Friday, January 2, 2009 was a cold and blustry day across much of the country. The northwest regions of the nation encountered severe blizzard conditions, which created problems for the Patrick-Patrick team. "Hammy" was stranded in a little town in Wyoming while waiting for his bus to be repaired. That was the downside; the 'upside' was all "Hammy' and his crew had to do was smoke dope and drink beer. To be sure, it was a 'real sacrifice' because there were only three bars in town, and none of them carried much of a selection. The Hamster-man had to settle for something other than his premium brands, but - there was even an 'upside' to that! With every sixth or seventh beer, the bartender would slide 'something special' across the bar: some of the best gaunchey Hammy ever had! In his usual fashion, the "Hamster-man from Amsterdam, appearing nightly in the beautfiul delCoronado Ballroom", managed to flourish in the hazy smokiness of his own gaunchey and cigarettes. The 'locals' had never quite seen anything like him before; by four o'clock in the afternoon, Hammy was well on his way to la-la-land; by nine o'clock that night, he was ready to perform his infamous Joe Cocker renditions. It became a routine where Hammy would get on the public address system at the Dewdrop Inn and screech, "JOE is in the house!" That brought patrons from the other two bars (just a block away), as practically everybody in town swarmed to hear the best live entertainment Dubois, Wyoming had seen since the 1920's when a bus load of flappers got stranded by a blizzard. By the time that busload of gals left Dubois, everyone had learned how to do the Charleston, which - to this day - was about the only dance movement any of the townsfolk knew. The only musical accompaniment available was a heavy-set, almost toothless gray-haired lady named Ella Mae, who fancied herself as a white, wrinked version of the great Ella Fitzgerald. As the evenings wore on, and Hammy got wound up tight, the crowd would encourage Ella to join in; the two made a handsome duet and found it easy to belt out some of those old favorites, including "That Old Black Magic", "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey", and "Honkey-Tonk Woman". Ella, it seemed, also had a passion for good gaunchey, and by midnight Hammy and Ella were singing anything they damn well pleased. By the time the bar closed at 2:00 a.m., it was only Hammy and Ella left alone on the small dance floor to the left side of the bar. The bartender would lock the inebriated, toked-up couple in the bar, where they were left to their own devices until the next morning when the Dewdrop opened for its usual breakfast crowd. In the days to follow, those sober citizens would come into the bar for ham and eggs only to be greeted by a completely nude "Hamster-man" stretched out on the floor with Ella's hands tightly grabbing on to what she obviously had mistaken for a microphone. Still crooning tunes leftover from the nght before, Ella's bulging lips seemed to be attracted to Hammy's bulging member like a magnet to metal. Tangled in a mass of disarrayed undergarments and wrinkled clothes, Ella's generously-proportioned body would sprawl all over the Hamster-man like a mountain of man-eating flesh.
It was enough to ruin some people's appetites; it was enough to make others dream about things they hadn't done for forty years. Before Hammy would leave Dubois, he would become a legend in his own mind, as well as the stuff myths were made of for the townspeople to talk about for generations to come. Wisconsin had its folklore of Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox. Indiana handed down its stories of Johnny Appleseed. Vermont had its sea monster in Lake Champlain. By the time he left Dubois, Hammy had become Wyoming's modern-day legend of