Saturday: Woke up, putzed around the house all morning, met up with Steve & Lori in Staunton, IL to start our "redneck bar crawl" around 2pm. Started off with lunch in Staunton. Afterwards, our first stop was Mr. T's Tavern & Package Liquor:
Stag was on tap, so I had one. First round (for 4 people): $6.00. Awesome. And dangerous.After we finished our beers, we walked the half-paved streets of Staunton looking for another open bar, to no avail. We then made our way to "The Log Cabin Bar". I don't have any pictures of it for some reason, but it's a log cabin. There, I moved on to Old Millewauke Light (on tap) and started chatting up an old regular named "Voogie" or something. Real nice guy, story was that he was a high-end car broker in LA before retiring back to IL. Lots of stories of partying with Eddie Van Halen and Don Henley. Pretty surreal. He bought the bar a round. I had another Stag.
Then it was on to Benld (aka "I'd like to buy a vowel, pronounced Ben-Eld"), for Capone's bar-something-or-other. It was almost 4 by then. We may have already been in Benld at the log cabin joint. Not sure. At any rate, there was some VERY loud Annie Lennox playing, and a 'rough' crowd. (Rough for Annie Lennox fans at least), the most loud-ass drunk people I've ever seen in my life. The bartender was a hippie chick with no shoes on. It was awesome. I had a Coke. The bathroom was labeled awesome-ly.
We left after a drink. Made our way over to KJ's, where Ellen and I were mocked for noting that the bottles of booze behind the bar had prices written on them in Sharpie. PBR on tap was had. George Strait was listened to. The bathroom floor felt like it was gonna give out from under me. We were warned that "the state troopers were in town" on our way out. Kind locals.
We then made our way up to Gillespie, IL (not to be confused with much smaller East Gillespie). We landed at Val's Vittles/Chiefs II (not to be confused with Chiefs I, even though the stained glass on the beer cooler said Chiefs I, and not II). The bar is to the left.
Moved up in the world, had a Bud Select. Bartender was nice. Keeping in the theme, since we were completely obviously out of place at these joints, we were asked what we were doing in town, what we were doing the day, where we'd been, where we were going, etc. Kinda neat. Finished our drinks, and headed on down Rt 4.Hit Carlinville, stopped at the Best Value Inn to get accomodations for the night. Hit Nick's Pizza for an awesome Italian sammach and shitty salad bar. Ate too much.
We went through Carlinville, and made our way to "The Carport Bar", which didn't have a carport on it anymore, and was called Full Throttle or something. Nothing eventful. Had a beer, they were setting up a bad (Hoosier Daddies) for a benefit for some R.D. guy.
Made our way back to Carlinville, where we landed at Hollywood & Vine. We were greeted by an incredibly creepy black and white full-size cut out of Clark Gable. The frontage window was full of... Vines. Really.
The bartender was Helen, and approximately 200 years old. I ordered a Jack and Coke, which she tried to talk me out of because "she (the owner? no one else was there) wants to charge $4 for Jack". I knew this already, since it was written on the bottle. I pushed for it. Across from the bar, above the "For Entertainment Only" (wink wink) slots was the Wall of Gable:
And of course, what apparently-Gable-themed bar in middle-of-nowhere, IL would be complete without a small Clark Gable puppet with a smaller Clark Gable puppet on its lap? (Flanked by Christmas trees. In April.)
Of course, I was completely elated:
(That's my Clark Gable-elated face)After the 'experience' there, we headed to "The Square" (which is actually a circle/roundabout). There were about 4-5 bars here, none of which I know the names of. The first bar wasn't anything amazing, but there was this VERY drunk dude in a wheelchair, who rambled about the most incredible shit. I can't even comprehend most of it still, but there was one tirade where he was talking about his incredibly-awesome Mad Max-style power chair (seriously, thing had like huge off-road tires, bunch of copper tubing caged around his legs). Basically he was just talking about all the things that his wheelchair could kill:
- Dogs
- Fish
- People
- Motherfuckers out there
- Everyone
- Fuckin' Protazoans on the sidewalk.
- E Boli Virus
- Cats
- Some other bacteria. Not sure what it was, but his biology teacher assured him "it was a motherfucker"
http://www.soundupload.com/audio/6s0f0223h9s021b
Incredible.
We then hopped around to a couple other bars, with varying degrees of success. Actually pretty dead, we'd concluded that everyone was at "RD's" benefit thing, which wheelchair guy claimed was bullshit. Oh ya, we ran into him later at a different bar. This time it was something about the Ohio River.
The food and cumulation of beer had teamed up against all of us, and the lack of interesting people led us to be tired, we went back to the hotel around 12:30 or so and split ways.
Sunday: Woke up around 8, made the trek back to Collinsville to let the dog piss. We then wound up doing some shopping (for work clothes for me), and scoured the greater Fairview area for affordable patio furniture. We made a side trip to a carnival for exteremely overpriced corn dog action, and then looked at dogs at Petsmart. Found a set (of furniture) we liked, borrowed Nate's truck, took it home, and assembled it while Ellen worked on the yard a bit. Then sat down, had a beer, and chilled in the new comfy outdoor furniture. Headed inside, caught up on DVR action, and went to bed early.
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