Oh so much to report from our wild and wacky getaway to scenic Greensboro. Since I can ramble for ten pages on one damn four-minute song, I’ll try to control myself. Aw, hell, who am I kidding? No, I won’t. But I *will* break it up to make each installment slightly less painful.
First of all, if Top Management thought me a schlub, she did a marvelous job of hiding it. The car ride was a joy. We talked, we laughed, we canoodled—it was fantastic. We stopped when we felt like eating, we didn’t when we didn’t, and by God if we saw a place called Concrete World on the way down and vowed to stop on the way back, well, we did just that.
And did we see some magnificent concrete lawn sculptures when we did indeed stop at Concrete World on our way back up? We did not. But we did see thousands of concrete lawn sculptures, so the quantity sort of made up for the lack of quality. I mean, we’re talking thousands and thousands and thousands of these buggers, obviously far too many to bring in at night. So they must just leave them out there on the lot after closing time. How is it that they’re not almost wiped out every single night? This place is a goldmine of concrete art, just sitting right there for the taking! You know, I think I'm less impressed with humanity's obvious innate goodness than their clear laziness. Just pull up a truck and drive away with priceless concretery!
So. There were hundreds of just different frog sculptures alone, some humanoid, some froggy, some big, some small, some happy, some sad, some dancing, some playing the banjo. Altogether I would guess there were twenty different frog designs and/or sizes with between five and twenty of each design. And that was just the tip o’ the iceberg…although, oddly enough, we didn’t actually see any concrete icebergs, come to think of it. Boy, are they missing out on a sales bonanza! Ooh! Ooh! With a concrete Titanic crashing into it! TELL me that’s not a guaranteed best-seller!
There were dwarfs and gnomes and Cabbage Patch dolls and elephants and giraffes and cows and pigs—some really quite large and realistic and therefore, I would have thought, unappetizing to look at. I was impressed with the artistry with which they’d rendered the pig’s…uh…hmmm…rectal area—and you couldn’t help but notice, if you were walking behind it as we were, so large was the entire pig and, therefore, that particular area—but jeez…who wants that? And who wants the kind of people who want that to be in your damn store?
There were concrete tables with mushrooms for the seats. There was a little naked boy gazing down at a bunny he held in his lap, the bunny reaching up to rub noses with the boy. It could have been sweet if it weren’t so freaky and disturbing. Dude. Put some damn clothes on before you put the bunny in your lap. Sheesh. Does that really need to be said? I mean, really.
Lots of fountains, too, including several of boys urinating. And they say the blue states are full of degenerates? Pig anusi, bunny-fondling and little boys peeing. Maybe I just don’t understand. If so, I hope that doesn’t change.
But I don’t mean to criticize Concrete World overly—believe it or not, I really don’t. We had a lovely fifteen minutes there and bought, yes, a frog. In fact, two frogs, since one big frog is giving another tiny frog a piggyback ride. We’re going to put it out under a tree in our yard and see how long it takes the girls to discover.
In fact, Top Management and I decided that, when our ship comes in—and it’s been so damn long in coming that it’s gonna be loaded for bear when it does finally dock, to mix a couple metaphors horrifically—we’re going to spend a couple hundred bucks at Concrete World, buying their less-disturbing pieces and scattering them around the yard, so maybe all you see are some ducks almost entirely hidden under a bush, say. And when we do, we’ll see if we can’t get one of them Titanic pieces made.
Although, it now occurs to me…that ship we’ve been waiting for? Damn…what if that WAS the Titanic? Would certainly explain a thing or two…
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