45. It was Bloody Rare, Part 2.

So, back to the meat-eater’s popsicle-paradise of Pitlik’s – dark and snowy – Sand Beach Resort.

I was aware that the racket of the bar-propping trio had increased to meet the clamour of the kitchen staff. Could have sworn I heard a death rendering moo at one stage. But after an eternity, a clearly struggling nappy-rashed, pimple-popping Mickey arrived burdened under the weight of our Bison Ribeyes. I had asked for rare meat. But I kid you not, this sucker jumped straight off my plate and started leaving a bloody trail as it stampeded towards the door. If it had not been for the clearly honed skills of one of the redneck bar proppers, my ribeye would still be out there somewhere eating grass and playing Russian-roulette with passing pick-ups.

My hunk of bison was slapped back onto my plate where I was forced to stab it relentlessly into submission. After a long blood-splattering few minutes, I gave it its final fatal blow, leaving it fresh, rare and pleasantly lifeless on my plate. Gosh I bet that in this part of the woods parents have trouble with their kids playing with their food. ‘But Mum, I just want to ride my steak one more time.’ ‘Chuckie, this is a restaurant not the rodeo’. ‘Aw Mum’. ‘CHUCK.’

I have never experienced anything like this before, I had blood running through my fries, flowing through my salad and running down my beard. It took all of my city dwelling strength just to slice the bugger(135). Then chewing the sucker was a carnivorous marathon. We were too Kiwi polite to send it back and ask for a little less blood in the ‘rare’. However it provided us with hours of chewing entertainment. The chewing started in the restaurant and finished weeks later when I had finally tooth-picked the last bloody piece from my cavities. I have never ever chewed so much to gain so little. But if you excuse the pun, it was a bloody good steak, a bloody cool place and a bloody good night.

And to top it off I bought a cheap nasty insulated coffee mug. It is white, with a picture on it of the lake and forest that we never saw. And at the bottom of it is written the word Dzie’kuje. I asked zit-Mick what it meant. He strained his pimples almost to the point of bursting, thought about it for a minute and said that he did not know. Months later I plugged the word into a search engine and was informed that it had indeed been spelt incorrect. The correct spelling of the word is dziękuję and it is Polish for thank you. So now whenever I have a cup of coffee I am reminded to be thankful for a blood soaked salad, blood splattered fries and a bison that almost got away. Incidentally I have used the coffee mug every Monday morning whilst smithing this monologue.

It was a horrendous trip home. The mist was so thick that we could not even see oncoming headlights until they were beside our door. Averaging thirty kilometres per hour, we drove for seemingly hours down a no-named backwoods road. The evening was dark, dismal and full of snow.

Out of desperation and a need to trade the car seat for a toilet seat, we stopped at some anonymous populated section of the road that was full of frazzled motorists and hung-up-hill-billies. Out-of-town Rednecks were in town growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to find alcohol, whilst cars crawled down the lonely only road. The atmosphere felt both hazily apocalyptic and weirdly American. The snow fell, the motorists motored and I took in a few moments to breath in America. To breath in this random dot on the map, where darkness enveloped the street lights, were the bitumen glistened with sleet and where the clamour of life was hushed by the intense overpowering mist. This was America, ‘Up North’, Wisconsin, a place where English as we know it is rarely heard and smiles greeted with suspicion.

We confined it to our memories and drove back out onto the highway leaving the town to survive in the squalor of its peacefulness. The motif was too beautiful, too raw and too real to even be spoilt with the silent clicking of a digital shutter.

And before we knew it, Betsie had rather sullenly deposited us back at Summit Lake, not that the lake could be seen. But its presence could be felt out there in the freezing mist and gentle breeze. The evening was laid to rest with an open-fire, smores(136), hot-chocolate, jazz and dreams of riding wild bison with dinner forks and bottles of tomato sauce.

Tune in next week for ‘photos in the mist’

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

44. It was Bloody Rare, Part 1.

One of the days we decided to take a drive further up north, we wanted to see a couple of towns, one called Eagle River and the other called Minocqua. I do not remember Eagle River at all. The problem was that Wisconsin is rather like Poland; it seems that most of its lakes have private residences right down to the water. This is great when you are like us and staying in a lakeside crib. However when visiting other lakes it is a pain in the butt, ’cause you just cannot get to see the water. But to tell you the truth, I do not remember seeing either a lake or a river, or even a town at that, so let me tell you about Minocqua.

Minocqua was wet, overcast, grey and damp. When we arrived it was somewhere between sleeting and raining. We stumbled upon a really good outdoor store. Like the best outdoor store that I have seen since leaving Aotearoa. Everything was so stinkin’ good and so stinkin’ expensive. It was called BJ’s Sportshop. The great thing was that the shop assistant actually knew what she was selling. She knew what was breathable and what wasn’t. Not only did they have one-hundred-strength fleeces, but they actually knew what they were. Unfortunately when you want the good stuff you have to pay for it and in this case I was not prepared to fork out the money. Sharon was, she needed an ‘icebreaker’ thermal and had been persistently hunting for one. This shop not only had them, but also supported large photos of New Zealand merinos standing in the wild. When I went into my usual predictable rant about how it is a shame that ‘icebreaker’ are making their products in China, the shop assistant agreed, like actually said something like ‘Yeah, I know it is sad, but it doesn’t compromise the quality.’ When I mentioned ‘human rights’, she lamented and agreed again. Like wow, this woman should start a business training shop assistants, because she is the only one who really got the Kel Fowler definition of right. After all, I do set the standard.

Anyhow after looking at much stuff we decided to see the rest of the town and mull things over.

So we went for a walk across a bridge through some trees but never really away from houses. This kind of sucked. But it was a nice walk, wet snow was on the ground and the bush was quiet and full of squirrels. Afterwards we went for a wander through the town. I met a lovely man in the Packers merchandise store where I finally replaced my seventeen-year- old authentic NFL Packers Cap with a new one. I was so, so happy.

We went back to BJ’s to get that ‘icebreaker’, but they did not have the right size.

So now it was time to find some supper. This was to be our special meal out, so we wanted something special. We stopped at the information centre at Eagle River and they directed us to a place on a lake around twenty kilometres south west.

So off we went, like two adventure-starved dumb Kiwis. By now it was dark, starless and snowing. It felt like we had about thirty millimetres of visibility and an army of deer and letterboxes waiting for us. Our map lacked detail, but who cared; our tummies were empty and the lady at the information centre said that this place sold meat.

We probably only managed about forty or fifty kilometres per hour for the drive and in the nothingness we missed our turn off by about ten kilometres. Saw some beautiful deer before eventually pulling into the almost empty car park of Pitliks.

Before entering we decided to go see the lake, after all this was one of the reasons why we chose this place. So we walked around this nice rustic building. Put our backs to the restaurant and looked forward. The sleety snow gently fell into our eyes. But we couldn’t really see anything, so we took a few steps forward until we were almost in the lake. I raised my hand above my eyes to shield out the sleet, leaned forward, strained my eyes and there it was, a beautiful lake shrouded in sleet, mist and darkness. And for all I knew, it was no wider than thirty centimetres. But at least now I could honestly write home to my Mum and say that we had a beautiful lakeside dinner.

I was after meat and the inside did not let me down. The first thing that I noticed was a stuffed deer head hanging above the fireplace. If they stuff ’em they probably eat ’em. The bar was divided into two redneck halves. One for smokers and one for non-smokers, both halves supported mounted road-kill, and open fires and set picnic style-tables with check tablecloths. Once again we instantly felt as if we were in the movies. We chose the smokers’ side, nothing like a nice long hard drag with your meal. Well, if the truth be known the non-smoking section was empty, whilst the smokers’ section supported a long wild-west bar complete with a barman and two loud-speaking men and one louder speaking woman, draped over it as if it had been their life support for the entire afternoon. None of them were smoking.

Being suckers for punishment, we chose what was possibly a lakeside table as close to the action as possible and waited with much mouthwatering anticipation for the meat to arrive. I was expecting a tobacco-chewing cowboy-hat-wearing trigger-happy outlaw to suddenly appear with his six-shooters and our menu. I mean the atmosphere reeked of dead animals and masculinity, this was a realistic expectation. Whilst enjoying the view, aka our reflections in the steamed up window, I heard a squeak. I turned round rather hesitantly to be greeted by our waiter. He was a boy lost  somewhere between nappy-training and pimple popping adolescence and I could be wrong here but I think he was struggling under the weight of the menus.

Child labour is illegal in many countries, but here in the USA it seems to be a right of passage. No sooner have Americans learned to use the toilet, than they are cast out onto the highways, byways and roadside restaurants to grow their pimples, pay for college and study polarisation though the conversations of the general public.

This boy, and I know I exaggerate but calling him a child just seems a little too harsh, stood there and squeaked at us. Someone needed to smack this kid around the ears, a boy should at least have a broken voice before he is allowed to sell meat and beer. Anyhow sounding rather like a zit-faced Mickey Mouse, he welcomed us and asked if we wanted a drink before we ordered. In my deepest voice I said ‘No thanks’. I was in meat eating country, I was not going to drink anything unless it had a picture of a four-legged future meal on the label. Zit-Mickey unburdened the menus and scurried away to who knows where. I was left to scan the bar of its vast array of Americanly bright beer taps, I found one with a picture of antlered road-kill on it and was instantly content.

Bear and meat go together, single syllable words easy for men with guns to grunt out. ‘Beer, meat, me, want’. Whereas wine on the other hand is not a description of the drink, it is a description of what people do when they drink it.

Squeaky-zit-Mickey scurried back, I grunted, pointed to the road-kill on the tap and said ‘Beer’ then pointed to the menu and said ‘Meat meat’. That was meat for the entrée and the main. Then we waited and waited and then waited some more. We passed the time away this romantic evening by watching the condensation run down the inside of the window, whilst imagining the lake. During the brief periods that we could actually hear each other above the din of the three at the bar spouting off about each other’s partners and ex’s, we actually talked. Occasionally we could actually hear the fire crackling but mostly we had to be content with just like the lake, knowing that it was actually there.

Then finally squeaky-Mickey-zit scurried over with our entrées. I do not know what is was about America and me, but once again my order was totally screwed up. Here in Lithuania I have watched pouty-faced blond-bombshells take an order for a dozen people and not make a single mistake. But here in America, I have struggled with pimply, smiley, gangly teenagers meticulously scribbling every detail of a two person order and totally screwing it up. I think a little less smiling practice and a little more memory exercise is called for. It didn’t matter, I came for meat and the menu was mostly meat. I ended up with some kind of hot chilli meat swirling in a bowl. I suffered gladly. Because of having to have only the one driver’s beer, I requested that it arrive with the meat.  Dutifully a few minutes later, squeaky-Mickey arrived under the burden of my meaty beer. And thus another popsicle-paradise was upon me.

I think we should take a chapter break here.

Tune in later to hear about just how bloody rare is was.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

43. The Irish Shooting Season.

When on holiday I walk, when on holiday we walk. It is just one of those things we do to relax. I walked into town a couple of times and we walked up to the local Corner Cafe. Recreational walking is such a strange thing to do in America that everyone notices you. One morning upon tentatively bounding into the cafe, I was greeted with the words, ‘So you’re burning the shoe leather this morning’. It was such a strange comment that it actually took me most of my cup of coffee to work out what the hang he was talking about.

One particular day Sharon and I were out marvelling at Summit Lake’s need to have multiple mail boxes in front of each home. One for the post, one for the Antigo Journal, one for the Antigo Area Shoppers Guide and often many more. The whole display looked like a leftover from Halloween and why the hang they couldn’t use the one letter box with perhaps four little placards on it saying what they do collect, I don’t know. Anyhow I digress.

So we walked. Ronnan’s owner had suggested that we walk a track near some local lake. So off we toddled(133). It was a rather typical, dreary, overcast and misty ‘Up North’ autumn day. The lake, the trees, their reflections and even seemingly the sky seemed to be all shades of brown, but a beautiful brown nonetheless. We were strolling along, chatting away, minding our own business when suddenly a man with a gun popped out of the bush. Sharon instantly tensed up; personally, over the years, I had encountered a few North American guns pointed at me. Plus why should we fear, in this part of the universe the local vicar probably strolls though the bush with his shot gun? So I let out a cheerful ‘Hello’. He replied. I thought gosh this is fun, talking to a nice man with a gun in the middle of nowhere, so I said ‘How’s hunting? Are you getting anything?’ His reply was ‘Are you Irish?’ He did not call us Australian or English, so we were not offended, but instead rather bemused. I said ‘No, we are from New Zealand. Why?’ He said ‘Are you staying on such-a-such road?’ I freaked a little and said, ‘Yeah why?’ And he said ‘My sister was out collecting the mail the other morning, saw you walking and heard you talking, she came in and told me that there were some people from Ireland walking down the road.’

America, if you would put in some footpaths and exercise your sport shoes, then we foreigners would not look like total freaks pounding your bitumen whilst desperately trying to subtract those nasty food additives. Can you believe it, here we are in the middle of the bush, perhaps an hour in and we were speaking to someone who had heard of us; we had only been in the town for a couple of days.

Anyhow oblivious to what a hunter walking through the bush actually meant, we kept on walking. When all of a sudden on this cool autumn morning, I heard a firework go off, then we heard another one, and another, they were going off all around us. Oh my goodness, how stupid could we be? We were in the middle of the bush during hunting season and suddenly it seemed as if every local redneck had spotted a deer right beside us and was shooting. We never saw the sucker, but I promise you, we got our butts out of there, lest they fall prey to some hapless hunter and our mugs(134) become stuffed and displayed above someone’s fireplace.

I had never been caught in crossfire before, but gosh I was cross with myself for such an ignorant display. Never mind, such is life ‘Up North’.

Tune in next week to read about a lot of blood.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

42. Summit Lake

I woke in the morning, meandered downstairs, drew the curtains and realised that the day before perhaps was not hell, but rather the mystical concept of purgatory. And that perhaps we had spent the whole previous day of excruciating pain atoning for our sins in preparation for the paradise that greeted me on the other side of the window. My eyes were hit by the view of a placid and tranquil lake, laced in a fresh light sprinkling of snow. My ‘jamy-clad’ body also became aware of a fresh intake of cold air. It was time for me to do one of my favourite things and light a fire in paradise.

Well I do not think that you need to hear every detail of our holiday. I guess you wouldn’t be interested in us drinking hot chocolate and eating s’mores in front of the fire. Or us watching the American Country Music awards and Democrats and Republicans fighting on the local news. You probably won’t be interested in me watching football and reading my book either.

By the time Sharon rose from her slumber, both the fire and the coffee were nice and cosy. Sharon had a cold, which meant it was my duty to trek the twenty-nine kilometres back into that horrible oversized intersection and do the grocery shopping for our next four days.

Men should be banned from entering supermarkets without suitable feminine company. It probably was not the dreadful toppling of the ‘Twin-Towers’ that triggered George Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, it was probably the fact that Laura had sent him out to do the week’s supermarket shopping all by himself. George being left all alone trying work out the difference between Coke Classic, Diet Coke, Diet Coke Caffeine Free, Diet Coke Cherry and Coke Zero would have been enough for him to race back to the Oval Office and aggressively push that fatal red button. Thus, boom, Afghanistan was invaded.

When I know what I want and where it is, then I can shop and exit the supermarket with a few frazzled follicles left on my scalp. My method is to be quick and keep my head down. I fair-dinkum storm down the aisles and sweep the merchandise catapulting into my trolley whilst speeding from the corn chips to the water.

On this occasion, on account that I knew nothing, I was doomed before I started. What a way to start a holiday, being stuck in an oversized country, in an oversized supermarket, with oversized people, searching oversized shelves for oversized produce. Whereas I was one little person, buying for two small eaters, for four days, wanting healthy, additive-free food on a very limited budget.

“If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain” is the expression that springs to mind. But it would have been a more pleasant experience to sharpen my toes in an electric pencil sharpener than conform to this particularly torturous corner of American culture.

Did you know that in America you can buy 100% pure orange juice with additives? I guess either the additives were pure, or I have a totally wrong concept of what 100% means, or an incorrect understanding of the word pure. And butter, oh my goodness, buying butter caused an udderly ridiculous spread of milky emotions. First, buying butter in anything less that a forty-four gallon drum(130) was near on impossible. Almost every container had picture-postcard-perfect pictures of cows, grass or butter on them, but only about ten percent of those containers actually had butter in them. The rest were all kinds of slick-additive-packed oily spreads. It probably took me about thirty minutes to read the copious amounts of fine print, before I had narrowed down my selection to about three brands of possibly 100% additive-free pure butter. Then I plucked out of the fridge the one with the lowest fat count, but promptly put it back on account that it was about the size of your average Kiwi hay bale(131). I am not 100% sure of what I left with, but there was a lot of it, it was almost too yellow and was high in fat content.

Now should we talk about buying corn chips? They come in sacks big enough to have sack races in. The big problem was actually the size versus price factor and again finding the natural without the additives. But on account of that there was a whole aisle of them, that was another thirty minutes gone. I will spare you the details. And the final thing that I learned, was that there seems to be no such thing a 100% cranberry juice. Beats me why?

And lastly what needs to be mentioned is paying, or perhaps rather, with what I paid. America, where are your stinkin’ fifty cent coins and why do you not have one and two dollar coins? And for goodness sake, what nation in the world would be so, so mean as to write ‘one dime’ on a coin and not tell us that it is actually a ten cent piece. And thanks, thanks a lot for actually writing ‘quarter dollar’ on your twenty five cent coin. Do you think it would be at little easier and understandable to just write twenty five cents? I mean surely it is not just foreigners and immigrants who have to learn your money, I presume your kids need to learn it as well? I note that you very cheekily plaster the word liberty on all of your coins, I presume this is your humour in reminding us that you have taken the liberty to confuse anyone who dares enter into your capitalistic spirit. Now correct me if I am wrong, but are all of your notes the same colour and even possibly the same size? If so, then putting ‘In God we trust’ on all your notes makes perfect sense. For indeed when I buy a fifty cent can of fizzy on the run, I am really trusting God that I am handing you a one dollar bill rather than a one-hundred dollar bill. I know I am being harsh. If I want to use it, I need to get over it and adapt to it. It is just why did your forefathers make it so hard for you?

Finally I drove across the supermarket car park across the road and across another car park to an op-shop(132). The driving distance was about the same as between any two rural Kiwi towns. I was still in search of my bib-type-overalls. Came up empty handed here as well.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

Thank you so much to those of you who have been sponsoring ‘Clueless in America, I really enjoy these writing times.

If you read my blog and like it, please consider sponsoring a chapter. Just click on the button and follow the instructions.  

So far I have written in the Hotel Pagegiai cafe, Pagegiai, Lithuania, the Katiyas Tejai Tirgotava, Sigulda, Latvia, Chu Chus Cafe, West Kildbride, Scotland and the Tinderbox cafe  in Merchant City, Glasgow, Scotland.

Thanks in advance and Cheers Kel

41. Blind Faith

It was practically dark by the time we left Grafton. We slid a ‘Saturday Morning with Kim Hill'(126) podcast into the stereo and submitted to the rhythms of Ronnan and the road. We got lost in oh-my-gosh-Oshkosh; with no warning Ronnan got all ambiguous on us, which forced Sharon and I out of our slumber and into thinking for ourselves. But I followed my natural instincts and eventually Ronnan stopped telling us to turn around and plotted us a corrected course. Now because we were still green with the GPS, we still had the thing plotted for the shortest route, so Ronnan was taking us away from the highways and down all of the country lanes. This would have been fine if we had wanted a tiki tour(127). But being tired and cranky, we just wanted to get the 185km behind us. The problem was this was a particularly dark, sleety, misty evening and there seemed to once again be almost no cars on the road.

Deer. We had heard many Americans talk about deer, hunting etc. Americans talk about hunting and deer on the roads like Scots talk about the weather. The subject had always been somewhat of a curious amusement for us, but this night all those conversations were justified and it became our reality. Kim had long since expended herself and rather appropriately, country music had found its way into the car. Whilst merrily bouncing our way around a dark, misty, moonless corner, suddenly two sets of glowing eyes seated in two almost invisible bodies appeared in the middle of the road. In an effort to have more control for sudden movement on a wet road, I quickly jammed my foot on the clutch and reached for the gear lever, only to discover that I had been duped once again by America’s infatuation with the automatic transmission. Next effort was the brakes. If I was to hit them too hard, I would only lose control and probably speed up as I either collected the deer or veered off the road into the trees, whence they should have been. I braked, and braked hard, Betsie did not lock-up, I pulled out onto the wrong side of the road, took my foot off the brakes and coasted past the deer. I am not sure if they even bothered to get off the road. This experience both shook us and as I said, validated many previous conversations.

Suddenly we were flung out of the beautiful lethargic rhythms of the road into the cold hard reality, that if we did not wake from our slumber and peel our eyes for the road ahead, that we could be meeting our maker with deer antler protruding from our foreheads in dark, dank, misty, nowhereville hicksville ‘Up North’ Wisconsin. It is no accident that both Satan and deer are rumoured to have horns.

It took us a wee while to recover from this Godly-stroke-of-the-smite-button. And then seemingly just as I was allowing the country music to invade my thoughts and the stillness of the road to settle in again, I was coldly woken by a terse, tense shrill from Sharon. The piercing shriek of ‘deer’ invaded my consciousness . I fumbled for the clutch and braked, swerving to the right of the road on a blind corner. It was about here when I realised that some mean, truly nasty and callous infidel had put two reflectors on their letterbox. Grrrr, they looked just like deer eyes to these untrained loopies(128). Over the next hour there was many a terrified shout of ‘deer’ and many a time when Betsie’s brake lights burst into bright red action. About seventy percent of the time we were taking evasive action to avoid stinkin’ letter boxes and the other thirty percent really were stupid, lazy deer who seemed to prefer suicide by motor car rather than a safe evening’s sleep.

By the time Betsie dumped us in Antigio, we were frazzled wrecks who had suffered one country song too many. We needed milk and bread, so set out exploring this oversized intersection of a town for a supermarket. And oddly enough we found one which was open. We parked in a huge empty car-park right outside the supermarket door. Sharon went searching for bread and milk whilst I recovered from my driving ordeal by dreamily meandering through the cheap Packer’s merchandise. It was quite a large supermarket and it eerily felt as though we had the whole shop to ourselves, this feeling being perhaps encouraged by the seemingly total absence of anyone else. Sharon eventually found me and we tiredly dragged our sad and sorry bodies up to the check-outs. We walked along a row of about ten identical check-out booths, they all seemed to be open, but no one was there. It was odd, eventually we just chose a check-out and stood there and waited. It was a bit weird. We waiting a long time, I suggested to Sharon that perhaps this was a help-yourself shop and that we did not have to pay. Either that or Jesus had returned and taken all of his believers away with him to the new heaven and new earth and left Sharon and I behind realising that we had spelt his name wrong and had been spending all of this time worshipping Mesus, rather than Jesus, thus missing out on our ticket to a better afterlife.

Anyhow, just when hell was settling in, we heard a voice from some far off corner yelling, ‘I will be there in a minute’. Shortly afterwards an elderly, beer-bellied figure who looked surprisingly like an over-weight Jesus came jogging down the aisle, with a big smile and a bouncing belly. Perhaps this dude really was omnipresent and was jogging to prove to me that Americans, if only to move quicker between the doughnuts and the maple syrup, actually do use their sport shoes for sport. This part of Wisconsin was particularly over-weight. Anyhow, with a bead of sweat, Christ-like smile and wilting halo, he offered a rather hefty apology and we set forth, bread and milk in tow, out into the wet, empty apocalyptic car-park.

We pulled out of the car-park, kicked over Ronnan and somehow expected that there was another adventure waiting for us on the final eighteen mile leg of our trip. How hard could it be? Ronnan had said, ‘Drive north on the US-45’. Well about thirty minutes later we were breathing in relaxed and relieved tones as we entered Summit Lake. Ronnan said ‘turn right’, we turned right, Ronnan said ‘ turn left’, we turned left and then Ronnan said ‘turn left’ again. We didn’t see the left hand turn, so we carried on hoping to find it. Then Ronnan said ‘you have missed your turn please turn around’. We turned around and drove back, then Ronnan said ‘turn right’, we stopped. We peered out the window, through the mist, rain and darkness and spotted a lonely, deserted track and thought surely not.  So we drove away with the beautiful Ronnan persistently and irritatingly protesting. We drove around the same rather large rural block a few times and every time we went past this little track Ronnan chirped in with ‘turn left now’.

Finally for a second time we stopped beside this track. I mentioned to Sharon that it was possible that our crib was down there. Our friends called it a cabin and I had seen such things on the tele, a single rustic log room with a pot-bellied stove(129) nestled amongst the trees of a Indian-infested forest. After some hesitation and turning our lights onto high beam, we tentatively set off down the track. With a head full of stories about Polish truck drivers getting stuck blindly following equally as innate GPSs up narrow English lanes, we set off down this dark, dismal, narrow and hellish forest track. Fortunately for Betsie’s sake it was only five minutes long, flat and well drained. Before we knew it, we popped out onto the same road at the other side of the block we had just driven round a number of times. However now that we had passed through this forested track, the rather snarkie Ronnan gave us a fresh set of instructions. I spent the last two hundred metres driving to the sound of Betsie and Ronnan arguing about directions and forests and listening to Sharon talk about her growing dislike of technology. With heavenly anticipation, we pulled down the driveway and gleefully shut down both Betsie and Ronnan with the turn of a key, opened our doors and stepped into the freezing paradise of an ‘Up North’, Wisconsin evening.

Tune in next week to find out why George Bush invaded Afghanistan.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

40. Leave the Lights Off Please

Well the first thing we noticed coming into Cedarburg was again, all of the cute houses and then the second thing we noticed upon turning into the main street was that Cedarburg looked one hang of a lot nicer in the dark than it did this dreary, overcast fall afternoon. In fact I was so disappointed that we needed coffee. We had once been given some Cedarburg Coffee Roastery coffee beans, so we set out to find their main street cafe. We drove the main street twice before we found it sitting pensively between the matching grey foot-path and grey clouds. We found a park and in anticipation of alleviating our GPS tension with a good dose of freshly roasted coffee, we hurriedly dashed down the damp side-walk. Upon entering our place of asylum, we were suddenly overcome with the fresh smell of burnt coffee beans. Did God have his finger on the smite button(126) this day or what?

But never mind, cafes are our natural environment and any cafe which roasted its own coffee was definitely good enough to become our wildlife sanctuary. In case you missed it, we were the wildlife. We de-stressed here and plotted our next plan of action. I also took the chance to view their merchandise; I was still looking for my insulated coffee mug. Over the last week or so I have pondered as to why this coffee roastery was seemingly burning its beans with such a passion. I have been in the presence of many roasting beans over the years and have even attended coffee school, but nothing had really prepared me for the rancid smell of these burning beans. The dude doing the deed did not seem to be fazed by it at all. One of the many things that Europeans sling at Americans is how they do not have decent coffee. Of course, what they really mean is that they cannot roast their coffee. Most of the world’s coffee comes from the equatorial regions of the world and often times European and American coffee comes from the same country. Europeans seem to like their coffee bitter, strong and useless without a bucket load of sugar. Whereas Americans seem to enjoy theirs tasting rather washed out and weak. And thus their beans are roasted accordingly. This lad at Cedarburg was in such a rush to roast his beans, it seemed to me that he had his roaster on far too high a heat and it seemed that no sooner were those beans hitting the inside of the roaster, than the beans were cracking and crackling and then being released as roasted coffee. It seemed to be that this dude was roasting his beans as a function, not as a romance or an art. Thus, though the coffee was good, it tasted washed out and functional. I wonder if I could apply this experience and theory to the great transatlantic coffee debates and secure myself a seat in the European Union parliament. I am sure they have a department to discuss such things. Anyhow, I will move on.

From here we went back to Kohl’s. Or at least Sharon did, I was too scared to go back in and be overwhelmed. We parked in a typically innate and boring parking lot which was flanked by equally innate and boring square windowless buildings. I do not know what these places are called, maybe strip malls, maybe shopping centres. But can someone tell me, does a wee man sit in a wee office and try to work out how to make these places as boring as possible? No wonder the church is so consumerist; if we had taken the ‘Kohl’s’ sign off the building and put a ‘More Grace Pentecostal’ sign on, well then we all would have gone in and worshipped something quite different. My point is that churches, shop, warehouses and factories in America all look basically the same and can be quite confusing.

We parked the car in the middle of this huge, empty car park. Sharon took a five-minute walk to Kohl’s, whilst I stuck Ronnan in my pocket and walked five minutes in a different direction to an electronic store. Upon entering the store, I presented myself to the first shop assistant and presented my rather flat and dead borrowed GPS system. Oblivious to the morning’s turmoil, a pimply faced, smiling geek presented me with a new cigarette lighter charger. It was on sale, but still cost a packet, it seemed that I was not the first loser that had been done over by his GPS system. From here I walked the five minutes back to the car and then five minutes in the other direction to the outdoor store. I wonder, do Americans drive from shop to shop in these car parks or are they like me and actually walk?

In the outdoor store I was still looking for my 100-strength fleece. I learned a lesson in this store. But first to put things in context; I was jaded, we had stopped at McDonald’s for lunch. Once again we did not know how to order, then they couldn’t understand our accents and eventually I was left eating something I hadn’t meant to order. So I was a tad miffed walking into the store. This was Wisconsin and not Kohl’s, so the staff did not really care about serving me. Well I searched and searched, got fed up and asked for some help. This lassie was friendly, but not from Texas. She showed me a number of fleeces; with each one I asked, ‘Is it breathable and where is it made?’ She never knew if they were breathable or not. Eventually I said to her, ‘Look if they do not say on their label that they are breathable, I am not buying it, so please do not bother showing me’. I learned that there is nothing that annoys an American or at least Wisconsin shop assistant more than being proven to not know their product or a customer expressing that they are not happy with what they find. This woman became quite snarkie with me. She eventually found an outlandishly-priced breathable fleece for me but I was silly enough to say ‘No thanks, I do not want it’. She miffed me even more by asking ‘Why?’ To which I explained rather emphatically ‘Because it is made in China’. Her reply was something like, ‘Well everything is made in China these days’. Before I had even managed to find my way through the maze of illogically placed shelves, she had managed to get to the front desk and tell her colleagues about this strange and rude foreigner. So by the time I walked out there was a gaggle of teenagers standing at the counter all scowling at me.

I trudged my way back to the car, plugged in Ronnan, set the co-ordinates for Summit Lake and drove to Kohl’s to pick-up Sharon. The day had politely sucked and we were both keen to get away from Grafton traffic, shops and civilisation, and get up north and on holiday.

Tune in next week to read about killer letter boxes.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

Please help me choose a new name for America, The Land of the Ziploc Bag.

So far these are my suggestions. Please leave comments and tell me which one you like.

America, Pimples and All.

America, As It Is.

America, A Very Special Country.

This is America.

An American Experience.

Across America.

Also please feel free to leave fresh ideas.
Cheers Kel

39. GPS, Grossly Pathetic System

Our Global Positioning System was for us a grossly pathetic system. Of course the GPS was not the problem, it was the clowns using it. We needed to find our way from Hartland to ‘Up North’ and specifically to an unimportant dot on the map called Summit Lake. We also wanted to swing back through Cedarburg and to re-visit Kohls.

By the way, I am sitting here giggling in anticipation about what I am about to write.

I named the GPS system Ronnan. Ronnan was the perfect navigator, like absolutely perfect. As soon as I had turned a corner, Ronnan would very pleasantly let me know that in three miles I would need to turn right and then as I got close, in a very well-mannered voice Ronnan would remind me of that intersection. If ever I forgot the instruction, which incidentally I do most times, a quick glance a Ronnan’s bright and American cheerful screen was all that was required. Ronnan at her core was beautiful, however it was her relationship with us that caused problems.

We jumped in Betsie and programmed Ronnan for our friend’s house in Cedarburg. It was here where I think that we made our second mistake, we chose the option for taking the shortest route. So we fling Betsie out of our friends’ driveway and were happily bouncing down the road when we approached our first T-intersection. I whacked on the right indicator just as Ronnan informed us that we needed to turn left, up, let’s say Cow Pat Street. Sharon and I looked at each other and thought ‘Well it is the opposite way to which we came, but let’s give it a go’. Betsie on the other hand could almost be heard sighing and thinking ‘Oh no, what fresh hell is this?’ So we dutifully obeyed. We were doing fine, we recognised some stuff from the day before, but increasingly we had that feeling of doom approaching us. We found our way into the most common part of rural Wisconsin, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere and suddenly we noticed that Ronnan’s battery was almost flat.

This is where we discovered our first mistake. We pulled over, rummaged around in the box that the GPS came in and found the cigarette charger thingy, plugged it into the lighter and then went to plug it into the GPS and oh shoot, it did not fit. We did not know where we were, our map was of the whole country, so did not have any of these Wisconsin-nowhereville-back-roads on it and now Ronnan was giving up the ghost and we couldn’t do a thing about it.

So we drove until Ronnan died. The good news was I knew exactly where we were when Ronnan karcked it. We were on the side of the road between Cadarburg and Madison and though this was a mere pin-point on my map, in reality it was a distance of about 115 km. We kind of thought that if we just kept on driving in the direction of what we remembered as east, that we would recognise something. What we forgot was that we were in back-woods middle America; every little town was a stinking clone of the one before. Each new town had the same cute houses, the same post office, same gas station, same fast food joints and same Lutheran church. To top this off, we never seemed to catch the name of these towns. I was sure we were travelling due east, but for all I knew we could have been travelling around in rather tight circles.

We decided to stop and crank over Ronnan. She burst into life and instantly told us to turn left. We turned left and she died again. Whilst Sharon was rather tersely explaining to me all the reasons why she does not like technology, I was rather tersely asking her to quickly turn Ronnan back on. Ronnan burst back into life again, gave us one instruction and promptly died. Sharon and I, in our increasingly cranky state, played this game for about twenty minutes, then I noticed a particular letterbox. This was clones’ville middle America, it looked like every other stinkin’ letterbox, but somehow I thought that I had seen this particular identical letterbox at least once before.

We pulled over, Betsie was once again red with embarrassment, we were red-faced with frustration and this letterbox just sat there proud and tall on its post, gloating at the crazy, stupid, fuming and helplessly lost Kiwis who had just been washed up on its road. After some time of trying to free my head of Sharon’s stories about new technology, I figured out what we were doing wrong. Ronnan was faithfully giving us the one instruction before karcking it. But we were actually quite close to Cedarburg, driving through seemingly identical square mile blocks of light farmland. So by the time we had turned Ronnan back on, we had already driven past our next one or two turns. So every time we turned her on, the first thing that she had to do was correct our perpetual screwing up, which meant due to missing our second instructions, we had been driving in painful figure-eights.

I am sure glad that Ronnan the GPS was programmed by Americans; if she had been programmed by Kiwis, every time we turned her on her opening words would have been ‘You twats(124), you have f’ed up again, accelerate into the nearest power pole, then dig a hole and bury yourselves’. But this being American-programmed, every time we cranked her over, she burst into her bright-sunny-dispositioned-service-industry English. For that I was incredibly grateful, Ronnan has become my role-model for suffering fools gladly.

So we learned a trick. And for the next thirty or so minutes we learned to turn Ronnan on and receive that one vital instruction. Turn that oh so important corner, then whack on the brakes and pull over beside an identical, seemingly-empty farm house. Then turn Ronnan on again and wait the painfully long five minutes for her to wake up her tired and drained circuit boards. Then we would kick the ever so reluctant Betsie into action and repeat the process another couple of kilometres down the road. Of course if there had been people around, we could have asked instructions, but no one was out on this dismal overcast day. Perhaps they had seen us coming. Eventually we drove into a village that kept on getting bigger and thus we had hit Cedarburg and Ronnan was gratefully left to enjoy her death.

Tune in next week to read about burnt roaster coffee.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

The Changing of a Name.

The name ‘America – The Land of the Ziploc Bag’ is formally being changed to the temporary name of  ‘America – Lost in a Registered trademark’

The reason being the word ‘Ziploc’ is a registered trademark.

If you are interested in the process, please read on.

Email 1 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Comments:Dear Sir/Madam

Please can you take a look at my blog. I am using the word Ziploc Bag in the tittle. I was about to produce a tee-shirt with the words ‘Ziploc Bag’ on it and then I was reminded that the word Ziploc is trade marked.

Please check out my blog at http://www.lunch.lt/ziploc-bag and advise me. I am hoping to publish a book with the same tittle.

Waiting you reply.

Yours faithfully
Kel Fowler

Email 2 From the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Thanks for contacting us, Kel.

I have forwarded your email to the appropriate department for handling. Someone should be responding to you shortly.

If you have future comments or product information needs, we invite you to visit or e-mail us again at www.scjbrands.com.

Regards,

Courtney

Email 3 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA, 15 days later.

Dear Courtney

Thanks for you reply, as yet I have not been contacted by the
appropriate department and am interested in your reply.

Please when can I expect a reply?

Cheers Kel

Email 4 From the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Kel,

We appreciate your patience while we look into your request further. Someone will be getting back to you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Denise

Email 5 Written to the Customer Relationship Centre for SC Johnson, USA.

Thanks Denise

Email 6 From the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Dear Kel,

many thanks for contacting SCJ concerning the usage of Ziplock name in your t-shirt and book. It is great that our brand has made so good impression but we are not able to give the permission to use it in the purposes not managed by SCJ company itself.

We hope you all the best

Kind regards

Soile

Email 7 To the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Thanks for letting me know, I kind of expected that. I presume the same also applies for my blog?

It will take me quite some time to remove your brand from everything, but I will start doing that.

Cheers Kel

Email 8 From the SCJ Supervisor, Oy Transmeri Ab, Finland.

Dear Kel,

Unfortunately yes it also applies for your blog.

kind regards

Soile

——————

If you are interested in donating towards the unlikelihood of of court costs or just towards the general running of America – Lost in a Registered Trademark. Please do me a favour and click the button.