I think I see a sign

Before we go any further I feel it needs to be said that the Nup came over the other day and, randomly, broke into the worst song ever written by humankind: Cool Change by the Little River Band, a song containing the line: "The albatross and the whale, they are my brothers."

Dear god.

Moving on. If my site had a search thing, I could try and figure out whether I have ever discussed Stuckey's, not a place you are likely to recall if you are even three minutes younger than myself. Surely I have spoken of the chant my brother made up in the late 70's as we rolled across dusty godforsaken stretches of lifeless Utah interstate in an Econoline van, bound for Arkansas:

I think I see a sign
And it's gonna say Stuckey's
And it's gonna be fine
We're gonna get a smokin' monkey

Stuckey's is a haunting shack of bygone days that once beckoned to summer road tripping backseat brats when the Little River Band ruled the airwaves. It contained vast bins of jiggling, dirt-stained bendy guys with snapped wires sticking out of their rubber thighs, and dried bird poop paper weights with glued-on plastic google eyes, and varnished spanking paddles with some weird, suggestive grandpa joke written across them in cursive script. Your parents might stop there because it was the only bathroom until Jackson Hole, still another 237 miles up the road, but damn the toilets, if you were under 12, you'd sit there fighting over the Walkman tape player loaded up with a threadbare TDK60 copy of Journey's Infinity to kill the time while dreaming of the motherlode: a smokin' monkey.