The cookies on the right are from Oven Master Mary. The trivia crowd has been urging her to cut back for a variety of reasons and we all thought that a significant downsizing was on the agenda. There might technically be some downsizing involved but it's hardly significant. There are no gingerbread persons this year but any other reduction is impossible to detect.

So this is the grub stake that accompanies me south and which I'll be sharing with the desk clerks of (mostly) cheap motels.

I then decided to go on through town and have a beer at the only bar I'd seen. I pulled into what I thought was it although I had a sense that the name wasn't quite right. I settled into the only open bar stool and joined the crowd in watching Washington and Boise in the Vegas Bowl. I couldn't decide who to root for since just about every play brought cheers from somebody and I had no idea why a Tennessee bar crowd would be fans of either team. By half time I had figured out that it was the score getting the cheers and not the schools. The amount of the pool must have been respectable since the guy who won the first half payout immediately bought a round. I guess it was only about seven or eight beers but it was a nice move and I was included. I really did intend to have just one so I thanked him and declined.

Then, as I started to pull out of the lot, I noticed another sign just one lot away. That was the place I'd seen originally. There are only two bars in town and they're right net to each other. So I moved one parking lot to the north and had another long neck Bud with some friendly Tennessee folk. The first bar was Bear's Brown Shack. The second was Big Rock Tavern. Both have drive up windows with bells triggered by rubber hoses like gas stations had back when knowing when someone pulled up to a pump was important. The only thing I saw pass through the windows was cigarettes. I'm not sure what else can be sold that way.