Howdy and Happy Halloween

At the Gillette bars on Halloween, there were real-life, honest-to-God cowboys. Then there were men dressed in costume as cowboys.

"How could you tell the difference?" a friend asked.

Well, the look of irony on the faces of the costumed cowboys, mostly. And their lack of tans. And some of the costumed wore ridiculous accoutrements that even novices like me realized were inappropriate. For instance, real cowboys don't wear leather vests with fringe.



That's plain stupid. Why would a cowboy wear a leather fringe vest? In ranching, function always trumps fashion. The bandanas around their necks protect them from the sun and cover their mouths during dust storms. The cowboy hats protect their heads from sunburn and the hats' wide brims provide shade. The denim protects from injury. Ditto with the long-sleeves.


My drink for Halloween was amaretto sour. We started at a bar called Tower West, a nod to Devil's Tower to the east, and part of the Best Western hotel. I like Tower. And the amaretto sours cost only $3.75. Sure they were watered down, but it was the beginning of the night. I was just getting started. (You couldn't buy a beer in Salt Lake City for $3.75. Well, maybe if it was some piss beer like Bud.)




Then we went to the Montgomery. It's got more of a scene than Tower West, but it's also slightly divey, with the stuffing coming out of the vinyl chairs. So of course, it would make absolute sense that amaretto sours cost $4.50.

There was a contest in which you held a pumpkin and guessed its weight. The winner would receive a prize, the DJ said. He gave us a hint, the pumpkin weighed less than 20 pounds.

"Well, shit," I told G. as we were standing in line to guess the weight, already feeling the effects of my third or fourth drink. "If a guy wins this, it will be a fluke."

Babies weigh less than 20 pounds. Even I know that. And I have questionable maternal instincts.

I think my physician's husband may be a stay-at-home dad. Otherwise, I don't know of any men in this town who are so involved in their infants' lives that they attend pediatrician checkups. Hell, I don't know of many men like that anywhere on the planet.

My drunken strategy was estimate the pumpkin's weight based on small dog weight (SDW) since I have more experience with small dogs than with small humans.



My (late) poodle-bichon Max weighed 14 pounds at his heaviest. Chloe is 11 pounds. Jack, my mom's Yorkie, is 5.5 pounds.

They put the pumpkin in my hands. I cradled it, like a dog-baby. It was heavier than Chloe. But not as big as Max at his biggest.

I figured it was somewhere in the 13-pound range. As for ounces, I just guessed: 13.2.

It turned out, I won!




What did I win?

"The pumpkin, of course," you reply.

You're wrong.

I got a stupid Miller Lite baseball cap.


Then we went to Mingles -- an establishment with a "South Park"-eque name but a smoke-free environment that I like -- but there was a Beastie Boys cover band and we didn't want to pay $5 to hear renditions of "Brass Monkey."

We tried a couple liquor stores, thinking we'd just go to someone's house and play drinking games but they were all closed, except for some at the south end of town, near Jake's Tavern, where an amaretto sour with a shot of amaretto on the side (I wanted to taste some fuel in my drink) cost, I believe, close to 10 bucks.

Then I crashed. I don't know if it was because of Halloween, but the crowd at Jake's was weird. A little bit hick and a little bit skank. The band was doing covers of hair bands. I had drunk too much too fast. Even K., who is usually a fun drunk, was bummed because he said "hi" to his step-brother and his step-brother's wife and she turned to her husband and said, "Who the f--- is that?" And his step-brother shrugged his shoulders like, "I don't know." True, K. was dressed as Jack (his girlfriend was Jill) but he didn't have a mask on his face. Just a hat and mustache.

I convinced my friend to give me a ride home.

The end.