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XVII
Montana Elephant Spring
In the spring of '82 while Richard was teaching here, the two of us came
up with perhaps one of the stupidest spectacles of all times: Montana
Elephant Spring. It all started when Richard and I would bar-hop through
the wet snow at night. He was trying to impress a barmaid at a place
called the Show Shoe Bar. He had already confiscated my only copy (signed)
of Willard and His Bowling Trophies and signed it over to her. She had
never heard of it before but thought the cover was "kinda cute." When that
didn't work, we used the ol' Elephant Man attention getter. I had a hat
(sheep herder's) that I got when I was in the Peace Corps in Turkey. If I
pulled it all the way down over my head, I looked a little like the
Elephant Man. The effect was complete when Richard paraded me around bars
like my trainer, and I slobbered through my hat, "I'm not an animal. I'm
an English Professor." But this also had little or no effect on the
oblivious barmaid. However, a couple of days later, the image returned to
Richard, and he came up with a plan. "Let's put on a play at the Eagles,"
he said. As usual, I was game. And here is the plan as it ultimately
evolved. We were to somehow get a half dozen barrel-shaped 50s-style
vacuum cleaners with long hoses; a metal wash tub full of mud; our friend
Brad; Brad's wife, Georgia; Georgia's sister, Mary; and a plumbing
plunger. We were then to take all of these people and this equipment and
put it on the stage of the Eagles Bar. I was to get in front of a
microphone in typical elephant posture and slobber my professional woes
out to the audience while Richard worked the plunger in the tub of mud and
the Donovan's shouted words of encouragement. And of course, all of the
vacuum cleaners would be running and spread out symmetrically before us.
But, as usual, the plan died down when Judy, upon hearing of it,
confronted Richard with, "And what do you think the cowboys and old farts
in the Eagles are going to do to you if you to through with this?"
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index |