A coworker had this dream Jan. 22, 2002, before she knew about the Hotdish Hoedown …
I have a dream, that one day, all will have hotdishes and Jell-O in abundance, living in harmony, near the Harmony, in celebration of community and casseroles. That we shall all be judged not by the amount of beer we drink, but the content of our hotdish …
The dream
Karen was hosting a party and she needed my help. Many of her guests were downtown at some sort of outdoor music event and were going to go to the party after the music.
Karen wanted to stay with these guests and asked me to go over to her house to make sure the beer was on ice and everything would be ready when they arrived. I didn’t want to leave the music; the special music guests were The Monkees, and Michael Nesmith (the smart one, wore a stocking cap, had long sideburns) was looking pretty hot. (I have been known to have celebrity sex dreams, but this does not qualify, for many reasons…)
So, I get on my bike, beer loaded into my baskets and head to Karen’s house. I had many obstacles on my ride, construction, fences, sandy roads… but I arrived and the beer is OK, too. (I think this came from some bit of a TV program I saw on extreme sports that had a triathlon that combined mountain biking with the swim and run events. But imagine mountain biking with a 25-year-old five-speed Schwinn with paperboy-style baskets! Fun!)
When I get there, Sandy from our office is already there, baking cream puffs in Karen’s fancy, restaurant-quality confection oven. Sandy helps me load up bottles of cold fruit juices in my baskets to take back up to the Square for the party guests.
The sequence gets lost for a while and the next bit I remember is showing up at the party at bar time. Things are pretty quiet but it looks like there’d been a good party — house was trashed, a few drunkards staring stupidly from the couch… I go looking for a cream puff, all gone.
And that’s my dream about Karen’s party.
— Jan. 23, 2002, Madison