Home is the sailor, again.

Man, I wish I was a sailor. Or better yet, a pirate. Then I could say things like "shiver me timbers" and it would always be in context. As it is now, it's kindof a mood-killer when you say that at a party. People can be so judgemental.

So yes, I arrived safely home in the Republic last night at about ten. On the drive home from Kansas I vowed two things:

1) That would endeavor, if I became President, to have St. Louis and Kansas City leveled for low-income prairie-dog housing. Prairie-dogs are falling on hard times, what with how they are poised on the brink of being irradicated by cattle farmers--broken cow ankles! Get over it!--and since St. Louis and Kansas City are vile, evil pits of inhuman despair that make me want to take my own life, or, more rightly, the lives of others, all the better. Well, OK, technically neither are in prairie-dog habitat, but I am guessing that once we get a few in, word-of-snout will fill 'em up right quick.

2) That I will never, ever even dream of driving that far without someone with me. When you are alone for that long--well, I was travelling as always with Bruce Hornsby--you start to fantasize about a two-sided conversation. When I stopped at Ozarkland, I nearly wet myself to hear human voices. Of course, those voices issued forth from mouths sadly bereft of teeth and filled with Skoal, but such as they were, they were human voices. I watched a man at Ozarkland try to use the automatic sink (which, in and of itself, was hysterical) for like ten minutes. He put his hands under the sink and just at the precise astral moment that moisture erupted from the spigot, he would withdraw his hands. This happened, like, uh, EIGHT TIMES. He began to get angry; this was the kind of anger that only comes from utter bewilderment. I could hear his inner monologue: "Shee-it! What the hell kinda witchcraf' is this?" So, since I am the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Krishnavigneshwarashrutiramalamadingdong, I decided I would do good and teach this poor soul by example. So I put my hands under the spigot and held them there, and sweet warm water issued forth. Then I slowly lathered. He looked at me like I had just tapped a wand on the spigot. He tried once more, and once again the water came on just as he moved his hands away. He left, his hands covered in Ozark intestinal bacteria, and continued his shopping.

So, Ozarkland. On the long drive across Missouri on I-70 East, I kept seeing signs at about five mile intervals. On trips like that, you read those signs: they, and they alone keep you from the brink of madness. One intrigued me. It said: "Ozarkland: Worth Stoppin' For." Later: "Ozarkland: Home of the $3.95 T-Shirt." Then: "Ozarkland: Cheapest Moccasins Around!" I was hooked. Then, the clincher: "Ozarkland: Check Yer Email For FREE!" I decided, then and there, that if I didn't get to go to Ozarkland that I would, indeed, perish. As the miles crept by, my excitement reached fever pitch. Full bladder? Need for sustenance? Cramped leg? Irrelevant. The signs kept getting closer and closer together, and more frantic. Finally, one said "Ozarkland: Next Exit for Fun!" I was in the left-hand lane of a four-lane highway. I started to cut across, and then I saw the exit, and then, Ozarkland itself.

Then, some ass in a Jetta cuts me off. I had to peel across three lanes of traffic at 75 mph to get to the exit. As I silently worked a Haitian infertility curse on my Jetta friend, I pulled into the lot of the two-storied barn. It was more magnificent than even I had dreamed. The letters of the exterior were sequined. Once inside, it was aisle after aisle of utterly useless, poorly-made shit that delighted me so much that I began to titter like a seven-year-old girl. Each aisle was worse than the last. Ozark joke gifts. Leather whips. Ponies and puppies made out of what appeared to be cat fur. Hokey "Native American" peace-pipes and dreamcatchers. Objects hewn entirely out of thousands of shells. Hundreds of windchimes. So I pressed on: I had to find the perfect Ozarkland souvenir. After all of the random shit, I thought: Domonic. Now: you must find something that should not be here in Ozarkland. Most of that stuff belonged in that there two-story barn.

Then, while in the polyresin statue section, I saw him. All alone amongst frolicking dolphins, clowns, and bears holding fishing poles, I saw my purchase:

A five-inch high polyresin statue of Saint Anthony of Padua.

I was momentarily speechless and was unable to move, as if I had been poleaxed. What the blue &%#@ was a polyresin statue of Saint Anthony of Padua doing in Ozarkland? Had it been ordered by mistake? And, most importantly: how quickly could I get to the checkout counter with it?

Saint Anthony and I had a good chortle at the whimsy of his existence. Finally! Someone to talk to in the car! Saint Anthony and I will now be roadtrip buddies; stay tuned for future installments of Dom and Saint Anthony Rove the Earth.

Kansas was a good time. I ate a lot. I slept a lot. I was drunk two out of the three nights I was there. Plus, I got to see the old man, and we bonded over alcohol and those weird bar video-screen games, all the way out there in the middle of this (freakishly enormous) country. I came home with a carload of clothes and food, and of course, most importantly, a five-inch high polyresin statue of an Italian saint.

Huh.

Well, have a great one, Bloomington.

Dom