Damien Galeone

“I’m gonna need the police at 200 Crawford Avenue. Domestic abuse in room 320.”

It’s 8 p.m. and we’re at the most active motel in Kansas City, probably the most active motel in the entire state of Kansas. There are more than thirty teenage female softball players running around the lobby filling up bags with ice and discussing athletic subjects at a grotesque volume. There is a constant flurry of activity as people storm in and out the door, most of them talking on phones.

Also, the police are coming.

The only five people standing still are Collin, me, the two men in front of us and the woman working the desk, who, though moving, is doing so with the imperceptible slowness of a sniper as she prepares their room. She is misplacing priorities by telling us the details of the evening’s events rather than handing over keys and pointing us to a room. “There are two big guys beating on a girl in room 320.” She leans in, “and apparently, they threw a toaster at her.”

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Our pre-rafting preparation consists of blowing up a boat while getting an instructional talk by a highly qualified guide. It focuses on safety tips, reactions to possible (and various) accidents that can occur, and avoiding mistakes that can lead to either injuries or a watery death.

The danger of mutilation begins within the ostensibly safe confines of the raft. Holding a paddle incorrectly can lead to a broken nose, lost teeth and black eyes. There is the highly possible, even likely event of going unwillingly into the water. And since collision with a massive rock often causes one to fly into the water, the water you fall into will probably not be deep, placid or free of rocks the size of buffalo. A rafter can get stuck under the raft. He can find himself sliding along a shallow rapid with only his hands, knees and genitals to help negotiate his rocky traverse. He can get a foot lodged into a crevice of the river bed, which explains the carved in stone rule: Don’t stand up in shallow rapids. And, in a scenario I have seen in a worse case scenario book, he can get trapped under a downed tree in the middle of the river. I recall the pictures in the book, however, I notice with alarm, not the advice.

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“That fire still out there?”

“Oh yeah.” I’m looking out the window of the Super 8 Motel that we chose in lieu of a another night of sleepless, airless, gruesome night in a tent. As we pulled into Hot Springs, South Dakota last evening there was a chimney of smoke sloping into the air. As we set out on our journey today we find that there are now two fires. There are now two fires. There are 100% more fires than there were the night before.

Brush fires are a very real traveling drama since at the very worst they are a concrete threat to life and limb and at best they are an impetus to detour. There’s a decision to be made: flee or flight. We, for some reason or other, decide to fight.

So, we gear up the Diesel and head into the fire.

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The street is full of college kids, twenty-somethings and townies celebrating a festival in this small university town. Every university town demographic is represented: ex-jocks with breaching beer guts, hippies, townies, barflies, farmers, the former big man on campus who lives with his parents again and the sorority girl who is dressed like a senate candidate. Other than the three people I am with, I have never seen any of these people before in my entire life, yet I recognize them all. I organize them into social partitions in my mind as though I were walking amongst people I knew around my university town. This is because every university town is exactly the same; only the name of the town changes. Sometimes.

At the River Falls Days festival, the town celebration attracts alumni and townies, glass blowers, former residents and, well, English teachers living in the Czech Republic. For most it’s a chance to celebrate the town, but for alumni (and us) it is a chance to live like university students once again. And that is exactly what we do.

We arrive and immediately start drinking Miller High Life in cans and chilled bourbon shots. We sit on the porch and annoy the neighbors and slap at mosquitoes and tell stories about cavalier actions in times of duress that are, quite frankly, crap. Yet each story is more glorious than the last. There is tobacco in every form and Taco Bell, which quickly reminds me of why I stopped eating it in the first place about fifteen years ago.

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The interstate has given way to a small country road and the sky is blocked out by the surrounding forest and trees that hang over the road like leafy umbrellas. It’s dark up in the north country, far from any city or town that might have a movie theater or, well, a dentist. As we turn off the country road onto a gravel path, the horror movie atmosphere is enhanced by an eerie mist which rises off the road and grass. We put on the Danse Macabre just to perfect the imminent feeling of doom that is now pervading the car. In an attempt to lighten the spooky mood, we make jokes and laugh, just like two kids walking past a graveyard at night.

“Did you see that?” Collin asks.

“I did. What the hell was it?”

It is quiet in the car. “There’s another!” he yells. It takes us a moment to realize what is happening on the dark and narrow road around us, but it soon becomes clear:

We are surrounded by frogs.

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The announcer on the field is a round girl with a hell of a lot of charisma. Her name is Julie and she speaks like a comedian warming up a crowd with such vitality that one can’t help becoming emotionally invested in her mid-inning wares. This inning, the 6th, she calls forth two people garbed in Sumo wrestler body balloons who waddle to the sideline at her behest. She introduces them as Blue and Red, explains the rules of engagement (knock the opponent to the ground three times) and then she shouts, “ready, set, go!”

The 1,415 people at Joannes Stadium (I call it the Frog Pond) cheer as Red and Blue bang into each other until Blue hits the first base line and Red struts along the batter’s cage until the next round begins. After two more knock downs by Red, and one attempted escape by Blue, Julie announces Red the winner along with her booty of a free haircut and a hotdog at the concession stand.

We decided to come to a summer league baseball game today as it’s a nice way to spend the evening outdoors but away from spiders. The local team, the Green Bay Bullfrogs, are spanking the Lakeshore Chinooks after jumping out to an early thirteen point lead that they have had no problem clinging to. By most barometers this game could be labelled boring, but we’re having a blast. Perhaps it’s the $2 local hop ales, or the surely animal yet oddly unidentifiable mascots running around, or Julie’s mid-inning shenanigans, but everything about this game has a sense of charming ‘Small Town America’ to it.

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“So you take the fork and poke it into the forehead between the eyes, then you drag it along the spine back to the tail. Strip off the skin and scales and separate the top half of the meat and pop it in your mouth.” Mr. P is stripping the meat off the fish and washing it down with black coffee. I am doing the same. “That’s how you eat a chubb,” he says. It is 8:30 a.m. “Do you like gin martinis?”

“Yep,” I say.

“We’ll have those at lunch.”

Being a Philadelphia native I have always been proud of my city’s exceptional ability to make one fat through food. We are the owner of the cheese steak, which is the filet Mignon of fatty foods. There are a thousand world-class pizza joints with some of the most-delicious, cholesterol-filled pizza and hoagies on Earth. We have scrapple, which is a hotdog-quality breakfast food for which I would kick a puppy in the nose. We have Tastykake cupcakes, soft pretzels and deli sandwiches that will end your life ten years earlier than planned.

My pig to truffle-like ability to find unhealthy cuisine led me to Prague. Gulaš, pork and dumplings, liver dumpling soup, Svíčková, cakes and, of course, beer. These two cities satisfy the gluttonous goblin that lives within me with their different varieties of fat-laden grub. I figured that I would have to look no further to quench this urge.

But then I visited Wisconsin. And what’s interesting is that in Wisconsin not only have I found a cuisine that will add to my waist size, I have found a new cuisine that will add to my waist size.

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I encounter a fearful sight as I walk down the aisle to my rightful spot on the metal death tube (airplane) this morning: There’s a person in my seat. I am taken aback and let out a sigh. This is a problem for so many reasons.

First of all, 24J is a perfect seat, made just for me. It’s a mid-plane window-seat, which provides a perfect view of the wing and if you are a terrible flyer you know that you gotta watch that bastard or it’ll fly off the plane. Moreover, window seats allow you to avoid almost everyone else on the entire plane except for the person who brings you drinks, the guy next to you and the cement-kneed martial artist behind you. Second, I don’t like confrontation. I’m usually either wrong and irrationally aggressive or right and too timid to push the point. Third, the occupier of my perfect seat is a child.

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I open the door to the Doghouse and take in the surroundings. Lee has set it up nicely; it is just as I have always imagined. There’s a beer cooler, an ashtray, a small TV and a book entitled ‘1001 ways to end up in the doghouse.’ He is jotting in a notebook with the words ‘What I have Learned in This Doghouse Visit’ on the cover. He is wearing a navy blue robe and listening to Jimmie Hendrix. The robe almost appears to be a membership garment.

It’s very nice, indeed. Lee spends a lot of time here.

There are several hundred ways for a man to end up in the Doghouse. Usually it involves drinking too much or missing an appointed curfew. Sometimes it involves a seemingly minor disagreement or smiling for a split second too long at the blonde cashier selling you catnip at the pet shop. Hypothetically.

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