There are people who simply shouldn’t operate or cook for restaurants. A disproportionate number of them seem to reside in Wisconsin.
Finding a decent lunch on our fall excursions in Wisconsin has been an annual challenge since we started our fall tradition of trail rides, leaf peeping, apple picking, and pumpkin patch visiting many years ago, when Mike was still with us. One year I simply gave up and settled for fast food, which is at the very least predictable.
Last year we found a place that had awesome sweet potato tots. In the same town this year, I opted to try someplace we hadn’t been before. Big mistake. I was served a “Buffalo chicken sandwich” that consisted of a boneless skinless chicken breast sloshed around in some watery, tepid “hot” sauce, and slapped on a bun with a side of fries and a pickle. The soggy sauce bore not the slightest resemblance to the crisp, spicy coating on the Buffalo wings you may have consumed at your favorite saloon.
On another excursion, I succumbed to a fit of sentimentality and chose to revisit a “family” restaurant where we stopped for breakfast with Mike one year. The giveaway here was that the place called itself a pancake house. The obvious caveat is, never order a salad in a pancake house. But I thought, how badly could you screw up a simple grilled chicken salad with berries, walnuts, and blue cheese?
I’ll tell you how: you serve it with something you call raspberry vinaigrette that has the appearance, consistency, and taste of diluted corn syrup spiked with artificial raspberry flavoring, and “cheese” (and this is in Wisconsin, mind you) in the form of tiny cubes, about half a centimeter square, of some unidentifiable, flavorless rubbery white substance. Then top it with a vigorously over-salted, charred chicken breast plopped on top of a mountainous pile of lettuce dotted with a few lonely strawberries and blueberries, an assemblage named something like “summer salad delight.”
Even breakfast wasn’t safe in Wisconsin this year. The minute we got out of the car at the diner I remembered from a few years ago, I knew we should have turned around and left to find another place to eat.
Why? Because to enter, one had to run a gantlet of yard signs supporting a certain demented orange narcissistic sociopath. There was even a window decal meant to suggest that the human cheeto himself was dining at a booth within.
OY, Wisconsin!
Both Angelic Daughter and I were hungry, and we had limited time until we needed to arrive at the stable for our trail ride, so I gritted my teeth, and we ordered and ate as fast as we could, given the crappy service (they must have seen the Illinois plate), and got out of there. But not before being subjected to the delusional ravings of four old men in the booth just across from us, moaning about what “they” are doing, are going to do, allegedly have done, are suspected of doing, or are sure to be planning to do, between breathtakingly insensitive and racist remarks about migrants.
I was going to make a long drive to another stable near a state park much deeper into Wisconsin this week, until I read that the local Sheriff was proudly proclaiming to the orange one himself that there would be no ballot drop boxes in his county (he was wrong–there are a few).
It’s not only that I didn’t want to spend money in that sheriff’s county; for the first time in my life I actually felt afraid to travel with my Angelic Daughter to an area dominated by a political perspective other than my own, to take a trail ride into a state park. The horror movie script practically writes itself!
I try to remind myself that an aggressive public display of political allegiance is often a thinly disguised cry for attention.
But unlike the screaming “lock her up” signs of 2016 or the gigantic banners erected in 2020 alongside quasi-religious arrangements of flags representing the various armed services, or bumper stickers forming words out of silhouettes of assault rifles (some arranged in the form of crosses, or depicting Christ carrying such a weapon), the majority of the signs I saw displayed along the highways and side roads this year were much smaller than four years ago. I took this as an expression of reluctant support, or a capitulation to peer pressure: an ‘if I don’t put a sign up, my neighbors will get suspicious’ sort of thing.
But for the first time in the past eight years, I also saw signs, some of them very large, proclaiming support for the opposing candidate, who has a history of upholding the law and defending the Constitution. “That’s ballsy,” I thought.
These folks who bravely and publicly disagreed with their neighbors have made it OK for those neighbors to consider voting the way they know, deep down, they should this time.
As Liz Cheney pointed out this week (and believe me I never in a million years thought I’d be quoting someone with her last name, but I do admire her backbone and determination to put country above party) the beauty of the secret ballot is that “you can vote your conscience and never have to say a word to anybody.”
God willing, a significant number of voters will use the protection of the secret ballot to cast their vote for sanity, experience, compassion, and competence instead of self-aggrandizement, dictator-worship, bloviating, bluster, hatred, and lies.
Early voting has begun. I voted yesterday. God Bless America.
your nervous, hopeful, anxious, depressed, let’s-just-get-this-thing-overwith-without-all-the-drama-so-our-Constitution-and-our-democracy-survives,
Ridiculouswman
Well written- tying your personal experience of eating out in the state, to the political rhetoric and hostile climate inducing fear that you encountered.
I realized today that Yes, of course, I want the president to be my choice, but more largely, when I can stand back and breathe, I want my fellow citizens to want to wake up to reality, to heartful experiences, to what binds us together and not what separates us and forces us apart.
I am well aware we have a long way to go but let us hope this tipping point tilts our planet back towards the light after the long winters of discontent.
I’ve noticed the dearth of orange signs around here, too. And also encouraging, for the first time I can remember in my town, signs all over with the other party – not just the presidential candidate, but for all the offices that they’re running for. The orange party signs have gotten much smaller, too. What I also think is funny is that signs from the orange party are met with signs from the logical, constitution-abiding party (right next door, across the street, all in close proximity, as if they’re saying, “Oh, yeah?”) Never saw that in the last two elections.
The problem, I think is, the people who are listening to the orange party believe they have someone who is sympathetic to their issues, problems, etc. and that they believe his drivel. It makes them feel understood and appreciated, even if the messaging is outright wacky. The orange one keeps going on because they listen to him and give him the adoration he craves.
From a couple of different sources I’ve read that while the GOP seems to be loud and loyal, the number of them has decreased, so that there’s actually fewer people who are part of that team. For the sake of our country’s survival, I certainly hope that’s so. Younger voters are coming into the fold this election season, and they should make a positive difference, especially since all of their (and ours, as Americans) rights are in danger of being revoked.
Well said. Unfortunately on the young people front, there is a stark gender divide (see today’s NYT) with a large percentage of young men supporting the Toxic Creamsicle while a large percentage of young women who feel the threat to their autonomy quite directly are naturally supporting the candidate who understands healthcare for women. Fortunately, however, I think there are more young women (and women in general) likely to vote than young men.