There Can Be No Question Of Flourishing.

A full scale hillbilly battle royale rages just down the street along the path of my daily walk. One junk car collector and RV enthusiast has seemingly gotten under the leathery redneck skin of their neighbor and said neighbor has now placed what appears to be all their worldly goods on their front driveway and lawn. They had been doing this for a number of days and like most things in my old Idaho neighborhood I do not understand I make no attempt to try and even less attempt to seem like I am paying any attention.

This weekend, and on Sunday no less, they put up a garage sale sign on the corner of two properties that are not theirs but the signs directed them to the spectacle. It was weird, like I pop-up-show that is always popping but not always open. Again, I am not trying to understand. 

Try as I might and I tried desperately I can assure you to ignore the suburban passive aggressive warfare I simply could not. My mother has already started developing her own theories and backstories of the main protagonists so really it is better than anything airing on HBOMax at the moment in the rare moments that HBOMax actually loads any content. 

My spare moments in Idaho that aren't spent chained to computer as though a global pandemic had never happened are spent thrift store warrioring and garage sale cage fighting so what I saw on the front lawn of the folks down the road was more than the detritus of a breakdown in neighborly fealty. It was a common ass temptation and one I am finding harder to resist. 

During my last garage sale cage fight session I discovered so many treasures and when I say treasure with respect to a garage sale cage fight I only rarely am referring to anything tangible. The verbal treasure that absolutely drips from the mouths of these fellow cage fighters will keep me warm on cold nights for years to come.

One lady, who I can only imagine is named Fran or Barb or something aggressively monosyllabic was talking to Sister so-and-so from Bishop who-knows-who's ward over an arresting assortment of linens when I overheard the slight grumblings of disconent and I thought I could scent malice when the words hit me: 'Well it's a terrible thing to say, but that's how I feel.'

I just about fell over right there on the spot for I don't think I had ever heard a statement that personified the acerbic cunty judgmental snideness that paints every wall of every end-times storage room of my hometown. 

'Its a terrible thing to say, but that's how I feel' is basically salty old Mormon lady parlance for 'Excuse me for being a bitch, but...'

It is Thursday, basically day zero for this weekend's cage fighting. There are few weekends in the summer left for these treasured moments. I have friends from LA beckoning me, friends from Seattle tripping over themselves to show me how they can vegan bar-b-que for one, but I just can't miss a single moment of this shit. I live and breath for it because deep down I want to be just like these ladies when I grow salty, or perhaps a little saltier.