Went out to dinner with Shootin' Buddy last night to a local restaurant; a sort of tavern-y place with a bar at the front and tables and booths in the back. It was fairly full, always a good sign, but we managed to get a table in the back corner. SB was sitting on the padded bench seat that ran along the wall, which meant he had, more or less, a seatmate not an arm's length away at the next table.
Said seatmate was well into that very friendly stage of drunkenness, and decided that maybe he recognized Shootin' Buddy. "Hey! I know you! Remember me?"
"Uh, no."
"Sure! You're... Steve!" (Not even close, BTW...) "It's me! Davey!"
And thus began the rambling narrative on the gentleman's Native American ancestry, his Vietnam War vet buddies, his spiritual guide, and which walking stick was best to use at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon, an event he earnestly wished we'd attend. Anyhow, as our entertainer's female companion finally spatulaed him off the seat and got him pointed towards the door, he turned and, with a little half-bow and his eyes squinted up like he was trying to remember the Gettysburg Address, very solemnly intoned "Na Mao Che Kim brunt puff ugh bargle watt. And that means 'I invite you to the Feast of the Hunter's Moon.'"
Rather than leave well enough alone, Shootin' Buddy (who has something of an ear for languages,) asked in all innocence "What language was that?"
"Huh?" blinked our floor show.
"What language? I mean, was it Miami? Shawnee?"
"It was... it was... Native American!"
Okay, then.
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18 comments:
Wow. A regular scholar you ran into there.
Should we greet Shootin' Buddy with "Yah-ta-Hey" or "How?"
Still laughing here.
They are out there.
Occasionally you run into them.
Feast of the Hunters Moon -- sounds like GenCon for reenactors. Except the reenactors aren't supposed to be in "costume". The dress (I can't even call it a gown) on the woman on the horse is so full of fail, I don't know what to say, except maybe WEAR A FOUNDATION GARMENT!
I hear the shopping can be really good, though.
Good thing SB didn't ask for the sooperseekrit VietVet salute...poor sot coulda broke his arm trying to make one up.
If there were as many N.A.'s and V.V.'s as wannabe claims suggest, the outcomes of those respective wars might've been a lot different.
AT
Hmmm...it seems Shootin' Buddy is possessed of a, dare we say, Snarky sense of humor?
Must be one reason you hang out with him :)
"If there were as many N.A.'s and V.V.'s as wannabe claims suggest, the outcomes of those respective wars might've been a lot different."
Doubt it. Quality counts more than quantity.
The only Native American greeting I ever hear is Place your bets.
Gerry
I hear quite a bit of some of the native languages around here (Ute and Navajo) and a lot of Navajo in the southern part of the state.
Ya'at'eeh or "yahtahey", as most biligaana pronounce it, is always proper to greet them. It simply means "It is good".
Oh, the stories of the "Native American" crazies...
We used to get them at the NPS site I used to work at. There were the "Cherokees" (whiter than me) who started up a regular "drum circle". Then there was the nut that really, really bothered my coworker a LOT. He was very creepy (in the pedophile way, if you get what I mean. He visited us two days in a row, and on the second day, he sat down, pulled out a bag of...something, and told her that it was to go in his peace pipe, and that he was allowed to have it because he was Native American.
He creeped her out to the point where she was about to push the "panic button" to set off the silent alarm.
The are several powwows that occur around the area every summer and I know a bunch of "indians" who attend them. They have tried to convince me of their "spiritual" nature but having visited a few it seems to me that stuffing their "peace pipes" full of certain plant materials is the central theme.
"Feast of the Hunter's Moon"= gathering of hippy fantasy gun nuts. How's THAT for oxymoronic?
Are you sure it wasn't Basil Marceaux ?
Feast of the Hunter's Moon wasn't bad back in the '70s, but last time I was there - 1987 - it was getting a little crowded; Ouiatenon isn't that big a place. Kind of like Pennsic, which for the last decade or so has been drawing close to 11k people each year....
"Quality counts more than quantity."
Then as to NA's and VV's, I guess neither had either.
AT
So, an event to commemorate the "native americans" of Tippecanoe is advertising itself by showing pitcures of re-enactors of William Henry Harrison's buddys? (Though I didn't see anyone impersonating Tyler). Just checking, because if so, that's funny right there...
Hang around bars for long and sooner or later you WILL bump into someone who has completely lost his mind. A close friend of mine is a parapalegic and man does he attract them. For years he and his wife ran a karaoke company and played a few nights a week at various bars. One night, a man sat down next to my friend while he was running the sound board and cueing up the next Bon Jovi song to be screached by a toothless redneck, and with all seriousness said "I can heal you". Turns out, the guy is one of God's other kids. Like Jesus' lesser-known half brother and "Dad" said he could heal anyone he wanted. Lucky for him, someone overheard and rescued the devine bastard before my friend handed him his head. Never piss off a 350 pound parapalegic who uses a manual wheelchair. Merely getting from point A to point B is a workout.
s
Hang around bars for long and sooner or later you WILL bump into someone who has completely lost his mind. A close friend of mine is a parapalegic and man does he attract them. For years he and his wife ran a karaoke company and played a few nights a week at various bars. One night, a man sat down next to my friend while he was running the sound board and cueing up the next Bon Jovi song to be screached by a toothless redneck, and with all seriousness said "I can heal you". Turns out, the guy is one of God's other kids. Like Jesus' lesser-known half brother and "Dad" said he could heal anyone he wanted. Lucky for him, someone overheard and rescued the devine bastard before my friend handed him his head. Never piss off a 350 pound parapalegic who uses a manual wheelchair. Merely getting from point A to point B is a workout.
s
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