Pak-a-Burger Has the Best Hamburgers

Bar nun.

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I took these photos and a few more a few years ago; It was a beautiful spring day and I was driving past when I noticed two nuns sitting in front waiting on their orders. I stopped, approached them and told them exactly what I wanted to do with the photos if they allowed me to take them. They both giggled and gave their consent.

They told me their names, but I can't remember them now after a couple of years. I'm pretty sure one was "Sister Mary" or maybe "Sister Teresa" but maybe I'm just hedgin' my bet with those guesses.

On a related note, the building was repainted, thank God. Seriously, thank God that it was repainted, thank God it changed hands. The burgers were horrible then after the change of ownership. The building is back to its original white and the food is back to being delicious again, especially the burgers.

About the only thing it had goin' for it, I guess, was that the customers were good.

B for Baculum

They looked like something a witch doctor would wear around his neck; a dozen or more bones on a wire.

I was about seven years old and was out in the garage with my dad when I first noticed them.

"What are those, daddy?" I asked.

"What's that, son?" dad asked in turn, looking up from whatever it was he was doing.

"Those bones on the wall there." I replied, pointing to them.

I remember my dad smiling as he paused; I waited on him as he thought about his answer.

"That's the business end of a gentleman coon." he said after a few seconds, grinning as if there was some private joke in his answer.

I frowned as I thought about his answer. "Business end?" Hmmm.... I knew the barrel of a gun was the "business end", so maybe this too was something dangerous, maybe it was some sort of claw the raccoon had. Whatever it was, they certainly looked cool, almost like ivory.

"Can I have one?" I asked my pop.

"Sure." he said, and reached up and got the set off of the garage wall. "You can have 'em all." and handed them to me.

I was thrilled. I didn't know exactly what I had, but I didn't much care.

"What are they good for?" I asked.

"Well.." dad considered the question, with another small grin on his face. Snickering a little bit, he went on: "They're not much good for a coon now, but some guys make keychains, even whittle them down and make toothpicks out of 'em. "

"They polish up real good." he told me. "I'll get'cha a little steel wool and you'll see."

By now you've figured out just exactly what the thing is, I expect, and if you haven't, your mother and/or father should've explained the birds and the bees to you a little bit more, I think.

From Wiki:

The baculum (also penis bone, penile bone or os penis) is a bone found in the penis of most mammals. It is absent in humans, equids, marsupials, lagomorphs, and hyenas, amongst others. It is used for copulation and varies in size and shape by species. Its characteristics are sometimes used to differentiate between similar species.

The oosik of Native Alaskan cultures is a polished and sometimes carved baculum of various large northern carnivores such as walruses. The raccoon baculum is sometimes worn as a luck or fertility charm.

The word baculum originally meant "stick" or "staff" in Latin. The homologue to the baculum in female mammals is known as the baubellum or os clitoridis or os clitoris.

It's too bad there wasn't the Internet when I was a kid; otherwise I wouldn't have taken it to Show and Tell the next week.

My teacher had a funny look on her face when I told her it was "the business end of a gentleman coon", but it wasn't anything like the one on my dad's face when he first "explained" what it was.

The look on my momma's face when the teacher called her and told her about it was an entirely different one altogether.

Don't hate her because she's beautiful.

I've a friend who is the white, Texas, female version of Sanford of that old TV show Sanford and Son. This was in her front yard with tons of other junk. I tried to talk her out of it her, but she - the female Sanford, not the mannequin head - didn't want to part with it her.

This effects me on some level, but I'm afraid to try to figure out just what that level is. It might be deeper than I've ever gone before.

I'm a fairly shallow person, so that's not really saying all that much.