Adventures on the Fla. ranch - Fear and Loathing at Hopkins

My personal physician, Dr. David Weishaus, and I had decided to escape from Baltimore and return home to Florida for Spring Break. The first day back, the good Doctor and I decided to go to the beach for some light drinking and heavy surfing. On a whim, we resolved to find out how many of our friends were still in town and see if any of them wanted to join us. Luckily, a well-racked lady friend we knew from high school, who gives blow jobs that are so ferociously slow, they've been known to cause nose bleeds, happened to be in town. With towels in hand, we loaded into a jeep and headed for an isolated stretch of beach only known to high-schoolers in the area.

By the time we got to there, we were met by the most depraved and diabolical sight - wall-to-wall yobo hard-bodies with their silicone-laden blonde girlfriends, whose hair blew gently in the breeze and whose skin was touched by a healthy glow of sun, their supple breasts slightly touching their boyfriends' muscled and well-proportioned arms. Not that I'm complaining. It's just that we didn't have a place to stand, let alone surf. After a brief stint at trying to clear out the place by removing all of our clothes, Dr. Weishaus and I searched for options to escape from the Floridian Spring Break crowding.

I reached for my mobile phone. On a whim, I decided to call up Ashley Palmer, the only person (still) alive who's able to drink me under a table. Ashley currently resides in Chicago, returning home to sunny Florida for school vacations. Splitting her time between two major cities, there should have been no reason for her phone to be out of range, but it was. This meant only one thing: She was ??at her father's ranch.

The Palmer Ranch, a 200-acre bastion of swamp and fields, is located 50 miles west of Yeehaw Junction and a 100 miles north of the Okeefenokee Swamp. For those of us who've been there, the Palmer Ranch is more than just a ranch. With its clean air, remote location, air-conditioned bedrooms, plush bunk-beds, heated showers and well-stocked pantry and liquor closet, the Palmer Ranch becomes the sort of place you'd want to wait out the Apocalypse. It's a good, American place, a place where the dreams of G. Gordon Liddy and Ted Nugent can materialize in the form of a wild boar being speared to death by the bows and arrows of a bunch of drunken college students, sort of like Animal House meets Lord of the Flies.

Don't get me wrong: I'm about two miles to the left of Trotsky as far as politics are concerned and suffer from S.V.D. (Seasonal Vegetarianism Disorder) from time to time. Yet, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to revisit the Palmer Ranch. The last time I visited was on New Year's Eve 2000, and I had promised Ashley's father that the next time I came to the ranch, I would hunt with him. I was certain that both he and Ashley would be thrilled by our surprise visit.

The three of us at the beach put our clothes back on and loaded into my car, proceeding directly to '67 Liquore and Gourmet Food to restock for the trip with a handle of Southern Comfort and a carton of Marlboros.

We got to the ranch at around dusk. The Palmer family met us with open arms, fresh venison and lots of red wine. Seven or eight bottles later, the Palmers retired, and David, Ashley and I decided to go for a midnight hay-ride out into the night to see the stars.

At some ungodly hour before dawn, Ashley, David and I were awoken by a startling sight. Billy McGee, the 250 lbs. ranch hand wearing what could only be termed as "britches," slammed Ashley's door open with: "Rise and shine, mother-fuckers!" I was worried. McGee and I have a history of not getting along. The last time I had seen McGee was the Millennial New Years, at 7 a.m. After a night of particularly heavy drinking, McGee came into the lodge, yelling: "We got a word for people who don't drink 'fore nine in the morning and we call 'em pussies." When I grumbled something about a hangover and my friend talked about wanting to go back to bed, he proceeded to call me a pinko leftist commie Jew-faggot and then shot my friend in the face with a green paint ball. And that was one of the more heart-warming memories of that New Years spent with McGee.

McGee tossed David and I out of bed, doused us with mosquito-repellent and headed us, bleary and hung-over to a tractor. We were outfitted with mosquito netting and handed a crossbow and a complimentary cup of McGee's Breakfast Health Smoothie (Gin and strawberry ice cream).

That morning, we were going to hunt the wild pigs that roamed the property. As we road out to the middle of the ranch , I pictured myself as the camouflage festooned warrior-Jew, at one with the land and trekking my prey, just as my ancestors had tracked the wild chickens of Eastern Europe and made them kosher. I was surprised when we were led to a stand perched on top of an automatic feeding machine, which dispensed pellets of food at a certain time each day for the pigs to eat. We climbed the ladder, sat down with our crossbows and got ready for the "hunt."

For several hours, David and I waited, enjoying the natural surroundings, drinking several of McGee's Health Smoothies, talking about nothing in particular, vomiting up McGee's Health Smoothies into the natural surroundings we once so enjoyed, etc. All of a sudden, out of the corner of his eye, David spotted a wild boar, a giant beast, heading towards the feeder.

Then, it dawned on us. Neither David nor I wanted to kill and skin, let alone eat, a wild boar. Why were we doing this? Because it was fun, dammit. Just as we were discussing our moral dilemma, I saw a rather large spider creeping towards me, causing me to loose my footing in the hunting stand, overturning the feeder and scaring the animals as far away as the petting zoos at Busch Gardens. All for the best, I thought as we drove back to the lodge. More work for McGee, and more liquor for me.