Tales From the Archive: Dubs of the D'Ubervilles

Fairly uneventful week overall. Watched Eurotrip (hilarious), played 6 hours of Halo, finally finished the sword brandy, and began training my fellow barbershop quartet members (a process that will either result in three better singers or three less friends). So to offer something for all you devoted fans, a tale from the past (as part of the continuing "Tales From the Archives" feature of the NU Alum blogs).

My senior year at Northwestern, I was friends with a lot of uppity sophmores, including the one who would later earn the moniker Uber260. Now, 260 hailed from a small town in middle Illinois, which we called Uberville, for obvious reasons. Since the inception of our communal friendship, the mythos of Uberville had slowly grown, to the point where we imagined it as an Arcadian paradise where everything was, in fact, uber, and where a group of misfit drunks from the big city could have many and varied hijinks. We repeatedly planned to go to Uberville and revel in our own idiocy, maybe burning the town to the ground and salting the earth to mark our passing. Eventually we did plan an actual trip, but due to the lameness of our cohorts, only Quantum, Uber260, and myself ended up going. (This was just the first trip to Uberville. Later our band of drunks would take the town by storm in a bacchanal of unprecedented proportion. As this was after I had left, hopefully one of my comrades will offer that tale as a complement to this one.)

For reference, Uberville is a small little hamlet near Starved Rock State Park, in middle Illinois. Coincidentally, Starved Rock is where the Red Headed Stepchild was born and raised, as her father was a park ranger, or warden, or whatever parks have. His duties remain somewhat unclear, but we Madisonians assume he fought bears with his hands and hunted the nearby townspeople for sport. Which means there's a very real chance some of Uber260's kin were slain by this admirable madman. But I digress.

After an arduous journey, we three arrived at the outskirts of Uberville, stopping to luncheon at the nearby Steak 'n' Shake. This was Quantum's first time at that prestigious establishment, and he with his fancy New York ways disdained it as mediocre, not yet realizing the brilliance of a place open 24 hours serving burgers. (This opinion would later change after many many late night forays once an outpost opened in Evanston itself.) Afterward, we attended the local Uberville Walmart to soak up some local culture, then hit the town itself like a thunderbolt.

Our first stop was at the local high school, where the Uberville Bruins football team was in a playoff game against some other local footballery institution. 260's younger brother played on the team, so we dropped by to observe. Upon arriving at the field, we witnessed a somewhat unusual spectacle, in that two children had thrown a nerf ball up into a tree and could not get it down, as they were short and the tree in fact was not. Espying a nearby metal pole on the ground, I deftly knocked the ball out of the tree and returned it to the young scamps, earning 260's praise in that I was probably the first person in that town to ever think outside the box. Pleased with my slick, big-city ways, I checked back every so often to observe the two children, only to gaze on in confusion as they continued to throw the ball back at the tree in an attempt to re-stick it. It was then I realized the true subtlety of Uberville, for it was no mere town, but rather a testing place for heroes and drunkards. This ordeal with the ball and the pole was, I realized, akin to the riddle of the Sphinx, a challenge for unwary travellers, folks who must prove their worth before Uberville accepted them. Armed with this new knowledge, like Odysseus and Achilles, Quantum and I set forth into the game itself.

Glad we were for this early challenge, as it quickly set the tone for the rest of the day, where the town would repeatedly try to kill us. It began with the water, for the town was apparently near an industrial center or pollutant or something, which rendered the local water unpotable to outsiders (260 of course drank it like, well, like water). Quantum and I both got sodas from the local concession stand, but sadly they were not cans, and thus were mingled with the local brew. Like acid eating away all it touches, that soda assailed my throat. Luckily, a strict regiment of hard alcohol had already killed most of those nerve clusters, so we passed that ordeal (though I still don't believe I ever recovered full use of my tastebuds).

We proceeded to watch the game, where the Bruins trounced their adversaries, despite their total lack of a passing game. Uber260 moved to chat with his family, while Quantum and I heckled the refs, cheered the Bruins, and constantly encouraged them to pass the ball rather than run it every play. Quantum, in his idiom, attempted to utilize his fabulous wealth to obtain favors of a lascivious nature from the local youth, propositioning cheerleaders with the somewhat ambigous comment, "Hey baby, wanna make five bucks?" Luckily, none of them actually seemed to hear him, and there was no shotgun wedding performed with Quantum as a reluctant groom to some farmgirl.

The rest of the day progressed with various interludes, as we visited Uber260's homestead, his parents' video store (and its fabulous porn collection), saw the multiple bars in the town (with the water as bad as it was, I'm not surprised they need that many bars. They must be like Red Cross stations), and learned that his small town has one of the highest murder rates in Illinois. Ah, Et in Arcadia ego! We then retired to a local chicken establishment to sup with Uber's family, a place called Rip's, where Quantum and I would face the next ordeal, that of the fried. Now, Rip's is a quality establishment, where the beer flows freely and the smell of frying food saturates the air. Sadly, we were with family, not our drunken cohorts, so we couldn't really enjoy the low-priced pitchers to their full extent, but we did glut ourselves on fried chicken and fried. Fried what, we don't know, as it was yet another mysterious attempt to kill us. For at Rip's, a side dish they offer is a basket of fried batter, just little bits of it, as if they had scraped it off a chicken, with a side of pickles used to scoop up the fried and eat it by the handful. (Captain Americanist, familiar with this establishment himself, tells me they are actually called "crumblins," but Quantum coined the term "the fried," and I cling to the old ways.) Again, such fare may have been enough to kill lesser men, but Quantum and I had also trained in the deadly fried-food arts, utilizing their unique poisons to repeatedly combat the poisons of alcohol. Again, we were more than a match for the deadly ways of Uberville.

Finally, with night approaching, we retired to Uber260's grandparents' farm, where we congratulated his brother (and informed him about our plans for their passing game). During that final stop, 260 showed us the creek/island where he planned his yearly "Hobbit Fest" (mockery ensued), we faced down the spectre of the "doglike creatures" that apparently killed the local animals (we never actually saw any, but, like any good city folk, Quantum and I were terrified by the possibility of the unchecked wilderness of a farm), and I beat up 260's obnoxious youngest brother. Yes, he was only about 10, while I was 21, but he was provoking me. And he just kept coming. So I stand by my decision. I think I made him cry, and I felt like a big man.

But like any epic journey, our trip had to come to an end, and we returned to Evanston full of ourselves and our victories over small-town life (I believe Quantum even took back some of the fried as evidence of the veracity of our tale). As I've said, our tale involved hilarity but no drunkenness (sadly), thus making it a somewhat unusual archive tale. Have no fear, though, as the next chapter of the story involves a band of drunken Shakespearian actors descending upon the town and drinking it dry. Hopefully Bourbon will eventually regale his readership with that tale, so keep an eye out for updates. And if you ever find yourself in Uberville, be wary, as a city person has little chance of survival against its slick, small-town ways. And watch out for the doglike creatures. I still hear their howls in my sleep, and I wonder if I ever will be truly safe again.