“George’s Unfortunate Adventure at Moe’s Cafe” by Jordan Montoya

 

“Great! The car broke down again,” said George. George was an averagely tall man with broad shoulders, and a powerful stance. However, the eternal baby fat on his face contrasted with his strong appearance and made him appear rather funny looking to others. George also had another terrible problem: George was the unluckiest man in the world. He was the kind of person who always had something go horribly wrong. If George did not drop his keys in the sewer, he was chased down the street by a duck of all things, or his car would ironically break down at a demolition site with debris raining down on top of it. Today was the seventeenth time this week that his car had broken down and the eighth time he ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere.

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to walk nearly five miles to town to find a mechanic who can repair my car,” George shouted into the empty air. Now on top of being extremely unlucky, George also had absolutely no sense of direction. When he finally reached town he had no idea where to go. He eventually ran into Moe’s Café after wandering about town for more than two hours. He had developed an enormous appetite by then. “I’ll eat something here, and then find a mechanic,” George reasoned.

Moe’s Café was a dump: the floor was a barf green colored tile, littered with napkins and food debris. The floor was scuffed and sticky from lord only knows what. Furthermore, the walls were covered with hunting trophies of several endangered animals that were illegal to hunt, including the tusks of elephants. There was an ancient jukebox in one corner, which only played songs from the 50s. The television in Moe’s Café was an old black and white without any sound permanently stuck on a boring biography channel.

George plopped down into a seat at the first booth on the left. He was immediately bombarded by numerous foul odors. For some reason he smelled a damp wet animal, which gave him the feeling that barf green colored tile was not the original color. In addition, the café had mold under the table and faintly reeked of gasoline.

George waited for over ten minutes before a waitress named Blanch came to take his order. Blanch could easily pass for a woman from the 50s. She was as ancient as the jukebox and many people believed that she owned the jukebox. Her hair looked like a hotel for birds and her whole body made creaking sounds with every movement she made. Blanch had a surprisingly rich and youthful voice for one so old. When she asked for his order, George thought he heard an angel at first.

Only then did he see the menu. The main dish was liver and onions and the only other option were eggs. However, Blanch bluntly informed him that the eggs were a month past their freshness date. The beverages choices were limited to only thick black coffee without sweetener or water. Thus, George was forced to order the liver and onions with black coffee.

After a couple of minutes of listening to people in the next booth talking about cleaning birds for cooking, Blanch brought George his meal. The toast that came with the meal was stale and moldy. The rest of the food was not much better, but George was hungry and finished everything. Unfortunately, when he finished the meal he promptly realized he had left his wallet in his broken down car five miles outside of town.

When he told this to Blanch, she went back to talk to Moe. Blanch returned with a large, fat hairy man, who was obviously in his late fifties. He had a large bald spot on the middle of his head. Moe looked like he was constantly sweating and George thought he tasted a strange salty substance in his mouth. When he approached, George could tell that he was furious.

“What do you mean you can’t pay me,” Moe exclaimed, “NO ONE eats here for free! If you can’t pay for the meal then you’re working it off!” Moe grabbed George and practically dragged him to the back of the café and told him to clean the dishes. Just then, they heard sirens and a voice over a megaphone, “This is the police, everyone put your hands in the air, we are coming in!”

The next thing George knew, police armed with weapons burst through the doors of Moe’s Café and rushed into the back of the restaurant. Moe seemed extremely nervous for some reason and looked as if he was ready to bolt at any second. The police opened a door in the back and discovered an illegal gambling operation. “You’re all under arrest,” stated an officer. Unfortunately, for George, they also arrested him.

After a three-hour explanation to the police, they eventually allowed George to leave. George was dead tired by this time and walked all the way back to his car. He got in and tried to start his car, before realizing that he never found a mechanic to fix his car with all his unfortunate misadventures. He slumped forward bumped his head on the steering wheel blasting the horn. He then was chased back into town by a herd of angry deer where he spent the rest of the night. Thus, was the ending of George’s misadventure at Moe’s Café.

“The Fastest Woman in the World” by Elizabeth Uehling

            It was noon and there was no way I was making it to my first big photo shoot. In two hours I was supposed to be somewhere in the middle of wide open Nebraska, but instead I was stuck in some sort of a gaping ditch. I’ll blame my terrible parking job on Bambi. I went to call for help but of course there was no signal. None, and to be honest, I couldn’t point myself out on a map even if I’d tried.  Luckily, there was a pit stop a mile down the road. In high-heeled stiletto boots, the world’s tightest mini skirt, and a chiffon blouse, I began my walk of shame.

God must have known I was going to wreck in that very spot about thirty years ago. Why else would there be a conveniently located repair shop? When I walked in the guy looked at me weird and asked if I was lost. I told him what had happened and from there on out, he told me he would fix my car up and have me back on the road as soon as he could. In the mean time, he advised me to go on over to Moe’s Cafe and wait there while he repaired the damages.

I hadn’t seen the cafe at first. It was hidden behind the overgrowth which consisted of a random patch of dead or dying trees in the middle of a cornfield. Even when I recognized it as a building, I wouldn’t have ever guessed that it was still in use.

When I walked up the rickety old stairs, I heard some old country song playing in the background and an old man wailing along with it. Maybe I was mistaken, but wasn’t karaoke during the night? I ended up taking a sit in the first booth after gambling booth one and booth two. I figured a few crumbs on the table were better than a puddle of dark juice and fly infested after-food.

It wasn’t just the table that was crummy. It was the whole building. Chunks of 70′s wooden panels were falling around everywhere and its friend, the burnt orange paint, complemented its aged appearance by chipping away from the wall. The old wooden floors were faded with wear-and-tear and the smell was of a thick smog of smoke that I’m sure had lingered there from the birth of the building’s existence. I ordered a cup of coffee from Marg, the head and only waiter at Moe’s Cafe, and waited patiently for my drink while the men and woman around the bar stared at me like I was a yellow zebra.

I sat there waiting for my coffee and listening to music. A hunched over man, who I later learned was known as Wallace, stood over by a beaten down jukebox. He didn’t from his place, leaned against the machine, howling to he same Kenny Rogers song again and again.  Once the music had concluded, he put another nickel in the slot and the tune repeated. After about en rounds, I couldn’t take it anymore–his howling or his awful taste in music.  Aware of my surroundings, I stood up and with severe sense of paranoia, I walked cautiously across the grease slick floors and over to the old man. I asked politely if I could choose a different song. I took his blank stare as a yes.

The nickel fell in and I chose the most contemporary selection by Cher.  As I turned away to head back to my seat, a frail woman in her mid-thirties began to began to shriek.  At first I thought a bug or something had gotten in her hair because she tugged at her curls as though in search.  I walked a littler faster when I realized her slight shrieks had turned into screams of panic.  She ran about the cafe, doing nothing but having some sort of freak out I’d never seen before. The only reasonable explanation for her behavior was that she was having a mid-life crisis. No one else seemed to worried about it, so I tried to my best to ignore it. Her scene had lasted the entire song and when Cher had sung her last line, the woman’s panic subsided.

It got eerily quiet. Everybody had quit talking and wasn’t looking at the crazy woman, but me. Wallace turned my way and with a raspy voice of aged man, he said,“You shouldn’t have done that.” Then he inserted his nickel and began his own rendition once more.

At first I thought it was the B.O. ascending from fat greasy man in the corner. To the dismay of my appetite, I found the ripe stench seethed from none other than the coffee the waiter had brought me. Was it poisoned? Who knew?! But I sure as heck wasn’t going to be the first stranded victim to find out.

There was nothing to do in the cafe except listen to Wallace and stare out the finger-printed windows. One thought led to another and soon I found myself contemplating my life, thinking of how just five months ago I was living a dream. I had my own apartment in downtown Chicago, a wonderful fiance I couldn’t wait to be married to, and had just been promoted to floor manager at Vogue’s headquarters. How had everything gone so wrong?

When the waiter to came back over to ask how everything was going, I said, “How everything is going? How does it look everything is going?” That’s when I completely lost it. “For starters, my coffee smells so bad, the Devil wouldn’t drink it. I’m stuck in the middle of  what seems to be cannibal country wondering if I’ll make it out alive all because my piece of crap car decided to die on me. I’m going to miss the photo shoot of a lifetime and on top of it all, my fiancé left for a girl who could pass as me if I were nineteen again. So how is it going? It’s going down the crapper, and the longer I sit here the worse it gets.”

He didn’t say anything after my escapade. There’s wasn’t any emotion that flash across his face, not even shock. He just turned and walked back to the kitchen and didn’t return. I pushed him away just like I did with most things in life and at that moment I decided that two is always better than one. Always.

It had been three of the longest hours of my life.  I was every mood in the book, from stressed to scared.  When the mechanic walked through Moe’s doors, I could have been nothing but relieved.

“You’re car is done Ma’am,” he said in his biker-boy voice. “We can talk business if you come with me.”

I followed him over to the shop and to a cash register to the shop towards a worn-out and dilapidated, which I’d assumed he had been using for decade or two, possibly three.

“I had to replace the rear axle because it had been cracked right down the middle when you backed out of the ravine. From the looks of it, this car has seen a ditch or two.” He gave me a demeaning look and held it for a moment too long.

I smiled and laughed it off, trying to make a joke of the situation.

“Yeah, every now and then it happens. I’m not much a professional driver, especially when it comes to gravel roads.” There was a pause as he scratched away at a receipt for me.

As he went for the hand off, he told me, “Miss, do be more careful. A lady such as you is far too beautiful and much too young to die just because she’s late for something. Life goes faster than you think. There’s no need to rush it.”

 

 

“A Change to the School?” by Kelsey Larson

 

Everyone has their own opinion on almost everything. Some are good, and some are bad. When it comes to school uniforms, opinions come in handy to everyone. Should we get them? Should we not? Why/why not? There are many different questions we could ask on this topic.  The Logan View administrators are considering school uniforms as a requirement from now on and some people may or may not like the fact on having to be told what to wear instead of having the ability to wear what ever they please. There are many pro’s and con’s to this conflict and like I said before, everyone has their own opinion.

A Senior at Logan View, Ryan Timmerman said that he was against school uniforms. Ryan had said that he doesn’t like school uniforms because he thinks that you can’t express yourself in any way by wearing clothes that the school would be wasting  their money on. “They would get boring and I would get tired of wearing the same thing five days a week and for however many weeks we have in the school year.” Ryan said. They might have options that you can choose from but it would all be very dull and no fun in the end. He had said that he already doesn’t like the school so if it really came to matter, he would try to rebel, but in appropriate ways. He also thinks that no one would like them at all.

There are many cons about school uniforms that many people would agree with. A lot of people like showing their personality and who they are through their clothing. Being comfy, with what ever you feel like wearing, can lead you to a good attitude. If students wore something that they wouldn’t like, they might not be very happy campers. Their might be choices in uniforms such as skirts, shorts, pants, polo’s, t-shirts, jackets, etc., but having to wearing the same thing each day might get a little boring for a few students. But for those other few students that would like them, they’d be willing to proceed with having a change in form at school.

Emily Scholl, a Junior at Logan View was for school uniforms. She says that it would eliminate many problems that clothes caused at school such as distractions of appearance and having dress codes cause conflict; someone might have their shorts to high or their baggy pants too low and with school uniforms, we would not have to worry about that problem. She thinks that it would students wouldn’t get judged for what they wore whether if they were wearing some high quality jeans or if they were wearing a shirt they had got from Goodwill. Their would be a lot less stereotyping because students don’t have much money as others, and she thinks that students would also be focusing on school more and staying less out of trouble. In her opinion she thinks that many students might be upset at first, but in the run, they’ll like it. Any kid who has gone to a private school would agree that uniforms are great.

With that there comes a positive look on having school uniforms. You won’t have to wake up as early as usual trying to figure out what to wear, because it’s already picked out for you. We wouldn’t be distracted with how we look and we would be able to concentrate more on the school work. Having uniforms would also make us look “professional”. For example, when there is a sporting event and parents and other students come to our home games, it makes not only us, but the Logan View look good as well.

So who knows if the administration will follow through with school uniforms or not, but if it happens I could see the students here at Logan View turning out to like the school uniforms. They may not be in style, but they sure would help with focusing in on school work and not having to worry about what you or what others wear to school, yet again it would kind of be a disadvantage, ’cause we’d all look the same!

“Apples to Apples” by Emily Scholl

Set in a hokey, poorly built western town during the gold rush of the late 1800s, The Apple Dumpling Gang leaves an impact on its viewers. Maybe it’s just my immature sense of humor speaking for me, but I believe the director, Norman Tokar, did an excellent job with this film. He really hit home with the quirky storyline, funny actors, and keeping it a sensible movie for viewers of all ages to enjoy.

Although I loved the movie, I was left shaking my head at some of the terrible acting and awful special effects. One scene in particular that left me wondering what the heck the director was thinking, was when the three kids found themselves flying down the hill in that wagon. To me, it really looked like three kids looking utterly amused while sitting in a box that was being tossed around. The whole thing looked terribly fake, but there were so many good parts in the movie, that the bad parts were disregarded. I loved little things such as Theodore lighting his cigarette off of Amos’s flaming bottom, or the sheriff sneaking off to grab a couple shots during an intense shoot-out. I also was intrigued by the discreet romance between Dusty and Mr. Donavan. Right from the beginning I think we all secretly knew that those two would form the unlikely couple found in many movies, but this one was played off well. They were brought together in holy matrimony by a great cause; keeping the kids they cared so much about in good hands, and I really liked that message.

One of the best, and worst, things about this movie was the acting. At times viewers were pushed to the point of exasperation by the preposterous villains, but other times we were laughing along just as it was intended. Out of the whole movie, my favorite part was the three adorable children: Bobby, Clovis, and Celia. The way they always stayed together and acted so innocent made me smile; especially little Celia. I would have to admit that had another actor taken the spot of Stacy Manning, the movie would not have been as memorable. Celia’s sweet but clingy manner made her one of the cutest children I have ever seen in a movie. My heart all but melted when she looked right into Mr. Donavan’s eyes and announced “I like you, Mr. Donavan!”

I believe that Bill Bixby (Mr. Donavan) and Susan Clark (Dusty) played their parts just right. Bixby did a wonderful job of transforming from a gambling, drinker to a kind-hearted family man, just as Clark gave a fantastic performance as the motherly tomboy, Dusty. The only problem I encountered with the casting was Dusty’s appearance. She did indeed look like a tomboy, but her hair cropped so short made her look too manly. I don’t think that a woman living in the late 1800s would wear her hair that short, so my only suggestion would be to make her character fit that time period a little more.

The Apple Dumpling Gang does a superb job of balancing some of the bad things that were going on in the movie, and making them suitable for younger audiences. When you think about it, the movie could easily be deemed as inappropriate seeing that it is filled with drinking, stealing, cheating and lots of guns being held against another person. The directors did an excellent job seeing to it that the movie contain elements that both older and younger viewers could find humorous. Another thing to note is how Tokar kept the movie flailing on the tightrope between silly and far too corny. I believe that people of all ages can enjoy this film, because it’s not too heavy, but it holds your interest.

The Apple Dumpling Gang is an amusing movie that can be shown today, and still gives the same effect. While the movie is meant for kids and will probably appeal mostly to younger viewers, it will still manage to catch the attention of older viewers with a childish sense of humor. The movie doesn’t require much thinking and is very lighthearted; and that’s exactly what makes it so easy to watch. Warning: If you are easily agitated by lack of common sense, some of the following scenes may disturb you.