…could it be her?
Critter Con 15
Day 3: In which we visit a house covered in pennies, find Giant Jesus sitting down on the job, eat coyote ice cream, see literally cool wildlife, eat steak, and do some dungeon crawling.
Since the trip from Holbrook to Amarillo takes almost 8 hours, we had Sweetie start down the freeway as we were all waking up. By the time we got to Gallup, New Mexico, and our first stop, we were just finishing breakfast.
(Yoyo: And it was another great breakfast from Julia, Jacques, and Alton. Steak hash for dogs is wonderful.)
(Leon: My steamed trout with Friskies sprinkles was killer.)
In the past, we have seen many houses made all or in part of things one would not normally build a house from. Assorted bottles, cans, bricks made of manure, all manner of things. We’ve seen houses covered in license plates and sea shells.
This time, we were going to see a house covered entirely with pennies. That’s U.S. Pennies, by the way.
Charlie and Grace Penrose, both age 76, have a perfectly fine 3 bedroom home that they live in. It’s about 8 miles outside Gallup, on 300 acres of land. Charlie inherited it from his grandfather, also named Charlie. Grandpa made big bucks over the years running not one, or two, but three saloons over in Arizona. He started them just before Prohibition and then changed them into speakeasies. The money rolled in and eventually old Charlie bought the ranch in Gallup.
But grandpa had a strange quirk. When his managers counted the take every night, he insisted they put every one cent piece in a big metal box about the size of a 50 gallon drum. Each time a box would fill up, he’d empty it into sacks and take them to the ranch.
(Roxy: Human strangeness never ceases to amaze me.)
(Duke: Yeah, humans are crazy.)
He closed the saloons after WWII and retired to the ranch. Then he built a good sized ranch house and began to cover it in pennies. 962,844 pennies, nearly ten grand in face value. Most are copper or copper/zinc alloy, but there are a bunch of the steel pennies minted during WWII.
(Omar: Somehow, steel pennies seem like cheating.)
The last penny was put in place in 1970. Grandpa was 80 years old and lived another two years. The house, which nobody ever lived in because desert sun + copper = hotter than hell, became a tourist attraction in 1985. For a mere three bucks, you can walk around and even through the house. Back in 1998, Charlie the Younger and Grace began letting people cover the inside of the house with pennies. It’s about two thirds done now. We all glued a few pennies to various walls, then got out of there, because even though it was only 9:30 AM, it was already about 90 in the house.
Yes, we bought t-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, and fridge magnets.
(Mara: This should surprise no body.)
Just before we got to Albuquerque, we stopped to take a look at the first Giant Jesus of this trip. He’s about a half mile off the freeway, next to the Church of Jesus Christ the Savior, a pretty cool looking church done in a Southwestern style.
(Mara: Doc was quite giddy as we pulled up to the place. He gets that distinct “Ooh, another Giant Jesus look.”)
You can see this Jesus for free, but since he’s solid concrete, you can’t go inside him. He’s sitting there on a big boulder, looking West, or, as Spike said, keeping an eye out for Giant Satan.
(Blue: Somebody needs to build statues of Jesus and Satan fighting. Maybe with knives.)
(Mara: No, they do not. Your grandfather would die from joy.)
The statue is pretty well sculpted and has a good paint job. From where his ass is on the rock to the top of his head, Jesus is about 50 feet tall. I reckon is he was standing, he’d be near 100 feet tall. We checked him out and took pix and then left, since there was no gift shop, only a donation box.
(Lettie: Uncle Doc donated a note saying “Get a fucking gift store! You’re leaving money on the table!”)
Back in Albuquerque, we had hamburgers for lunch. Mine was a green chile cheeseburger. It was delicious. Then we went for ice cream at Coyote Ice Cream. The place is run by Bert and Debbie Walker, who are old friends of ours. The look like a nice young couple, possibly of Swedish ancestry.
The big gag is that they are, in fact, coyotes from California doing NHTA service using nanoid human bodies. They’ve been living here and running the shop for 8 years, observing humans and writing reports when not making some very delicious ice cream.
Once we had eaten our choices, mine being green tea,…
(Yoyo: Cherry vanilla)
(Duke: Peach)
(Lettie: Banana)
(Leon: Chocolate)
(Roxy: Peach)
(Omar: Dulce de Leche)
(Amy: Mint Chocolate Chip)
(Mara: Strawberry)
(Blue: Chocolate)
…and chatting, we took our leave.
We rode along for the next 2.5 hours, whiling away the time by touring the newly renovated Zoo Room, specifically the Extinct Species section. We saw plenty of baby animals. The baby mammoths were particularly cute.
(Yoyo: I wanted to go to the Kaiju section of the Zoo, but we were out of time.)
(Blue: “Out of time” is a strange phase for members of our family to use, if you think about it.)
Our next stop was pretty interesting and, by our standards, dead on normal. Just west and south of Tucumcari is a 5 acre park designed to give local wildlife an oasis in the desert. Besides plenty of man made ponds and streams, there are many planted areas with native New Mexican trees, shrubs and other plants. On top of that, pipes that go a few feet below ground use solar powered fans to bring cool air to several areas, while tall poles topped by shade cloth keep out a good bit of the hot afternoon sun. It was a good 15 degrees cooler than the 96 degrees elsewhere.
Wildlife was abundant, from deer to foxes to rabbits to all sorts of birds. We saw a couple of javelinas and a bobcat, too. Fortunately, our non-human contingent was all on the Bus, playing in the Shoe Room, to prevent any unfortunate incidents.
(Leon: That sounds like profiling.)
During our 2 hour trip to Amarillo, we watched “Doc Savage vs The Monsters”, a movie from 1990 Earth 1-E. It was based upon a classic Doc adventure and was pretty darned good.
(Duke: That was a good movie. I’m going to read some of Dad’s Doc Savage books.)
A few minutes after the movie ended, we arrived in Amarillo, our stop for the night. We’re at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, one of our perennial stops. As you’d expect, we ate various steaks or burgers for dinner. I had the chicken fried steak, because that how I roll.
(Yoyo: So. Much. Steak.)
The rest of our evening was spent playing D&D, chatting, drinking milkshakes, and falling into food induced sleep.
Tomorrow, we pick up two more travelers, then head to our final stop before Critter City.
Starting Destination Sign: Deep Space Nine
Ending Destination Sign: Avengers Tower
Radio Station: PLKA, your 24/7 polka station
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