…not as much fun as you might think
CatCon 4: Day 3 Your Humble Narrator plays catch up…we again encounter Jesus…an Iron Chef competition happens
Having fallen behind by a day, I shall now make an earnest attempt to catch up by compressing Saturday into a “highlights reel”.
8:00 AM: Our company begins waking up. I and the critters have been up for an hour. Breakfast is eaten, including tasty Paannncaaakessss Foooorrrr Peeeettttssss! By 9:30, we are on the road.
All Critters: Those were great pancakes! Our Dad Rules!
11:00 AM: We stop at the Toy Soldier Museum in the tiny village of Tyler. The museum is in the largest building in town, a converted warehouse that at one time held cotton. Now, it holds 190,000 toy soldiers and military miniatures, some of them nearly 200 years old. While civil war figures are most prominent, you can find soldiers from every war since Alexander the Great went out & about. Before then, actually, since there is one battlefield set up to show Neanderthals fighting Homo Erectus. All of the scenes are impressive and Spike informed me that the War of 1812 scenes were very accurate. Best of all, the whole place can be toured for $3.00 a head. T-shirts were $15.00.
1:00 PM: We stopped to eat at Mother Smith’s Kitchen in Greensboro and Mother Smith was so impressed with our bus and our critters, she made them plates of food. The critters, not the bus. We ate all manner of fine chow and were soon back on the road to adventure.
Flash: She gave us fried catfish and hush puppies! What a wonderful human being!
Winker: I got some pudding, too!
Lucy: I had a sausage and some gravy!
Abby: My salad had apples in it. It was delicious!
Flash: Afterward, back on the bus, we played Dance Dance Revolution. Abby won. Girl can dance, you bet.
2:15 PM: The road to adventure was short, because just on the other side of Greensboro, we encountered another Giant Jesus! This Colossal Christ was 90 feet tall and you can go up inside him via stairs, then look out through his eyes. Many of our party wisely opted out of the climb, but Spike, Mary, Miranda, Doc Mystery and his daughter Lauren decided to give it a try with me. As you might expect, the teenager and the kid reached the top way before the rest of us, but we all did make it. After sucking most of the oxygen out of JC’s head we finally looked out the windows. It was a hell of a view. As we were leaving, a group of church type folks entered the room and asked if we felt the presence of The Lord. My reply was “Not unless it feels like a heart attack and the need to fall down”. They did not see the humor.
Flash: You could hear them all wheezing and gasping for air, and the echo from inside the statue made it sound like Jesus was having an asthma attack. It was pretty cool.
Once back on the ground, we climbed back on the bus and loaded up on pain meds for our backs and legs, then started out for the next stop.
4:30 PM: Did you know that just outside Meridian, Mississippi is the “World’s Longest Outhouse”? It’s right next to the “Truck ‘Em In” truck stop and it can seat 100 people. No charge to look at it, but the doors are nailed shut and there is no odor, so the whole thing is a fake. That was kind of a letdown, as most of us could imagine 100 Ku Klux Klan members in there after a big cross burning.
Lucy: What is it with humans building elaborate rooms to poop in?
Winker: Beats me, sis.
Flash: They could save lots of money by just using a litter box.
Abby: They should just pee and poop outside.
Winker: Well, Dad does pee outside pretty often, usually on Compost Pile F/65, code name Fuzzy Bullet.
5:30 PM: We pulled into the KOA outside the tiny hamlet of Wiggins. It was decided that we would have an Iron Chef Battle for our dinner entertainment. I was to be the Iron Chef. My nephew Zach was to be the challenger. Three dishes each using the three mystery ingredients selected from our extensive pantry/fridge by our youngest (Lauren) and oldest (Sharon, since I was Iron Chef) audience members. The secret ingredients were: Ground turkey, fresh carrots and duck eggs. Judges were all of the womenfolk and commentary was by Spike & Doc Mystery. The results were…
Appetizer: I won with tiny omelets filled with assorted cheeses and panchetta. Zach did well with his carrot crackers with spicy ground turkey and cream cheese.
Main Course: I won by a single point with my Savory Turkey Burger and Carrot Loaf. Zach’s Turkey Sausage Pizza with Carrot & Tomato Sauce was very tasty.
Dessert: Zach won with a very delicious Duck Egg Custard with Caramel Carrot Sauce, handily defeating my Chocolate Chip Carrot Ice Cream.
All Critters: Also, they dropped lotsa stuff on the kitchen floor for us to eat!
After dinner, there was rehearsal for our version of “The Time Warp”. It went pretty well. More than that I shall not say.
And then it was time to go to bed, so we did.
Music: QM Station “Janis”, playing music from her 60 year long career.
Destination Sign: Over There
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