Our Summer Home in Wendell, Idaho.

 

Our rustic cottage on the outskirts of Wendell --

a bucolic Idaho town where the natives roll potatoes

down the streets each morning to keep the grass

from growing.

Lolling in our leather recliners the other day, Amy and I felt the need to get away from the brittle hurly-burly of Provo, with its obtuse academics and Silicon Valley wannabes. So we have rented a charming little villa in the midst of the wilds of Idaho.

We spend long weekends there now, soaking up the local color and reveling in the quaint traditions of the peasants. 

The manure-scented zephyrs and abundant road kill refresh our spirits. Clouds scud along the horizon like a billowy cattle stampede, and the corn is as high as a skunk's rheumy eye.

Stephano and Katrina, the caretakers of our rural retreat, greet us each morning with platters of potato knots, freshly churned butter, and parboiled alfalfa sprouts. Chickens in the doorway cluck happily while scratching lottery tickets.

The back forty, where we keep a few emus and 

mountain goats for their eggs, meat, and milk.

We had several yaks but they didn't care

for the liquor laws in Idaho and have

migrated to Nevada. 

 

Our days are filled with pleasant, non-stressful, activities -- such as skeet shooting, turkey raffles, and tenement removal. At night the peaceful rasp of armadillos mating with abandoned hubcaps lulls us into a deep refreshing sleep.

 Amy in a pensive mood, as she ponders the problem of

rural poverty, which condemns most rural residents to

a lifetime diet of milk, cream, potatoes, strawberries, and local unprocessed

meat -- all the time breathing nothing but

fresh mountain air.

 

The sleepy pace of life here along the frontage road suits us to a T.  The mail comes once a fortnight. The grocery store in town still gives Green Stamps. And the local bank only opens on Fridays, when the workers at the turpentine distillery get paid.

All in all, Amy and I are as happy about our decision to spend part of each week out here in the boondocks as a pig on an airplane. 

We hope you'll come visit us this summer, before the snow flies and the Visogoths return from Canada. We can promise you smoking platters of fried canal weed and a bed in the hayloft with the pigeons and earwigs!

And we'll only charge you by the hour.

The quilt on our bed is an authentic hand-woven Balkan

Coverlet -- sewn by Armenian albinos and bindlestiffs,

who settled this land a hundred years ago in

search of mascara deposits.