.

Now see, this is pretty. I like this.  I don't know what to think about the dish of tiny weenises to the lower left there, but it's not all weenises, and look; there's a dish of crudites, which is French for 'hard throbbing vegetables.'  

It is. 

That's what it means.

And here is the recipe.  And also a recipe for freakin' LOBSTER SAUCE.  You know what, Rawleigh, I live in Wapato, Washington and it's 1959. 

Where the fuck am I supposed to come up with LOBSTER SIR. 

For BASS. 

FOR BASS.

Shh shh OK I'm fine, I'll calm down. See?  Here's some nice average stuff that your mom might make you for lunch, and you would be happy.

Ignore the Ham Salad Mousse.

Ignore the Molded Vegetable Salad, and particularly ignore the Jellied Vegetable Salad. 

IGNORE IT.

Here we are again at a wonderful piece of food staging artistry. I love everything about this picture.  I love the butter bowl and I love the rolling pin, and I love the shiny, shiny bread products, and the tablecloth.  The recipe is fine. It makes the slightly gloopy kind of white bread that Franz Bakery used to make back in the 1960s. I figure that's due to the shortening.

Aw, it's Easter!

And Peter Rabbit is out there with the Hot Cross Buns and the marmalade and the strawberry jam! He's headed straight for the butter!

With his tongue hanging out, mad as hell, ready to chew some human faces, followed by his band of  beakless baby fowl!

I put this in because Blueberry Pie is my favorite pie.  

 

At the very end you get a page on how to use spices, which is adorable.

You also get two pages about vitamins.

Unless you are standing in a meadow literally chewing on a cow, your food is falling far short and its mostly your fault because you cook, and cooking sucks. 

Vegetables are not your friend, they do not like you, they deliberately belch all their food value into the aether leaving you with nothing but a wad of plant cellulose while the god of plants laughs at your plight.  

Even the Sun hates you. 

Malnutrition looms.  

Listen. You live way out in the country and its 1959. You already have a lot to worry about when it comes to recognizably human offspring. See, and here you don't even realize that you're nutritionally deficient and a menace to the future, you ignorant clodhopper. But you are.

Do you want to have mutated babies? Do you want to have a kid that looks like a possum?  Or a clam? Because you will - if they make it nine months. Thats right. 

YOUR BABY IS PROBABLY GOING TO CROAK.

Why can't Johnny read? Look at the shit you let him eat. 

You see Grandpa over there suffering from lactation, infections, worry, fear, pregnancy, lack of sleep, rapid growth, fractures, surgery, and change of climate??? BITCH HE NEEDS OUR VITAMINS.

So yeah. 

This is the back cover. 

And this is a pair of salt and peppers that look like dolphins, and the salt comes out of a hole in the middle of the dolphins' face.

________________________________________

The Rawleigh Company is still in business!