things i'll miss about the tundra.

CORN. When thawed, the tundra can be a relatively pleasant place, especially in the spring or fall. However, everything is relative, thus the tundra, while sometimes pleasant, isn’t always so. When the tundra is thawed and the summer crops start to come up, folks like to say folksy things such as “knee high by the fourth of July” when speaking of corn.

A fair amount of people I know grew up de-tasseling corn, including stella. Apparently, the removing of tassels from corn is (a) very unpleasant, (b) makes you wet, (c) drains your desire to actually ever eat corn, and (d) makes you rethink the living off the land process. I have family in from a town that specializes in corn. The town has a big corn festival. Many of Inga’s cousins and aunts were corn queens or on the corn court at said festival. There’s always lots of corn – usually grilled, usually slathered in butter. Sometimes it’s free. You can also get things like deep-fried twinkies at this festival. Or your face painted. There’s a certain amount of kitsch to this kind of festival, where way too many people who have eaten way too many deep-friend twinkies come out in way too little clothes, where the carnival rides look so wobbly and the carnies look so ominous it’s a wonder ANYone lets someone they know on one of the rides, and where one time famous bands (ala Journey , Molly Hatchet, or Joan Jett), get their tired, saggy asses up on stage to sing about the glory days. I’ll miss this ode to the corn. Especially since, as some of you know, I once knew a girl who grew up in the town where children of the corn was filmed and her classmates were extras. This girl grew up to get married in a pink dress with princess sleeves and whose ceremony included a bad (but is there ever a good?) rendition of “groovy kind of love.”

Obviously, these things are effects of the corn.

JUMBO MART. Sadly, and some what ashamedly, I’m actually composing this snark at the local jumbo mart. I leave the tundra tomorrow for the south, so an oil change and a quick looks-see at my belts, fluids, and tires is a good idea. Like with everything else this week, I’ve procrastinated getting this done (other things I’ve dropped the ball on until today: finishing calling places to give my new address, turning in my change of address form to the local post office, seriously packing – as opposed to half-assed packing, and the actual attempt at packing everything I think I’ll need into my car, the lil’ bug). Thus, where else does one go without an appointment for a heavy duty oil change? Jumbo mart, of course.

And given that it’s a Thursday and well before noon as I compose this, I figured there’d be little to no wait. No such luck. An hour and a half - maybe. Hopefully. So I’m in the dingy little sitting room. It was rather dark and dreary, until I realized, just now, the light was off – now it’s fluorescent bulb dreary. And even worse than the cracked pleather chairs, crappy flooring, and “magazines” such as FLW Outdoor (featuring the article “2007’s Best Bass Fishing Spots!”) and Guideposts (60 years of inspired living!), my ibook’s battery is running low. Alas, what will I do when I lose power? I guess I could walk the aisles of Jumbo Mart, looking at bulk food items, polyester house jackets, and generic vs. brand name cleaning item displays. The good news? I’m fairly certain my destination in the south has its own brand of Jumbo Mart. Yea!

CRAPPY PSEDUO-IRISH PUB in the Tundra. Yes, it’s true. O’Crappy’s, the place where Stella and I used to go for a good ol’ martini or four. When this place first opened, it sucked and it was hard to pinpoint what sucked the most: the awful food, the cheesy piped in musak mixes, or the fact that, on opening night, a few hours or so into opening, this “Irish” pub ran out of Guinness, and despite being in close proximity to 23 liquor stores (the tundra is, after all, a college town), didn’t go to get any more. This wouldn’t have been so bad if Yadho and I, after ordering a couple of pints of Guinness, hadn’t sat around for 35 min. before someone told us the Guinness had run out hours ago.

But lately, the pub’s gotten better. The bartenders are appropriately chatty. The Guinness is usually poured right. The martinis are more often good than bed. And the food is good, too. Plus, it’s a smoke-free bar. Even the music has gotten less cheesy. But it’s still pretty crappy. Why?

This past Monday Ena, who has been in town to help me pack, and I decided enough was enough – we were tired of looking at boxes, tired of packing, tired of each other. Let’s go out to eat, we decided. So we go to O’Crappy’s. We order cocktails, we order food. Inga’s starting to de-stress a bit. Ena orders a special treat – onion rings! I reach for one, see a glint of light catch it. Odd, I think. I look closer. There’s a staple in the onion ring, an honest to goodness staple. I show Ena. She looks confused. We decide to not eat any more onion rings. The manager happens by. Look, we say. Staple. He furrows his brow, shakes his head, takes the offending ring to the back. Our waitress comes up moments later, apologizing. She offers us either free desserts or another rounds of drinks. Ena and I decline. Now we’ve lost our appetites. We ask for the bill. When it comes, the manager, rather than comping round of drinks we did order or, oh, I don’t know, the food, takes a few bucks off our bill.

Want proof of how tired and stressed I was? Inga no snark. The perfect opportunity to snark up one side and down the other of this “manager” but instead? I let it go. Goodness.

This move needs to be over and done with so I can get back to what I do best!