[Bordermarch] Flying Squirrels

[Lathrop, Dave]

"Ladies, I'm pretty sure those things bouncing across the road are not flying squirrels!"

Recently, an unfortunate wrong turn off Highway 105  landed us smack-dab in the middle of Anderson Texas, the birthplace of Jason, and his cousins Michael and Freddie Kruger.
I knew we were headed in the wrong direction, but HE Elisabeth, my trusty navigator, had been jibber-jabbing with our passenger, Lady Padraigin, about the Micmac Indians and the amazing talent they had for balancing themselves on high-rise girders when I needed her help the most.
I made a decision by myself and was in the process of turning the truck around when I spied a garage sale taking place on the town church lawn.

We were travelling back home from the Lyst at Castleton when we found Anderson Texas by mistake, but a few hours earlier that very same day we made a fortuitous stop at a roadside antique shop hoping to find some much needed and sought after items.

The joy of my life who just happens to also be my peach blossom in the spring and my personal finder of cool stuff, HE Elisabeth, tracked me down in the back of the antique store we were visiting and to my great surprise held up a "Meat Smasher!" I had been looking for a Meat Smasher ever since Lord Adolf enunciated these words; "The only way to properly squeeze the meat juices from the sausage when making biscuits and gravy is to use a Meat Smasher!"
He never did properly describe what a Meat Smasher looked like but HE Elisabeth knew exactly what he was talking about. It seems Lord Adolf's Meat Smasher is the very same old time kitchen appliance that HE Elisabeth's Grandma used to rice her potatoes with; Grandma called it a "Potato Ricer."
My mother, we just called her Mom, would never rice our potatoes because she didn't want us to start thinking we were better than everyone else; she just mashed them with a Potato Masher.
The Meat Smasher HE Elisabeth found was still in wonderful condition, it even had some old dried things stuck in the squasher holes.

 "Seeeeeee, I told you there was to such a thing as a Meat Smasher!" shouted Lord Adolf who had earlier joined in our antique shopping spree with his lovely family in tow. When we heard him shout we knew the gloating about the Meat Smasher had just begun so HE Elisabeth turned to the wise old lady antique dealer sitting behind the counter and asked, "Hey lady, in the spirit of good corn bread, what's the name of this thing he keeps calling a Meat Smasher?" The wise old lady who had been dealing antiques for the better part of her long life bent close to examine the item HE Elisabeth was holding up and said, "I don't really know, but just between you and me, I use it to squash my beans to make refried beans."
Lord Adolf went berserk! "I told you it was a Meat Smasher, I told youuuuuu!" "Adolf, she uses it to squash her beans, not her meat."  replied HE Elisabeth. "A bean is a meat!" shouted Lord Adolf. To my surprise my love turned to me and said, "You know, I do believe he's right; a bean is considered a meat because it's a protein."  I was speechless.

We left the antique store and parted with Lord Adolf and family, but not ten minutes down the road was another Texas Trash place that literally screamed at us to stop!
At this junk haven I picked up a fish scale that could quite accurately weigh a 200 pound fish; I needed this not because I fish, but just because.
We didn't see as much fruit at the Texas Trash place as we saw at the very first flea market we stopped at on our journey home. The first flea market also had a lot of parrots for sale.

Now back to that unfortunate wrong turn;
A garage sale that's sponsored by a church is usually a good place one can find some pretty good deals on stuff; the one that caught my eye in Anderson looked to be just such a place.
We were lost as usual but we figured we'd ask the locals for directions once we entered their maze of tables that were scattered over the church's manicured lawn.
I immediately scarfed up a bundle of fine long handled brushes that I could use to clean small things with. HE Elisabeth found a basket, a long silver spoon, a little monkey, and an old bible written in Spanish. The bible was pretty cool and she said it was in the $2.00 bin. When we finished up with our shopping, I took her basket of stuff to the checkout lady. Everything HE Elisabeth had in the basket was priced way too high and the bible was priced at $100.00!
The lady said it was a special bible; I let her keep her special bible and everything else.
Everyone there gave us weird looks as we drove across the street to another antique store in hopes of finding better deals. What we found was the old Anderson Hotel, now converted into a cheesy junk shop in the guise of an antique shop.
As we scaled the crumbling concrete steps leading to the shop, a  grizzled old man who must have been the proprietor looked us in the eye and said, " Do not under any circumstances open the door at the back of the first room!"
No sooner were the words out of his mouth then another local walked out from behind the shop and started talking with the proprietor about the merits of the old style washing machines.
We found nothing of value in the shop and the ladies were even a bit spooked by the place. We saw the door the old man mentioned , but never opened it. For reasons known only to her, Lady Padraigin always became very agitated yet pleasantly excited whenever we found a stuffed monkey in one of the shops we stopped at. The old Anderson Hotel had plenty of old dusty stuffed monkeys.

We decided Anderson had seen much better days and it was now time for us to once again try to make it home.
Just as I was backing the truck out from the Anderson Hotel's curb, an old dirty looking motor home came barreling around the corner, seemingly intent on beating us to the road leading out of town.
At the time I thought nothing of it, but I should have paid more attention to the big grins on all the local's faces as we followed the motor home out of town.

The scenery was spectacular. We saw nothing but green fields that seem to go on forever. The road side was speckled with profuse amounts of Blue Bonnets and Yellow Hootisses. We were on one of those newly paved roads that you sometimes find out in the middle of God's country. The Ladies were chatting back and forth and we were all in a good mood now that we'd left that spooky town behind us, but our fun ended when we smelled what we first thought was a skunk!
The odor was getting really bad and I noticed that the windshield was covered with dark speckles of wet stuff. At the time the sky was clear and sunny and it took a moment to realize that the speckles were coming from the brownish-green bubbly fluid that was all over the road.
By now the smell was so bad that I had to literally pinch my nose and the ladies started to scream when they realized that the juices that were splashing all over our truck were coming from the very same motor home that beat us to the main road back in Anderson!
With one hand on the wheel and one hand pinching my nose, with two hysterical ladies screaming, with juices now streaming down my windshield, I finally knew what was happening. The motor home from Anderson had released the total contents of its septic  tank onto the road, all the while knowing that it was splashing all over us!. I think they did it on purpose because we didn't buy that $100.00 bible back in Anderson.

I now refer you back to the very first line of this missive.

HE Santiago