WHEN JEFF COMES TO TOWN

Yes sir, ol’ “Fat” himself, Mr. Jeff Wilson from Killeen, TX, and famous for his “Fathairybastard” Blog came to see ol’ Mushy for a couple of days this week. This is his third trip and each trip seems to bring us closer together. He’s like a brother to me and I thoroughly enjoy his visits. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed his company so much this time that I followed him part of the way home, to Memphis, just to spend the best of three more days with him – but more on that in the next post!

Jeff got into town on Monday and we headed for the “Good Ol’ days Diner” for a quick lunch. Judy and I decided to feed him enough to get him to Ozone Falls and up on Black Mountain, and then on to Big Ed’s Pizza for supper! We weren’t about to let the boy go hungry!

Jeff loved the huge boulders upon on Black Mountain and promised to come back when all the copperheads were hibernating! However, we did get to the top of one overlook and walked beneath one of the rock over hangs where Indians camped long ago when on “long hunts”.

Finally, we got to one of the things he insisted we do again, and that’s visit Big Ed’s and share a pizza. Terri and Steve met us there and we really enjoyed ourselves over a pizza and beer feast. To our surprise, Big Ed has branched out is now offering a wider selection of draft beers – Fat Tire and Yuengling, to name a couple. What a difference variety makes in the world of beer! (There will be more on what we ate over the last few days on mushyscookings.blogspot.com, later in the week.) We split a couple of pitchers and then broke for my house again.

If there’s anything the boy likes more than pizza and beer, it’s sitting on my back porch with a cigar, a beer, listening to my tunes, and looking out over the lake. The screened porch is situated in such a way that you feel like you are high up in a big tree-house. This July has been unusually wet for East Tennessee and everything is still deeply green and clean looking. When the pollen subsides, I too like to sit our there as much as Judy does. She’s out there reading as I write!

Tuesday morning came and we met Neena and Ron at Mimis Cafe for breakfast. After a very satisfying meal, we broke into teams…the Dragons deciding to go shopping in Turkey Creek, while we, manly men, took off for Smoky Mountain Knife Works and Bass Pro Shops in Sevierville, TN!

As you can see Jeff was in hog-heaven at the knife store. I think he touched almost all of them and they got a lot!

So, with the shopping over, we headed back to Gander Mountain to kill time until it was time to meet the ladies, and my son Corey. We finally got to the third place Jeff made me promise to take him back to…Wild Wings Cafe! As Corey is fond of saying, there was plenty of “carnage” after the meal!

We wanted to drop by Steve’s afterwards and shoot Jeff’s M-16, but the rains came and forced us back on the porch. Only the smell of gun powder and sounds from yesteryear could have made the evening better. Like I said, the boy likes his cigars and if you note in one of these shots he has a big tooth pick stuck through the butt of a cigar. He’s “toking” that thing like it was a joint or something! I said something about tar, but he just says, “Dude, these things are expensive!”

Jeff bought the Colt AR-15 (M-16) just because it was early Vietnam vintage and looked just like the one I had in ‘Nam. Here’s a “then and now” shot for you viewing pleasure. No laughing or pointing out what is obvious either guys! I think the photo was worth the price of the firearm to Jeff, who took great pride in bringing a “piss-pot” for me to better re-enact the “mail room” shot from DaNang I had taken sometime in 1966.

Oh yes, if I don’t mention the gun anymore in the Memphis post, please remind me…it plays into another good part later! Of course, Jeff may mention it before me…so check his post out first…if he does I won’t rub it in any more!

Wednesday morning found Judy and I in our car headed for Memphis, with Jeff following along behind us. I was leading the way taking directions from the bossy lady in the GPS and we made it to Memphis in about five and half hours. We booked into the Westin, just a block from Beale Street and set out for our next adventures!

As Jim “Suldog” Sullivan is known to say… I’ll be back with “More better stuff!”