Stoner Drug: Since 1896!

We woke up in Sioux City Iowa and someone from the hotel had slipped a piece of paper under the door. It was a printout of our bill for the room, and on the bill was a $40+ charge for a long distance phone call. Before I left Miami I had noted local numbers to dial to get on the innernets at each place I thought we would be staying. The problem was that on the beach you have to dial all 10 digits of a number even if you’re calling next door. In Sioux City Iowa, you will get charged for a long distance call if you dial all 10 digits. I tried explaining that I didn’t make a long distance call at all, but they pretty much said “We don’t believe you. You dialed 10 digits so it must be long distance!” I wasn’t happy.
Our first stop after leaving the hotel was Wal-mart for jerky and Red Bull. here’s a dumb video from the parking lot. (oh hay I wore that shirt today!) I had wanted Kim to take a PICTURE of me draining the water out of the ice chest… I thought it would look like I was peeing (not really, but you know…) and that would be funny. Instead, she made a video clip of Brandon putting ice in my shorts. Some friends, huh?
We got on the road and I don’t remember how it happened exactly… Either I saw a sign for a John Deer dealer, or we had to pee, or Kim saw their sign, or something… but we ended up at Stoner Drug in Hamburg Iowa. It was actually a cool place with a soda fountain deal in the back. We spent quite a while there just looking at stuff (and peeing!). Oh, I remember what happened… They had trouble with their credit card processing thing and that took like seriously 20+ minutes to get sorted out so I could pay for my Stoner Drug sweatshirt (and probably jerky and Red Bull!). Brandon got a Stoner Drug t-shirt, and I can’t remember what Kim bought. On the way into this town we passed a John Deere dealer, and before we even left Washington I had been saying I wanted to stop at a John Deere place somewhere in the midwest so I could buy a hat or something. Well, on our way back to the interstate I asked Brandon to stop at Athen Implement. Kim and Brandon stayed in the truck and I walked in. I was like deja vu all over again. I walked in and all of the old white people (like 5 of them) stopped their conversations and just stared at me. I was waiting for one of them to be like “zOMG BROWN GUY! GANG MEMBER!!!” or something. I had a look around and found a hat I wanted to get, but there was nobody at the counter and nobody else there seemed to want to help me so I just left. (NOT with the hat in hand… I actually never took it off of the rack) I was kind of upset because I’ve been dealing with people like that all of my life and there isn’t much I can do about it. I mean, I realize I’m not the shiniest person on the block, but I’m not a hood either. I wonder what would have happened if Kim had gone in with me. Or what if I had a white girl on my arm?? It’s like, if I can nut up and walk into this old-timer’s establishment, they should at least be able to be cordial. If they only knew how white I really am! I mean, I probably could have schooled them on a lot of farm things. I WAS A STATE LEVEL LIVESTOCK/DAIRY COW JUDGE AND TRACTOR DRIVER!! Wow, remembering that kind of got me fired up. Everyone was so cool and nice at Stoner Drug, but not at this joint. (see what I did there??) Anyways…


We eventually passed into Missouri, or as I like to call it, Misery, because even though I grew up on a farm and still have an affection for rural america, at this point I was feeling Ocean Drive a lot more than dirt roads.


EXACTLY!!


If I remember correctly, this was our longest driving day, and on top of that, we didn’t have any cool destinations to hit on our way to St. Louis. To illustrate how boring the drive was, Kim drew ME! I think she did a pretty good job.


Oh, St. Louis! Once we (almost) finally got to where we were going, we hit traffic. And I mean BAD traffic! We were stopped in the same spot for so long, but something cool happened… We’re sitting there and we’re like WFT why aren’t we going anywhere?? and all of a sudden a car hauls ass past us on the shoulder and then like 767657 cop cars went by chasing the car. It was awesome!

T
his is Kim with her friend Jamie. We stayed at his place in St. Louis.


This is Sadie chewing on the fake poop Brandon bought at Wall Drug. Brandon thought it would be funny to play a joke on Jamie by setting the fake poop out on his carpet by the front door for him to find in the morning. But what actually happened was funnier/more embarrassing for us! One of Jamie’s roommates (that we had not yet met) came home after Brandon had placed the poop by the door. When we heard the keys in the lock, Brandon jumped up to grab the fake poop, since the joke wasn’t intended for a stranger. Well, the roommate opened the door and Brandon was right there. The roommate (I forget his name) was like… “What’s up” and Brandon’s response was “Just playing with poop.” as he tossed it up in the air and caught it again. It was like, OH MAN! You just made us look like a bunch of stupids! but we had a pretty good laugh over it.
The next morning Sadie had played a joke on Brandon with the fake poop… She had chewed it up and made a huge mess with the little pieces!
More pictures here!