Thursday 20th August 2009 – Male Strippers and Crabs

I spent a day racing round in circles, from the Morgan County Courthouse, to Winchester Library and Glasgow itself. But there are no obvious signs, like land ownership, of why it got its name, and nobody I could find who remembers why. So I will have to just accept what the history books said in the first place, that it was in honour of James McEvers. But it gave me a chance to show off to the nice grown-up lady county clerks and librarians, so it was by no means a wasted day.

I found McEvers gravestone, in Glasgow Cemetery, among a great many other McEvers. They say he's buried somewhere else, but the stone is there now. That strikes me as an odd thing to have done, because now they don't know exactly where he's buried.

I spent a day racing round in circles, from the Morgan County Courthouse, to Winchester Library and Glasgow itself. But there are no obvious signs, like land ownership, of why it got its name, and nobody I could find who remembers why. So I will have to just accept what the history books said in the first place, that it was in honour of James McEvers. But it gave me a chance to show off to the nice grown-up lady county clerks and librarians, so it was by no means a wasted day.
I found McEvers gravestone, in Glasgow Cemetery, among a great many other McEvers. They say he’s buried somewhere else, but the stone is there now. That strikes me as an odd thing to have done, because they don’t know exactly where he’s buried now.

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But the stone does claim he was born in Scotland, and one has to assume it was in Glasgow, otherwise there is no link at all to the present name. As you can see, he fought with the colonists against the British, so perhaps he wouldn’t have been grateful for the town getting a British name.

Later that night, I had a heavy schedule.
First there was the crab racing. One of the hostelries downtown runs crab races on a Thursday night. I couldn’t stay there long: it’s too far to walk, so I had to drive. But it was a fascinating experience. They are hermit crabs, the ones that look as though they live inside a seashell. The owner has a tank of them, and you get to rent one for the evening. The process of getting them into action involves putting them under a bright light to warm them up, and, if necessary, lubricating them with water (I assume it was water) to help them out of their shells. They scuttle to the edge of a circle, and can be excitingly indirect. The first and second get through to the next round, the rest are returned to the tank. I didn’t get to stay to the end, but I guess the winning ‘owner’ gets some proportion of the rental money.
Then it was on to the main event. One of the local bars has a group of male strippers every Thursday. I was told the audience was a wonder to behold.
When I arrived, an earnest young man told me I had to go to the back bar. I assumed at first he had concerns for my morals, but when I asked him, he said it was “company policy”, so I guess it was a safety issue: perhaps males in the audience might be in physical danger. The audience was still visible from the back bar, so I was happy enough.
How times change. Not so long ago, it would have been lady strippers, dirty old men in the audience, and ladies definitely excluded. Now it seems to be pretty well the opposite. Although this audience seemed distinctly more enthusiastic than I ever remember the dirty old men being.
I had assumed that the audience would be mainly jaded and frustrated ladies of a certain age, but they all seemed quite young: perhaps it was really some sort of anatomy lesson.
At the end of the show, the MC shouted for everyone to get on-stage, and I wondered, just for a moment, if I should take up the offer, and show these silly girls what a real man looks like.