Everybody Has One And They All Stink

I'm in a damn mood! Do not get in my way. Now I mean it. I am here to tell you some shit and you just pay tension, now. Hand me down my spit can, Louise, I'm too tarnated to get it myself. Yas.    

Dammit, there's been things that have pissed me RIGHT off lately.  Just pissing me RIGHT off!

1. This book:

It's been years since I was so pissed off at a book. I got sucked in by the hype finally, and opened the pages to realize that it was nothing but another fatuous, cringeworthy, trivial piece of chick lit. This book was so bad it doesn't even merit the full force of my ire! Because believe me, I could go on. And ON. 

2. Why is it whenever politics get complicated, the media starts in tripping on the 'UFO secret documents' bullshit? Ever since the Bush administration. Ever notice that? Why is that?  Why?  

There there...just calm down...shhhhh...     

I have watched this narrative grow through the years, from the days of George Adamski and his Nordic Venusians, through the Mystic Space Brother days,  the Wilsonville photo (which was a hubcap with a game piece glued to it thrown into the air like a frisbee) to the Vast Silent Triangle... being debunked, cropping up again, being debunked again, cropping up again, each time with a new detail that gets taken up into the fabric of the lie. Aliens are the Kardashians of politics - they are not real, they are not news, they push other serious issues out of the conversation, and I for one am sick as fuck of the whole non- matter.

...and now that it's been proven conclusively that I don't have a brain implant, I feel free to speak out about this issue!

3. These things:

 

...all up and down Guide Meridian - Highway 539 - from the Blaine Border crossing to Bellingham city limits.  A year ago there were two.  Now there's seven, ever since Roe V. Wade.  

I was crossing at Badger yesterday when this next one one wrenched a loud 'WHAT THE FUCK?!?' out of me. Out came my camera:

Here's a better shot, taken by a local:

Never fear. This is an ironic 'Love my small town' post.  Here's the Tik Tokker who posted it, looking fabulous!  

At first blush I thought "Well what are you going to do, Jim Bob, ask for it back?"  Is this about spooge?  If so, you literally could not have given your DNA away more sincerely!  Law of ownership and donative intent must come into play here; I mean what the actual fuck. (So to speak.)

As it turns out, they're talking about the doctrine of Life At Conception, as can be discovered by looking up their parent organization, National Right to Life, on Wikipedia, and reading the damn article.**

 This is how people who do not understand science and are not capable of understanding science shoot themselves in the foot when they try to use science to back up their religious beliefs. Oh my God I weep for this nation.

Now I am tired of dealing with all this booshwas. Tired is what I get. I get tired. I do.  My feet hurt something fierct. My bloods pressure is done. Look at my legs how swole up they get, I get so consternated and my blood pressures so. Reach me down the Tokay, Margie. 

Alla you else go find something to do. 

Pft.

______________________________________

  **These are not people who are real devoted to stating their aims clearly. Try looking up 'Who donates to National Right to Life' and see where that gets you.  They have the internet sewn up tight, don't they?

*** No seriously, look it up, and tell me if you have better luck than I did trying to find out where the money comes from.  Or just look at where the organizations' money goes. THAT's interesting.

...even my footnotes have footnotes.

Cockroaches, Cher, And My Roses

 ...is the answer to the question  "What three things will be left standing in the smoking aftermath of Armageddon?"

This might be a little rough, but please, don't cry for me, Argentina. I had to face the reality, and I got through it just fine - with a little help from The Angiosperms!

 YEAAAAAAAAAH WE'RE THE ANGIOSPERMS!  YEAAAAAAAAAH WE'RE THE ANGIOSPERMS!  WE'LL SAVE YOU FROM STUFF WITH OUR HAIR!   (Meet The Angiosperms 1972 Arista Records)

Here we have a picture of Rancho FirstNations two years ago in June:

Here's a picture of the Rancho today:

Yup, it's abandoned.  

Here's what happened.  We sold out to a local man who was keen on taking advantage of the situation created by the flood, acquiring local properties fast and cheap.  Mere weeks after we cleared out, we pulled the trigger.  We got cash on the barrelhead, done deal, and made a modest profit, feeling lucky to have gotten out from under. 

 

About three months after the sale was final, the State and the Feds changed all the flood zone definitions in Sumas and upgraded the development regulations - and now the poor dude can't do a thing with the place.  It would simply cost too much any way he might want to jump - he can't even afford to tear it down! so he's stuck.  But since the property is within city limits he has to keep up the lot or get fined, so he sends in guys to hack everything back.  As you can see, they do 'hacking back' thoroughly and well.

Try as they might, though, you can't keep a good rose down!

Utterly indifferent to all the spilled diesel fuel, asbestos, cess pit effluvia and other nightmare substances that now lay on this valley like leprosy, THIS ROSE LAUGHS!

I lead off with 'Munstead Wood', the queen of my heart.  There it was, smelling like heaven, making bees happy, a huge umbrella of a plant.  Man, I felt proud.

I also felt hurried because I was trespassing, so I had to do a speed run through the place; hence the lack of more and better snaps.

Here's a landscape rose I bought. I forget the name. It's just a Star Rose.  But I mean look at this thing:

It's clean as a hound's tooth, too.  All these roses are! Thriving on neglect.  Not a bug. Glorious new growth. 

Celine Brunner, the frowsy old harridan, living her best life, coming down off the first flush of May.  Check out those leaves!

Here's one I never expected to make it. Not in a million years. It was cranky, it was whiny, it was a heavy feeder, the bugs adored it; and look at the goddamn thing now.  This is Jackson and Perkins 'Fourth of July'.

Here's another picture of it because it just blew me away.  There's some nice dead canes sticking up, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't on this bastard. Best striped rose on the market IMHO.  Hardy, too!  You see the proof!

Even this bugger!  I bought this rose as a band! It cost me a buck at K-Mart!  Yeah, the pieris to the left is a dead duck, but this damn thing lived!

And here's the star of the Survival Show:

Improved Josephs Coat!    

I will never stop singing the praises of this rose.  This plant stopped and held a full-sized floating steel dumpster during the flood! It was knocked halfway to the ground, half-covered in flood-wrack, and all the branches were broken! It's been backed over! There's a two-foot hole right next to the roots where someone dug up the Itoh Red peony, it's had no care whatsoever and the fucker is blooming!

There are buds on it!  This is all new growth!      

Many of the perennials are coming up and are ready to blaze. It's going to be a colorful abandoned property, that's for sure, and I hope people come by and steal more plants. 

I'm going to pat myself on the back here.  I damn well knew how to choose and where to plant.  I knew what the hell I was doing. 

  

I Dreamed I Had A Heart Attack In My Maidenform Bra

 I thought I had a heart attack yesterday.  

It was a lovely, warm, calm day.  I was sitting at the table and had just tucked in to a nice bowl of Japanese soup when out of nowhere, a headache began in the middle of my brain, expanded and swelled and got worse and worse and worse until I thought my skull would explode. It happened just as fast as it takes to read that sentence. I got nauseous and short of breath, and came over all clammy.  Chest pain. Tingling hands. I went from feeling as good as I've ever felt in my life to AGONY in three seconds.  It continues to wax and wane after the initial blast, too. I could not have made a phone call, driven a car, or walked to the front door.

In case I've not made my point clearly enough, here is a visual aid.  

 

I was still going "Why? Huh? What?" when the Biker calmly took me to the emergency room.

After ex-rays, cardiograms and a couple of brain scans, I found out:  I was fine. The cardiologist told me that I have the heart and circulatory system of an 18 year old kid (insert 'crawlspace' or 'trunk of my car' joke here) and oddly, my brain scans were 100% normal.  I expected to see weird things, like maybe a pool toy or something. But no.  No sign of an aneurism or an impending aneruism, no alien implants.  And by this time, I was feeling fiiiiiiiine. A little hungry. A little sheepish. The pain had just faded away on it's own. It took about an hour and a half.

Apparently I had a Cluster Headache.  I was given a medication to take if I feel another one coming on, and now I have to go and do a bunch of tests to check all the other things that might be the problem, which really irritates me, but is better than having my head explode and far less of a pain to clean up after, I guess.

The reason this even merits a post is because I had no problems whatsoever up at the hospital.  None. It was fast and professional.  The place was a war zone after Covid; now the whole place has been cleaned, repaired, updated and streamlined.  The staff seemed upbeat, not the downtrodden, resentful drudges I remember. It's not the same St. Joe's that I used to fear, and that is A Very Good Thing. Good health care still happens in America. 

It looks like I won't be dying of a heart attack or an aneurism anytime soon, either. Cool.

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!