Redneck Window Shopping
There are two rather delightful places I walk past on my way to work.
The first is a bar. It's one of those mysterious places that seems to be open 24 hours, or at least every time I walk by it. It's in a tiny red building, which it shares with an equally seedy laundromat. They're likely in cahoots with each other - it's just too easy to imagine an owner breaking into the dryers for a handful of coins, then spreading the wealth next door in the form of water-esque PBRs.
The bar has no windows to speak of, except for the tiny one stuffed with desperate neon. A country twang resounds from the door, and all manner of creatures congregate just outside, blowing smoke into the lungs of passersby who are passersby for a reason. It's about as Wisconsin as a bar can get without also being in a corn field or surrounded by cow pies.
The other place I walk by is really nothing like the bar. It's a furniture/knick-knack emporium, with classy lettering on the sign and a whole wall of glass windows for display. The colors within are modern and bright, and I'm sure everything would take at least four dryers's worth of quarters to purchase.
But the glass antlers are the reason I tie them together in my mind. They sat on a table in one display nook for about a month after I started my job. What a bizarre thing to sell, I thought each time I walked by. They were hollow, and apparently meant for hanging on the wall, to impress everyone with your ability to shoot a glass deer without shattering the antlers. The kind of people who would buy them would either think they're absolutely hilarious, or (more likely) pronounce vase so that is rhymes with Oz. Not okay.
I guess one person or the other must have actually purchased them, though, because that table is now home to something else bizarre: a pair of... table-bushes, I guess. They're little pieces of fake greenery, ensconced in what look like those cups you use to hold hard-boiled eggs. But they resemble shrubbery much less than they resemble distraught artichokes, wondering what the heck they're doing where they are, and why they exist at all. You hear that, knick-knack emporium? You make artichokes question their existence.
With the disappearance of the mysterious glass antlers, I guess I have no reason for the bar and the shop being tied together in my mind anymore. But thanks to the existence of the most fragile deer in the world, I think they'll stay connected forever.
The first is a bar. It's one of those mysterious places that seems to be open 24 hours, or at least every time I walk by it. It's in a tiny red building, which it shares with an equally seedy laundromat. They're likely in cahoots with each other - it's just too easy to imagine an owner breaking into the dryers for a handful of coins, then spreading the wealth next door in the form of water-esque PBRs.
The bar has no windows to speak of, except for the tiny one stuffed with desperate neon. A country twang resounds from the door, and all manner of creatures congregate just outside, blowing smoke into the lungs of passersby who are passersby for a reason. It's about as Wisconsin as a bar can get without also being in a corn field or surrounded by cow pies.
The other place I walk by is really nothing like the bar. It's a furniture/knick-knack emporium, with classy lettering on the sign and a whole wall of glass windows for display. The colors within are modern and bright, and I'm sure everything would take at least four dryers's worth of quarters to purchase.
But the glass antlers are the reason I tie them together in my mind. They sat on a table in one display nook for about a month after I started my job. What a bizarre thing to sell, I thought each time I walked by. They were hollow, and apparently meant for hanging on the wall, to impress everyone with your ability to shoot a glass deer without shattering the antlers. The kind of people who would buy them would either think they're absolutely hilarious, or (more likely) pronounce vase so that is rhymes with Oz. Not okay.
I guess one person or the other must have actually purchased them, though, because that table is now home to something else bizarre: a pair of... table-bushes, I guess. They're little pieces of fake greenery, ensconced in what look like those cups you use to hold hard-boiled eggs. But they resemble shrubbery much less than they resemble distraught artichokes, wondering what the heck they're doing where they are, and why they exist at all. You hear that, knick-knack emporium? You make artichokes question their existence.
With the disappearance of the mysterious glass antlers, I guess I have no reason for the bar and the shop being tied together in my mind anymore. But thanks to the existence of the most fragile deer in the world, I think they'll stay connected forever.
I like your more odd posts. Also, I say vahz. Vase doesn't sound right to me.
ReplyDeleteI write "grey" rather than "gray" because it seems more true to the color. :) And thank you!
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