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My
sweetheart and I had taken a tour of Carroll
County. It’s a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River. It was a weekend site-seeing trip for me and hunting down leads of
quilting shops for her. We had some
time before seeing my son in his masterful performance of “Private Lives” at the Timberlake Theater.
It was off to a small gem of a village, Pearl City. This sand speck
was barely on the county map. We
tried to drive into town but the local sheriff was stopping traffic because
an annual town parade was in progress. |
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Jean
(my sweetheart in the first paragraph second word) and I saw children of
a variety of sizes and shapes teetering on a moving float with their backs
turned. Collectively the back pattern was an American
flag decorated ten shades of red, white and blue. We were whispering about Garrison Keeler story
of the “human flag” but we held our laughter for fear the town folk might
think we were not very patriotic. |
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There
were only a couple of horseback riders and politicians in cars dragging
up the rear and it was off to the quilt shop.
Now I wasn’t exact anxious to look through hundreds of bolts of
cloth so I excused myself and sought out the only food store in town to
get some refreshments. This was a spit and you’ll miss it town. It
was in that store that I spotted the pictorial advertisement for a “Johnnie
Race”. Last year’s winner was
photo opted with his ass hanging out. For those of you not accustomed
to Western Illinois slang, that’s a race with a toilet seat strapped to
your bottom. I asked the teenage female cashier about the
rules for the race. “You got to
run the length of town and not have your seat drop off”. I couldn’t resist asking about the history of how this race evolved.
“Who started this race? I asked. “My father”, was her reply.
She was grinning for ear to ear.
“I am sorry I have to miss it though”, she added as an advertisement. “My two brothers and mother will be in it too,
but I have to stay and work.” “Will
you be coming, it’s for a good cause?” I apologized that I would be seeing my son’s play that night; otherwise
it sounded like a really worthwhile event. I wished her and her family
luck and returned to tell Jean about
“Johnnie”. |
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The
next morning, I invited my son to stop by the bed and breakfast before Jean
and I went back to Chicago. I had to tell him how great his performance
was. Some other folks joined the owners of the B&B
for breakfast and Karl was just in time chow down and hear our story about
the “Johnnie Race” that we forfeited to see his play. Well, the stories of local town color started
to get to the point of “can you top this?” I told about the cow-chip bingo they had back east where I grew
up. Illinoisans arose to the whopper windies. One of the guests started
to tell everybody at breakfast of an “Outhouse Race” down the road apiece. This was the dime dropped for Karl to reach
into his character pool and start elaborating on how the race began before
the true facts came to light. Here’s
how he told about the origins of “Outhouse
Race” in his artful drunk farmer
slurred voice. |
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Pers that Zeb and Zeek were polishing off a bottle of rotgut
one night. Zeb told Zeek he had
a great idea for up and comin local town shindig. |
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“Let’s
get shum outhouses, paint-em-up patriotic like, put em up on some
some wheels, and a and a - hell I can borrow some tractors.
I’ll be in the driver’s seat and
you, you’d be in the toilet seat. I kin saw the top half of the door off and
you can wave to the crowd as we collect 1st prize. Why shucks, we do it right, those reporters
back in da big city will flock to come and take our picture.” What cha think about that Zeek” |
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While
most of us were cracking up at my son’s ad-lib story, one of the guests
remarked. “How did you know? That’s about how it began. |
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