It’s amazing how many books you can crush in a long weekend when the usual distractions of reality television, computers, tire changing, grocery shopping duties, and most importantly, humans are removed from the equation. Only the sounds of cardinals and giant mosquitoes were left to remove me from the printed word. I blasted through two Bukowski novels, War Talk by Arundhati, and a book on Japan’s influence on Frank Lloyd Wright culled from the depths of the Minneapolis Public Library. All great reading but I hadn’t anticipated being able to focus on the reading quite so ferociously and soon I was down to my last paragraph with nothing on deck. Desperate for more words, I traveled from the Log Cabin dwelling and drove the 8 miles to the closest town – New Prague – to gobble up whatever words I could. Just so you know, New Prague doesn’t look anything like Old Prague. In fact the new development that was unceremoniously deemed “New New Prague” certainly doesn’t bare any resemblance whatsoever to its romantic old Eastern European sister city.
Being that it was a holiday most everything was shut up except for the local Econo foods grocery. I was still in the mood for some quality literature but when all you’ve got to supply your addiction is the Econo foods in New Prague…well that’s just an unforgiving mistress. Across from the canned coffee I found the miscellaneous reading materials shelf overflowing with a bounty of bridal magazines and fantasy football periodicals. I actually had my hands on the newest edition of Lowrider Magazine for a heartbeat, but then I wised up. My book choices were singular – dictionaries that had sat undisturbed on the shelf since the Cold War. No luck. I drove back to the cabin with only a recipe on the back of a bucket of store bought homestyle potato salad for enjoyment.

Without reading materials, the rest of trip was spent in the Captain’s chair trying to lure some of the hundred or so bunny rabbits over to my outdoor lazy-style HQ with bits of potato salad and bite size Oreoes. No takers. The bunnies did get pretty close tho and hopped about on the outside of my perimeter. Of course they were highly entertaining as I finished of a six pack of Private Reserve. The estate also had a few variety of goats, dogs, and a brand new litter of snow white kittens with baby blue eyes. The kittens were doted over for a good long time.