Taste of Predation
In Wisconsin, I've noticed that they do things with a certain lack of
self-consciousness (I noticed that in Germans, too, when I lived outside
Andernach). Junie and I are staying at The Cedarberry Inn, in Sauk
Prairie, where Junie grew up. There are no cedarberries to be found
anywhere. Also no half-in-half, and no orange juice, but I do spot donut
holes. It's 6 o'clock and change, and Junie and I will take her mom out to
breakfast later. Yesterday, the three of us went to a dinner club
production of a comedy, it you allow dinner to begin at 2:30 PM. Outside
the club entrance (folding doors into an small club setting with a stage) were a
couple of dozen regulars at a bar that looked, I suppose, like the outline of a
Viking ship from a birds-eye view. Each patron had his or her own ashtray
and what looked like a remarkable variety of drinks. I must not get out to
bars enough, because I had never seen anything like the posters hanging
everywhere. One said "Drop the F-Bomb" and showed a hand dropping a shot
glass filled with Irish whiskey into a mug of beer (the whiskey was Finster or
Finiger or something). Then there were three or four Ice Hole schnapps
ads: one with two ice fishermen sitting by a hole for their mint schnapps,
and simpler ones for their chocolate and butterscotch schnapps. Hustling
behind a bar filled with the motley combination of gray hair, camo jackets,
mukluks, and 3-day beards was a remarkably attractive bar-tender with a
beautiful figure, long black hair and the calm visage of a Madonna.
Go figure.
We always eat breakfast with Mom at the The Proud Eagle Cafe or the Soaring
Eagles Restaurant or something like that, a block from the Wisconsin River where
tourists apparently bus in to see the Bald Eagles in February, though God knows
what either of them are doing there in the zero degree wind chill. I will
eat my usual 9 eggs and a ham slice the size of a flywheel. This is to
make up for the fact that all I normally eat for breakfast is Blue Monster and a
banana at home. From there we will head to the famous Ho-Chunk Casino, a
couple of miles from The Dells, about which I once wrote in a poem:
They will stop at the Ho-Chunk Casino for their famous daily
of pike and potatoes. Barker says he'd like a taste of predation.
Junie counts cards, elbows sheltering a column of green. She wonders
if a dozen reasons are enough, puts her fingers on the pips and
splits sixes.
Then, back to Eau Claire. No need for lunch, most likely, as all we
seem to have done is eat since I arrived. Last night, we had one of those
Hobbit's meals like second breakfastes, running from the car through the
freezing night into the original Culvers's, a quite excellent fast-food joint
with hundreds of franchisees now (mainly in the Midwest). I had a tuna
fish sandwich and Mom had chile and Sweet Junie had a salad, but we could have
had their trademark ButterBurger (this is, after all, Wisconsin).
More news, perhaps, after the long drive back northwest through the still, bare
forests and frozen dairy farms.