Yesterday afternoon, while I was helping Mr. Brett set the three remaining columns on the porch, I found out that he was havin’ a hankerin’ for Mt. Hamill chicken.

We left for town around 4:30 and met up with the 1-Stop Rental crew for a bit. Jason was in the middle of balancing the till, but still had the manners to say “thank you” when I told him he was cute, and didn’t get pissed off when I bolted the front door and then proceeded to push it open.

Joe hopped in Brett’s truck with us, and we followed Bo home and picked him up, and off we went to find fried chicken!

In Mt. Hamill Iowa, a town consisting of a dirt road and about five buildings, there is a rather large tavern that serves the best fried chicken in the world. The t-shirts you can buy there say, “To get a better piece of chicken, you have to be a rooster!”

I don’t eat chicken, of course, having a trendy eating disorder and all, but the stuff does appear to have a lovely beer batter on it, and you really can’t go wrong with beer batter. But they have a salad bar and they make cocktails, and plus Brett probably wouldn’t leave me at home anyway ’cause he’s bossy like that, so I usually end up going even though I couldn’t care less about fried chicken.

Anyway, there was a cluster of pre-teens in front of the jukebox playing AC/DC songs and singing along that warmed the cockles of Joe’s heart, and Brett was just so damned pleased to be eating fried chicken after craving it all day that I thought my heart would burst for being happy for him. Bo just seemed mellow and glad to be out somewhere.

When you order the chicken dinner at Mt. Hamill, you get half a fried chicken, french fries, cole slaw, a couple of dill pickle chips, and a single piece of white bread with margarine on it. This bounty comes on a styrofoam plate and the meal is piled about four inches deep. The waitresses – there are at least six of them at any given time – never use trays and can carry six or eight of these meals each. On a busy night, the kitchen goes through a thousand whole chickens. Any time after 6, it’s standing room only in there, and you never get your dinner in fewer than thirty minutes after ordering. People pour in and out the doors all night, the bar is busy, the waitresses defy laws of physics, and kids run around screaming while the empty beer bottles pile up on their parents tables.

The whole place is a trip.

After eating we rode back to Fairfield in silence, digesting and listening to disc #3 of Brett’s new Gov’t Mule album, “LIVE… With a Little Help From Our Friends.” We dropped Bo & Joe at their place and headed home ourselves.

After a brief restover we headed up to the Ba-tavern; they were having a Mardi Gras thing and had hired the Jefferson County Green Band to play. I’d declared the week before that my intention was to go there, get shit faced, and be useless the next day – a goal I accomplished, thank you very much.

Brett, bless his heart, actually managed to hang out until midnight before he started making noises about wanting to leave.

The band was there, Misty was there, and a few folks from the Fairfield contingent were there, but mostly it was the usual Ned’s Place crowd. They were giving away beads with drinks, and there was a raffle for t-shirts and masks, and the band sounded good, and it was HOT AS HELL in there. I danced my ass off, drank a few more cocktails than I needed, sang a blues song, and was home in my own kitchen by 12:24 AM.

Mr. Brett sent me to bed when he realized how wasted I was. At some point in the night I took my pillows and moved into the office because – I think – I was rocking and Brett kept trying to get me to stop and it was pissing me off. All I know is that at nine this morning when Brett woke me up I wasn’t in our room, I was on the daybed in the office, and he was trying to get me to make good on my drunken promise of morning nookie. Unfortunately, women have no honor: I failed to keep my word and basically hissed some gross hangover breath at him, groaned, and rolled back over. He either chuckled or sighed, I’m not really sure which, and left me alone.

I officially got out of bed at 1:33 this afternoon.

Yes! I totally partied!