6.26.2010

Washington, PA I







"You smell plastic burning?"

"Yup."

"Must be Pampers season. Soon all those pretty white flowers will be floating down the river with their little brown buds..."

The dental salesman and the false-tooth fabricator sit in camp chairs eating a greasy breakfast of sausages from plastic plates. They are old friends, from West Virginia and southeast Ohio, respectively. This small, remote corner of the world has been their fishing getaway for the past two decades.

"Usually there's nobody here."

Sometimes they come alone, sometimes they are joined by their wives and daughters. This time they gaze in resigned disgust at their campground neighbors, a group containing two cars, three laundry lines, five tents, a litter of young children, and an indeterminate number of families. The children squeal and run around in a way that could be marketed as endearing if they didn't outnumber the mosquitoes and carry more diseases.

"Rugrats. That's the same group as was here last week... and they're burning diapers again."

"Better than throwing them in the river."

The Fabricator nods and makes banjo noises in a Deliverance reference.

"Hill people."