Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins Page A

pooper. He'll eat pig flesh and pretend it's pork. He'll devour a chicken but not a kitten, a turkey but not a Turk. It isn't that he is principled, particularly. In fact, we all gut somebody every day. But it's sneaky, symbolic, unappetizing, ego-supportive, duty to God and country—never with a good pot roast in mind. No cheerful, honest cannibalism. Alas, alas.”
    Amanda was not much swayed by John Paul's remarks. Incidentally, though, her vegetarian sentiments received a bit of a shake a few months later when Marx Marvelous said to her: “The cow became a sacred symbol to the Hindu because it gave milk and chops and hides. It nourished the babies and kept the old folks warm. Because it provided so many good life-supporting things, it was regarded as an embodiment of the Universal Mother, hence holy. Then it occurred to some monk or other, some abstract scholarly kook, as you would say, that gee, folks, since the cow is holy we maybe shouldn't be eating it and robbing its udder. So now the Hindu has got sacred cows up to here but no more milk and steaks. They starve in plain view of holy herds so big only Hopalong Cassidy could stop them if they took a notion to stampede. The spiritual man's beef against beef is the result of a classic distortion. It's another case of lost origins and inverted values.” But that was Marx Marvelous and that came later.
    For the present, they worked it out. They had to. While the interior of the cafe was now clean and freshly painted, the exterior had hardly been touched. A warning: the sky bulged like the sooty cheeks of an urban snowman—it hadn't rained yet but it wouldn't be long. The downpour was overdue. Action was required. So, Amanda reluctantly gave her consent to frankfurters and, in concession, John Paul agreed to a ban on dangerous fluids such as coffee and soda pop. For beverages they would serve the juices of fruits and vegetables. Amanda would squeeze them fresh in her automatic juicer. She had fun planning zesty combinations. Apple-papaya juice, for example. Carrot-orange. Spinach-tomato-cucumber. Good health to all! “People will think this a real funny place,” said Ziller, “when they can't buy their coffee and Coca-Cola.”
    It was a funny place anyway. A roadside zoo with no animals. Except two garter snakes and a tsetse fly. And the tsetse fly was not even alive.
    A trailer of rain fell for an hour at sunrise, but the afternoon was dry. The hot dog was erected on the roof of the cafe. It looked good. It could be seen for miles.
    Ziller's magnificent sausage became a landmark in Skagit County. Directions were given in relation to it. “Turn right a couple hundred yards past the big weenie,” some helpful farmer might say. From that time on, Mount Vernon school children would be obliged to compose annual essays on “The Sausage: Its Origin, Its Meaning and Its Cure.”
    To this day it hovers in plump passivity above the fertile fields. It is a perfect emblem for the people and the land.
    A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquillity in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.
    Consider the peaceful repose of the sausage compared with the aggressiveness and violence of bacon.
    "Er, ah, this quite an interesting place you fixing up here.” The speaker was Gunnar Hansen, a thirty-fivish pea farmer from down the road a ways.
    “Thank you, Mr. Hansen,” smiled Amanda.
    Gunnar Hansen. Yes. This mystic old Chinese valley (with Dutch undertones) in northwestern America is inhabited almost exclusively by Scandinavians.
    “But you folks, your name ain't Kendrick,” Farmer Hansen said with uncertainty.
    “No,” Amanda assured him, “our name is Ziller.”
    “Well, er, ah, who's this Kendrick?” asked Farmer Hansen, trying to sound jocular through an accent the color of a midwinter suicide. He was nodding his tombstone head at the new neon-bordered sign that stretched across the roadhouse facade just below the great giant sausage: