Snake Dancing across Highway 89, Afton, Wyoming
I arrived in Afton knowing where the high school was, and that a "snake dance," bonfire and powderpuff football game were on the schedule. Stopped in at Rulon's Burger Barn/Sinclair Gas station for some calories and information. Chocolate Zingers do not constitute nutrition, and the bonfire was built behind the teacher's parking lot at the school.
Watched about 30 minutes of a junior varsity game, where the Shelley, Idaho Russets were pounding the home team Star Valley Braves - it looked like some three-time sophomores had been eating more than their share of potatoes.
Three school buses drove the Snake Dance participants from the high school to downtown. Flashing blues stopped traffic on U.S. 89 so that two hundred students could hold hands and run through the Taco Time, a gift shop, and across the highway under the world's largest elk antler arch. Very loudly.
I got back to the high school just in time to see the bonfire, topped off with a stuffed tiger (mascot of the varsity opponents from Lander, Wyoming), collapse sideways, spraying a shower of sparks. No one got hurt. Photo time pretty much over. I didn't stay for the powder puff football game (senior girls won over the juniors) because I had at least four hours on the road ahead of me.
Highway 89 was closed in between Montpelier and Geneva for road construction, so I detoured through Randolph, Utah to get home. A new path for me, but since it was dark, I concentrated on not killing any wildlife.
Driving on my own, I am a terrible radio station flipper. Could only get a few AM radio stations. Heard the pre-game show for the UNM football game, out of station in Albuquerque. Switched past some ultra-conservative on a Las Vegas area station. The kind of program I call shout radio. These guys aren't really experts on any of the issues, only at at ridiculing people who disagree with them. It's like talking with a drunk - they take a inciteful position, shout over people, and never back off to consider a caller's point. That's not a conversation, but for what it is, listening to willing victims call up to be insulted, was slightly more amusing than driving to soft choir hits of the last century. One program in particular held my attention for a long time because the signal was blending randomly with Frank Sinatra and old jazz standards, an interesting medley of the pretty and the truly ugly.
Somewhere between Randolph and Huntsville I switched over to a real call-in show about extraterrestrials. I always thought that was a tired sit-com joke, not a real genre on the airwaves. It kept me awake, and I did not hit the deer, a skunk, a rabbit. Eight hours in the car for a chance at a photo. Such is the progress on this project these days.
Comments (1)
That would have probably been Coast to Coast AM you were listening to. http://www.coasttocoastam.com
Posted by No One | October 22, 2007 12:15 PM
Posted on October 22, 2007 12:15