Saturday 16th May 2009 – In a Hotbed of Young Ladies

 

I was chatting to a man called 'OJ' in a bar in Minot, ND, when his wife came in and dragged him out.  He was wearing a cap with a stylised union jack on it, a bit Like Jensen Button used to wear in his Honda days.  I had just been speaking to his daughter on the phone (I can't think why).  Her name was something like 'Olivia', and I had thoroughly confused her by (I thought) clever references to Hamlet.  I don't think the Ophelia-confusing of the daughter was connected to the out-dragging by the wife, but I can't be sure, because she (the wife) wouldn't speak to me.

He said it was a Buffalo Bills cap.  The Bills was the OJ's team.  He was a Bills fan, he said, and that's why everyone called him 'OJ'.  Maybe the wife ought to tread a bit more warily.

It is possible the wife knew what she was doing, because they had no sooner gone than several bus-loads of young ladies, out on several 'hen' nights, arrived, in, I have to say, a very frisky mood.  One group, trying to raise money for a present, were selling lollipops under the banner 'a dollar for a suck'.  I proffered two dollars, and the bride-to-be was astonishingly grateful.  At which point I thought it wise to leave: I didn't want the young men to get too jealous.

I had been left at this bar by a taxi driver with a sense of humour beyond his years.  I had asked him if he knew any bars with draught beer and old men drinking it.  He clearly thought I would enjoy a rather different sociological experience.  And I did.

 

I was going to spend the night in the van at a truck stop, having found a book which lists all the places where you can do that.  So I had settled into a nearby bar for a quiet nightcap.  It was called the 'Flaming Fireplace', but was anything but.  The barmaid, amazingly, didn't want to talk to me.  She was gossiping with an off-duty colleague at the other end of the bar.  And the only other people in the place were teenage boys crowded round a card table playing cards.

When I asked if there was anywhere in walking distance which had draught beer, she said "No, but I'll call you a cab".  I took the hint.

 

Oh, and every bar I've been in in North Dakota has a row of ashtrays on the bar.  Just to celebrate being back in civilisation I cadged a cigarette from the barmaid of the Flaming Fireplace.  Maybe that's why she took agin' me.