bing bang boing

third base mavis

Third Base Mavis cooked the school lunch in the old High School. She came from out east, maybe Ohio or Indiana and she knew her slap-dash beef and macaroni and tomato soup from a can. 3B Mavis pioneered the art of of white flour buns and honey-butter. She'd barter milk prices and pick and can the corn for her tamale pie.
She was called Third Base Mavis or 3B for short on account of the high school boys who frequented her shingled shack in Hillcrest. Ole 3B kept Dingel's Corn Whiskey on hand. After a few, she was willin' to let the boys get to third. Try a home run and you'd meet 3B's nickel plated 38.

Scott Pippert wrote a song for Mavis or a poem, if that'd be best for your recall:

Old Third Base Mavis was a son of a gun,
Made her livin' off a honey bun.
A three cent milk and a can of pears,
tattoos, hairnets and fightin' scars.

Ol' Mavis made goulash, beef with tomato,
And a rough piece of work she called Deadwood potato.
She drank beer at the Badlands,
whiskey down in Scenic,
and gasoline in Pine Ridge,
and dreamed of living in Phoenix.

She never made it there,
her money was not willin'.
She stayed in Wall and screwed em' all.
'cause that was most fulfillin'.

As the years passed by and Mavis aged.
a legend began to form.
Of all the local gentlemen,
Mavis had performed.

There was Scott and Lee, there was Bill and Shorty Schuler, Rusty, Rocky and Casey and the entire crew of the custom harvesting team of Skip and (Kansas Boy) Buehler. There was Jim Doyle, his dad and the Richters. Stan and Stuart Mettler, who, as father and son stayed true to their fetish for "lunch-lady" toes.

3B Mavis is gone now. Dead and buried. We buried her up on Hell's Half Acre which gets smaller every year due to natural erosion. Eventually, Mavis will re-enter this world. Mostly bones but maybe part carcass. Human jerky.

PS: Word is the 38 is missing. By this post, I'm asking who has it?

living in quinn

someone actually commented on this post. i can never tell who will find something interesting.
this is not quinn. it has nothing to do with quinn. it is a blue house in louisiana or mississippi or somewhere nearby.
living in quinn is a state of mind that has nothing to do with history so don't send me the history of quinn. i won't post it. if you want that crap online, start your own webpage.

gone shootin'

The National Rifle Association, or NRA, is a non-profit group for the promotion of firearm ownership rights, marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection of hunting and self-defense in the United States, established in New York in 1871 as the American Rifle Association. It sponsors firearm safety training courses, as well as marksmanship events featuring shooting skills and sports. The NRA is sometimes said to be the single most powerful non-profit organization in the United States. It bases its political activity on the principle that gun ownership is a civil liberty protected by the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and claims to be the oldest continuously operating civil liberties organization in the United States. According to its website, the NRA has "more than four million members.

pig

When I'm eating corn, I often opt for some pig as well. Most of you call it pork, others call it "the other white meat". I just call it pig. That speaks well and fairly of the entire carcass. Pink skin, bristles. Tripe. Tail soup. Fried ears. Pulled. Fried. Grilled. Served with rice and beans Cuban style. It's all good. And guess what? Chewy pig snout sandwiches are out there standing in the wings, waiting to take the stage. Our field correspondent, Tina Haney, writes:

This [sandwich] is tasty in a VERY disturbing way. You bite in, you taste the bread, the sauce and then CRUNCH--you are crunching the cartilage. It's incredibly crunchy: like biting through a bunch of twigs, only pig nose twigs. At the same time, there was something pleasing about it: like gnawing on a chicken bone or like eating a shrimp with the shell still on ... I loved my pig snout sandwich, ... I'm really glad I tried it.

Dang. I want one. Think I'll head over to Hap's BBQ (owned and founded by South Dakotans of the Rapid City ilk - KC/Texas pit-sweet BBQ styles practiced) on Washington Ave tomorrow and request a menu addition. A side of barn beans and vinegar corn cabbage with a bottle of real Root Beer and a sour dough flake biscuit with sweet cream butter churned out back in Queen Creek. Just like heaven.
And while we're on the subject, here's a quick and easy recipe for making pickled pig's feet right in your own kitchen. Don't never say you didn't get any value from this website ...

An item available in about every bar when I was growing up was pickled pigs feet.
You could buy them individually. They were great with
a cold beer. Here is a quick and easy recipe for you
to fix your own:

Ingredients:

4 pigs' feet (split in half)
3 cups cider vinegar
1 onion (sliced)
1 tsp crushed red pepper
3 whole cloves
1 bay leaf

Wash the pigs feet thoroughly. Place in a pot with cold
water along with the vinegar. Bring to a boil and skim
off the foam. Add other ingredients and cook over medium
heat until thoroughly done (approximately 2 1/2 hours).

Store in a container along with the liquid. If you have
too much liquid, remove the cooked pigs feet and boil it
down a little. Refrigerate. Serve cold.

corn

Corn. We all like it. So do our cows and pigs and chickens and everyone from Iowa and Nebraska in general. But, we are at risk of losing our corn as we meet the dual challenge of ethanol and genetic manipulation. Taking food from the mouths of babies and the poor to fuel unnecessarily offensive gas guzzling vehicles and seed companies that patent genetic strains that are designed to respond to chemical treatments of herbicides and pesticides that they make and peddle along with the seed. Use the seed without attribution and risk copyright and patent violations. Both can and have lead to civil damage awards in US courts. One was prosecuted on the criminal side of the judicial ball.
When I was in college, I had a friend who lived in a mobile home on the edge of a field of sweet corn. We used to "borrow" an ear or two when we grilled. It was the best corn I've ever had. Now I pump it into my vehicle and drive to the store. Something got all fucked up along the way ...
When you vote next fall, keep corn in your headlights. As the farmers make up for years of distress due to increased demand and the new trucks line main-street in Moeville, IA, and tractors till from fence-line to ditch and drought ravages range cattle production and food costs shoot through the roof - be ready. Dig a bunker and stock it with canned goods. Clean and oil your guns and buy more ammo. Keep a close eye on your neighbors and the patterns of migrating birds. Stop going to church.
Focus on the corn crop. It's our only hope. Well, excepting potatoes, that is ...

almost crimes

broken social scene

the lone rhinoceros

The last, lone rhinoceros left Gilbert at 10:10 PM MST Friday, February 29 on a flight bound for Minneapolis-St. Paul where he'll catch a Greyhound Bus to his final destination in Morris, Minnesota. In Morris, the last rhinoceros will turn himself into campus police at the University of Minnesota-Morris for incarceration and tests and an attempt to reproduce with chickens to bear progeny extending his particular line of rhinoceros. Success is questionable and a freak of nature probable.
But, if failure is the result, it doesn't mean you should give up chicken. Some chickens are still bred, born and slaughtered in the old fashioned way with an axe, boiling cauldron of water and propane torch. The free range chicken of yesteryear still pecks away in the barnyard of your uncles and cousins, is stowed away in your freezer or canned in large mason jars. All to good effect. Soups are made; casseroles and stews competing for attention.
Chicken is good food for the most part. Pieces and parts provide great variety. Beaks and feet are sold to Asian markets where chickens are ubiquitous, though beakless. Plentiful like the duck, but with less risk of bird flu.
In Ulan Bator, I once sampled chicken cake; a light, frothy affair with a chicken broth meringue. In Thailand, I tasted toasted chicken beaks. Crunchy, acrid and sweet, like burnt toast and honey. In the deep south of America, I feasted on a buttery chicken feet stew with okra and a poke salad. In the Philippines, I learned that unborn chicken balut is better than duck balut. I like to steam my balut with mixed vegetables and rice in my rice cooker. Crunchy, chewey, putridly savory just like you mom's balut with canned tomatoes and watermelon pickles.
But this all goes without saying if the lone rhinoceros is extinct, we have little choice but to stick with chicken and the chicken manufacturers will be congratulated for their persistence and faith. Chik-Fil-A's will continue to prosper and we'll get the chicken we want without regard to the rhinoceros.