For any of you contemplating a recreational jaunt to my neck of the woods, please consider the rights of the natives. We do not welcome you with open arms. Our habitat is not one big free playground in which you may frolic at will. Streams cannot be owned. But the bridges spanning them are still subject to rules of the road. They are designed for vehicle traffic.
DO NOT SET UP A CANVAS CAMP CHAIR ON THE BRIDGE!
Seriously. That is just rude. And dangerous. And makes me want to write Backroads Miz Manners about your obvious lack of on-road etiquette. A concrete bridge with no sides, wide enough for one car only, in a dip between steep grades with poor visibility until the driver is nearly upon the bridge, is no place to wet your worm and sip a beverage. Seriously.
Some fool woman did just that last week. She put her red fold-up chair nearly in the middle of the bridge. She needed comfortable room for her feet, I suppose. And her beverage was too big for the chair-arm holder. So she set it on the bridge beside her. It was a 44 oz. Like Lou Grant helping himself to half of the Veal Prince Orloff at Mary's dinner party, BRIDGEt took up half the bridge. I barely squeezed my SUV by her.
Never mind that the water in that creek is now twelve inches deep, a far cry from the twelve feet it achieves in flood stage. No self-respecting fish is going to be caught dead in that clear water. Fish have eyes, you know. They can see you trying to snag them. Especially in a red camp chair. And what fun is it to fish when you can see the bottom? See that there is nary a fish in sight? BRIDGEt might as well have set up her rig over a mud puddle. A galvanized bucket. A kiddy wading pool. She would have the same chance of success.
I am organizing a crew of Backroadsians for a trip to the city. We plan to take naps on the highway on and off ramps at rush hour. Fair is fair.
Fight THIS
6 comments:
Us city folks would welcome you with your adjustable mattress.
Right next to you, we'll set up a stand to sell Elvis-on-velvet paintings so you won't feel so alone. And a stand that sells gen-u-ine Rollexe watches. And to protect you, we'll station a homeless man who has made a sign--using a black marker and a piece of cardboard--which he holds while he smokes a cigarette.
Come on over. We'll leave the light on for ya...
BARn, BRIDGEt, flusie, etc. Time to start thinking about publishing a dictionary.
Sounds like she's a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
Yeah, if she wasn't around, I would have been tempted to boot that chair over the edge of the bridge.
That BRIDGEt!
We were in Branson a few years ago and the entire town had camp chairs set up lining every street. It was hot rod weekend, but we didn't find that out until evening when people occupied the chairs and cars cruised the strip creating nightmare traffic jams.
Was she still there when you went back or was there just this smoosh of red canvas, fishing pole and eeeewwww?
Sioux,
I'm holding out for the guy pushing a cart containing a single lamp across the 7-Eleven parking lot every evening.
And just so you know, we here in Backroads never get out of our vehicles until we reach our destination. We fold in the mirrors to collect our mail at the row of mailboxes, we grab the empty trash dumpster and tow it along beside the door, and we hand off items to family members in other vehicles through the windows.
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knancy,
Shh...I've been clandestinely compiling such a tome for the past several months. The working title is THE (myhusbandsnickname)TIONARY. Keep it under your hat. I don't want to leak any trade secrets to copycats.
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Chick,
She had the nerve to GLARE at me. While I was using the bridge for its intended purpose!
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Linda,
For future reference, the streets of Branson are like that every evening. The traffic jams, not the camp chairs. Hot rods or not, the traffic is turtlesque. In fact, I would bet my money on an arthritic septuagenarian Galapagos Tortoise to beat a car from one end of The Strip to the other.
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Leenie,
Only her cup remained. For three days.
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