Wednesday, September 20, 2023

A Four Star Dog and A Five Star Hoodie On The Road In Greer

 September 20, 2023

   I apparently have a thing for used sweatshirts. I bought a Five Star Hoodie in northern California back in 2013 and I'm still wearing it. Here's another road trip picture from ten years ago featuring my fave, second-hand hoodie:


Thomas Charles & His Padre
at Amado, AZ, 2013

   And, here's the same sweatshirt today on the Loop Trail to Sheep's Crossing in Greer.

Four Star Dog and Five Star Hoodie


Post Pandemic Ponderings

   It's good to hit the road and see what's going on out in the backroads country, but the mind blower, to me, is the lack of service help in all the restaurants. "The dining room is full, sir," the hostess said the other night. Well, no it isn't. I can see that half the tables are empty, but you apparently don't have enough staff? Our cabin neighbors brought a half cord of wood and wanted to start a fire in the firepit and they asked us for matches and we don't have any and there isn't anything in the cabin.  Nobody else in the compound had matches. She looked at me pleadingly. So I piled Kathy and Uno in the Flex and we drove to the nearest restaurant in Greer (there's maybe three, tops) and they didn't have ANY matches. None in the bar, none in the dining room, none by the fireplace! Crazy. So I drove to the second place and there are none at the hostess stand (imagine!?) and I went into the bar and asked the bartender, who is besieged with customers because she's doing the entire room, including the bar and all the table tops and she says "Yes, I have matches. I'll be right back," and I see her walk past the bar and into a corridor adjacent to the bar and she reaches up on a top shelf—way in the back—and retrieves a small book of matches which I paid her $2 for.

   It's a crazy world you kids got going here.

   In the New Yorker (Sept. 18) there is this article about this young woman, Emily Wilson, who is retranslating Homer (The Iliad not the Simpson) for her generation. One of the themes is that all the tropes from Homer's time still stand. We are all in a brotherhood of nomads yearning for the homecoming, which is the crowning of a hero's journey.

Arizona Inspection Station, 1946
screen shot from "The Grapes of Wrath"


"Tell the old stories for our modern times."
—Homer

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1:45 PM

    Ha! I bought a used Arroyo Grande Eagles "I survived my class reunion!" from a thrift store in Grover Beach (near Pismo) for similar reasons twenty years ago and not only is it soft and warm, I've got a lotta mileage out of this reply to the query as to whether I attended there:

    "No, but I was a Big Ditcher in high school."

    ReplyDelete

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