The last day of tour began in Kansas City, and I wish to remark upon a stroke of real fine luck. Prior to departing for St. Louis, I stopped in a coffee shop (let us not burn too much time contemplating the damage one might inflict on one’s carefully-crafted image as rustic steel-toed scribbler should it be determined that one took advantage of the wi-fi in an earth-toned establishment called Latte’Land) (furthermore  located next to the Tommy Bahama shop in the Country Club Plaza) (one did not have a latte’) (one did have the FTO Timor Emera) (French-pressed and mighty fine) (I own a pitchfork!) and caught up on some emails and thank you cards (yes, Mom, a postcard to every bookstore) and blog posts and such. Prior to leaving, I noted that the Timor Emera had infused my cerebrum with an audible hum and thus for purposes of recalibration I ordered a soothing and rehydrating herbal tea (essence of apple) (Steel toes! Pitchforks!) for the road. I had driven a remarkably hilly two blocks (including one right turn) before reaching for the tea and realizing I left it on the roof of the car.  Drawing the vehicle to a stop as gently as if my lap had been homesteaded by a bowl of steaming weasel soup, I climbed out to find that the tea was riding proud and I had just wasted one very powerful swear word. Enjoyed that tea half way to St. Louis and in light of all those times I’ve groused and kicked and pitched a fit when my absent-mindedness has produced less hortatorius effects, I resolved to Take Note and thus I share with you this my Tale of Triumph. A friendly group waited in St. Louis. When the last book was signed, the streets were filled with a bashing thunderous rain. Underway by 9:30 p.m., lightning in the rearview as I passed Busch Stadium.  Planned on one more Super 8, but by midnight I had the idea of home in my head and couldn’t shake it and thus this 2,185 tour loop ended in rural Fall Creek at 5:26 a.m., after 527 miles straight. The sun was pinking things up when I walked in the house. The family was asleep but the little fuzzballs above were scratching about in their plastic tub, doing me the favor of confirming that apple tea notwithstanding, we are still in the chicken business.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

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Because publishing is a difficult and dangerous business, just prior to the book tour I bought me a pair of big ol’ honkin’ steel-toed logging boots. Made the purchase from Ralph down there at Ralph’s Boot & Shoe. Ralph is not really Ralph, but he won’t object if so hailed. We ordered them in and the first pair arrived a little out of whack (best way I can put it is that the leather was twisted around a tad slaunchwise). Ralph took care of it for me, no problem, which reminded me why I like buying things like boots from businesses like Ralph’s. “Ralph” not only custom fits your boot (rather than just stuff my metatarsals in the nearest size he spent some time with the weird foot-gauger dealie and found a pair that actually matched my flat feet) but he’ll be around later to repair, maintain and generally make whatever little extra I might have invested well worth it over the life of the boot. Naturally I am aware of that a writer wearing steel-toed logging boots is clomping down that thin line between incongruity and Imelda, but I wear them in part to remind myself that while I am clip-clopping around the country nattering about prose, my brother and many like him are using logging boots to actually log. Thus when someone asks me if I’m tired of signing books, I can wiggle my toes beneath the safety caps and unequivocally state, “Nope.” I also wear them because I have always nurtured the theory that at some point the wheels are gonna come off the wagon and at such time a man should be wearing good boots. Even – or especially – if he is in the vicinity of a latte machine, as was the case earlier today. I furthermore admit I just plain like boots (got married in the most recently-retired pair), even to the point of preserving their memory in the service of cross-marketing (click on album cover).

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

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The business concern pictured above is located directly across the street from my motel.  Compose your own jokes about how the installation crew might dress and act. Just the sight of the sign glowing blue-ly in the muggy dark made me smile. With all good fortune, by the time you read this I will have pointed the diesel southbound toward Wichita. Enroute, I plan to eat some turkey jerky. No special reason, except I like to turn the bag over when I’m far from home and see that it was made in Minong, Wisconsin, site of the hardest hit I ever received in a high school football game. Left defensive end, rolling out to contain the quarterback option when someone popped me in the face so hard I just rolled and rolled. There were hills and valleys on the Minong football field, this added texture to the experience. When I came to rest on my tailbone pad I recall bright lights above and a stinging lump on my lower lip. Hardest hit ever in a game, but not overall. That was during practice. Clay North. Helmet-to-helmet and such a crack that I could feel my sulci part. Now: Where are my car keys?

P.S., today I signed books for two very pleasant residents of Sweden. I showed off by saying “Come Here!” in Swedish.  Learned it from a Swedish policeman summoning a drunk off a train in the middle of the night one summer in 1989. Safe travels, Swedish people! 

P.P.S. I now have it on good authority that Swedish chickens say “Pock! Pock!”  (I may have omitted key umlauts.) 

P.P.P.S. The best umlauts are these.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

For additional details and tracking, see: Sneezingcow.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Whatever you think of Mike Huckabee, he once stated that if it is handed through a car window, it’s not food. The pile of greasy sacks avalanching the passenger side of my car are shameful and I repeatedly swear on a stack of curly-fry holsters that I shall not sin again, and I don’t, at least not until I’m running late and the grhelin kicks in. Back the cruise down, ease off to the right, and whoops, I’m looking at brake lights and talking to the radio box like some pathetic lab monkey trying to trip the trigger that releases the banana tablet. But today, a culinary tra-la-la! My schedule allowed me to join two dear friends for an actual sit-down dinner before leaving Omaha. We went here. I had two fat slabs of carp, including a side of bones so big you could use them to rat up your hair. Deep-fried, therefore: delicious. The sign above made me lonely for a special little backwater nook on the Chippewa River (within sniffin’ distance of the sewage treatment plant, if you must know) where I have whiled away many a pleasant hour with my pal Mills as we stalked (stood there until some came by) the wily (totally predictable) ictiobus bubalus and sheepshead drum (alternatively and wonderfully known as the “thunder pumper”). In a motel room beside a penitentiary outside Lincoln I pull the curtains and dream of a day not so long from now when I shall return to the Mighty Chip, raise my 30-year-old Browning compound and (aiming low, to allow for refraction) take a shot at landing some smoking materials of my own.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

For additional details and tracking, see: Sneezingcow.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Continuing to provide you with a gripping inside look at the whirlwind dazzlefest that is the barn boots book tour (not barn boots, actually) (logging boots) (more on the boots in a post for another day), the above photo reminds me to tell you that if yer gonna stay in 30-some motel rooms over 40-some days, you should not only remember to take your key when you leave the premises, you should take the little envelope with the room number on it, or you will be wandering the halls upon your return. Once during book tour in Oxford, Mississippi (I think … call the fact-checkers), and another time on a book tour in a location I can’t recall, I went to the wrong door with my key card and the door opened anyway. In both cases I encountered only someone else’s open suitcase and dirty socks (not the someone elses themselfses), but you will understand now why I always throw the deadbolt and hook the chain, no matter how prime the real estate. The perimeter is thus secured as I type this, having rolled a chunk of I-80 (fuel mileage dropped a click or two as the westward drive is a climb) from Iowa City to Des Moines with a stop along a rare undeveloped interchange to do a phone interview with Wisconsin radio station while sparrows and bob-o-links chirruped and bob-o-linked in the ditch grass outside my open window. It’s a fine green time to be crossing the Heartland.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

For additional details and tracking, see: Sneezingcow.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Greetings to my friends and family in the Chippewa Valley. You were promised fabulous book tour photography, and so it shall be. What you are seeing is Iowa or possibly Illinois (there were border issues and it was after midnight). I do know it was at least an hour after I hit the raccoon somewhere near Mineral Point. Poor little furry fella tried to merge with me but failed to signal his intent and the only consolation from the resulting thump was the idea that some chickens may have been spared. One bears no ill will to wilderness creatures, but after 21 years of ambulance calls one is loathe to take split-second evasive action at 68 mph with a car full of book boxes, as there is no airbag in the ceiling. I followed the pink line on the GPS screen to a Super 8 motel and only after hitting the sheets at 3 a.m. did I realize I had no idea where I was. In the morning light I looked at the address on the bedside phone and it said Bettendorf, Iowa, which I guess it was unless someone at the Super 8 is a real joker. I did look up the Bettendorf website and learned it was originally part of the Wisconsin Territory, so I will shortly fire off a letter to Governor Doyle and determine if those sneaky people in Iowa called no give-backs. When I awoke the drywalling contractors outside my window were dropping the F-bomb regular and referring to their “bishop sticks,” which, if I recall my firefighter training properly are devices used to stabilize a ladder and not associated with naughtiness in the church or something you might find in a Christopher Moore novel. Right now I am in the empty breakfast area of a conference center in Moline, Illinois (John Deere Central), where in one hour I will try out postmodern Wisconsin cow piths and allusions on an agriculturally-minded group of forward-looking conferencers. Afterward I shall attempt to transact commerce involving the aforementioned book boxes. After all, this is a business trip. Then it is back in the diesel (yah, check out price of diesel versus gas right now, I look smart for at least a week!) and off to Iowa City for one of the legendary bookstores, Prairie Lights.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

For additional details and tracking, see: Sneezingcow.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Not sure if this counts for a "Show Us Your Volume One" but here is a cellphone shot of me checking V1 on my laptop in my hotel room with the spaceship-like Seattle Public Library in the background.

I'm currently on tour to promote Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. I'm blogging the tour here, Tweeting the tour here, and Facebooking it here.

Cellphone shot: My "desk" in the Super 8 Motel. Visible items include laptop (lifeline to Volume One) Festival Foods receipts (bought "tour-related" [as in "business expense"] food on the way out of Eau Claire), sugar-coated peanuts ("business expense"), "COOP" postcards (Mom taught me to get those thank-you notes in the mail right away), stamps (use'em quick, rates going up), fine-point Sharpie (the tool of celebrity, which I used to accidentally mark the thigh of one of the two pairs of pants I took on tour), postcard with multiple pictures of me in the mud with my pigs (reserved for extra-special thank-yous), bottled water (must maintain skin turgor), VISA bill (didn't get it paid before I left home, gotta send the money from the road), various business cards (crumpled from pocket), USPS box with books I'm mailing home to my daughter (books gifted to me on the road by a kind soul), white envelopes for receipts (Press-N-Seal...I hate tongue cuts), Post-Its (life before Post-Its was dark and terribly forgetful), Dentyne gum wrapper (must not have zoo breath when signing books), show prep notes from Minnesota Public Radio interview, and scribbled notes that ended up being a blog post about Tom T. Hall.

I'm currently on tour to promote Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. I'm blogging the tour here, Tweeting the tour here, and Facebooking it here.