"I'm not worthy!"

What movie is that from? I dunno. The only movie I care about right now is the one I'm being a total sycophantic fan in, or of. I'm not so delusional to think I'm actually IN the film "Groundhog Day," but I have had fun running around the town square snappin' off digits like a tourist, or a location scout. But I doubt I could pass for the latter in a real town where the filmmakers used everything in town and built, so far as I can tell, only a handful of interior sets.

One I'm sure they didn't change a bit is where I now sit, the bar at The Dew Drop Inn, aka the town's only bowling alley, all 8 lanes of it (will spare you its real name). On pure instinct or perhaps just luck, I place myself at a barstool where the camera would have been and snap some shots. It's only after talking with barteder that I discover I'm dead on. Naturally, I'm pleased. But like every effin' bar in the U.S., the TVs on. Two of em, broadcasting alternately a sitcom on one, sports on the other.

(A few minutes later..)
Ha! The few patrons in the bar departed, and before the next came in, I leapt on the juke, a hungry leopard with a fiver in my teeth. I stacked the juke box with 15 classic rock hits, sat back at the bar, the sitcom now muted, grabbed my beer & Blackberry, felt very princely, set thumbs to keyboard and.. and in walked Frank.

Well bueno. We need this time to decompress together. "I don't mind telling you now," Frank says, "I'm sore and tired." Telling me now, I grumble, echoing his words. "Stoicism is greatly admired in the military," he continues. "It is a well-heeled virtue in my character." I'm speechless.

Frank is already scheming in his head about next year. "A re-attack," he calls it. "The soft approach didn't work so well." Deeply steeped in my own P.T.S.D., I am too shell-shocked to entertain future campaign ideas. As it is, Frank earlier made me a gift of one of his $285 paddles. It was a trophy I had hoped for in New Orleans. Having come only 500 miles, I didn't feel worthy. I graciously thanked him, however, and marveled at its magnificence, its weightlessness yet incredible durability. I wondered at how I'd get it on the plane.

Frank tells Kim the bartender what lovely, sparkling eyes she has. He's right. She has a certain twinkle. He compliments me on my jukebox choices, then pronounces to Kim and me, "You wanna know the best Rolling Stone song ever? Gimme shelter." Tonight both Frank and I will take shelter here in Punksatawny, beneath his very own roof.

As if reading my mind, the captain now jolly with a few beers whispers at me, "Well there's only one thing to do now. Meet a couple of locals, get in their car and drive down the railroad tracks."

On the juke, Manfred Mann sings the poetry of my 70s youth from Blinded by the Light. "She got down but she never got round, she's gonna make it thru the night."

The bowling alley, near vacant when I entered, is suddenly alive with some league game. But I hear little of the racket of balls and pins, tucked as we are back here in the bar. I hear only Frank to my left breaking down the fortress waters of the Mighty Miss into algorithms (sp?) and logical rationale. And in stereo I hear my chosen music:
Joe Walsh - Rocky Mtn Way
George Thorougood - One scotch, one bourbon, one beer
Steve Miller - Fly like an Eagle
Rolling Stones - You can't always get what you want

Not long after, Frank and I depart for real food on the town plaza. Together we devour some two dozen baby back ribs, chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, goumet salads, Octoberfest beers and cheesecake. It is a gorging, the kind of feeding that ferries romping summer and hard-won harvest into the winter of hibernation.

"Even Lewis and Clark took the winter off," quips Frank, to which I add, crass but not dishonest to my own needs, "Sure, and if they were smart they were fucking squaws."

Unplanned, but it'll be nice to know as I sail at 30,000 feet tomorrow back to my native earth that my captain is not out there going it alone, and furthermore that he, too, is happy to be home. - RSM
(Pure Gonzo Journalism, hot off the fire to you!)
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