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Subject: Bixby Green Corn Festival Road Trip Report
Well, it has been an intersting fortnight*
here at the Funny Farm.
There's been a couple of personal things that
I'd rather not get into.
But there are some things I'd like to share with
the studio audience at this time.
Last week, I had the great fortune to visit with
my good friend Bartcop and attend the
Bixby Green Corn Festival in Oklahoma.
The trip was fairly uneventful - about fifteen hours
(and a thousand miles) of driving. I arrived
in the greater Tulsa area in the middle of a downpour,
which obligingly let up long enough for me to
get checked in to my hotel room. Then Bart showed up
and we did a couple of shots of Chinaco before
heading out to one of the local Goldie's Hamburgers
for the best burger in town for dinner.
Bart also took me to see one of Tulsa's most famous landmarks,
the Golden Driller**.
Friday was pretty relaxed - swearing at the local
drivers checking out the local area, doing a little
window shopping, and swearing at the rain because
it would not stop trying to schedule some time
to attend the cornfest. That evening I
was very privileged to visit BartCop Manor and have mas finas
anejo tequilas, assorted party favors, Del Castillo
on video, and dinner with Mr. and Mrs. BartCop
in the privacy of their own home. This
was my first exposure to the famous Bixby corn, and while it is
quite a tasty treat, I had to confess that it
is not head and shoulders above any other sweet corn I've had.
It is right up there with the best - but I would
challenge Bart to enjoy some Essex County sweet corn in
a month or so (when it starts to come in season
- August is prime sweet corn time in the most southern
part of the Great White North) and draw his own
conclusions.
Note: Tom bought some corn to take back with him. A few days
later he told me his friends said
he might've been a little quick to declare the Bixby corn "not head
and shoulders" above the rest.
On Saturday it was time to pack up and check out
of the hotel. After a quick trip to the store for ice,
it was time to be escorted by Bart to the premier
alcohol retailer in the area, where I purchased about
$200 worth of fine anejo tequilas (worth over
$300 in my neck of the woods), including some not available
for purchase in Michigan.
Note: As the lady was ringing up Tom's
tequila, she ssid, "I like your shirt"
(WPE)
The dude boxing the bottles also indicated he
was happy to see the shirt.
Then it was off to the market to pick up a couple
dozen ears of corn to bring home,
and from there to the corn fest itself.
Sweet corn, home made lemonade, and local root beer were among the
delights sampled by Your Humble Narrator in beautiful
downtown Bixby. I also checked out a local carnival
which just happened to be located right next
to the corn fest grounds.
The trip home was somewhat of an ordeal - monsoons
and tornadoes in Missouri (I missed the one that
tore through Springfield by fifteen minutes or
so), and then fighting to stay focused after driving out from
under that dark cloud. I finally made it
back to the digs in Pontiac late Sunday afternoon.
I got very few unfavorable attitudes, and a few
compliments on my t-shirts, even though I was mostly
walking around in a Worst President Ever t-shirt
in the middle of Kool-Aide Central; very encouraging to
someone who has felt ostracized and harassed
by formal society since before the Republican'ts stole the
national election (the first time) in 2000.
It was funny to hear a Putsch fellating Republican't*** tell his son
about how the president is mostly a figurehead,
and those smelly libruls are unfairly blaming him for all the
nation's woes. Funny thing, though - when
it was the Eeeevul Clenis that was large and in charge in 1600
Pennsylvania, the president was responsible for
everything that went wrong in america (and the rest of the
world too, as some tell it).
All in all, a delightful experience for yours
truly for the most part. A big thank you goes out to
Mr. and Mrs. BartCop for extending some true
southern hospitality to this Damn Yankee.
* - even more so than most fortnights usually are at the Funny Farm...
** - it's a horkin' big statue of an oil guy leaning on an oil derrick.
*** - which seems to be the only kind that are
around these days.