City Slickers

I was driving back from a river rafting trip near Jackson Hole last week. There I was in my pickup truck driving through parts or Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming listening to country music. What would my younger self have thought if he would have seen me!

True, I was born and raised in Wyoming, and by all rights I should be wearing boots and a hat, driving a pickup truck and listening to Country Music. But that does not describe my youth. I was considered a "City Slicker" by the true cowboys in Wyoming. I had longish hair most of the time, listened to Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull, and wouldn't be caught dead with cowboy boots.

Well, I have to admit that as time goes on, I find myself wanting to be more of a cowboy. Folks where I grew up had common sense. Arguments in school were settled with fist fights. No one would blink if I carried a hunting rifle down the hallway in high school. And nobody was shooting anybody. Weird huh?

I know a few people who hold contempt for small town folk. They think they are uneducated and ignorant. But I'll take the common sense and attitudes of a small town over west or east cost sophistry any day.

Ironport

One of the best memories of my youth involves a corner drug store, a soda fountain, and an obscure soft drink. It is funny how many of my fond memories of life boil down to simple pleasures. Things that once were, but seem now to be lost forever. Well, sometimes what was once lost can be found again.

A hot summer day in Evanston, WY is about 85 degrees. That is just about hot enough to require some refreshment on occasion. So, as a young boy on a hot day, I would often make the 4 block trek down the hill from my home to the corner drug store called City Drug. It was a small store, where I suppose, people filled prescriptions and bought band-aids. But that wasn't what sent me there on any given day.

City Drug had a soda fountain where you could buy Cherry Cokes, Fresh Limes, Chocolate Malts, and Ironport. I'm sure there were other things you could buy there, but as far as I was concerned, those were the most important. All but one of those drinks are fairly easy to find today.

Ironport is a drink so rare that Wikipedia lists all the places where you can actually buy one. It is a syrupy sweet drink with some very unique flavors. Some have compared it to root beer or sarsaparilla, but it really is different. City Drug was the only place I knew where you could get one, but the soda fountain at City Drug had been closed for many, many years. Until recently.

Yesterday, I took the family to my home town to celebrate the graduation of two of my nephews and one niece. We had the regular pot-luck dinner and B.S. sessions at the pavilion by the old ice ponds. During one of those sessions, someone mentioned that City Drug had recently re-opened its soda fountain. And, apparently, you can get an Ironport!

I wasn't able to go there that day, but on my next trip I plan to revisit City Drug and try an Ironport again. Ah, the simple pleasures of life! What seems so commonplace and ordinary, sometimes turns out to be precious and rare.

Not really my first, but more first than not...

Once I owned a Palm Centro.  It is the last in a long line of devices from Palm, Inc. that uses the venerable old Palm OS.  It came with a program that allowed you to take photographs, upload them to a blog, and comment on them.  I tried it out, because that's just the kind of thing that I like to do with a new device.  I created a blog on Vox, which I'm not sure anyone but me has heard of.  I uploaded a few pictures and made a few inane comments.  That was my first attempt at blogging. 

Well, so now here I am on Blogspot, and this is my first post.  I can't technically say it is my first submission to a blog, but it really is my first blog.  At least, it is my first blog with more than two sentences (check out http://paesano.vox.com).  

What will I talk about in this blog?  Hard to say.  I'm the kinda guy who can't keep focused very well in a conversation.  If I am talking to someone about a topic and the subject changes to something else, I will converse about that something else, but keep a thread of thought spinning in my head about the previous subject.  There is no telling when that other topic will randomly pop up in our conversation again.  I get a lot of strange looks when that happens.  

But I digress...

A lot.

So, we will just have see what kind of randomness comes out of my brain-damaged head.