I just got home from your Mecca.
Well, maybe not your Mecca. It's likely a little lesser than that. Maybe your Mecca-Bitty.
This afternoon, I set foot in Cabela's. Boise is the home of their newest location, and it opened, sadly, after Mom and Dad went back to So Cal. I hadn't been in there until today.
I ordered some Life Is Good stuff for mom from Cabela's last year, online. I had no idea who I was dealing with. When the grand opening happened here about a month ago, the fact that people were lined up at 3:30 A.M. on the first day started to give me a clue. And that they were busing people in because there was not enough parking.
It's a hunting/outdoors/recreation store. Or Mecca. I walked past more camouflage stuff than I have ever seen, including several mannequins covered head-to-toe with Ghillie coveralls or some of their other leafy stuff (I had to look it up to know what it was--you gotta look at 'em). I thought Big Foot was after me. And I kept apologizing to the mannequin where I was looking at clothes--dang, they dress those things in hats, and you forget they aren't real.
Also, I had to walk past the HUGE center display, what they call Conservation Mountain. It's a mountain (think Disneyland--it looks real), covered with museum-quality taxidermed animals, from bunnies to bears. Even musk ox. And a polar bear. And a nice deer in the pose of licking a little something off its back. Yep, I saw tongue.
There are "ducks" flying in one area of the store, home and cabin furnishings, a general store with candy to keep you company on the hunt or fish, and a tremendous, Sea World-size freshwater aquarium featuring the trout and fish found in Idaho rivers and lakes. In fact, the guy ringing me out apologized for not folding my clothes terribly neatly. When I told him they were going home with someone who would not be too precise about it either, he said he normally works the aquarium but they had called him to the registers to help out.
So we chatted. Turns out he has given dozens of tours in the last three weeks, including 20 Boy Scout troops, busloads of kids on school field trips, and even 94-year-old women who have been part of the one day out a year that their little senior home takes. They wheeled their walkers through Cabela's, God love 'em.
But the real moment I knew I was in a different kind of store? I was in the dressing room, and as I pulled a sweatshirt over my head I heard from the PA system, "Customer assistance to the meat grinding department, please."
And though I smiled, I did NOT laugh. They have a Gun Library and a Bargain Cave. I don't want to be on the business end of either.
It's been a big day. And, Daddy--your St. Nicholas gift came home in my Cabela's bag. You lucky dog :)
7 comments:
Welcome to the Midwest. :) We have two of them here in our neck of the woods and my parents love the place. Ours even has a buffet style restaurant, at least that's what my dad tells us. I think it's a good place to buy coats, and Devin likes staring at the shiny paintball guns. Going there always makes me think I should go fishing but the urge disappears as soon as I leave the store. They have a giant clearance sale around July 4, which is when we're usually driving back from my parents and they are at a good point to stop for gas on the journey.
They have a mail-order catalog which I'd known about for years. I worked as the only girl in an office with six engineers, and the Cabela's catalog always seemed to end up in the bathroom (we only had one).
It's definitely not a very "California" kind of store.
First, let me assure you that your blogging does not elude my attention. The eyes of "Peeps" are made of carnuba wax (check the side panel).
Cabelas...Why not? A Nordstrom for the heartier lot, a See's Candy Store for the outdoorsperson (that doesn't ring right), a one-stop-shop for the hunter-gatherer lurking in the heart of every man, a Living Spaces for the open spaces, the Fashion Island of the "skin and dress" crew,... and a haven for the more gentile type to peruse and purchase ultra-lite graphite rods of the finest quality and whisper soft casting reels at $600 a pop.
I think that it should be a government requirement that all good citizens "take the tour" to get in touch with the reality of where the beef comes from. The pristine packaging of predressed, prefeathered, preskinned, presliced and diced table fare has made us all whimsically out of touch with the need to "kill to survive".
Whoa... just the thought of it, like "the smell of napalm in the morning", sends the blood rushing.
The next time your mother comes to see you in Boise you can wave to me as you pass the corner of Franklin and the crosstown freeway. I'll be the guy wrestling with the caribou two tiers above the grizzlie.
Love and kisses,
Dad
I have nothing to add except that I'd like to live there for several months, then move to Banff in a walled tent and live off the land.
Wowsers. I'll be there with ya, dad, except I'll be over in the camping and hiking section, eschewing the fly rods. But we can still browse kayaks together...
This is too wierd. Perhaps the most bookish family I know all chattering about how best to eat pine needles in neoprene waders. Does Nancy know about this strong vein of pendleton plaid in her family? ;)
Honestly, I had no idea that outdoorsy thing was in any of you. I found Mike's revelry about his hike slightly odd, but now I see it goees much deeper.
Interesting...
We're a Renaissance family--what can I say?
With all my talk of finding a mountain cabin far from civilization in which to live, I'm surprised you didn't know of my deep desire to be a mountain man.
Silverback,
You haven't lived if you haven't woken up freezing cold, sore from the rock under your back, smelling a campfire, and hearing Tony singing "Oklahoma!" show tunes.
Trust me.
Ain't that the truth?
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