A party sat down behind us and the conversation began, spanning all sorts of things - silvaculture, raw log exports, windrow composting, Gordon Campbell, unions, mostly dominated by a single guy.
There's a set script that seems to be followed by these conversations regardless of the actual content. The guy who does most of the talking made a lot of money. Maybe he was in the oil sands or up north somewhere. It doesn't really matter. They try to establish their importance and explain away their current less-than-favourable position by claiming all sorts of past victories but mostly they just talk.
At one point in time the conversation drifted toward hunting. They discussed all sorts of lodges and the entertainment and game you could find there, bragging about what they'd caught themselves, who had been to the best one. Of course the one guy dominated finally by declaring the amount of bear ham and bear salami he'd eaten.
"You know, this one place is the best," he said, "You know how you go to hotels and they put the chocolates on your pillows? You go to this place and they leave dried meat on your pillow. Dried meat!"
That was enough listening in on that conversation. We left.
Outside and out of earshot there was a competition to imitate the line. Dried meat on your pillow! Ick! Can you believe it? It was good for a bit of a chuckle. "I bet that's meat hanging from the mirror of that truck," my mom said in an offhand way, without really looking at it.
"There is," I replied. It was three laminated strips of bacon.
She began to laugh hysterically. Good thing she wasn't driving.
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