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.

Tiny Towns on a Drizzly Summer Day

 I keep to my old pharmacist in Sumas because 1. The man is professional, kind and knows his shit, and 2. He saved my husband's life not once, but twice.  Both times from fatal drug interactions. (When you live in the ass end of nowhere, your town doesn't attract those A students from Harvard Med.) 

Anyway, this gives me a chance to get out of Bellingham and back out into the wilds of Whatcom County. And man, is it wild out that way lately!  Due to an unusually chilly, rainy Spring and early Summer, the plant life is coming up tall, green and rank.  It's like driving through the Willamette Valley, and it smells glorious, unless someone is spreading manure.  Then not so much.

Feed corn foreground, random farm being encroached upon by blackberries center, a metric shit-ton of mountains and foothills rear.  Mt. Baker was hiding in the clouds, but it's there. Really.

Here we are way out in the middle of nowhere, and here are some cows.  Nice.

   I got way down in the weeds to nab this picture of super chunky baby corn so you'd better appreciate it.

   The nearest little town to Sumas (that still stands) is a 'twinned' town:  Everson/Nooksack.  We have a lot of twinned towns in Washington and I have no idea why.  I've been told that the E-N split came about because of an unpopular property tax.  The people decided that rather than get over themselves, they'd just that divided the town along the main street. Everything North became Nooksack, everything South, Everson. Each side paid the tax of their choice. I would have chosen to pay no tax whatsoever, myself, but this all happened way back in the 1800's when people were drunk a lot of the time.

This is the main street of Nooksack:

Yup. That's it.  Two blocks. A molasses company (of all random things) and a coffee hut on the right, and two blocks of old, old cement and brick storefronts on the left. They have an elected mayor and city council and baby and all. 

Yeah, all the roads out here look like this, and most are worse.  It's because everything in this end of the Fraser River Valley floodplain floats on a thick layer of clay, and the ground shifts enormously. They dribble a little hot tar on the cracks all year long and hope for the best.

This ^^^ is Rodreguez Auto, where we used to take all our business.  Did they run fast and loose?  Yes. 'Cash only' got you all the favors.  You did not ask why. They did not tell you.

Notice how the building is leaning out toward the road.  This road and this town are sinking, is why. 

Out here where you don't go nark on your neighbors to Code Enforcement, how you deal with subsidence is up to you. When the foundations and floors of these places rot out, they just lift the buildings up, build a new foundation atop the old one, and lower the building down on that, or, like Rodreguiz, build four steps down from the sidewalk to the floor inside.  The tan building on the far left has four layers of foundations, like stripes going along the lower walls inside - and each layer is below grade. Presently it sits on a row of dry-laid cinderblocks covered in a skim coat of pool cement on the outside so as not to attract attention.

See the hint of aquamarine to the right?  That is...

The mighty Three Flavors Restaurant of which legends sing   

Now listen - I'm serious here.  Only cool people can know about this place, OK? so don't go spreading it around.  This is the BEST restaurant in the county. I do not exaggerate nor do I lie.  Nobody knows about this place unless they live in a six-mile radius.  And the owners work at keeping it this way too.  See the sign in the window that says 'restaurant'? It's because people kept driving past the flat sign, thinking it was the kitchen of a taco wagon. They don't even advertise in the papers. I mean look at the size of this town and you tell me if you'd expect to find fine freakin' dining here.  But here it is - and not a single sunflower, a scrap of chintz or an overpainted rooster statue will you find within. I know, right?   

Of note is the fact that these are the only three wooden buildings left in the 'downtown' area.  Two of them, center and right, are true, back-in-the-day Old West False Front jobs, but the tall parts got sheared off years back by storms, and since false fronts serve no purpose anyway, they weren't worth re-erecting I guess.  There used to be floating wooden sidewalks out front too until the highway department made them take them out (they'd break loose and float out into the middle of the road during floods.)

Now let's travel three blocks down and visit Everson, which also has it's own Mayor, city council, and baby and all, because that'll show those Nooksack bastards!

Boom, here we are in front of the oldest building in town that isn't a farm, barn or outbuilding. 

People still refer to this as the 'new' city hall, and...

...they still refer to this as the 'new' police station.

Are you noticing a theme of poured concrete?  It's because this used to be big timber country.  The fire hazard wasn't so much up in the nearby woods as it was in the enormous timber yards that covered this end of the valley  - and also the astounding number of timber buildings, from houses to one room cabins.  The fires would start in the Autumn and hopscotch from cabin to cabin, sweeping across this whole end of the valley (unless you had a good pump and were near a creek, which explains the few survivors from that time.) Imagine if you had a business, how sick you'd get of rebuilding shit every November.  Because this was very prosperous country - until after WWII - smart businessmen built in cast as soon as the money came in from the first insurance settlement. Most of these cement buildings have been built back many times over the years, starting from an empty, charred concrete box. Yup. 

Here is a shot of the old Main Street of Everson:

Six blocks of businesses, about 2/3 of them occupied.   

And here is a shot of what people with too much at stake to sell out are still engaged in doing, going on nearly two years after the big flood:

We're still in downtown.  This place is in the middle of an old creek channel that was re-routed in the late 1800's by the Canadians (it's just behind me.) This house had endured decades of mild flooding, but after this last big one, they've raised the sills ten feet off the ground and built a 'flow through' foundation.  I guess if ya gotta stay, ya gotta plan for the future.  These folks own the little nine-hole golf course behind - note the faded sign - and a lot of land around town.  They've cast their lot.  I can't say this is a bad decision either. Adapt, migrate or die, man.  

Right next door we have this place.

This place was flooded FIVE FEET DEEP for over a week. See that stripe below the big windows?  That's where the siding is still missing - the current tore the boards off.  Once those waters went down, the owners just scraped out the mud, gave it a fresh coat of paint, and moved back in - the same thing that most people in Sumas, Nooksack and Everson have done. This is a Sears house too, so it was built between 1910 and 1940.  It's been flooded out many, many times since it's been built. Imagine what's going on inside those walls, and under those floors. Imagine what's been growing in that old horsehair lath and plaster behind the wallpaper.

Here we are in downtown Sumas, 2023.  In the very center of this picture you can see a pointy evergreen tree sticking up above that red car.  Everything beyond that point is Canada.  There are a few odd collections of towers and grey circles in the background - that's all microwave shit for border security, and the tall pole with the box on top to your left is a spy cam. Roughly five city blocks (about 15 Sumas city blocks coming in at 118,500 square feet per. You're welcome.) of businesses and homes, about 3/4 of which are occupied, which is a freakin'  miracle.  Now for the parade of New Foundations:

Four feet high

Three feet high

Four feet high, with flood debris in the foreground

Six feet high with flood debris and fill in foreground

Three feet high    

I have about ten more pictures but one assumes your ass gets the point. Depending on what little pothole you live it, or how long you intend to live in Sumas, those new foundations run from three to seven feet high.  Yes I hollered at people and asked.

Ever run into Old West town names like "Unsolved Murder Corners" or "Incest Corners" and wondered what the hell they meant by 'corners' and why there were so many little towns with the same name?  Well, here's one.

"Corners" means it's on a four-way intersection. Welcome to Hinote's Corners.

I've heard that this was a place where walking trails crossed and the different NA bands would gather and trade.   After awhile some dude named Hinote bought a farm near here, and the locals got together and chased out the Red Man so Manifest Destiny could play out. Hinotes has grown a surprising amount over the past twenty years and now has the potential to be a town, but for now it's just a tiny, two-block cluster of random small businesses.

When people say Hinotes Corner this gas station is usually what they mean. For ages this was the only business here. 

Nowadays, this is the Mexican gas station. Right behind me is the white gas station, because that's the way shit is out here.  The Mexican gas station put their donkey planter right out front too, so everyone gets it, and there it is by the white door.  They have a minimart and sell ice, propane (and propane accessories) vapes, bongs, hotcase, firewood, bait and a whole wonderland of Mexican and Hindi tchotkes.  They also have a restaurant kitchen for their taco wagon business on the side of the building:

They do nothing but bank money all day long.  

How does the other gas station stay in business?  They have local contracts. They fix Dakotas, Range Rovers and Cadillacs.  They sell a little gas too, but good luck rousting a jockey if you get out of your car and you aren't the right color.  You're expected to know what that donkey planter means.  No shit.

I could have gone into this in greater depth with better pictures but I didn't so suffer. Well...nah, I should be humble. I'm still getting used to taking pix with this camera and I must have dropped it about 50 times and taken all the images of my fingers and the side of the car and it was a huge mess.  I promise I'll do better next time!

 

Mayonnaise Soul Attack!!!

 I live in the woods.  

DROP THE BEAT!

Bam YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH hey TWO, TWO, THREE FOUR yeah-     

This is the street that leads to my apartment:

In the woods!  In the woods!   

Here within the scope of this image there are  (masses of blackberry all in a vapor of white, delicate bloom) three 65 unit apartment complexes on the right, nine suburban homes on the left, and straight ahead?  An international airport just beyond the trees.  And anywhere from five to nine people living in the Winnebago parked up there. 

This stuff is in the woods.  

What's in the woods, woods woods? Yeah, in da woods. In da woods. 

That drive thru hut is In Da Woods. In Da Woods. Yup in da woods. 

Usta sell coffee in da woods! 

Now you get ganja In Da Woods!

\Yeah! 

(police whistle, car revving, folks yelling encouraging things)

 Five city blocks away, this is the marijuana outlet I frequent.  Behind it is part of a mini-mall and a supermarket I go to.  I'm up on an overpass, so out of frame is I-5, just under my tires.  It's all in the woods.  

Two.  Three. Four.

This is the view from my front door.  As you can see, we're in the woods. 

In the woods. 

In the woods. 

In the woods yeah. MarkHEYyeahHEY yeahHEYmark HEYdown YEAH!two.. three.. four... 

This is the O'Reilly's auto parts store a mile from where I live, next to a Taco Time.  They're in the woods. In the woods. In the woods. In the woods. 

This is a Wendys right across the lot from the Taco Time.  It is in the woods. 

The fuckin' woods. 

Bears in the woods yeah, In the Woods TRAP! two three four HOLLABACK! Yeah! two three four...

Behind me is a Wal-Mart store. It's in the woods. Yes it is. In the woods. With the trees. And the freaks. In the woods.

I couldn't get a picture of the Wal Mart because I was waiting for the light on a four-lane highway  (539) that runs from Alaska, through Canada and down into...basically South America.  Yeah, this section, from Kelly Road to roughly Prince Avenue?  Is in the woods.

Sweet Adeline! In da woods! Ain't She Sweet!  In da woods! Goodnight Sweetheart, in da woods! Shallow grave! In da woods!

It's no wonder that I have so goddamn many raccoons.

_________________________________________________________

I have been going out into Whatcom County taking pictures, and I'm going to post a series.  They're going to be unadorned, non-arty, average pictures of what's on the ground here, now, in what was the real, honest to God, rootin' tootin' Old West...and whatever else I come up with until I get bored. I've always wanted to do a non-scenic, average Joe look at America in these parts, and dammit, now is the time.

Be prepared for a lot of average shots, but!  There will be surprises, whimsey, and biting social commentary.  Everything you've come to expect from a woman who goes around in public wearing an armadillo t-shirt.  

Coming up next:  What Rural America Looks Like When It's Not Whining About How Fucked Over A Farmers' Life Is!

I can tell you're just tingling with antici

  ...pation!       

Rats With Thumbs

 In Sumas, the raccoons stuck strictly to my weird neighbor's place and I was fine with that because the weird neighbors themselves were very raccoon-like (smelly, disease vectors, like to root around in the trash.)  My thought was "Go. Party. Live in a discarded sofa on the side of the road. Be happy."  And they were, until they abandoned the house and it was declared a biohazard and the fire department had to burn it down.

How many of you have been hanging around Steve (or Paul) this long? ^^^

It was so ammoniac and horrible inside this house that the air quality warning sirens the poor firemen were wearing were going off the whole time they were setting up the burn. This, my friends, is why we don't hoard animals.

A fireman at the end of the rainbow!         

Before moving back to Bellingham, I had only seen a live raccoon in daylight four times in my whole freakin' life.  Once here, I began seeing them going past my back slider nearly every day, waddling along in a nonchalant manner.  One night I woke up to clattering only to turn on the light and see two big ol' honkin' raccoons mere inches away on the other side of the glass, standing on their hind legs looking at me like I was the problem.   

 Whenever I see the things I chase them off. And they go. Not leaping away in terror, the way you should when a mighty Apex Predator bids you begone, oh no.  They just amble. Like "OK sugar pie, be that way. We'll let it go." And they were always headed down the same direction. 

Why?

I found out this last May, when it got warm, and it began raining. 

They were going to the wooded space between my building and the next one down, shitting in a heap at the base of a tree. 

The tree right outside my bathroom window. 

What had until then been refrigerated became, that warm, rainy Spring night, a Lovecraftian nightmare-mound of nauseating yellow and orange fungus, semisolids, tall cilia and stench. I opened the bathroom window to clear the steam and DAMN. NO. WHAT THE HELL.

               And that's the story of how I discovered the phenomenon of The Raccoon Latrine!

You didn't need this picture, but you got this picture.    

Apparently raccoons will pick out specific locations to take a dump, and they'll all use that same little exclusive spot to hang ass like the dirty, disgusting little freaks they are. These communal haystacks of crap are called a raccoon latrine  (link provided in case you wanted to look up the crapping habits of raccoons. Who knows with you people.)

 Call me picky, but I feel that a raccoon latrine belongs in the damn woods, not in the middle of a high-end apartment complex.  Raccoons are not cute. They are not funny. They are Rats With Thumbs. 

 Good thing I've been plying our handyman with Bushmills.  He is mine to command.   I was able to get him to set traps tout de suite, and he's been catching the masked bastards right and left since late May. He says he lets them loose down in Skagit.  

I am happy to leave it at that. 

We smile.      

Sing Us A Song You're The Banana Man

 If you came here looking for a banana man, he's at the very end of this post, and you'll be glad he's there to sing you a sweet banana lullaby after this mess.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I gave in and bought a vintage cookbook. Yeah, I'm weak. I thought I'd put vintage cookbooks behind me five or six years ago, but the pull was just too strong. The instant I saw it I had to get this classic from my childhood:

Ta daaa!  Ta da ta da ta daaaaa!   

My mom had this cookbook. EVERYBODY had this cookbook.  This is the culinary identity of Milwaukie, Oregon c. 1964 - 1975 (when sun dried tomatoes came in.)

I'm going to note here:  any ingredient or combination of ingredients I mention from here on out is actually in this cookbook.  Don't come crying to me afterward like you weren't warned because you were.

See, back when cows weren't a critically endangered species like they are now, if price is anything to go by, ground beef was for folks on a budget, which was a euphemism for poor.  Of course, we were ALL on a budget.  But! If you zhuzhed up that ground beef with stuff like burgundy, deviled ham out of a can or cinnamon, well that was a horse of a different flavor. The more obscure the ingredients, the merrier. It said 'I shop like a rich person.' The more obscene the combination, the better. It made you look adventurous and broad-minded. Therefore:    

 If you mushed bananas into the ground beef, fried that, and dumped a red wine sauce made using orange marmalade over it -  JACKPOT BABY YOU WIN! 

Yes. That is a real recipe out of this book.

 

"This is my fault. I am the one who brought you here. I am the one that said "keep

reading I dare you." I am the one who is gonna write about raw liver. It is my fault,

because it is my blog. Everything has to be my way. And this is where we've

ended up and it's all because of me."

 Crimes against mankind aside, half the recipes in here are pretty good. (Naturally, we won't be spending much time on them. This is Steve, baby.)  I can say that for a fact because I've had about 3/4 of the stuff in The Ground Beef Cookbook.  They're the dishes I remember eating when we had guests, at friends' homes, after funerals and at lodge picnics and reunions.  You got familiar with them quickly, seeing them at every potluck and buffet, and knew your favorites.  The trick, as a kid, was to go through the line authoritatively or you'd get some old bag chasing you around with Campbells Soup Green Beans, squash casserole, or some sauerkrauty abomination insisting you eat some vegetables. You had to use strategy. You had to step into the middle of the line and quickly occupy your paper plate territory with delicious Spanish Meatballs and keep on moving. No more room for Bean Salad, Gladys! **

Because this cookbook was published in 1965, there are many horrible, inappropriate, and scary ingredients in use. There is far too much soy sauce, for starters. It doesn't need to be in everything. There is ketchup all over the place. There are canned tamales. Used as an ingredient. 

LOOK AT THEM.  

 

Lunchmeat. Cornflakes. Raw liver. White bread and wheat bread. Potted meat product. Eggplant in places where eggplant does not belong. American cheese. Bologna. Bananas.  Oatmeal. Canned prunes.  Karo Syrup and way, way, way too much Worcestershire sauce. 

Not that Worcestershire sauce isn't good, it is - but because back in the day, all we had was Frenches' terrible Worcestershire sauce. Everybody's mom, per Frenchs' magazine campaign 'Make hamburger night zesty!' was already dumping that stuff in their meatloaf and hamburgers by the half-cup, and it was awful. All you could taste was vinegar, indigestion and brownness. 

Utter complete garbage Worcestershire sauce     

Once Lea and Perrins hit the shelves, even us 'budget' people started buying it.  Fuck French's Worcestershire. Fuck it in the heart.

When seasonings are used, they are used in minute 1/4 teaspoon amounts. Tabasco sauce is measured out by the drop like it's plutonium.  All chili powder is mild and used in trace amounts, and the chili sauce called for is the weird stuff in the bottle that isn't even hot and has no chilis in it at all. None. I don't understand it and it frightens me.

 In contrast, tomatoes - canned, peeled, unpeeled, chopped, pureed, stewed, whole, sauce, paste, ketchup, tomato soup, oh my yes, throw all the tomatoes at that ground beef. All of them except the fresh, raw kind. 

'cuz fresh tomatoes are the Devil!    

I love that so many of the recipes here have glam names - well, glamourous for blue-collar Oregon of the early 1960's.  Indian Meatballs, for example. It is a perfectly mundane meatball recipe save for the addition of soy sauce, bran cereal flakes (??) and exactly 3/4 teaspoon of sugar. What makes them Indian?  Which Indians do they mean? Where did they get bran flakes?

Watercress Beef Patties with Oriental Sauce contains a shake of allspice. I think the shake of allspice is what makes it Oriental. Or maybe I'm wrong.  Could be the watercress.  Could be the Worcestershire sauce.

Beef Tomato Swirls sounds like something a ballerina conjured up in her Parisian garret one rainy Sunday afternoon, doesn't it? What it is, is ground chuck, Worcestershire sauce, canned tomato soup and cheddar cheese.  Rolled into a log, baked, and...sliced.  Now, this tastes OK. But it doesn't swirl at all. It doesn't have a swirl design either. It looks like a grey CD lying on your plate bleeding grease. 

Here is a picture of a jolly jack tar dancing with a can of corned beef. I hope he doesn't step in that leghold trap someone left on the deck.  

Coffee Glazed Hamburger Patties are said to have a 'surprising' flavor, which I'm sure they do, given the half- cup of rolled oats in there. For the glaze? Oho.  You dump a half-cup of ketchup into a half-cup of cold coffee and let your patties blurble around in that mixture until the excess liquid evaporates and voila - trauma. 

German Meatballs contain brown sugar, allspice and nutmeg - which tracks, actually. Oh, but if they'd only put in some caraway too. Then they could have called them UberGerman Meatballs.  

This is the most German dude on the Internet and he is playing German Meatball Tennis. If you throw a meatball at him he catches it in his mouth. If you don't he whaps you with the racquet.    

The worst concoction in The Sunset Ground Beef Cookbook is on page 34. Now, on page 35, there is a recipe for Meatloaf With Prunes, which is frankly vile, but must take the silver because it is something you might feed a parrot and it would be good for the parrot. No, our winner is an agglomeration of random, pointless indecency that mocks the entire concept of food. 

 Before you continue, you need to sprinkle a circle of salt around yourself OK? Light a few candles. do a novena. This is going to be really, really bad. 

First, there is 

THE LOAF.  It is an average loaf.  You're feeling safe.  Right?

Then, there is THE FROSTING.  Who thought 'Hey, you know what would be a trip is if we put frosting on a meatloaf! You know, like it's a cake, but it's really a meatloaf!'  Bad toilet people is who. 

The frosting is made of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes, mixed with chopped onion, brown sugar and cinnamon. You slap it on the loaf and slide it around until that meaty loaf is entirely orange and smells like a forgotton pumpkin pie in the trash.  Here. Have an antacid. OK now let's continue.   

There is a sauce for this frosty, meaty loaf.  Oh yeah there is. 

THE SAUCE

Onions. Green pepper. Celery. Garlic. 

Margarine. 

Lemon Juice. 

White Sugar.  Mustard. 

Cinnamon. 

Four drops of Tabasco - no more, no less!

HALF A CUP OF EFFIN' KETCHUP.

AND HALF A CUP OF 

RAISINS.

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**Come on, Americans, you all remember this stuff.  It is simply not a smorgasbord without the damn Bean Salad, with all those little beans pressed up against the clear plastic bowl like the faces of drowned sailors.

1 can red kidney beans, extra bland

1 can cut green beans, extra bland

1 can garbanzo beans, extra bland

1 can black-eye beans, extra bland

2 1/2 cups minced celery

1 bunch green onions, chopped 

1 tiny, tiny clove of garlic, minced

one small jar stuffed green olives, sliced

1 can sliced black olives

1/2 cup salad oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons brown sugar - Oh hell, make it four

Salt and pepper because that's what people do

You have ten minutes. 

1. Light up a smoke. 

2. Open and drain all the jarred and canned ingredients. 

-Nah, just open them and dump them in that bowl. Yeah.

3. Chop whatever needs chopping.

4. Dump all ingredients into a bowl and mix. Add salt and pepper just to say you did. Cover with Saran Wrap and put in the trunk of the car because 'It's winter so it'll cool off by the time we get there.'  

Now here's your banana man.

*sings to Mr. Peenee* "Oh banana mio, oh, go to sleep now, banana, avoid the monkeys, my sleepy bananaaaaaaaaa, my sleepy banana child."

An Update On The Classics

 I had SUCH A RANT...and then Bob came up with the perfect cartoon (go visit his blog, folks.  It's GOOD:   I Should Be Laughing.)

The Weird

 When I was growing up, the school board didn't feel that we little geniuses needed to learn world Geography because 'Geography doesn't matter', as we were told.  This means that I'm laughably clueless when it comes to the locations of different countries and their governments and stuff. Take for example what I learned today. 

Today - this very day! - I learned that it snows in Australia.

I ran across a video of kangaroos romping around in the snow and my immediate thought was 'Oh those poor things, trapped in some shitty zoo up in Chicago' because Australia Is Of Course Tropical and Hence No Snow.  And this bothered me until I checked online and discovered that yes, the video was taken in Australia, and yes, actual snow falls on Australia. 

This lead to the discovery that there is such a thing as the Australian Alps, where people ski.  Well now of course my mind is completely blown so I need a Bloody Mary. I'm just sitting here sipping my tasty beverage and mulling over the whole snow in Australia concept.  Who the fuck knew.

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Inexplicable DeVice requested pictures of my attempts to be arty, so here you go:

Sorry for the reflections.  The two white things are fortunes out of fortune cookies that I jammed in the frame there, not part of the fookin' ART.  Which is a collage of hand-laid papers with three layers of overprinting and stain that you can't see.  Not because it's secret, but because I can't take a photo to save my ass, so these images are all bleached out.        

This is one of the few paintings I've done.  I used three layers of acrylic overpaint on top of strips of tape.  When it dried I pulled off the tape, which pulled off uneven oblong patches of overpaint and left jagged edges, which made me happy. This is vivid blue with tiny patches of Screaming Paris Pink.

I go through weird periods of time when I get obsessed with the color blue, to the point that there are certain shades that literally make my mouth water, which is super weird, but there you go.  Then it goes away for awhile. And then it comes back, and I plant a zillion blue flowers, or I paint my bathroom orchid blue, or I do blue 'art'.  This ^^^ is what I did last Summer when the color blue was all up in my shit.  Then came this last Winter, and the color blue came back to visit, and I did a bunch of blue turtle embroideries.

Like this guy.    

I don't know if color obsession is an ADHD thing or not.  I do know that there's a component of sensory crossover because normally I don't want to eat non-food items, but I would eat the colors peacock blue, indigo, and (car paint color) Banner Blue because I find them literally mouth-watering.  And I'm not playing this for laughs either.  It gets this way.  Basically I am a mess. 

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Gilbert Shelton famously wrote 'Smoking pot and drinking beer is like pissing into the wind' and while that doesn't quite capture the tone of what's to follow, it just came to mind, so yeah.  

I do know that I'll not be smoking pot and drinking hard liquor again any time soon. I had forgotten that thing where you drop off to sleep like a sack of shit, only to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night feeling all janky, having to take a desperate steaming pot piss. Stagger off to the bathroom, leave it smelling like the alley behind the middle school, get back to bed and can't sleep, because every time you start to drop off your heart rate ramps up and you're listening for intruders and shit, and this happens over and over until you finally get too exhausted to rally the adrenaline anymore. Then you wake up around noon and you smell like the used towel bin at the Pot Olympics, and you've got atomic cottonmouth so you drink out of the faucet until you gurgle. Then you eat three orange marmalade sandwiches, and that makes your teeth squeak, and you sit and worry about diabetes all afternoon.  

Or maybe that's all me. Nonetheless.  Thought I'd mention it.