2/26/2001 - 3/1/2001

On February 26th, year of our insignificance 2001, I flew to Dallas,
Texas and stayed in the Embassy Suites-Outdoor World right near the
airport.  My company has offices in Fort Worth/Irving area and we had
a 2-day management meeting on the 27th and 28th.  My day ended early
on the 28th, so I wandered over to OUTDOOR WORLD, which is attached to
the hotel.

Now I recognize they were going for something like LAMP WORLD or COAT
WORLD - attempting to indicate a world of possibilities within their
walls.  But egads, what a name.  

Then there's the size.  A really big airport hangar, maybe.  Maybe
bigger.  Impossible to fill with soap suds, I'd imagine.

I decided to walk the perimeter before venturing into the middle.  

My choices to start were the camoflauge clothing (which appears to be
for sneaking up on all sorts of things in order to have an easier time
killin'em) on the left or a giant dead-and-stuffed snarling polar bear
with a winter-wilderness backdrop and a couple of buckets worth of
fake snow set up in front of a camera so that you too can have your
picture taken with "your kill" on the right.

Ok.  Left it was.

I almost immediately started feeling the stares of the curious,
particularly from the ever-polite salesmen.  Not many women alone in
this store.

CAMO was followed by GOLF, which had an upper level built in
containing a putting green/driving range.  Thing is, I hate golf, but
I was endeavoring to put aside my personal prejudices for a cultural
experience.

Next was CAMPING, which included outdoor grilling and canoeing (which
is distinctly different from boating - but we'll get to that later).

Under the outdoor cooking heading (a CAMPING subsection) we find
pallet upon pallet - thousands of gallons - of OIL.  To be specific
it's COOKING OIL of every imaginable sort (peanut, vegetable, etc.)
and GIANT POTS filled with ELABORATE PARAPHENALIA for deepfrying
ENTIRE turkeys.

The mind boggles.  Grills, grilling videos, marinades, tools, and all
sorts of nifty camping gear.  (I got a four-pack of glow-sticks, one
of each color, and a bag and some buckly-snap things.)   

PLUS, canoes on TOP of the aisles, backpacking gear hung from the
floor to higher than I could reach, and an endless supply of portable
seating arrangements.

Then we achieved FISHING.  And I don't mean that sort of namby pamby
get a rod & reel and some worms and get out there.  

I'm talking 3 aisles so long they had to have a center aisle punched
through, containing NOTHING BUT BAIT.  

I'm talking a little shack, roughly the size of a friend's house,
built inside OUTDOOR WORLD and specializing in BASS FISHING.  I'm
talkin' shelves 8 FEET up by 20 FEET long DEVOTED to tackle boxes.  

I'm talking another SIX AISLES of rods with all sorts of end-cap crap
like a belt & pocket get up for bracing your rod (in and about the
area of one's own rod if one's inclined to have one).  Also included
were yer standard hats and vests-of-many-pockets and bait bags and
coolers and catch bags (for the fish you've caught) and BOOTS.

I'm talking a giant fake rock formation with a TUNNEL and a channel of
water with a bridge over it stocked with bass and ducks.  (The tunnel
was for looking at the fish close up and observing the 115 lb. turtle
from hell - I forget the name, but it was the kind of snapping turtle
that has the lure on its tongue for getting fish near its mouth.)

I'm talking SERIOUS FISHING here.

This all segues neatly into BOATS.  Flat bottom or fiberglass hulls,
these are boats made for FISHING!  Danger orange vests of every size,
floaty thingies for your keys, replaceable chairs to allow you to
choose the one that best suits YOUR ASS (and NO ONE ELSE'S).  There
were a good half-dozen boats lying about, giants piles of stuffed (as
in filled-with-cotton, you-know-for-kids stuffed) FISH, and MORE
vests-of-many-pockets, more ways to attach your pole to your boat then
you might imagine plus SAFETY GEAR out the wahzoo.

This was next to the WATER SPORTS.  Ahem.  This was also where the
commitment-to-nature types of propaganda lived.  And some chairs for
the weary.

Did I mention the dead-and-stuffed (as in taxedermy) wildlife?  There
was a plaque stating that they were all donated from private
collections.  OUTDOOR WORLD built second level shelves the size of
your average deck along many walls and featured savage-looking bears,
growling coyotes, leaping wolves, a bellowing buffalo being attacked
by leaping wolves, snarling big cats and the occasional squirrel.  (By
the by, who the FUCK stuffs squirrels?  They didn't even have the
heart to make 'em look vicious!  They were just nut clutching
observers of the mysteries of... bein' dead and skinned and mounted, I
guess.)

Beyond the joys of water (water-skiing, swimming, messing about in
boats, etc.) were the check-out counters (outlined in faux-logs) and
beyond that was THE GIFT SHOP.  It was sort of it's own separate
little room.  This is where I found other women, but only in pairs or
with their husbands.  It was full of birdhouses and dried flowers.
And ART!  All the wildlife that was life-sized & stuffed in the rest
of the store had been captured here in carved wood, painted and
mounted.  Also, here we had the books!  All dozen or so of them.
FISHING FOR DUMMIES was my favorite.

THE GIFT SHOP lead into a small, darkened arcade with 2 different
shooting games.

Outside that was SHOES and then we were back by the dead polar bear,
near CAMO.

So I turned and ventured towards the center.  

In the middle of the place, near the bridge and the water, surrounded
in a semi-circle by GOLF, CAMPING & FISHING, is UNCLE someone or
another's SNACK SHACK, with more faux logs AND, my favorite of all the
stuffed animals, STUFFED PIGEONS - one presented in mid-flight (with
the help of a couple of wires).  

Nearby were the TREE SEATS.  These were seats that you rig up on a
tree (many different sorts were set up on tree-sized poles) using
spikes or ropes or climbing webbing so that you can sit up in the tree
and observe the wildlife unnoticed.  What I'd like to know is how many
hunters have blown themselves out of a tree by shooting a high-powered
gun from a bad angle...  More CAMO here - hardcore hiding-in-the-trees
ambush shit.

Also in the middle were hats - both the kind ya just buy and the
able-to-be-personalized booth (which also did t-shirts) - and clothing
(y'know - overalls, vacation wear, pants with zip-a-way legs, etc.
PLUS the most HIDEOUS women's clothing I've ever seen in my LIFE and
-trust me- I'm from Jersey and I know from fugly, and Tommy Bahama
silk hawaiin shirts that made my eyes tired).

Beyond clothing was the SPECIAL PRESENTS AREA, by which I mean the
place where you buy things for your womenfolk to make up for the $1000
you spent on gear or so's you don't have to go into one o'them
degradin' MALLS.  They had GOLD BY THE INCH, rings, necklaces,
lockets, cameos, and little crystal animals.  Nightmares.  For years.
'Nuff said.

(Have I mentioned the ceiling?  It was well over two-stories high and
had that hanging metal infrastructure-type stuff.  It made everything
seem even bigger.  And lots of the displays went vertical - 10, 15,
even 20 foot high - signs, things hanging down, things posted up,
things on top of the aisles, things dangling from nets and ladders and
poles.)

But the best thing in the middle - the freakiest thing in the middle -
was the killin' part.  

Five or six aisles, transected by a center aisle.  To the left, every
sort of bow-and-arrow thing you could think of - make-yer-own-arrows
gear, hard cases for your bow, soft cases, videos, a whole aisle of
arrow-heads (pointed, bladed, four-blades, long, short, barbed), bows
for kids, packed-solid wads o'stuff with targets for practicing,
videos, etc.

To the right was an aisle for holsters, an aisle for ammo, an aisle
for gun cases, an aisle for ANIMAL CALLS!  Ducks, geese, turkeys -
ones you blow in, ones you pump, ones you jiggle, and MORE VIDEOS.

This was followed by the scent aisle - half for how to mask yours,
half for how to replicate the animals.  They had big cat piss, small
predator piss, rutting female deer piss, musk from antler-slamming
time, musk from felt-shedding time, on and on and on.

But on the other side of these aisles were the actual guns and the
door to the shooting range (for both bow&arrow and gun) downstairs. 

The gun counter was so long that even with my glasses on, the guns at
the end were a blur.  

The rifles were lined up, stock down, aimed at the ceiling, with their
trigger guards at about grabbing height for the guy behind the
counter.  Too many to count.

In the glass counters were the pistols.  End to end, six foot long
counters - so many of them, with crisp lighting and very little drool,
that I couldn't count.

I got a lot of evil side-glances here, so I didn't look much.  And it
was so overwhelming, seeing so many guns all at once, that it was a
blur.  I didn't want to look.  I didn't want to think about it.  I've
been to a shooting range, fired and cleaned guns.  I respect guns.  I
have friends who've hunted for food to get them through the winter.
But this was...  incalculable.  Immeasurable.  Immense.  Mind-blowing.

Back around the SHOES and out the checkout, passing a pink t-shirt
showing a woman in fishing gear with the caption I WON'T CLEAN HOUSE
BUT I WILL CLEAN FISH.  

Then a walk outside in the 35'F rain (without a coat) before making it
past a giant outdoor fountain back to the walkway into the hotel
(which has a restaurant, sort of attached to OUTDOOR WORLD and whose
entrance you pass going between the hotel and the store.  It
specialized in BEER BREWING AND BEEF - from outside you could see the
stainless steel tanks through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the
second floor).

I walked back to my room with my purchases, my head buzzing - 
overloaded, overstimulated, too-much-local-color-indoctrinated, and
tired.  Elapsed time, nearly 1.5 hours.

Texas.  Yeesh.

--
Kelly J. Cooper
23 March 2001