Sports Car

Millie and Sam were at it again this week!

Last night was their thirtieth wedding anniversary.


Millie has been talking on and off about a new sports car for almost a year now.
Sam never really responds when she gets to talking about it.

Well, Wednesday night, Millie told Sam that after 30 years of marriage, she deserves the kind of gift she wants. Not some vacuum cleaner or an iron, but an exciting gift.

She told Sam that when she got up in the morning, there had better be something sitting in the driveway that would go from 0 to 200 in less than a minute.

So, after Sam left the next morning, Millie ran down the stairs and looked out into the driveway for her gift. Sure enough, there sat a box all wrapped up nice and pretty with a big bow on top.

Millie ran out and got it, and ran back into the house.

She thought the box was a little small, but she was certain there would be the keys to her new sports car inside.

The real trouble started when she opened the box and found a new set of bathroom scales!

Well, I guess Sam took her at her word. She may have put on a pound or two!

Yall have a great weekend!

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Earth Day

I think that this was the best cank festival in Lando history!
Somebody told me that we used just over 3 tons of cank!

Well, the fun never stops in Lando. Today is the big Earth Day Celebration.
We've been doing this ever since ol' Doc Houge started it back in 1969!

Today is the second largest celebration we have. Everybody in Lando is Earth concious.

All the schools and businesses and government offices are closed today.
We send ALL the school buses around to collect as many people that want to come, and bring them into town. The buses run most all day long. As a matter of fact we'll use about 25% of the allotted budget for fuel on this one day! That's a lot of driving.

Down town we have about a hundred booths set up with gas grills or cotton candy machines or ice cream and shaved ice machines all humming along. We have to run extra cables and get the power company to max out the grid just so we can light it all up!

We bring in a carnival company so we can have a sort of midway set up with games and rides and such. Those guys bring in a few generators to make sure it all runs smoothly.

We'll sell about 2,500 pounds of barbeque that's been slow cooked over kiln dried hickory.
We also have french fries, elephant ears, polish sausage, cole slaw, corn dogs, yeast rolls, and corn on the cob!

This is one big feast!

It's a good thing that the cank festival ended on Saturday so we could have a rest for a couple of days before the big Earth Day celebration kicks off!

All told we'll end up with an extra 10 to 15 tons of waste for the landfill from this one festival alone. That's mainly because we have so many folks driving in from all over the state!

Of course, not all of what they get goes in the landfill.
Most folks have two or three styrefoam take home plates, and, obviously, the porta-johns are all full, too!!!

If you can get by today and celebrate Earth Day, you wont regret it!

And remember to you your part to reduce your impact on the earth, just like we all do here in Lando!

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Cank Festival -- Day 2

Boy Howdy! It sure has been a fantastic Cank festival, so far!
I have never had so much fun at a Cank Crawl in all my life!
Did you see the parade? If you missed it, you missed the best pollination rap song that's ever been. It sure was a toe-tapper! And how about all those beautiful Cank Queen contestants?

You know, I met the Mrs. Mayor Stoner when she was a Cank Queen Pageant contestant. She was first runner up in the pageant, but she was the queen of my heart!



Here are a few more shots from yesterday's parade and festival street.

This is Lando Cank Queen 2008, Miss Ashleigh Crouse!

Ashliegh Crouse

Ashliegh is Dirk's little girl, only she aint little anymore! She won the beauty contest as well as the blue ribbon for best cank dish, Crispy Cank Tortilla Chips with Tropical Cank di Gallo. Check the recipe at the end of this post!

Even the cats dig the Cank!

Viva le Cank! Show me some Cank love!

Crispy Cank Tortillas

• 1 package of regular sized corn tortillas, quartered
• 1 lb Lard
• 1/4 cup Fine Sea Salt
• 1/4 cup Chipotle Powder
• 1 lb Male Lando Canker Worms

Preheat the oven to 250.
Place the Canks on a large baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.
Heat in oven until completely dried out and crispy.
Pulse in food processor until they become a fine powder.
In a medium bowl, mix together salt, Chipolte powder, and worm dust.

In a large iron skillet, slowly heat lard to cooking temperature.
Place quartered tortillas in hot oil and fry in batches until crispy.
Season with Cank seasoning immediately upon removal from hot oil.

Tropical Cank di Gallo

• 15-20 Female Lando Canks
• 1/4 cup Apple Cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup EVOO
• Salt and Pepper


• 6-8 Roma Tomatoes
• 2-3 Tomatillos
• 1 Red Bell Pepper
• 1 Yellow Bell Pepper
• 1 Green Bell Pepper
• 2-3 Jalapeno Peppers
• 1 Habenero Pepper
• 1/4 cup Pineapple
• 1/4 cup Kiwi
• 1/4 cup Papaya

Dice all the peppers and fruit and mix in a large bowl with the remaining ingredients and Canks.
Stir until well combined and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with Crispy Cank Tortillas

Recipe courtesy of Lando Cank Queen 2008, Miss Ashleigh Crouse

Cank Days wraps up tomorrow at noon. I hope you all got your fill of cank until next year!

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Cank Festival -- Day 1

Good Day!

The Cank Festival kicked off early this morning when Mayor Stoner tossed out the first worms from the gazebo on the town square. The crowd of about 10,000 roared to life as the worms flew into the air! There is nothing finer than the first day of Cank Festival.

Right after the opening ceremony, the big parade got under way.

The children lead the way

Followed by A Cank Queen Contestant

And another!

And the Queen's Court!

A couple of locals enjoying a tall glass of Lando Cank Lager while the parade goes by.

Wee Miss Cank of 2007

Everybody loves to get in the parade!

Traditionally, the first day of the Cank Festival is known as Whacking Day. This is the day when all the folks in Lando go about with their Whacking Sticks and knock the worms out of the trees. In ancient times this was referred to as the Whacking Harvest.

Today, it's more of a sport than anything else, since most of the harvesting is done by machines that take hold of the tree trunk and shake it hard enough to release the worms. These machines are called, for obvious reasons, Shakers.

Whacking Sticks have really come into their own, as well. Today, it's not uncommon to find a serious Whacker with a professionally designed Whacking Stick costing thousands of dollars. Take a look at these.

We even got our very own Whacking Day Salute on Google.

Once the whacking is concluded, the serious cooking starts, and then it's on to the Cank Crawl!

Folks got their eyes on all the past years winners to see what they got cooked up this year. I hear that we got about 250 entries to judge this year!

Drop the tiny kids off at the day camp, and come on and crawl with us!

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This Week in Lando

This is a really hectic week for all of us here in Lando.
Obviously, we're all getting ready for the big Cank Festival which starts on Thursday!
Most everybody in town has something to get ready before the festival starts.


Bobby Green and his wife are working with all the girls who will be vying for Cank Queen.
Sylvia Snodgrass is getting together the judges for the best Cank dish.
Rafe Hollister is working on his solo for the Cank Chamber Choir Concert, and there are countless others working to make sure that this year's Cank Festival is the best ever. That's a hard thing to do, too, since we have so many years of festival tradition behind us.

Well, it seems like the only one around here who doesn't have too many things to do is me, so I thought I take a walk around town, and give you all a glimpse of what those hard working people are doing to get ready for the biggest event of the year here in Lando!

First I went by the opera house to see how the crew is getting on with sprucing up for the concert.


These guys really know how to use a ladder!

This is Jake Deese hauling off some brush from the town square.


Chief Wiggum has installed new road signs...


Workers all over town are sprucing up....


I finally got my dumb ole brother-in-law to get that dead tree out of his yard...


I dont know how this happened, but Mrs. Mayor Stoner took her eyes off the road for just a minute and got stuck on the bridge over Woody's Creek...


These boys had just a bit of trouble getting those lights on all the trees on Main Street...


Here's the Jacob's twins getting their boat down to the lake for the Cank Crawl Rowing Meet...


Here's Dirk Crouse moving the swingset down to the playground....


Look at Crazy Cooter working on one of the trucks we use to pull the floats in the parade!


As you can see, there is a lot going on this week!

Remember the Festival starts at 8:00 am on Thursday, April 17, and concludes on Saturday.
You DO NOT want to miss it!
See you there!!!

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Cank Salad

Up there in Charlotte, it seems they got themselves a Canker Worm problem.


They done gone and hired a big city yankee to come down and spray something called BT to kill 'em all. Folks here in Lando have known about Canker worms a long time, and we figured out years ago how to deal with them.


Here's a picture of the Sky Tractor spraying over Charlotte.


Seems they take this modified crop duster and fly real low over the city and drop the BT stuff on all the trees. It's real sticky and clings to the trees. Somehow the worms eat it and they all die and fall on the ground. Problem solved.

Here in Lando, we take a little simpler approach that everyone can enjoy. It's called a Canker Crawl, and we have it every year about this time.

A Canker Crawl is when most of the ladies in town cook up their favourite recipe using Canker worms. Then people go from house to house and sample the food. It's a real big party, and most everyone in town gets in on it! At the end, ballots are cast and we select a Canker Queen based on who cooked up the tastiest dish.

Cank is a spring-time treat and is only around for a couple of weeks. It's also very versatile. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it.

There's, cank-kabobs, cank creole, cank gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple cank, lemon cank, coconut cank, pepper cank, cank soup, cank stew, cank salad, cank and potatoes, cank burger, cank sandwich.

We've had cank slaw, cank toast, cank po-boy, cank étouffée, cank pie, cank dressing, cank bread, and cank beignets.

This year the Cank Crawl is April 17-20 in lovely downtown Lando.

Y'all dont miss it!

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American Inventor

I know that many of you may feel that Lando's such a small town that we dont have much in common with the big city folks. Well, nothing could be further from the truth!

Let me tell you a little story about a Lando boy that's made a fine name for himself...

The boy's name was Rodney Remington. All his life Rodney had a fascination with guns and rifles. He's made several improvements to the design of military weapons and has even built his own line of classic style revolvers from the old west.

Rodney Remington

Now that he's retired, Rodney's content to help out around town with our local hunters and law enforcement officials. He'll clean and repair their weapons and make minor improvements that help keep the weapons working properly and reliably. Given his current pace, you wouldn't expect that he'd make the news anywhere but Lando, but not since he came out with an improvement that rocked the weapons world.

If you've seen any modern movies recently, you know full well that there's more to shooting than there used to be. These days, you have to look really cool when you're capping some rival gang member or knocking over that liquor store. The problem is that you dont aim so accurately when you got your heater all cool looking and stuff. That's where somebody like Rodney can really change things.

Take a look at this....

Homeboy Sights

Now, you can look cool AND be accurate all at the same time.

Rodney's been written up in all the big weapons magazines and newspapers, and now he's making a name for himself in all the hip-hop and rap publications, too.

Wouldn't surprise me any to spot ol' Rodney bustin' a rhyme about his new invention on that rap video cable channel any day now!

Way to go Rodney!

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