Hoot Hoot Hooters and Hell’s Angels

Jeez, I gotta start reading the Missoula paper. My buddy called from out east of the mountains and told me that there’s going to be a Hooters in Moo-zoola soon. Golly. Jeez. Wow. What do you know? Moo-zoola is almost like a big city these days. When you have a Hooters, you’re on the map. Just like Seattle or some place in California. Wow. I might have to stay in Missoula town longer this year.

Ain’t nothing like a bunch of gals with a nice pair of headlights to light up the place. (Or, call them a headache rack, like the rack on your truck that you always bump your head on, but you only call them that only when the little lady is giving you trouble). But he told me to watch out. Those lesbians are up in arms about it. (Or got their headlights sagging down, as some of us like to say). Said there’s lots of letters in the paper about how Hooters is the runination of Missoula. Well, hell. I should have suspected as much, people thinking that. Some people – especially them Lesbians – and those fellas who have been up and around what they call Brokeback Mountain.

Now, just so you know, I don’t know nothing about no Brokeback Mountain. Never been there, never done that. Couldn’t even find the place on a map. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose. We’re all animals on God’s green earth and I’ve seen some different sort of things among the cattle and the horses. So to each his own, as long as you let other people be at the same time.

But, to get back to what I was saying. I don’t understand that. What’s the problem with a couple of sets of headlights? He said something about people saying that women shouldn’t be objectified over that. I don’t know what that word means. I looked around the house and I ain’t got a dicationary, so I guess when I go to the library to read up on Hooters I’ll find out what the word means. Said they wrote that women should be respected. Well, hell I respect women. I respect them even more depending on how bright their headlights are. (And I respect her even more and stay the hell out of the way if there is some big guy hanging around her acting like he’s the one who gets to polish her headlights every night.)

I don’t see people going nuts over cheerleaders at the grizzly games. I mean, they’re shaking it baby don’t break it. Nice young fillys. And I don’t see people going nuts about all the womens walking around downtown on Friday night just about blinding everyone with their headlights, either. Thank God for a beautiful America.

And I ain’t even talking about the stuff you see on TV. Wow. The things you see on TV, and that ain’t even cable.

But I suppose this is Moo-zoola. People can be hippo-crites about something like a Hooters. That’s life. People can just sit around and think that they’re the cat’s meow and that what they think is what everyone should think. Puts a damper on what everyone else can do with their own life. Hell, I wish the guy who was opening Hooters was a buddy of mine. Can you see that? I might could get me a job sweeping up at night.

People like hippo-crites used to get strung up not too many years ago. My grandpa told me that well, hell, if it was generally agreed that someone was a pain in the ass and generaly wouldn’t be missed, well, hell, they at least gave them the choice of getting on the train and finding a new town somewhere. If not, well, sometimes there was one of those old fashioned neck tie partys at the big cottonwood outside of town.

I got to read the Missoula paper and find out when that Hooters is going to open. My buddy said that even the paper didn’t think the Hooters should be here. Well, that gives me an idea of how much salt to take with my reading of the paper. He’s going to drive over when it opens and we’ll go check out the headlights, along with some burgers and beers. Along with a thousand other people from town, I think. ust be some types in this town that aren’t uptight about a Hooters.

But what I want to know is how Hooters and them hooters girls are going to mix with those Hells Angels? Could make for a busy time in July when them bikers come to town. That’s what my buddy said. I’m too old to get mixed up in the middle of that. I’ll leave them alone. But I will be reading the paper after that, see what happened.

And let me get to the library so I can educate myself on both those situations, and I’ll be back here soon.

So long for now, signed, Missoula Sucks

Dog shit days in dog shit town

Well, folks, it’s dog shit days in dog shit town. It’s the first warm up of winter (east of the mountains cowboys like me call it a chinook; here, just stinky) and that brings all the pleasant memories of winter back to life: empties show up on the sidewalks downtown, lost packs of smokes, cell phones, a few wallets and maybe even a body in the alley behind Charlie’s. Life in Old Missoula never gets old.

But mostly it’s dog shit days. The whole damn town smells like dog shit. It’s been collecting for months over the winter, and now it’s all thawing out like a dead freezer. I happen to like the smell of cow shit, and horse shit, too. It all depends on what you feed them, of course, but if they’re eating good grass and don’t get into anything funky, well, it ain’t bad at all. Don’t feed them pork and beans, and keep them out of the loco weed, too, but it’s the good smell of the ranch. But Missoula. Jesus.

What is it about Missoula and dogs? Is it all the lesbians? Now, don’t get your ass all in an uproar. Let me say why I think that. I got good reasons. If you don’t think so, well, maybe you’ve been living in Missoula too long.

Once a cowboy buddy of mine was in town (and he asked my why the hell did I live here in this smelly valley, but that’s a different story) and when we walked downtown for a beer, he couldn’t believe the fact that every other woman we passed had a dog and was a lesbian. Now, I was just learning my way around at the time, and I did wonder why only a few of the pretty fillies in town would even talk to me (not that every filly in town is pretty). But hell, my buddy just starts pointing out to me that every other woman we passed was a lesbian.

Just how to do you know, I asked.

Well, he said, first of all, look at the dog.

I said, OK.

It’s a big dog, right?

And I said yea. (It was some kind of german shepherd, kind of mean looking, too.)

And it’s male, right?

And I said, well, I’m not going to grope around, or rope it and throw it down, but yea, its a male.

Well, that’s it.

What?

He says: her butch cut, her funny looking baggy clothes, and her big male, mean looking dog: she’s a lesbian.

Well, you got a point…

He kept talking: she don’t like men but she dresses like one. She don’t like men but she’s got a big male dog, on a leash, like she wishes she could have a cowboy on a leash.

I kind of shut up, cause I had to think about all that. It was a lot to take in. I figured I’d have to think about it after he went back to the ranch in a few days.

But anyway, that’s one reason it makes it dog shit days in dog shit town. Lots of dogs, dog shit. Maybe there ain’t as many lesbians around as my buddy says, but hey, there’s a few, with big, mean looking dogs. The bigger the dog, the more shit. The more shit, the more there is. The more there is, the more there is to stink in the spring when it starts to warm up.

And that’s the story of dog shit days in dog shit town.

See you on the flip side.

Signed, Missoula sucks

Hell’s Angels again?

Big news, Missoula suckers. The Hell’s Angels are coming back to town. I suppose I ragged on poor old Bubba enough earlier about his poundage, but hey, we’re all waiting to see what’s going to happen and how out “His Honor the Porker” is going to handle it. Maybe he’ll go to Hawaii during the time the angels are here, like Mike “Dipshit” Kadas did.

So the angels want to hang and party at Marshall Mountain, the out of business ski resort a little bit out of town. The paper says they came to town a few times already to hold pow wows with the police, suss things out, see if they were welcome, even offer some business proposals to people in town and leave large tips at the Top Hat.

And a week or two after the news came out, ‘Ol Rusty the Chief of Police decided to retire. What the what? He was the head honcho in charge back in 2000 when the angels came to town. He and Mike “Dipshit” Kadas called in the brother heat from big cities in the northwest, bumping the police force up by something like four times. When the angels rode out of town, the streets were still packed with people, and the cops starting pepper spraying people and swinging their bats, mostly unprovoked.

Even the Missoulian, our high and mighty local rag came out with an editorial that said, well, yes, the police went a little nuts last time, pepper spraying people for no reason, and for them to cool it next time, and for the citizens to be more involved with a plan for the angels.

It’s kind of like grizzly bears. The only time you hear anything in the paper is when someone gets eaten. But there are hundreds of bears out there, and they mostly keep to themselves. Hell, I’ve been on packing trips when we spot all kinds of bears, and if they don’t keep to themselves, they are actually running so hard away from us that they almost trip themselves. So if you leave the angels alone and don’t pack the damn town with cops and then get the city sued when they hammer on people for no good reason, then it’s good for the town, damn liberals and all. More on this as the story develops, as they say.

Signed, Missoula Sucks