Meltdown in Mooseville
I come down out of a rugged mountain canyon onto a high dry plain. A small town is laid
out before me. 8:00 AM, time for breakfast.
"Welcome to Mooseville!"
A theme town, like Solvang - the Christmas town, or Hershey - the chocolate town,
Dollyville - the Dolly Parton town dominated by two large hills, the various totem pole
towns in Canada, Banff - the Japanese tourist town, other animal towns wild and domestic,
crop towns, "Old West" and "Old East" towns, towns of subcultures or
cute ethnics, TV star towns, ideology towns and racist towns. This town more a collection
of like-minded civic themes rather than a single corporate entity.
But why Moose, why this particular animal? Derived from the Natik
word "moos," supposedly descended from the Proto-Algonquian mooswa,
meaning "the animal that strips bark off of trees." Alces alces americana,
the largest member of the deer family with its distinctive palmate antlers and bulbous
nose. In Europe and Asia they are called elk, while our elk, the wapiti,
is a distinct North American species. Dangerous aggressive animals, their comeback has
sparked many unpleasant situations, even deaths, maybe their near cult status in popular
culture a particularly American fondness for the large and mean. But why here? Moose live
in wetlands, this valley dry and wasted, typical cattle country, probably hasn't been
Moose here in 150 years. Then I remember, the National Park some 100 miles east of
here, they must have Moose, Moosevillle along some sort of tourist route then, a day
trip into "The Wild West."
One main street maybe a quarter of a mile long. Moose-faced hoods on the arc lamps,
Moose street signs. Gift Shops in which one will find 30 different types of Moose
t-shirts in up to XXXXXL sizes, coffee cups painted with jiving rapping Moose, singing
Moose coin banks where you can fling coins into a slot using spring-driven antlers,
antlers you can purchase in soft wearable form...Moose dolls that poop chocolate-covered
coffee beans, Moose piloting every conceivable means of transportation from spaceships to
go-carts to submarines, Moose beverages, Moose ice cream, Moose pie.
In the middle of town is a tiny park, a few flowers and an immense cement Moose. Some
guy is watering it with a bright green plastic garden hose, obviously a daily ritual. He
looks Central American, probably wondering what he's doing so far from home hosing down a
huge cement animal...
I park and look for food...across the street is The Atomic Moose, a
retro 50's Western Sports Bar & Grill. They feature "The Early Moose
Special." A pack of Harleys is parked in front. Dakota bikers, the worse kind, or
German tourists who buy Harley leathers and cruise around and act like how they
"think" bikers should act. Even this time of the morning I can hear them inside
singing bawdy
Moose songs. I skip this experience. There! There's my place, The
Coffee Pot Cafe, complete with obligatory Moose face. Time to eat!
Inside I see no real Moose heads, a welcome relief yet proof that Moose are extinct
around here. Lots of blonde wood. Everything is made out of pine, an almost knotless
pine you can't get anymore. Tables, chairs, floors, walls and ceiling - all pine. A light
airy feeling. The Moose motif a series of laminated Moose scenes strung along the walls.
Made of darker wood and some of stacked laminate to give a 3D feel. Moose faces, Moose
family groupings, etc. Over the cash register is a TV...New Zealand sports
feed...avalanche snow boarding. The snow boarders are mourning their dead. Next is bungie
fishing. Line set so when you plunge off the bridge you are in the water just long enough
to snap up a fish w/ your teeth. Problem is the water's surface tension, if you don't hit
correctly you break your face. Or if there is a fish on the surface, then you end up w/
fish for a face...there are books and bookshelves everywhere, mostly paperbacks, but many
hardbound, many yellow with age. Mostly elderly in here, one lady has the shakes so bad
that she can barely eat her eggs. Three bikers, weekend bikers, probably insurance
salesmen when not out biking, middle age, clean cut, new leathers. The waitress is elderly
also, white bun of hair, pinched sunken face, very thin, her hands discolored and blue, a
sign of emphysema.
"What'll ya have?"
She has this weird habit of addressing the whole room when she speaks to you. Most
likely the owner, an ego establishment, where you have to listen to the owner's spiel if
you expect to get through breakfast...oh well..
"I'll have the biscuits with Moose gravy and a
pot-o-coffee."
Across the way one of the bikers is growling about draft dodgers, about
how he volunteered for Nam and how they are the scum of the earth. You'd think that
after 35 years that war would be over. This draft dodger hides his cowardly un-American
face behind his paper. The Patriot is espousing his own
peculiar form of Social Darwinism. His buddies are looking nervous, wishing he would shut
up. I wish him heart burn, boils, plagues of locusts. I turn to the paper, news of a
massacre west of here. Someone has killed every animal in sight along a 50 mile stretch of
county road this last night. High-powered rifles and a search light. Six or seven hundred
dead; deer, elk, antelope, bison, porcupine even jack rabbits. Left dead by the side of a
lonely dirt road. The Forest Service decries the waste of good meat...hunting season has
begun.
Here comes the food...the pot-o-coffee a black and silver plastic carafe. She again
addresses the room.
"You know I've read every one of those books?"
"oh yeah?"
" I took Evelyn Woods, I can read up to 9 pages a minute,
sometimes even more."
"Impressive!"
"You bet it is."
I work at my food...The biscuits stingy and mean, no matter how small I cut them they
refuse to soak up a pasty thick gravy quickly cooling to a jelly-like consistency peppered
sparsely with charred little chunks of gristly "Moose" meat. The bikers are
trundling one by one to the john. As The Patriot goes by. I resist a powerful urge to
stick a fork into his round face. I'm supposed to be a pacifist. The old woman is having a
particularly long episode of palsy, the eggs slip and slide, somehow making it to her
mouth. Her husband ignores her completely. The waitress is talking to them...
"Did you finish that box of books I lent you last
week?"
"uh, no."
"Well, when you're done let me know, I'll give you another
box."
As she turns the husband rumbles something I don't catch, something sarcastic.
Next the waitress addresses the bikers...
"Did you boys see a herd of elk just south of town this
morning?"
"no."
"Well, there was a party of bow hunters in here much earlier
lookin' for them."
"Ah," I think, "a
date with destiny."
Next it's my turn...
"How's yer meal?"
If only I could projectile vomit.
"well, fine."
"I wish I could be fine. Nothing fine about me!"
she turns to the room.
"These books."
she gestures to the overflowing shelves.
"Look at all these books. I've read every one of them, every
one. I have five times that number in the back. I get a new box every week. All that
reading...And for what? For WHAT I ask you?"
All those in the place suddenly intent on their eggs.
"For what? I could die in a day or a week or year, I'm 78
years old! I will die. There's nothing I can do about it. And all this...for what? I'll
tell you...For absolutely nothing!"
She hangs her head and stalks to the back of the room. There is a palatable sigh of
relief as she does, the place returns to normal. I feel sad for the woman, not that she is
going to die but that she has discovered a great truth but is oblivious to it, so many
people clinging to things, little chunks of ice to cling to as they drop over the falls,
for her a great pile of books...
I go to pay. After her tirade the waitress has disappeared, replaced by a much younger
woman, probably her granddaughter. I peruse the bookshelves. Books from every Swap Meet in
the country have been gathered here, mysteries, romance, Westerns, Science fiction, how
to, religious, autobiographical, biographical, science of every kind, philosophy,
humanities, government, songs, ballads, jokes, health, animal, encyclopedia, knowledge and
even books about prisons:
I step out into the mid-morning light of Mooseville...
Moose are not only expanding their range but they are
actively evolving as well. They are getting smaller, even more aggressive, coming
in new ranges of colors and interesting antler patterns are appearing. Now this could be
new territory stress or toxic wetlands or maybe some sort of "Uncertainty
Principle" is at work here. Moose was the first mammal besides man to appear in Genbank,
lately many of the nuclear genes have been sequenced. Could it be that by reading it's
code we have somehow changed it? A few years ago we sequenced Candida and a year later
flesh eating bacteria appeared. Or how corn helpfully doubled its DNA content ten
thousand years ago as humans first experimented with agriculture. I wonder what changes
are happening spontaneously to humans as our sequence is unraveled over the next thirty
years...
The bikers drive by going the other way. I wish them an interesting life,
an old Chinese curse. I take one last look at The Coffee Pot Cafe...time to get the hell
out of Mooseville.
So I do.
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