Every summer, the haute bourgeoisie of Middle America descend on Lake of the Ozarks to jet ski, barbecue ribs, and (until 2023) drink a shit-ton of Budweiser.
I’m not quite that well-heeled, but I’d say I live in a great little riverside community with much the same attitude, in Canada. I grew up around Peterborough Ontario Canada, the ‘playground of the Kawarthas’. Watching the insane antics of the Toronto people on the lake my parents built their cottage on, which was close enough to our town home I could ride my bicycle in from it, I always believed that it was stupid to live in a city longing for those few months a year you ran like mad in ridiculous traffic every Friday to get to your sweet spot at the cottage for the weekend. Where you ripped frantically around the lake on your noisemakers trying to show everyone else how much you were ‘enjoying’ yourself, and then fell into the long glum line of traffic back to Toronto again every Sunday. Ditch the city and figure out how to live at the cottage all the time. It shaped what I chose for a career long before the internet made working from home a horizon-expander: I became a nurse, and there are sick people, and therefore, jobs, everywhere. I wasn’t jailed to work in big cities. For the last 15 years, heading into retirement, we farmed in New Brunswick far from crazy crowds, but along came grandchildren, all back in Ontario. In 2019 we looked for a base in their midst, and luckily, bought just before COVID sent prices into orbit. Husband lives fishing and we lucked into one of the best spots on our stretch of water. You know you’re in the best company when, despite suffering financially from the lockdowns, which we largely ignored, you hear the local restaurant shipped pizzas down to Ottawa to feed the truckers in the Freedom Convoy every day it was on, and you see Freedom network newsletters on the counter. The guys in the parking lot at our little church banter back and forth about how full of meat their freezers are, for upcoming winters, and a buck-knife on the belt under the Dickies padded shirt is normal Sunday style. On Canada Day, the entire river blows up with firework displays answering each other. This year we had a fire ban due to extreme dryness; we had a forest fire a few miles downriver. But, my son, a fireworks tech, is gleefully preparing our display for Labor Day, to compensate.
We don't have a house on the Lake of the Ozarks, but we visit friends who do. It's the most laid-back, fun, relaxing, nobody-cares-who-you-are-or-what-you-do place. There are huge mansions and tiny trailers on the lake, monster racing boats and tiny fishing boats and everything in between. There are teens and young families and young adults and retired people. You can wear your swimsuits and boat up to the restaurants and bars and eat and drink and listen to live music any evening throughout the summer. And NO ONE cares who you voted for or what your stupid pronouns are. People are just HAPPY there.
The Trump Boat parade here in Charleston SC in May 2020 was the largest flotilla of individual vessels EVER in CHS harbor (the 2nd largest was the flotilla escorting the sunken Confederate submarine Hunley after it was recovered nearby in 2000). It was super fun - boat people are almost all normal people. In my boat, after the parade, we tied up to the dock at a local bar on Shem Creek in nearby Mount Pleasant, which was PACKED, had beers and rum and lots of good conversation with strangers. ZERO masks.
Then the next day I was reading of all the Draconian craziness in the big leftist cities (the photo of people in a NYC park having to sit in little white circles on the ground with cops watching them is, to me, the iconic COVID craziness pic). It really hit me what a contrast we had in the same nation. Remember, Joe Biden was credited with winning the 2020 election with the lowest amount of county-level victories in US history (about 500 of the 3000 US counties). So, most of the places you go in the US are normal. The leftists are packing themselves into smaller and smaller parts of the nation.
Several summers back, cruising around the lake during a beer marketing war, I saw these great billboards pitting Busch (beer of the people) versus Coors (Rocky Mountain waters) with my favorite being: "Keep Your Mountains, Just Show Us Your Busch."
Can totally relate to this part: "They weren’t super political, until they felt the politics, the culture, the language of the media people and tech people and Hollywood people thousands of miles away—the people telling them how to live, what to think, what was good or bad—bearing down on them."
That describes me to a T. I was never political until the leftist culture MADE me political, by forcing their politics on me like a slow IV drip over years and decades, then becoming an IV PUSH in the years between about 2015 and 2020. Except that the kind of political they made me was in direct opposition to everything they stand for.
That aside, reading this article and seeing the pictures, I would so LOVE to go there! It looks like a blast to this life-time Northerner.
What??? I thought thousands of innocent people were killed during that pool party over Memorial Day weekend. And it was all because some ignorant, selfish, idiotic, uninformed people with no education and one tooth didn't listen to The Experts.
What a relief to learn that carnage was avoided.
Seriously, thank God for middle America and people with commonsense and independence. As someone who is stuck in the heart of a blue state on the East Coast, I greatly admire the way they live.
But the massive George Floyd "protests" just a week later, which dwarfed that gathering, were A-OK, because the cause was racial justice and COVID favored the woke.
Did you see the picture of the lunatic that my home state of CT elected - and keeps electing - to Congress. Rosa De Lauro. A picture's worth 1000 words. What sort of people elect these cartoonish gargoyles? Why, Democrats, of course. Hopeless. We need a national divorce.
Spectacular ! Thank you . Fuckem all !
I’m not quite that well-heeled, but I’d say I live in a great little riverside community with much the same attitude, in Canada. I grew up around Peterborough Ontario Canada, the ‘playground of the Kawarthas’. Watching the insane antics of the Toronto people on the lake my parents built their cottage on, which was close enough to our town home I could ride my bicycle in from it, I always believed that it was stupid to live in a city longing for those few months a year you ran like mad in ridiculous traffic every Friday to get to your sweet spot at the cottage for the weekend. Where you ripped frantically around the lake on your noisemakers trying to show everyone else how much you were ‘enjoying’ yourself, and then fell into the long glum line of traffic back to Toronto again every Sunday. Ditch the city and figure out how to live at the cottage all the time. It shaped what I chose for a career long before the internet made working from home a horizon-expander: I became a nurse, and there are sick people, and therefore, jobs, everywhere. I wasn’t jailed to work in big cities. For the last 15 years, heading into retirement, we farmed in New Brunswick far from crazy crowds, but along came grandchildren, all back in Ontario. In 2019 we looked for a base in their midst, and luckily, bought just before COVID sent prices into orbit. Husband lives fishing and we lucked into one of the best spots on our stretch of water. You know you’re in the best company when, despite suffering financially from the lockdowns, which we largely ignored, you hear the local restaurant shipped pizzas down to Ottawa to feed the truckers in the Freedom Convoy every day it was on, and you see Freedom network newsletters on the counter. The guys in the parking lot at our little church banter back and forth about how full of meat their freezers are, for upcoming winters, and a buck-knife on the belt under the Dickies padded shirt is normal Sunday style. On Canada Day, the entire river blows up with firework displays answering each other. This year we had a fire ban due to extreme dryness; we had a forest fire a few miles downriver. But, my son, a fireworks tech, is gleefully preparing our display for Labor Day, to compensate.
We don't have a house on the Lake of the Ozarks, but we visit friends who do. It's the most laid-back, fun, relaxing, nobody-cares-who-you-are-or-what-you-do place. There are huge mansions and tiny trailers on the lake, monster racing boats and tiny fishing boats and everything in between. There are teens and young families and young adults and retired people. You can wear your swimsuits and boat up to the restaurants and bars and eat and drink and listen to live music any evening throughout the summer. And NO ONE cares who you voted for or what your stupid pronouns are. People are just HAPPY there.
Sounds like Heaven!
The Trump Boat parade here in Charleston SC in May 2020 was the largest flotilla of individual vessels EVER in CHS harbor (the 2nd largest was the flotilla escorting the sunken Confederate submarine Hunley after it was recovered nearby in 2000). It was super fun - boat people are almost all normal people. In my boat, after the parade, we tied up to the dock at a local bar on Shem Creek in nearby Mount Pleasant, which was PACKED, had beers and rum and lots of good conversation with strangers. ZERO masks.
Then the next day I was reading of all the Draconian craziness in the big leftist cities (the photo of people in a NYC park having to sit in little white circles on the ground with cops watching them is, to me, the iconic COVID craziness pic). It really hit me what a contrast we had in the same nation. Remember, Joe Biden was credited with winning the 2020 election with the lowest amount of county-level victories in US history (about 500 of the 3000 US counties). So, most of the places you go in the US are normal. The leftists are packing themselves into smaller and smaller parts of the nation.
I suspect a recent release of a new frankevirus has succombed to the summer heat.
Every summer the viroligists go on holiday while the climate cabal fills in for them.
Several summers back, cruising around the lake during a beer marketing war, I saw these great billboards pitting Busch (beer of the people) versus Coors (Rocky Mountain waters) with my favorite being: "Keep Your Mountains, Just Show Us Your Busch."
The comments are ten times more entertaining than the article. LMAO.
Can totally relate to this part: "They weren’t super political, until they felt the politics, the culture, the language of the media people and tech people and Hollywood people thousands of miles away—the people telling them how to live, what to think, what was good or bad—bearing down on them."
That describes me to a T. I was never political until the leftist culture MADE me political, by forcing their politics on me like a slow IV drip over years and decades, then becoming an IV PUSH in the years between about 2015 and 2020. Except that the kind of political they made me was in direct opposition to everything they stand for.
That aside, reading this article and seeing the pictures, I would so LOVE to go there! It looks like a blast to this life-time Northerner.
What??? I thought thousands of innocent people were killed during that pool party over Memorial Day weekend. And it was all because some ignorant, selfish, idiotic, uninformed people with no education and one tooth didn't listen to The Experts.
What a relief to learn that carnage was avoided.
Seriously, thank God for middle America and people with commonsense and independence. As someone who is stuck in the heart of a blue state on the East Coast, I greatly admire the way they live.
But the massive George Floyd "protests" just a week later, which dwarfed that gathering, were A-OK, because the cause was racial justice and COVID favored the woke.
Yep, thought so, spoke too soon you’re still snarky and miserable. Good thing you think yourself handsome, not much else going for you.
Sounds refreshing
I love it. This is life at its best. Anti-neurosis is trending.
Sometimes, when I think about it, I just cannot believe the last three years especially with these authoritarians in charge. Absolutely disgusting.
Well, this author sems to confim what I've been saying since Day 1. People didn't vote for Trump because of "economic anxiety." ;)
Late to the party - away on biz.
Did you see the picture of the lunatic that my home state of CT elected - and keeps electing - to Congress. Rosa De Lauro. A picture's worth 1000 words. What sort of people elect these cartoonish gargoyles? Why, Democrats, of course. Hopeless. We need a national divorce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9H3uCpl48
Felt like I was enjoying a Pabst Blue Ribbon on a pontoon boat! Keep writing.