[77] Fast Times At Worland High

[77] Fast Times At Worland High:

07/06/2020 Tuesday. Brother Charley's Shop. Ten Sleep, Wyoming.

Stocks down, or up, I don't know. I stopped checking months ago after the Orange Douche got his ass voted out. I mean, this feels like a Movable Rooms type of post, ya know? Last Good Summer style.

We drove and drove and drove. Three days on the road. Two nights. One night in Toledo, Ohio. One night in Albert Lea, Minnesota. The first day of driving was the hardest. New York is boring as shit. Same too, Pennsylvania. Ohio is pretty cool. The tidy farms and stuff. We got to Toledo. Checked into the hotel room. Went out for dinner. Ate at a Chili's. Got the Cowboy Fries, steak fajitas, and a full rack of baby back ribs. Desert was a volcano cake. It was all surprisingly good, as Professor Curly would say.

The next morning we got up. Hit the road. Stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's drive trough. Drove for about four hours. Stopped at a Taco John's. For tacos and taco burgers. Got some gas. Drove for another five hours. Got to Albert Lea. Checked into the hotel. Hung around for a while. Went swimming. Then went out to find some dinner. Nothing was open. Aside from a Perkin's. Which had a 30 minute wait list. Which was weird, and the place seemed like a Christian cult so we went next door and got some KFC to go. Which we ate in the hotel room.

The next morning we got up at 5a, and hit the road by 6a. We were in Wyoming by 3p. Then in Ten Sleep by 6p. The whole trip was painless. It was nice to see the country. Even if we were on the interstate the whole time. I mean, America is humongous. An ocean of land. Never ending. Nothing really changes until you hit South Dakota. Then it becomes badlands. Then after that, it's mountains. I don't know what's over those mountains. We never got there. My guess is more land. Lots of it.

When we got here last night we hung out with Brother Charley, Sister Megan, Niece O, Nephew E, Brother Buck, Sister Amy, Niece J. Sister Megan made some pizza. Salad. Cooked veggies that for some reason I didn't notice. Found out about afterwards, when it was too late. I mean, the pizza was tasty as well as the salad. Not so sure about the cooked veggies, because I didn't get a chance to eat them, but the reviews were that they tasted great.

G stayed the night with her cousin A, me and Professor Curly slept in the living room of Brother Charley and Sister Megan. We got up in the morning. Drank some coffee. Ate some watermelon and cherries. Did some talking. Brother Charley and Sister Megan packed up a truck and hit the skids. Niece O and Nephew E in the back seat. Heading to Idaho for a river rafting birthday party. They will be back in a few days.

After that me and Professor Curly poked around for a while. I cleaned the car out. There was quite a load of trash from the trip. After a while we made a plan to go to Worland to meet PegLeg for lunch. We got ready. Drove over to Brother Buck and Sister Amy's house to get G. Then we drove to Worland. Had lunch at Ranchito's. I got the chimichanga and a taco. The chimichanga was smothered. Which is a funny thing around here. The idea of smothering things. Food things. The way that in Ohio all the food stuff is hybrid. Like you can't just get Mexican food, it has to be Mexican/Asian or something. You know, food with a twist. Which is both funny and maybe I don't even know, maybe xenophobic in a way. Like they want to include new cultures into Society but that idea is too scary to just mainline, so they have to get it in doses. Which is nice in a way, if you enter into the agreement in good faith, like maybe the people of Ohio understand that America is a nation of immigrants, but they need the immigrants to act like Americans before they will be accepted. Which, I don't know, at least they acknowledge that there are immigrants. And those immigrants contribute to American culture. I mean, they accept this in very specific and cowardly ways, but at least they aren't absolutely terrified of change. Which, to go back to things being smothered. I feel like that is the limit for acceptance of immigrant culture in Wyoming. Taking whatever food you are getting and smothering the thing in green chile sauce. Not too spicy of course. And the secret to success for the one Mexican restaurant in Worland. I mean, you walk into the place and a needle scratches. All the white farmers stop eating. Look up from their smothered burritos. Who are these gringos? They think. Without any irony. I mean, they must have known we were driving a Volvo somehow.

But that was always something funny that bothered Brother Charley when he and Sister Megan ran a bakery in Ten Sleep. That everyone was always asking for their breakfast burritos to be smothered. Even though it wasn't on the menu. Which meant that everyone just wanted their food smothered in gravy, or they were just so afraid of trying anything new the only way they could process eating something new was to have a security blanket wrapped around it. But Ranchito's. I don't know, maybe I have changed or the restaurant has changed, but all the "Mexican" has been pretty well bleached out of it at this point. And I am not saying the food is bad. Or has gotten worse or something. But it is just not the same as it was growing up. Which is also pretty interesting that it is the only restaurant still remaining in town from back then. The other two are the Subway sandwich shop. Eat Fresh. Which was the first second fast food chain that came to town. The first was A&W which had a monopoly for at least a decade before Subway Eat Fresh showed up. The other restaurant is the Brass Plumb, which has changed owners multiple times. And came around in the mid-90's. Every other business has failed. I mean, aside from Larson's Bicycles. Which doesn't serve food. I mean, as far as I know Ranchito's has had the same owners this whole time. I mean, maybe not, I am starting to remember that the original owners sold it a few years ago, or they retired or something, but still, it is kind of impressive. In a town of failing businesses these are the few that survived for whatever reason. Oh, I guess Taco John's has been around too. And Maggie’s, which is across the street from Ranchito's. I mean, I guess my whole point is that the only thing that sticks around in these parts are restaurants with mediocre food that don't aggravate the palette of the angry right wing losers that refuse to accept that America is a changing place filled with fantastic and exciting futures. Futures that don't need to be smothered in order to be validated.

I mean, I don't even know what I am trying to say. The wider I open my mouth the more the words change. I mean, there used to be this diner called the Crossbow that as a teenager we would hang out at. Drink coffee. Act like jack asses. I don't know. Maybe order fries sometimes. I don't really know why they tolerated us. Coming in. Spending like $2.40 dollars. Hanging out for hours. Tipping horribly. Then we would leave a huge mess. Come back the next day. Do the same. But they always sat us. They always took our orders. They always tolerated our lousy tips. Sometimes we would get yelled at for being too loud. I mean, they always sat us in the same booths. Far away from the paying customers. The actual paying costumers. The ones that orders food. But whatever. That placed shut down. Then it became an authentic Mexican restaurant. That I was only able to eat at once because it didn't last very long. The food was really good the one time I ate there. Like nothing else you would ever get within hundreds of miles of this shit-hole town. Which is why it failed. I mean, plus all the racism of course. And now the place is a car parts store. Which will do good business for as long as they want to stay in business. I doubt anyone one goes in there asking for their brake pads to be smothered though.

It is odd being back here. Everyone seems so very angry. By everyone, I mean the people that were so very angry before when I was a teenager. But now they have a new edge. Like their entitlement has ossified. They don't want anything new. And since they just lived through four years of being told they were right to think that way, they have become emboldened again. Like they don't have to take it anymore. They were pissed when Jim Crow ended. And now they see a way back into that. The problem though is that is never going to happen. Not in the way that they want it to happen. Because you can't stand in the way of progress. No matter how bad you want it. The only thing they can do is just be as unpleasant to any and all outsiders as possible. Which works in a micro-scale. I mean, they can be dicks to whoever they want. And maybe people won't want to move to their shitty little town. But the people they are being shitty to are the people that are just cruising through. On thier way out West or out East. Nobody that will actually be affected by their actions. Not in any real sense. Becuase that is the nature of tourism. It is just passers through. And to become a town of repulse just means that the few businesses that are open to new people will thrive and all the other businesses will just not get any business. Which almost certainly will mean that either no new businesses will be able to open, or the few that do will have to be trusted chain businesses like Target and Walmart, or whatever. I mean, if the whole idea is to become an insular and self-sufficient town, they are just making that harder and harder the more they act this way. And as time goes by. As businesses move elsewhere, like Ten Sleep, where they embrace the tourist culture, places like Worland will slowly rot out. Because the computer pulls no punches. And word gets around pretty quick. I mean, if you can buy a house in Worland that is nice and has some land but is still really cheap because nobody in their right mind would move there because it is a dying town, and you can drive 30 minutes and that same lot of land and house will cost you a million dollars, I mean, somebody at some point is going to understand this.

Brother Jade was telling me that someone he knew thought that the best way to get people to come to Worland was to get people to go to Thermopolis, one town over because then the tourism would trickle down. Because Thermopolis actually embraces tourism as well, they just have a fucked up way of going about it. I mean, I guess what his friend meant was that if things are good in Thermop, then things would be just as good in Worland. But the logic fails when it means that Worland is just a town to get gas in on your way to Ten Sleep or Greybull. I mean, they are building a huge truck stop in the middle of Worland now. Where the IGA used to be. Which! Is not on the truck route through town. I mean, the truck route circumvents town because the town doesn't want all the trucks to muck up the local businesses. Meaning, what the hell? Somebody from the City Commerce decided that Worland was just a truck stop now. And nobody is doing anything to stop it. I mean, they did bulldoze the City Commerce building that was on the Court House lawn. So maybe that tells you something. I mean, I don't even know how the trucks are going to get in and out of that parking lot. Where they are building gas pumps and whatever. Are they going to have to tear down Pioneer Park? The weird park that nobody ever goes to that has a huge metal statue of a guy behind two oxen plowing a field? I don't know what else they can do. Aside from tearing down the hotel that is on the same plot of land. Then what? The big rigs drive down the alleyways to get out of town? I mean, the Ace Hardware moved over to where the Pamida was. Which to me means that that land was sold to somebody. I mean there is a public building next to that that I guess will be shut down? I mean they are also moving the public library. I mean, something is changing big in downtown Worlando Beach. I mean, nobody is really talking about it. I mean, maybe nobody knows what is coming? Or maybe everyone does know what is coming and they just don't care. Capitalism wins again. And everyone that is in the way will fail. I mean, those trucks can come in. They just can't get out.

I mean, right now it is just a Subway Eat Fresh, a Taco John's, and a Dollar General. I imagine a year from now there will be a Burger King, and a Chick fil A. I mean, the Pepsi plant is right there too. My guess is they have a large part to do with this. They have just been waiting for the people of Worland to just give up. And now that there is nothing but angry "Libertarians" who think that the reason they can't get ahead is because of the Mexicans they will just look the other way as their downtown gets destroyed so Pepsi Co. can save a few dollars on gas. Or whatever. And then when they think what they are doing is adding jobs to the economy because making things easier for corporations to prosper somehow means job creation, which it doesn't because all it means is that low paid jobs become essential to a business and therefore the only people living in that area are low wage workers who maintain the Economy, but are a drag on the Economy because they can't afford things so they can only shop at the Dollar General, which then drives the Economy further into the ground, and then the housing prices drop. And then people stop buying homes. And then you have created a wasteland in the middle, the literal middle of your town. I don't know. Why not invite a Walmart in. The ultimate vampire. At least then the poor people you are creating will have a bigger selection of crap to buy. I mean, nobody is going to be coming around to Worland, Wyoming to get diesel gas aside from truckers. And the truckers aren't sticking around for the nice vibes.

I don't know what I am saying. I don't know if I am venting or just giving a warning to the future. It is odd being back. It has been two years. A lot has changed. But it does feel like the 90's again. Back when a guy like me couldn't go a day without being chased down some alley by some redneck asshole with a large truck screaming, Faggot! I will beat your ass if I catch you! I mean, PegLeg thinks it is because enough time has happened since 9/11 when we all came together to fight the brown menace that is Islam. I mean, I don't mean to put words in her mouth, I mean, that is not what she said at all, but yes, after 9/11 we did have a single minded focus to hate any Muslim, and yes, that is wearing off now, in America, because it was wrong then, and it is wrong now, but the Progressive Left is once again the enemy of the Racist Right. And this time it seems, they aren't going to let it go. Things feel pretty dark. And Wyoming, which always pretended to be a kind of; Live and Let Live kind of place, is not that anymore. The Racist Right is more activated than ever. They don't need a charismatic leader anymore. Trump is just nostalgia at this point. And not a single ounce of logic will change that.

Hold onto your butts.

AOC 2024!