Editor’s Note: More from Marlow’s magical mystical American road- seen from two wheels. Snow in the forecast here at the farm. Time to get it together if I am going to be back in The Swamp today. Wish me luck. But as Marlow notes, there could be a bar and dragons on the way.

– Vic

Road Animal Bar Dragon Tale

I was suddenly called away from a cross country motorcycle trip with Chip-n-Dale ten or more years ago, when we were in the Dakotas. I hurriedly made my way directly eastward en route northern Indiana to perform an emergency rescue operation of a beloved in-law whose perimeter had been overrun by 21st century VC. I was planning on dropping napalm and snakes (lawyers, guns and money), if necessary. Despite high-balling it across the northern plains, I had to stop well after darkness descended over northern Minnesota or Wisconsin (can’t remember which) for the night at a local flea bag motel.

Hungrier than a winter hibernated, starving bear in spring time, I asked the night clerk where I could catch a bite to eat. She said there was only one place to go at this hour. It was an animal bar — yes, one those establishments that had stuffed animals on its walls.

Upon entering the front door, a stuffed owl eyed me from above with its taxidermied right eye set in a permanent wink. I smiled and winked back at it before spying what looked to be a record-sized muskie. I instantly warmed up to the place, since I knew I could get a decent fish plate in what surely had to be a sport fisherman’s watering hole and grill.

It was a place where everyone knew your name — especially if you had caught a record sized fish. This place’s premier trophy fish was in a glass case, weighed sixty seven and some odd pounds, and was caught in my birth year in the 1940’s. The fisherman was reported to have said, “The Lord was with me, when I caught this fish.” Back then, most monster fish were landed by shooting them. A big plaque above the fish made it clear: “Fish fought for one hour and was landed by beaching.”

This dead animal bar and grill was dark and smoky with a working, mechanical, coin-operated, cigarette machine, a big jar of pickled eggs of middle age next to the beer taps and the Hallmark Channel on the TV. All of that decor was standard fare for animal bars, but this one fancied itself as a weird wildlife sideshow and emporium.

Not only did it have several additional big dead fish but a number of absurd, stuffed-animal dioramas. One scene had chipmunks wearing little hats. They were drinking, singing, gambling, and fishing — but mostly drinking. I believe that one of the diorama’s chipmunks was actually a weasel.

Singing, beer-drinking rodents

Another scene depicted a boxing match between two raccoons, with skunks as seconds and a groundhog as the referee.

I decided to eat at the bar and listen to the local chatter. Fishermen are utter BSers but charming and entertaining ones. Before I began what turned out to be a long night, I noticed that the bar sat inside of what appeared to be a very old log cabin structure. I quickly learned that was the case from the bartender. It had been the first bar out in these parts. With more outdoors tourism after WW II, the place had been modernized and expanded several times over the years.

The original place’s footprint looked like it was about nine-by-twelve. The old timers said the bar’s floor had been mostly rotted out with boards missing from its walls and the entire structure canted to the right. Hanging from the roof peak had been a hissing Coleman lantern which swayed when the winter winds blew hard. When the weather got too rough to go home at closing time, patrons would sack out on the floor amidst their beer cans — some warm and empty, some chilled and half full.

Animal pelts and heads (most of the moth eaten ones were long gone) still hung from tie-boards and nails. Strung up on the bar’s back wall were various stuffed animal carcasses.

With my meal served and scarfed down, I had made enough connections to be an audience of one to the following tale when my glass became empty, and the bartender must have seen it and quietly refilled my rum and coke. Beside me, an earnest story teller cleared his throat ominously, while the other regular patrons deliberately turned their backs to his tale, looked along the mahogany terrain toward the door, and beckoned to the bartender for their checks.

“Who’s that stranger, drinking by himself down there?” he asked. “Maybe he’d like to join us — no one should be a solitary drinker. Please leave the cherry out of mine this time, Ralph.”

“What’ll you be having?”

“Pour one for our new friend here, invite that lonely drinker down there at the end of the bar up here and offer him a drink on me, and the usual for me — a boilermaker, with a long shot. That reminds me . . . ”

My gaze traveled with the bartender as he ambled away from us to invite the solitary drinker down and ask him for his order. As he spoke to the patron, the latter turned a melancholy face towards us and nodded. There was no trace of his previous libations in his gait; but, he ordered a double Zombie as he joined us.

“I am in mourning.” he said as he seated himself, “I just lost a miniature dragon. I wouldn’t care so much, but it was a loaner. It died this morning when my house caught fire and burned to the ground.”

According to Wikipedia, the Zombie cocktail was “originally concocted (in 1934)
to help a hung-over customer get through a business meeting.” Several double Zombies (i.e.,
with more than 8 ou of liquor each) were apparently needed to mourn one’s departed dragon.

The bartender interjected heartily. “I remember that transaction like it was yesterday. Someone, it might have been you, borrowed it off that fellow who was drinking his own special order, whiskey drinks.”

With that came the realization that this would be a choral rendering of an old and local tall tale. I twisted in my chair to see if the owl was drunkenly winking in my direction. “I have never seen a dragon hereabouts” the bird seemed to whisper.

The last and only other thing I distinctly remember from that evening was from my grade school class on the History of the Saints that Saint George had supposedly gotten rid of the world’s last dragon. But given my glass-eyed hangover the next morning, I must have decided to hear these three out.

To this day, I still wonder if the dragon owner had insurance. Since that night, I have always had a taping device available on my person while on the road in strange, new places with old timey cocktail drinking, chatty strangers for companions.

Another Zombie-drinker-with-a-loaner-dragon tale of woe is just too good to miss.

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