Yesterday we found ourselves out and about in Hometown with a little time to kill. mrs. mil10 suggested going to Atwoods. Really? Their motto is "If you enjoy the country lifestyle, you're going to love Atwoods." They may not be looking at the mil10s as their target demographic group. However, since we are not really in touch with our country side, going to Atwoods exposes us to many of the things that we may not know about or can fully appreciate. We always manage to have a good time there and it had been several months since our last visit so we gave it a try.
I don't know if it was a special day or just a regular thing on Saturdays, but we were greeted with free bags of popcorn as soon as we walked into the store. EK was more excited about the flavored popcorn salt. Sitting next to the bags of popcorn were no less than ten different flavors of popcorn salt. Come one, come all! Step right up and have it your way. Atwoods definitely has the local movie theater beat out when it comes to varieties of popcorn salt.
We saw a heated pet bowl. Hmmm. How do you go about plugging this in, filling it with water, and not having a dog electrocute itself since it plugs into an electrical outlet? I see one of two things happening. Either we would have a hot dog when it manages to get a charge of electricity or the water bowl would manage to trip our electrical breaker. It seems like when we use our Christmas lights when there is the smallest amount of moisture in the air I am always having to go flip a thrown breaker. Am I the only one that sees the potential disaster that is bound to happen when you plug in a bowl of water? Surely we are not the only pet owners without a heated pet bowl.
It didn't photograph well, but right next to a metal tub filled with duct tape sat a container full of yardsticks. They were labeled as "four sided." As I looked at them I noticed that the yardsticks indeed had an unusual shape, but only two of the sides were printed with the numbered increments that make a yardstick so helpful. The remaining two sides reminded you that Atwoods is "America's favorite ranch home outfitters" and the "home of Ranch Pro feeds and Real Ranch work wear." Why then, I must ask, are these yardsticks billed as being four sided? Technically, it didn't have any more functional sides than a traditional yardstick.
Next to the orange soda, cream soda, and root beer, sat bottles of sarsaparilla. That was unexpected. Who knew they even made sarsaparilla anymore? If you didn't read the label pictured above, go ahead and read it now.
It really is good to know that there is nothing better than an ice cold sarsaparilla, regardless of which end of the horse I am working with. Maybe you knew this already, but that was definitely new information to me. I think I will take their word for it, but I will keep it in mind just in case I find myself working with some end of a horse in the future.
I didn't take a picture of it, but there was a meat band saw on sale for only $199. I am not an informed consumer when it comes to meat band saws, but that seemed like a reasonable price to me. Kill the meat. Then slice the meat on your own personal band saw. That sounds like a perfectly normal thing to me. We mil10s must be really missing out!
Finally, next to the check out area we found these little packages of Lil' Dude meat that caught my eye (I must have been thinking about that meat band saw). I held two in my hand so you could gauge the size of the meat snacks. There were about four or five different flavors to select from but I can only remember summer sausage and pepperoni now. For only ninety-nine cents you could have one of these packaged meats. When I did a little googling I did find a Flickr photo that shows them priced at only eighty-nine cents. I wonder if Atwoods would honor the price shown there? I also discovered that the Lil' Dude Summer Sausages have their own Facebook page.
The mil10s did not purchase any of the things pictured above, but we did not leave empty handed. EK found a package of root beer flavored jelly beans (which spilled across the back seat as we left church this morning). mrs. mil10 bought a bag of peanuts which turned out to be a great snack at the park. mr. mil10 left with a peanut patty, which EK wouldn't even taste. We also bought a jar of dilly corn. Growing up, mr. mil10 thought they were fun to eat because they look like ears of corn, but closer to the size of pickles. EK probably won't taste those either.
