Calling all carnivores!

If this doesn't put you off beef for good, there's no hope.

No matter which way the wind is blowing in Dalhart, Texas, you can smell it. The locals call it "the smell of money," when really it's just the smell of cow butt. I call it "the smell of death."

Twice a year for the past 20 years I have driven through Dalhart on my way to and from New Mexico, and I have never grown accustomed to the stench and the sheer size of the dung heaps that lurk on the edge of town. As you head west out of Dalhart on Highway 54 you can literally see a murky dome of methane looming ahead. Warning: ROLL UP THE WINDOWS and PUT YOUR AC ON RECIRCULATE!!!

And as you get closer to the cloud, you'll start to see brown dots on the horizon. Those dots are cows -- tens of thousands of heads of cattle -- as far as the eye can see. They are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder into two massive feedlots on either side of the highway. You've never seen anything like this anywhere.

Regardless of my revulsion, this is an amazing vista. (The above picture doesn't do it justice, so I've added a Google Earth image of one of the lots.) These are huge bovine concentration camps the size of small towns where the cattle gorge themselves, poop a ton, eat some more, get fattened up, and then get loaded onto semis or box cars and transported up to Liberal, Kansas, where they're slaughtered and turned into Happy Meals.

And the frontage road leading to the larger Cargill feedlot is called "Farm to Market Road." Doesn't that sound quaint? As if these places can be considered "farms." How would you like to be the guy who drives around every day and picks up the dead cows who have keeled over in the heat? There's not a lick of shade for miles.

Bovine growth hormones! It's what's for dinner.

Chicken Fried Romance

When the hostess at the hotel restaurant informed us that the "theme" of the evening's buffet was "Ozarkian", I admit that it didn't conjure up many delectable images, or even many edible ones.

"Would you like to see what we have?" she offered. Of course, I've gotta see this...

The first thing she unveiled was "chicken fried chicken." Those were her exact words.

Stop right there. Enough said. That's all this grease-averse vegetarian needed to hear. If someone has to qualify that fried chicken has been "chicken fried," that implies that there are going to be other similarly fried items down the line. Chicken fried steak. Chicken fried squirrel. Chicken fried possum tail. Chicken fried skunk fingers. Who knows? I wasn't the slightest bit curious to find out what "Ozarkian" fried things lurked behind doors #2 through 5.

I had the veggie pasta dish. Call me boring, but at least I knew what I was eating.

That was our brush with haute cuisine, as Jeni and I spent two informative days and a relaxing night at Tan-Tar-A Lodge at the Lake of the Ozarks in south-central Missouri. We were there for a gathering of the The Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals. The kids were at the grand in-laws, so we made it our "date weekend."

Nothing says "romantic dinner for two" like breaded and fried mystery substances.

I can breathe in a small town.

Our loyal fans in Moberly, Missouri, are part of the reason The Hiccups and I love playing in small towns. Of the 14,000 people (26,000 metro) who live in Moberly, about 400 of them came out for the show last Friday night. Pretty impressive, considering that about 100 turned up at our last show in Denver (Pop: 588,349 and 2.4 million metro).

Thank you Moberly! And thanks to the good folks with Parents as Teachers whose hard work is to remind us that we are the best teachers in the world! And a shout-out to the very loud student body at North Park Elementary! Salute!

With the hospitable good will of small towns, comes the challenge of finding a vegetarian meal. There is usually a Subway sandwich or a BK veggie burger or a Taco Bell bean burrito to fall back on, but we can only ingest so much of that stuff. Vegetarians like variety, too.

So, typically while in Moberly we visit Rick's Americana Grill for some veggie pasta or grilled fish (Jeni and I both eat fish for various reasons I’ll explain some other time). Because it’s one of the few full-service restaurants in town, it usually takes a bit longer than we have for a pre-show meal. We branched out and tried the Santa Fe Mexican Restaurant this time and we were pleased. What do we eat at Mexican restaurants? Lots of beans (that is, those not prepared with lard) and Jeni goes for the chile rellenos. Great service, good prices, and hearty beans and rice. Our waiter was from Mexico City and the guy who cashed us out was from Playa del Carmen. When asked how they managed to end up in Moberly, they both answered, "The job."

Since Moberly is called "The Magic City," it sure would be nice if we could -- POOF!!-- hocus-pocus ourselves a good vegetarian meal sometime. We'll wave our wands on the next go round.