Sweaty hamburgers and flat soda...mmm...mmm..GOOD!

So yesterday was one of THOSE days.
Yep...I just couldn't get my head around all the cocksuckery abounding in every direction...

Sometimes humor can't fix it and yesterday was one of THOSE days...

But today is different. I have a whole new attitude about it.

"Fuck it."

That's the attitude...

Today I'd like to tell you about Stans.There has always been two places other than Nana and Pa's house that have been a constant in my family's lives.The good old American Legion (where ALL of our anniversary bashes and parties have taken place) and a run down shack called Stans.

Stans was literally a condemned building, ready to fall in on itself. It had been this was for DECADES! I'm not even shitting you.
Of course that didn't stop every idiot Swede(and everyone else within miles of it)from stepping inside to grab some breakfast or lunch and some local gossip.
It was THE place to be if you were at the lake. Lake Man frequented the place more often than anyone else in my family and probably purchased the greatest majority of his meals from Stans.
The guy who owned the store(Stan)lived there with his parents who purchased the ramshackle place back in the 60's from the original owner who opened the store and rental cabins back in the early 1900's.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe they bought the place with all of the original inventory and to my knowledge I don't think they so much as cleaned the place or did anything to it when they bought it.
And it was in sad shape.
The whole store was dingy...dark..with a low ceiling. The windows were warped and the screens rusty. Inventory was piled in corners and stuff hung everywhere. The shelves were crammed with things in boxes covered in dust.

If you wanted a special birthday card for someone that NO ONE else would be giving them?



You could find it at Stans where it had originally been sold when it first came out fifty years earlier...LOL

How about some of that cool hair pomenade the drugstore stopped carrying?



Yep...Stans...He probably had a couple cases of it on a shelf somewhere....

If it was OLD and OUTDATED Stan's carried it.

He was a grizzled old dude,a little on the chubby side who always had a twinkle in his eye. He reminded me of a mix between Grizzly Adams and Santa.



And it is UNCANNY how much this picture I found looks like him...wow.

The store sat on the shore midway between the end of the road that nearly circled the lake so it was became a make shift meeting place for all the residents, complete with mailboxes for everyone.
You could even buy gasoline from an old fashioned pump that still worked. It was cool as shit too...

He had a small kitchen in the back where he cooked breakfast or hamburgers and hotdogs.
Not just any kind of hotdog either...

RED hotdogs...the kind of thing you'd want to have if you were cracking open a bottle of Moxie and tearing open a bag of Salt and Vinegar chips.



NUMMY!!!

My friend Paul and I would spend summers at the lake, swimming and wreaking havoc. The Lutheran church I attended always had some kind of activity going on right there at Stan's, mainly because two of the youth leaders had a camp right across the street from Stans.

I always love going in the store and thought it was the neatest place around.
The old damp smell of wood and coffee lingered in the air. Dusty shelves hid boxes of treasures and made it a great place to hang out and investigate...
There were boxes of fancy embroidered hankies to go through...playing cards with the Little Rascals on them...view masters..the OLD kind...with pictures of Niagara Falls and Mount McKinley in Alaska...
Once we even found old hat boxes,with several hats from the fifties in them and tried them on.
Stan would just laugh at us...he was really a good hearted man. He definitely didn't have a problem with anyone looking through his stuff. And in the event that someone might find something they wanted still marked 25 cents, he'd always ask them what they thought would be a fair price. He wasn't a greedy man at all and fair almost to the point that's he'd practically give things away.
To my knowledge he was the only place that still served 10 cent coffee up until the place closed several years ago. That was one of the things people always said about Stans..."Home of the 10 cent cup of coffee."

If Paul and I grew tired of looking for treasure then there was always some thing else to entertain us...playing cards or listening to music. There was always someone sitting around playing hearts and cribbage.
We"d sit in these red leather booths that Stan had picked up when they closed the Tastee Freeze and watch everything. The booths sat along the wall in the back, up against the windows so you could look out onto the lake while you ate or played cards.
Actually Stan's is where I learned how to play cribbage. Old Pokey Peterson taught Paul and I how to play one afternoon. The the rain came pouring out of the sky in torrents and we were forced out of the lake and into Stans.
We listened to the rain dance on the roof while a cool breeze blew in through the screened windows.Mr.Johnson and Mr.Sjoberg played swedish polka music on the guitar and accordian...and we learned how to play cribbage.

How odd that I can remember it so clearly...just like it was yesterday. I can almost taste the hamburgers and salt and vinegar chips...taste the strawberry Brunswick soda...nice memories.

Of course all good things must come to an end...
When we got older, Paul mentioned something one day that forever turned me off from eating hamburgers at Stans. He said, "Have you ever noticed how Stan will stand with his hands tucked in his armpits?"
I replied."Yeah."
Then Paul said," Have you looked at his armpits?"
I looked...



ARMPIT SWEAT!!! TONS OF IT!!!

So Paul looks at me and asks me, "Have you ever thought about Stan, standing around with his hands tucked in his armpits and then stepping in the back to slap together a nice juicy hamburger to throw on the grill?"

Of course I HADN'T thought about but from that day forth, I never touched another one of Stan's hamburgers...

It's too bad really because I'm sure it wouldn't have killed me. God..I can't imagine the shit that we eat every day we're not even aware of. And quite honestly, I miss Stans.

Like I said...it was a place my family always went to when everyone was home. I went there as a kid..as an adult and even when I'd go home to visit after I moved to West Virginia.
Every fourth of July it was a meeting place for everyone to watch fire works go off. They'd take the fireworks and set them off in the middle of the lake. It was always such a beautiful sight..the reflection of the fireworks on the water...

There'd be music..food...drinking..boating...just lots of fun. You'd get a chance to see everybody and get caught up with the goings-on in town.

Yep...Stans...
He finally got too old to take care of the place so he sold it. A couple of younger guys bought it, thinking they'd fix it up and make it into a bar and restaurant. Of course before they tore the place down, they didn't bother to check into the zoning laws and discovered too late that they couldn't construct a new building on the property bordering the shoreline.

So now there is nothing where Stans used to be....

Well that's all I've got for your today.

Yesterday was shitty, but you know what they say about that...."When things get shitty, put on your waders and muck your way through it."

And let me tell you what. I make wearing waders damn sexy so don't you forget it...



That's right! Don't hate me cause you ain't me!

IN case I don't make it back tomorrow, have a great weekend! See ya Monday!