Going nuts: Severance, CO

Population: 3,165

Area: 2.2 Sq. Miles
County: Weld
Motto: "Where the geese fly and the bulls cry"
Visited On: October 15, 2011
Cast of characters: High Country Newsman

Howdy, folks, this is the introductory post for Dotting The Landscape's Western edition. I'll thank you kindly to remove your hats and firearms before entering.

As a former central Illinois resident myself now living in northern Colorado, I wanted to start you flatlanders out with a town that wouldn’t freak you out too much (a lot of Colorado mountain towns are isolated dystopian hippie-ocracies that are the realization of a half-assed Hunter S. Thompson story). Enter Severance, Colorado.

Severance actually looks like a lot of the small Illinois towns already profiled on Dotting The Landscape. Surrounded by corn? Check. The Fighting Illini on the local bar’s TV? Check.

A pickup full of “equine senior” horse chow? Check.

But there’s a couple key differences between Severance and the prairie towns of central Illinois.
One is the lovely snow-capped Rockies about 20 miles away. (Sadly, Blackberry cameras are really, really bad at capturing loveliness. Trust me on this one).

The second difference is that Severance’s main industry is servin’ up hot-n-juicy deep-fried bull testicles.

That’s thanks entirely to Bruce’s Bar, by far the largest and most prominent establishment in Severance.

Bruce’s isn’t so much a bar that serves Rocky Mountain oysters as it is an organization on a single-minded crusade to assist and glorify in the eunuchization of every bull.

#OccupyCowStreet

"You folks ain't from around here, are ya?"

Former owner Bruce Ruth, who all young male bulls are warned will come get them in their sleep if they don't behave

Inside, Bruce’s looks much like your run-of-the-mill family-oriented biker bar. At a table sat a family who was either chowing down after hunting for the day or got a group discount on matching camo outfits. At the bar, a middle-aged mustachioed gentleman, wearing a polo shirt the same beige color as the label on the two Coors bottles in front of him, was quietly singing along to the bar music: Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds.” It was a moment of sublime beauty.

After convincing the bartender to get me a Budweiser despite not having my ID, I ordered some oysters, along with a cheeseburger as a backup plan.

Here's what happened next:

The verdict: they tasted like heavily breaded calamari. The only sign I was eating sliced bull testicles was a slight metallic aftertaste, though that easily could have just been my brain trying hard on my behalf to identify, for future reference, any possible difference between seafood and bull nuts. I ate about 5-6 of them before focusing on my Plan B cheeseburger.

Turns out I went to Bruce's Bar a week before history: the 1st annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Challenge.

The bartender seemed excited when I asked her about it.

“We’ve had a lot of people ask about it, but only a few have actually signed up so far,” she said. She handed over at least half a dozen flyers, touting how – for $10, contestants each get a drink, a t-shirt, and – of course – all the nuts they can shove down their throats while the Coors Light girls look on. How can you afford NOT to do it?

By now, I’m sure you can guess where the name Severance came from: obviously, from David E. Severance, a local 19th Century farmer.

Of course, the town is about much more than bull gonads (am I the first person to ever write that sentence?). Severance has actually exploded in population during the past decade, from 597 people in 2000, becoming a bedroom community for the nearby cities of Fort Collins and Greeley. Go about six blocks anywhere east of town, and suddenly the scenery of a sleepy farming town gives way to Naperville.

And, yes, there are businesses in town besides Bruce’s. There’s a newish-looking gas station, not to mention a drive-thru coffee stand/egg dispensary.

In the lower right hand corner of the sign, it says "omega 3," as if farm fresh eggs don't fucking sell themselves

And there's growth opportunities right and left -- you can even buy Severance's post office!

I should specify that this chain-link enclosure is not the actual post office.

The P.O.'s located right across the street from Bruce’s Bar. Maybe we could start a competing Rocky Mountain oyster emporium. Let me know!

I did not see a single goose in town the entire time I was there

Tuesday's Gone With the Wind: Virginia, IL

VITAL STATS

Population: 1611

Area: 1.1 square miles

Cast Members: Dr. Doctorman, Your Intrepid Blogger

Vistited On: July 16, 2011

Oh Lord. Oh God most high. Oh demons of Cass County. What have you done? What have you done?

Have you seen any version of Children of the Corn? There was the original with Linda Hamilton, the legion of sequels it spawned, and the passable Sci-Fi (SyFy?) Channel remake. Rolling into Virginia gave me the exact same creepy feeling. The square was all but deserted and every other window we looked in was either boarded up or wishing it were boarded up. Even the crunch of the gravel under our feet seemed to whisper "Go! Run! Don't waste your life away, young man!"

This appears to have been closed since before I was born.

But why? How could we have felt such crushing depression on such a bright and powerfully warm day? Well YIB and I did know in advance that Virginia was the county seat, a title that had been taken from previously written about Beardstown quite some time ago. We came into town to investigate why, and I think that puts the fault partially on us: We were expecting to find rationality and evidence to answer the question. Instead we found madness and non-Euclidean geometry.

While Beardstown was certainly a tired old river town, it didn't live up the Latino vs. Caucasoid atmosphere we had been warned about. Still, it definitely had a personality of some kind. Probably more like the personality of your previously divorced uncle who is now married to a young senorita, but a personality all the same! Virginia, though, ah...yeah.

We stopped in the mysteriously empty town square at around 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. First thing we noticed (besides the lack of people there) was that the main drag through town is actually called Beardstown Avenue!

Hey man, give the people what they want.

I thumbed through the town's website, http://www.casscomm.com/~cityofva/, and thought the "History" tab would prove useful. That was wrong of me as it's clear that the town's only idea of a history is a long list of what occurs in the town annually. Oh, and there are apparently some replica log cabins nearby. HOOPTY-DOO!

Granny was finally forced to close down in 1981 when she started featuring "Cat Food" as the flavor of the month.

We then bailed back into the car, not waiting for Isaac and his congregation of children to come out and sacrifice us on the courthouse steps. A drive around town only revealed tired old houses, badly in need of repair. One even had the "engine block hanging from a tree" that I really thought was just something Jeff Foxworthy had made up. We were on the edge of true dispair, then we saw this:

It's coming for you.

But there were people patronizing it, despite the eerie music it was emitting.

And then there was this place:

Which frightens me far too much to give it a witty caption.

We finally found our way through to the other side of town, which was not nearly as disturbing. There was a pretty nice ballfield and even a public pool. Honestly not a lot of small towns can brag about having a place to cool off in the summer, other than the tavern or the church basement. And the place was jumping.

Seriously, there are people in this shot, it's just a terrible picture. Something about walking up to a swimming pool where kids are playing and taking pictures does not sit right with me.

Then, to our surprise, we stumbled on the Cass County Fairgrounds. It wasn't huge or anything but it fit the description well enough. The weird thing was, I don't remember seeing any signs in or around town that would indicate that this was here (it probably just escaped by powerful sense of detection).

Here is where the children gathered to decide the fate of that poor comptroller who wandered into town last week.

And there was one street with some houses that were at least partially kept up.

See? Nice!

YIB recently made the point that we need to find reasons for going to our Dots on the Landscape. After Virginia, I can only exhaustedly say "yes, we must." I feel like we came into town, open for anything, and immediately stepped into a pot hole and broke our ankle. As you all probably know, I'm from a small town and I really do love all that that entails. But we didn't see any of that here! There weren't people out talking to each other, just solitary people sitting or moving in isolation...and they looked damned mad about it. Instead of an inexplicable sense of small town pride, we saw unmowed lawns and closed businesses as far as they eye could see. The public pool was probably the only bright spot in the whole town the day we were there.

Now I'm not saying I understand the inner workings of Virginia. I'm sure someone had a good reason to move the county seat there once upon a time. But whatever reason that was, I think it's long, long gone.