claudia's surf city, ozarks

I'm bummed. I don't know why I wanted to buy a gas station in the Ozarks near the Eleven Point River. I mean, the price was right: $24,000. But it's not like I need another piece of property or can afford it or even plan to live there. "You just want to have it, don't you?" asked Citichild. Well, yes. I did. In fact, by yesterday I sort of had my heart set on it and was hoping someone would just give it to me. Dangerman said he'd chip in ten bucks. I would never have to stay in the Honeymoon Suite in the Ramada across from the Wal-Mart in West Plains, Mo., again—an easy savings of $500 a year. And that was good, especially now that the Ramada is under new management. But then I got the word: the future Claudia's Surf City, Ozarks branch, has been sold. The closing is Friday. Oh well, let somebody else sweat lead bullets about the probable EPA nightmare that lurks under the surface of that innocuous-looking yard. Wouldn't my logo have looked great on that wall, though, with the surfboards and refirgerator out on the redneck patio?
I guess the gas-station fetish got started earlier in the trip when I visited the UCM Museum (say it out loud) in Abita Springs, Louisiana. It's a way-cool roadside attraction in the old style, created by a wacko conceptual artist and his friends, among them my cousin, who contibuted a Christmas wreath made of a piece of chainlink fence with paper cups stuffed in it. The museum has the Amazing Bassigator, funny animatronics and just stuff encrusted all over the walls—bottle caps, cell phones, motherboards, mosaics, signs and sayings. My cousin and her friends have a few other pet projects, too, like the Queen Bee Social and Pleasure Club which swarms in beehives and stingers at such occasions as the local Mardi Gras parade with its decorated lawn mower floats (definitely look at these pix). The bees used to smear honey on nice lookin' drones and then lick it off, but they aren't as nasty now that they're mama bees.
The UCM sensibility threads through it all. I scored a Freud action figure there, as well as a Van Gogh's ear air freshener. I knew I was gonna love it as soon as I saw the entrance, an old, old gas station.
Sigh.