Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins Page B

CAPT. KENDRICK MEMORIAL HOT DOG WILDLIFE PRESERVE . That's how the sign read, in letters the height of Jewish ghetto tailors.
    “Shame on you, Mr. Hansen,” Amanda said. “You don't know your local history.”
    “Well, I thought I did.”
    “Captain John Kendrick. You can look him up in
History of the Pacific Northwest
by George W. Fuller. Captain Kendrick was one of the first fur traders and explorers to operate in the Puget Sound region. Came here in 1788. On slim evidence he was reported to be the first white man to navigate the Strait of Juan de Fuca and to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. He did quite a bit of exploring but unfortunately he neglected to leave any records of his discoveries. History has repaid him for that oversight by generally ignoring him. After about five years here, he tired of the Northwest skin trade and set sail for the Sandwich Islands. He arrived on December 12, 1794 and was immediately killed by a shot from a British ship which was saluting him.”
    “Oh, awful,” said Farmer Hansen, with a Nordic insensitivity to irony. He drove away in his truck. Farmer Hansen had five children attending public schools in Mount Vernon and Conway. Perhaps that explains why it is now common belief among Skagit County pupils that Capt. John Kendrick invented the weenie sandwich in 1794.
    Amanda climbed to the top of a big spruce tree, the better to absorb the Skagit twilight. She climbed slowly, using only one hand, for with the other arm she cradled her belly much as an avid bowler holds his favorite ball.
    The sky was afloat with raw oysters and dead nuns, a grim canopy beneath which flew wild ducks by the dozens. It was a green sunset. The reds, the oranges, the purples which Amanda automatically associated with sunsets had been snuffed out in the soggy cloud pile, and the nearly invisible sun that sank—beyond the fields, sloughs, rock islands and tide flats—into Puget Sound, it looked like an unripe olive photographed through gauze.
    From her perch Amanda could watch Baby Thor as he played on the moss near the base of the tree. And she could watch John Paul as he nailed silhouettes of sausages to the newly painted facade of the cafe. The sausages, about two feet in length, had been cut from plywood and covered with diffraction grating, a thin, synthetic, metallic silver material that picks up light and diffracts it so that its shiny surface is constantly rainbowed with moving spectra.
    It is amazing, thought Amanda, how John Paul's weenie cutouts succinctly advertise our good common indigenous merchandise while at the same time suggesting the virility fetishes of numerous African tribes. I'm glad that John Paul recognizes that they are images of pleasure not of domination.
    Amanda rested quietly in the boughs. Although the mid-October skies were gray, the air remained mild and mellow and she was comfortable in a cactus-colored corduroy jump suit beneath which there was not a thread of hampering underwear. She had devoted the day to arranging furnishings in the upstairs apartment, caring for Thor and baking panfuls of her notorious breads. Now she was due a rest. As she rested, she thought of many things. She thought of Life and said to herself, “It's okay. I want more of it.” She thought of Death and said to herself, “If I fall out of this frigging treetop, I'll soon enough learn its secrets.”
    She thought of the planar fields—some plowed dark brown, others yellow-green with cabbage or broccoli left deliberately to seed—that straightened toward the horizon in every direction, the ones to the east tilting into hills, the ones to the west falling off into the Sound with a slow fuzzy expansiveness, and she said to herself, “Although the surface of our planet is two-thirds water, we call it the Earth. We say we are earthlings, not waterlings. Our blood is closer to seawater than our bones to soil, but that's no matter. The sea is the cradle we all rocked out of, but it's to dust that we