The night was moist and clingy like a BBQ-sauce-smeared wet nap.  A damp chill hung in the air like a BBQ-sauce-smeared wet nap.  OK, I’m out of similes.  I got nothing.  As fate would have it, there were far too many eateries and drinkeries within walking distance of our hotel to do any justice to the ghosts of Gettysburg.  In a spirits vs. spirits grudge-match in my world, the carboxyl group version trumps ectoplasm every time.  Some people shake at the sight of spirits; I shake when I don’t get enough of the other kind.

Prior to this year’s Thanksgiving feast, my sister sent me out into the wilds of Phoenix to retrieve something called a gravy separator. She typically chooses a “special job” that matches my talents (aka: a job that even I can’t screw up).  There is long history here of bringing back the wrong cooking sherry, the wrong cranberry sauce, or the wrong homeless person that I met at the bar on the way over.  She obviously decided to throw care into the wind this year by sending me to a large kitchen store.  This was clearly above my pay grade. It was not some recent increase in confidence, mind you, for the ‘just pick up some ice’ fiasco was still fresh on her mind (ice also has a drug slang connotation).   

This yarn is embellished approximately one-to-five percent due to age-related cognitive-decline, also known in certain Discord circles as Dave Atsals’ Syndrome (DAS).  This tale is going to sound fictitious, like many of my stories, but I can assure you that those who knew me in the eighties and nineties would understand.  You see, I settled down in the twenty-first century, when Dean Moriarty somehow morphed quietly into Ward Cleaver. Anyway, back in the Bruce Springsteenesque glory days, the night was dark and stormy.  OK, the moon was very full, which may or may not have inspired me to dress like Lon Cheney’s version of the Wolfman.  You know, old school.  This was before American Werewolf in London, before Underworld, or even before Old School, for that matter.  Back in those days we only had Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Warren Zevon to frighten us.  If that didn’t work, my GPA usually did the trick.