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:

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