web analytics

One of the lesser-known harbingers of Summer

Once every week or two, we like to take a long drive up the coast to our favorite fish and chips shop (they still cook in beef tallow!) and do a little shopping. Every time we drove up last Summer — every single time — there was a young man standing on the side of the road who gave a stiff and enthusiastic Heil Hitler! to every car that went past.

Clearly a tard or mong of some description, he always wore earbuds and carried an iPod. I’d love to think he was listening to das Beste des Adolphenschpechen but it’s probably just “Teletubbies: Oops-A-Daisy”.

When Autumn came, he was gone. As his usual post was near a trailer park, we assumed his family had a seaside Summer rental.

Welp, you guess it — my ol’ bud Heil Hitler was back this afternoon, heiling his heart out. Summer’s here!

I just got an email that began You’re getting this email because you blog about stuff real guys like. Since they’ve obviously taken time to learn about me and my blog, I figured I’d help them flog their crappy bourbon.

Actually, it might be good bourbon. I don’t know. I’m not a bourbon drinker. Anyhow, the blog that sends most unique users their way gets all sorts of fabulous prizes…some for me, some for you. It doesn’t seem likely we’ll be that blog, but if I win anything, I vow to pass whatever it is on to one of you.

Somehow, “Buffalo Trace” doesn’t sound like something I want to put in my mouth.

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 26, 2010, 9:58 pm

You don’t have to register at Buffalo Trace, unless you want to enter their contest for some kind of luxury trip to the Kentucky Derby.

Mm. The bar looks kinda skanky.


Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: March 26, 2010, 10:09 pm

Ummmm, fish & chips in tallow? Never thought of that: sounds absolutely heartstoppingly yummby!!!


Comment from Allen
Time: March 26, 2010, 10:33 pm

I can only think of one thing that is brown like bourbon and is a trace of the buffalo.

Love the reconstruction, it’s like “Chariots of Fire” meets the Schutzstaffel.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: March 26, 2010, 10:40 pm

It was a combination of whining vegans and meddlesome Hindus who forced* McDonald’s to stop cooking their fries in tallow. Instead of buggering about with my menu choices, lettuce-munchers and cow-worshippers, how about fucking the hell off and minding your own goddamn business? No-one forced these wankers to eat Micky D’s fries, but the professionally aggrieved are incapable of not foisting their obsessions on those of us who could not give a shit.

Harry Ramsden’s up in Shipley used to use tallow but they’ve switched to vegetable oils now. Bloody shame.

* Gave them a fig-leaf, rather. The veggie-appeasing is a front, of course. Tallow is more expensive.


Comment from Spad13
Time: March 26, 2010, 10:51 pm

Allen do you mean buffalo……fur?


Comment from Randy Rager
Time: March 26, 2010, 11:28 pm

Buffalo Trace is pretty good stuff. It’s not Booker’s, or even Baker’s, more equivalent to Basil Hayden’s or Woodford Reserve.

Still, not bad.


Comment from Sockless Joe
Time: March 26, 2010, 11:47 pm

I guess “Buffalo Trace” sounds like a moderately worse name than “Knob Creek”, and KC is pretty good as far as I’m concerned.

I think (but am not positive) I tried some Woodford Reserve once. Good, but as a creature of habit I return to my Knob Creek.


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: March 27, 2010, 12:21 am

Um. “Trace” also means “the line or track left by something that has passed”; or “the course or path that one follows,” the latter definition being labelled archaic. There is, for example, in Kentucky a stretch of State Highway 453 designated “the Trace,” where one can see all kinds of cool wildlife. . .the one time I drove it, my radiator grille bagged two stunningly exquisite insects, one of which I’m pretty certain was a dragonfly. I felt pretty rotten about that. . .

So, anyway, presumably Buffalo Trace refers to a track left by buffalo, and later used by humans. Who probably consumed alcohol while in transit. . .

On the other hand, well, HARUMPH. Stuff real guys like? And what is your female readership, eh? Chopped liver? They really want to appeal, they’d better appeal to more than one sex.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 27, 2010, 12:45 am

Well, sure, Can’t Hark. And “scat” also means “take to one’s heels” — but I still wouldn’t buy a whisky called Wolverine Scat.

Okay, I probably would.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: March 27, 2010, 1:09 am

I bought a bottle of Bulleit a while back. Christ sakes. If it didn’t kill you going down, you could strip the enamel off your double-wide just by breathing on it.


Comment from Pupster
Time: March 27, 2010, 1:10 am

What Randy said. It’s a pretty good middle of the road bourbon.

My home town had a waver, he used to ride his bike down to the same intersection every day, weather permitting. He held a little transistor radio in one hand and waved at all the cars with his other. As he got older and the traffic got heavier, he would only wave at folks who honked their horns. We called him Special Ed.


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: March 27, 2010, 1:14 am

Buffalo Trace has Bourbunnies. That’s good enough for me.


Comment from Mrs. Compton
Time: March 27, 2010, 1:32 am

Tallow? Don’t they make candles out of that?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: March 27, 2010, 2:00 am

Bourbunnies! Gotta get me some!


Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: March 27, 2010, 5:34 am

Mrs. Compton:

Tallow? Don’t they make candles out of that?

Yep. Well, used to, anyway.

All those saturated & trans fats provide an excellent source of flammable energy! Of course, having candle stuff stuck to the sides of your arteries may not seem like a good idea to some, but think of it as extra insulation in winter, and lubrication in summer!


Comment from Hotrodelectric
Time: March 27, 2010, 6:13 am

Stoatie, I have a thought (OW!!!): regarding your young Heiling friend. You mentioned he has an iPod. D’ya think there’s some possibility his is loaded with the drivel speeches of the Jug-Eared Marxist? I mean, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Her Maj decided to put her so-called gift from Bammy on the table at some charity auction, which then infected (influenced?) this poor sot, is it?


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 27, 2010, 12:44 pm

I reckon Hotrodelectric’s on to something. That iPod had to wind-up somewhere.


Comment from Pavel
Time: March 27, 2010, 1:25 pm

I heard that Her Maj used the Obamapod to bolster the short leg on a work bench in her garage, and it has succeeded in stopping that annoying rocking. She’s resourceful like that.

In Denver, there are shuttle buses that shuttle folks along the downtown pedestrian mall. There used to be this sweet old guy, obviously not quite compos mentis, who would stand there all day in a yellow hard hat and “direct” the buses with hand signals. He never gave the Nazi salute, for which I am grateful.

So I went out to the Buffalo Trace website to register, and was struck by how they need to pay their graphics guy more money. The top of the swinging doors blends into the lady behind them, giving her upper boobal/rackage area this weird flowing w-ish shape. I registered anyhow, and if I win, I’ll hoist my mint julep to sweasel.com


Comment from mommer
Time: March 27, 2010, 6:17 pm

When I was a wee young mommer my wee young husband and I used to live in a really crappy old camping trailer (no ritzy double wad for us). On pay days he would bring home a six pack of fancy beer for him and a fifth of Buffalo Trace for me.And a good time was had buy all.

I was curious about the name as I have apent more than a little time around bovines and frankly the thought of drinking something that ran off a cow path was pretty discouraging,to say the least. It turns out that back in the day, a trace was a path and this old baffalo byway was eventually turned into a popular thruway for commerce for the likes of cheap bourbon and other great stuff. It’s okay. About the same as Kessler and a hell of alot better than Ol’Pinnacles.

I’ll get into the rediculous stories about rv park liven another day. Your welcome.


Comment from Spad13
Time: March 28, 2010, 4:27 am

Mommer, untill I was rather uncerimoniuosly laid off last June I was a supplier of electrical equipment to a lot of the RV Parks and would be facinated by stories of living in them. I have some interesting stories of sales calls and installations, believe me.


Comment from Hotrodelectric
Time: March 28, 2010, 7:23 am

That iPod had to wind-up somewhere.

#forefingers to temples, squinting furiously#
“happy pure thoughts, happy pure thoughts, happy pure thoughts…”

I like Pavel’s take. She is one resourceful lady, isn’t she?


Comment from JuliaM
Time: March 28, 2010, 9:09 am

Every small village should have a Hitler-saluting loon. It’s the sort of thing us English do best… 😉


Comment from JeffS
Time: March 28, 2010, 6:17 pm

Here in town, we have one fellow who frequently stands on the sidewalk of a local road, and smilingly waves to everyone going by. That’s all, he just smiles and waves. It’s clear that he’s not all there, from both his actions and manner of dressing.

At least in good weather. He may not be all there, but he ain’t stupid.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 28, 2010, 7:08 pm

We’ve got another one. He used to have a job (a paying job, I assume) rounding up carts at the local supermarket. But they let him go, poor bastard, and now he stands at the bus stop wearing a reflective vest and looks serious. I thought for a while he really was some kind of workman.


Comment from bad cat robot
Time: March 29, 2010, 3:39 am

When I was a roving scientist-for-hire in Berkeley, there was a Hitler Clone wandering the town environs. He had the hair, the mustache, but added an olive drab trenchcoat and black military-style boots which I don’t think are part of the oeuvre. I’m happy to say he seems to have been content to merely mimic the appearance and not the beliefs or behaviors of the late unlamented — but it was a bit of a shock to come upon him unexpected-like on the street.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: March 29, 2010, 4:53 am

Oh God, the trolley-tard. We had one when I worked for Tesco, lo these many moons ago, in the instore bakery during my summer hols aged 16 and 17. I was paid £2.50 an hour for wrapping buns in plastic and running baking trays through the grease applicator and heaving five tons a week of flour from the forklift palette to the shelves in the warehouse. God knows what the trolley boy was being paid (40p an hour, maybe). I guess the minimum wage laws did for him. Another triumph for progressive politics. It would have been undignified to pay him less than that, d’you see? But he’d have been under the PAYE and NI thresholds, so it was essentially cash-in-hand, and it might have helped defray a little bit of what his poor old mum was forking out to look after him. Now, if the poor sod hasn’t slipped between the cracks and died, he’s probably in sheltered accommodation somewhere, costing multiple tens of thousands of pounds-worth of taxpayers’ money per year, and for nothing except to tick a box in the dry, dusty mind of a hollowed-out bureaucrat who serves no more salient purpose than as startlingly-effective kindling on the bonfire I would make of those who have brought about New Labour’s hegemony.


Comment from Fa Cube Itches
Time: March 29, 2010, 7:49 am

Buffalo Trace is decent bourbon. That distillery makes a lot of solid brands of booze.


Comment from Bill (still the .00358% of your traffic that’s from Iraq) T
Time: March 29, 2010, 7:52 am

I figger Buffalo Trace owes you a prize of *some* sort — how uniquely unique is the uniqueness of sending two hits(*) from Iraq to a bar featuring Bourbunnies majoring in Entertainment Hospitality?

(*)my laptop’s on a separate server


Comment from Princess Bernie
Time: March 29, 2010, 1:09 pm

Buffalo Trace Distillery is about 5 miles from where I sit at this moment. The Van Winkle small batch bourbons are distilled there, also, including my hubby’s favorite, Pappy VanWinkle (20-year-old). I have a Pappy VanWinkle bourbon barrel in my family room that Julian VanWinkle III personally put aside for us. Woodford Reserve is a fine bourbon and know there are folks who like Bulleit, but once you’ve tried Pappy, you’ll have a hard time going back to the others. Of course, finding Pappy is difficult enough, but then you have to be willing to pay over $100 a bottle for it, too. The 23 yr is over $200 a bottle.

And true, a Buffalo Trace is the path they followed. Many of the highways here in Kentucky follow the routes the buffalo took when they traveled.


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: March 29, 2010, 2:47 pm

If my name was Van Winkle, I think I’d change it 🙂 .

And I never found anything too odd to be out of place in Berkeley (which I see the iPhone capitalizes for me), even hitler.

(Which the iPhone DIDN’T automatically capitalize)


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: March 29, 2010, 3:24 pm

We have a road-side waver in Vegas too – Mr. Happy. He has a guitar, (which he doesn’t play) while he dances and waves at everyone. Story is that he invented something, patened it and then sold the patent for a zillion dollars and will never have to work another day in his life. Sure enough, there’s a video of him out there.


Comment from Gromulin
Time: March 29, 2010, 5:01 pm

I have a Pappy VanWinkle bourbon barrel in my family room A full barrel of bourbon? The world needs more wimmins like you, Princess. Now that’s what I call home decor 🙂


Comment from Princess Bernie
Time: March 29, 2010, 7:05 pm

Gromulin, it’s empty, alas… But it smelled wonderful when I brought it home. I have a glass top on it and my hubby displays his bourbons on top of it.

It was pretty cool driving to the back of the distillery on a semi-clandestine mission to pick it up from the “regauge room.”


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: March 31, 2010, 1:20 am

I remember thinking years ago that at some moments of the evening, there were places in downtown Chicago that looked like a Hitler rally, with lots of people shooting their arms out. (They were of course trying to hail cabs.)


Comment from Hotrodelectric
Time: March 31, 2010, 1:51 am

I remember thinking years ago that at some moments of the evening, there were places in downtown Chicago that looked like a Hitler rally, with lots of people shooting their arms out. (They were of course trying to hail cabs.)

I hate Illinois Nazis.
/obligatory

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny