After three weeks on the road and seeing Wal-Marts scarier than Christian Slater’s hairline (and if you think your Wal-Mart is scary, then either you live in Salt Lake City, where it has its own parking garage, or you’re completely full of shit), I have finally made it to Oregon.
Unfortunately, one of my first impressions of Oregon was a small town by the name of Hines, where I stopped off at a supermarket to buy a party tray of boneless honey barbecue chicken wings because, unless I wanted to chow down on bumper stickers reading “Real Men Love Jesus”, there was nothing else. It was at this moment that I overheard someone say, “I hope he falls off the face of the earth and we never have to hear about him again.” Hoping they were talking about Ryan Seacrest, my ears perked up, only to discover that this Joe Dirt knock-off and his girlfriend and/or mom were referring to a tabloid featuring Barack Obama.
Now, as far as my opinion of Barack Obama is concerned, I’m somewhere in between the rabid commemorative plate crowd and those who come up with new ways to talk about Michelle Obama’s ass, so I didn’t feel the need to really say anything. For this, I was rewarded because after that, the conversation transitioned into a heated debate on whether or not they would have enough money for cigarettes and a movie, which was weird since they were buying 22 fruit pies. If you make more than $30,000 a year and are therefore unfamiliar with the fruit pie, it’s a processed dessert (or in this case, every meal ever) consisting of a glazed pocket of crust filled with your choice of an ambiguous gravy-like substance that is passed off as cherry, lemon, or apple. It’s more like the concept of pie, which is why in most cases, it only costs .75.
So there I am, not really able to be too judgmental because I’m standing around with 7 pounds of chicken in my arms, wondering why I left everything behind for this. I mean, I knew that Oregon had more to offer than a couple with matching Army t-shirts and crew cut hair styles, but in that moment, all I wanted to do was go back to Florida so I could at least bask in a lower socio-economic culture that I was used to. Then, as I was driving away, imagining these two going home and eating their fruit pies while watching “Reba” in what I hoped was a child-free home, I saw this billboard:
It says, “One style doesn’t fit all. Especially when it comes to birth control. Free or low-cost birth control, that fits your life, your body and your budget.” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, and while searching for a picture of an aborted fetus holding up a “fornicator” sign, I finally realized that this was actually promoting safe sex practices instead of pandering to the lowest depths of teenage vernacular in order to transform pregnant fifteen-year-olds into married pregnant fiften-year-olds.
So, overall, Oregon is pretty cool–and I don’t even have to pump my own gas.
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This post takes me back to the terrifying shopping trip I took in Colorado City, Arizona several years ago. But instead of watching the serial wives of some polygamist compound putting fruit pies into the basket, they were buying–no kidding–chicken wings. All I’m saying is: Be careful. And godspeed.
I went to Walmart back in Palm Bay a few weeks ago and I’ve never seen a more stereotypical scene in my life. I was lucky enough to walk into the store at the same time as two 16 (or at least I hope they were that old) year old girls both carrying babies. My whole 20min trip included camo, bad perms, people with missing teeth, and the grossly overweight riding around in those motorized carts… I was pretty damn jealous of the latter
Oh god yes–in the SLC Wal-Mart there was an “Emergency Preparedness Center” filled with bulk quantities of Morning Moos Milk Alternative–still haven’t figured out if that was geared toward the compound folks or the world is going to hell in a hand basket bomb shelter types–but I guess they kind of cross over anyway so mystery solved.