Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 22:31:21 -0500 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 3 Medium-Sized-Running-Little-Bare and Schultz "Minnehaha, Laughing Water Handsomest of all the women In the land of the Dacotahs, In the land of handsome women." --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) "Were th Fugawi?" --Richard Longwind Liemaker (1999) In our last episode, you'll recall our hero standing, gasping, pigeon-toed and slack-jawed in front of some motel counter in Minnesota, shocked and horrified to hear these words from the clerk: "Nay, matey, belay that guff. We be aw' FULL!" Now you can imagine his blessed relief when, upon clarification, the clerk was directed to recheck the motel's reservation under our hero's correct name, Kitschme Siouxme, instead of whatever they had written down there before in their yellowed, dog-eared, spiral-bound reservations notebook; and, upon further clarification, what the clerk had REALLY said was that the place was "awful" and not, much to our hero's weird hearing, "all full." [I know that was a cheap shot, but I couldn't resist. I'm following a hallowed American tradition here--that of the old-fashioned serial radio drama, the kinds of stupid episodic plot twists that used to keep your grandparents cliff-hanging. Now, of course, over all the sheer vertical precipices on courses such as the Superior Trail, you do.] So "our hero" (namely me) tried relievedly to reassure the ancient mariner behind the counter that "oh, I'm sure the place isn't all THAT bad," and then gracelessly grabbed the room key and tore around the corner to the ONE empty remaining parking spot. I got out, unloaded my freighter of all its cargo, and sank quickly into a deep, deep (to maybe a depth of about 1,685 feet) sleep. "With a load of iron ore Twenty-six thousand tons more Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty A big ship and true, Had its bones a bit chewed When the gales of November came early" --Gordon Lightfoot (1972) And I didn't wake up, not surprisingly, until I next had to pee. But, after that, I slept all night. Well, hey, the motel wasn't too bad, although the floor was polar bear #*!!#%*'ing FREEZING, but I compensated for that by building a campfire. I am, after all, a renegade wild Indian. (But that's a lie, of course. Siouxme.) The next morning, however, there was a different story to be told. I was hungry, and so drove off in search of one of the following: a) slow moving buffalo herd, b) wild boar on a spit above a raging fire, or c) a restaurant. And I defy you, gentle reader, to drive off right now, or anytime, and find A RESTAURANT IN SILVER BAY, MINNESOTA!!! WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE IS IT? DO PEOPLE EVER EAT ALONG THE "NORTH SHORE" OF LAKE SUPERIOR??? I drove, I swear, for an hour and a half. There's this "drive" see, called the "Outer Drive," which has all sorts of evidence of civilization (a feed store, for example, some used farm implement lot, a Union hall, a bunch of other buildings, a modern-day high school for-heaven's-sake, and a "tourist information booth") but... absolutely ZERO Bugsy's Beaneries. No burger joints, no KFCs, no drive-ins, no Dairy Queens, and not one single Subway sandwich franchised shop taking over where a Bozo's Hot Dogs used to be. Nuthin'! (Where do all those high schoolers go when they cut class?) I practically panicked. But, of course, being the stalwart Indian brave wannabe that I want to be, I pressed on. I decided to look instead for the post office, since it is an express American dictum that ALL burgs have one, and knowing what I know about postal workers and how they like to eat... Presto! I caught a sign ("Business District-->"), turned right, spotted the flag, and bingo: the Silver Bay Post Office and, practically right next door, "The Northwinds Cafe." Wow! What a business op, eh? The only show in town! I go in about 11 A.M. and the joint is jumpin'! So I find a seat, sit down, pick up a menu and notice immediately the misspelling: It says, "The Northwind's Cafe." Hmmm. Well, it COULD be that "Northwind" is the name of the family that owns the place, and in that case the singular possessive would be appropriate. But it would more likely require a plural possessive, and even more likely than that require no possessive whatsoever. It could just be that "Northwinds" is the name of the cafe. (And I checked after I left. The big sign outside, correctly, contains no apostrophe.) But I came there to eat, not critique (or teach), and so I ordered some soup and a sandwich and had a most exquisite lunchtime repast. Hey, I highly recommend this place! Next time you're in Silver Bay, Minnesota, be SURE to check out The Northwinds Cafe, OK? It's a little hard to find, what with the traffic and all, but it's worth the Drive Outer your way. After lunch my plan was to actually find the trailhead to the Superior Hiking Trail (our course, of course, for the following day) but I couldn't find THAT either. So I did the next best thing. I drove all the way back, through traffic, to that "Tourist Information" booth, and pulled in. Maybe *they* would know where the trail was. No sooner do I burst open the front door (actually the place was a bit bigger than a booth) than I practically crash into a couple old lost "buddies" of mine from the tribe, Medium-Sized-Running-Little-Bare and her boy Schultz. Omigosh. Wow! It was sure nice to see them again after all this time. Here I'd assumed "Little Bare" had gone off with the Lewis and Clark Expedition and her boy Schultz got back on the boat. But the hapless meeting was also fraught with agony and despair. Both these brave Indian renegades were there, of course, to run the race the next day. But they had only one pony with luggage rack (actually it was a "borrowed" panel van from Schultz's papa's company: UPS) and the race is always one-way, not round-trip. That's correct (no lie this time)--the Superior Trail 100-Mile Endurance Run is point-to-point. You start in Silver Bay and you quit (if not sooner) in Grand Marais. Thus, getting back to Silver Bay afterwards *can* be a problem. Omigosh, radio fans! What will happen next? How will these people handle their required transportation needs? And what will happen to "our hero"? Will they *all* be stranded in Grand Marais, Minnesota, without a ride? Without a teepee? WITHOUT A RESTAURANT??? Will their bones all be discovered centuries hence hanging by the knuckles over some sheer cliff????? Stay tuned next time! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-station! "The Thrilling Adventures of Kitschman and Throbbin" will return shortly with Part 4. (And now stay tuned for the World Series. The Brooklyn Dodgers versus the Washington Senators.) "Kitsch" Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net