During a lunch break in Muskogee, Oklahoma we pay respects to the Restonic Mighty Mattress Man.
It’s now morning in Miami, OK. The view from my ninth floor hotel room is an impressive sight dominated by an ocean of treetops. Looking down and to the right I can see some children have already descended on the pool. Mercifully, I can’t hear them. Looking left I spot a firetruck and one or two utility trucks. There is a trench dug and men are milling around casually. Me being me, I think nothing of it. Jim being Jim, wonders whythere are firemen and utility workers down there.
All would become clear as we approached the restaurant craving a hearty breakfast prior to our trek to Stillwater. There was a gas leak and the restaurant was closed. A stale doughnut and a cold bottle of milk from the gift shop were going to have to carry me for a while. Jim got some fruity drink and a scone or yogurt or something.
Breakfast eaten, we grab our bags and headed for the Judge. The evening prior I parked it on the periphery of a pack of old, colorful cars in the hotel parking lot. Now it sat alone. It seemed we were getting a late start by Power Tour standards. It was time to give Jim the bad news.
“Jim”, I said.
“Yeah, Bill?
“I’m pretty sure I broke the door handle on your side last night”, I confessed.
“Really”, he said.
“Yeah, I was holding the button in when I shut the door and now it’s jammed.”
“Hmm”, mused Jim.
After spending some time considering our position and how we might improve it, the decision was made to forget about the balky handle and move out. Fortunately, the door was latched and secure. Unfortunately for Jim, ingress and egress would be through the driver’s side door and would require clambering over the center console until the door handle was repaired. Jim would repeat this process with quiet resolve many times throughout the day. The day prior I had asked Jim if he was interested in driving. He said it would be fine but he didn’t really care one way or the other. I would not broach the topic again until after the handle was fixed.
Turns out, there’s lots of nice scenery in Oklahoma. This stretch of road was very fun and very pretty.
And we haven’t even gotten to Turner Falls yet!
As I write this, it has been almost two months since the Power Tour adventure. And to be honest I don’t really remember much from day two. There was the broken door latch and a lot of driving. I vaguely recall getting a good deal on a large cooler for beverages. Around that same time I bought all of the NOS octane booster O’Reilly’s had in stock. The Judge was not getting along with the crappy 91 octane gas in Oklahoma and the NOS stuff really worked well. Turns out, not all octane boosters are a fraud. I remember encountering an older couple in a neat 1965 GTO which was painted bright orange. I had no idea one could get a factory orange GTO in 1965, but there it was. That meeting was late in the day and not all that long before we arrived in Stillwater. Surely I’m forgetting something.
Jim’s sterling navigation did break down for a while in Muskogee, OK. I think it was a combination of heat, desperate thirst (not sure why he didn’t just reach into our new cooler) and a dizzying hunger. We were definitely off the suggested Power Tour route as we meandered through some of Muskogee’s side streets trying to correct our course and HOLY SHIT NOW I REMEMBER! The Monster Potato.
For me the high point of day two was a toss-up between the Monster Potato encounter
and stumbling onto a surprisingly pleasant hotel lounge with a good jazz band.
We were lost, hot and hungry when Jim spotted a big menu on the side of a big trailer which was hitched to a big pickup in a big parking lot. He was certain we had found lunch. I swung The Judge around and parked. The small window next to the big menu framed the face of a dark-skinned youngster with enough business sense to enthusiastically suggest the most expensive item on that menu; The Monster Potato. I pushed forward twenty bucks, sixteen for the Monster Potatoes and four for whatever. Jim remembered the cooler and grabbed us a couple Cokes and we waited. It wouldn’t be long before a man emerged from the trailer with two large, oblong objects wrapped in aluminum foil. It was not time to eat, however, as the man placed them into a very hot smoker which was bolted to yet another trailer.
“Gotta melt the cheese”, said the man.
A few minutes later Jim and I were each handed a large Styrofoam to-go container which struggled to house the Monster Potato. Evidently, this delicacy has roots in Texas and has logically migrated North into Oklahoma. It consisted of a very large potato which had been baked and partially scooped out to accommodate a careful balance of chicken, pulled pork, two types of sausage, BBQ sauce, sour cream and some kind of cheese. It was hotter than a Nagasaki Jap and ugly as hell. It was larger than my head.
Ingoring Mr. Kliban’s advice could have been a disaster but it wound up
being one of the more meaningful experiences of my life.
The Monster Potato had such a menacing presence that I didn’t really know how to approach it. I realized I had to just ball up and plunge my plastic fork through the goopy toppings and hope for the best. I expected to extract a melted nub from the molten abomination on my lap but was rewarded with a steaming fork full of pork and chicken with a slice of sausage barely hanging on. Holy shit it was hot and I literally bit off more than I could chew.
I was still pretty scared of the Monster Potato when I took this picture.
This was not a pleasant experience. Not yet, anyway. Burnt layers of skin from various parts of my mouth sloughed off and were absorbed by the supernova that swirled viciously in my mouth. Things settled down as I worked through this first bite until the slice of sausage detonated. Holy shit it was spicy. It was almost more than I could handle. I slurped some Coke and contemplated the culinary demon on my lap. I had to keep going. I couldn’t be a pussy about this. I let the Monster Potato cool a bit and took more manageable bites. Mercifully, only one of the sausages used was ultra spicy. I found some success in segregating those slices and creating a volatile sausage ghetto in a corner of my container.
As the potato cooled I as able to enjoy the flavors and textures that sprang forth. I was able to notice that the chicken and pork were of a high quality and well prepared. They were tender and flavorful and the toppings complimented them well. As a bonus, the natural result of poking around in there was to create a kind of mashed potato slurry which made the experience even better. The Monster Potato was freaking delicious. I was able to overcome my initial terror and would recommend one to anybody. So if you find yourself hungry in Muskogee, search for the Restonic Mattress Man. You won’t fail to spot that big trailer if you’re lucky enough to find him.
Afraid no more!
Then we drove and drove. We saw that orange ’65 GTO and we drove some more. We waited for a guy rotate his stop sight. We stopped for more fuel and octane booster and Jim bought a slim jim which would hopefully allow him to jimmy that balky door handle. I checked some fluids and fiddled with an idle screw. Then Jim clambered over the center console again and we were off.
This ’64 GTO would be one of the few Power Tour cars we saw on the road to Stillwater. It had been hobbled by a failed pinion seal. The jerk with the sign took his sweet-ass time letting us get underway.
The original destination for the Stillwater leg of the cruise was the Kicker car audio headquarters. Event organizers changed it to the Oklahoma State campus due to wet, sloppy grounds from a recent deluge. This resulted in a fragmented and awkward setting. Not that we would be there very long.
The official ending at each cruise occurred at 6pm. Due to our late start and frequent stops we rolled onto the campus at around 5’clock. As Jim crawled over the console he vowed it would be the last time.
The crowd had already cleared a bit but there was still plenty to see and we were able to chat with a few Pontiac enthusiasts. As you might imagine, they were excited to see a RA IV Judge. One of them had a dark blue 1964 GTO with a four barrel that he bought from the original owner. It was in good but unrestored condition and apparently came with all kinds of paper work including mileage and usage logs. I was just as impressed with that plain jane ’64 with the steel wheels and dog dish hub caps than those guys were with my Judge. As I’ve said before, there’s just something cool about good unrestored cars. The nice folks with the orange ’65 GTO also stopped by for a bit.
Jim’s handling of the whole broken door handle thing was impressive.
A lesser man would have certainly bitched and moaned.
As it turns out, Jim would make good on his vow. While I talked paint colors, Tri-Powers, gear ratios and the like with our new friends he once again focused on that stuck door handle. By the time our Pontiac buddies moved on Jim had managed to remove the inside door panel despite the fact the door was unalterably closed. I’m not sure how he managed this feat but he did. And he did so without leaving a mark. With the panel off he gained enough access to the inner workings of that door to spring the latch. Turns out, the rod that actuates the latch mechanism when one presses the handle button had been pushed upward and became firmly wedged at a useless angle.
The highlighted arrow shows the exact location of the jammed part. My thumb pushed the button down when I closed the door, forcing the rod upward, causing the malfunction. Note: this diagram is for a 1967 Camaro, which uses a similar, if not the exact same door handle as the Judge.
His work done, we each grabbed a can of beer and wandered among the cars. We would strike up a conversation with a young man who was doing the Power Tour with a pack that included friends and his dad. Of course I can’t remember his name but he drove a gold ’68 Camaro with a supercharged LS engine. His dad had an orange ’70(?) El Camino, also LS equipped. It was obvious these guys specifically built these cars for the purpose of going all the way on the Power Tour. These were cool old cars with reliable, lightly modified, late-model engines with lots of power mated to modern transmissions with highway friendly final drive ratios. If memory serves, I believe both cars were air conditioned with modern, comfortable seating. These guys had it figured out. This encounter marks the tipping point that really made Jim and I focus on the next Power Tour and the next car.
Soon after we would load up and hit the road again. But not before Jim was able to savor the simple act of opening the Judge’s passenger door and seating himself with grace and dignity.
Due to a botched hotel reservation, there was much more driving to be done. It was all very boring and I will spare you the details. We would end up driving all the way to an Oklahoma City Best Western. All we wanted was some beer, food and a place to sleep. What we got was a hotel lounge with a decent beer selection, genuinely good hand-formed cheeseburgers and an excellent jazz trio. It was a surprising treat at the end of a long, tiring and at times frustrating day.
6101 N Santa Fe Avenue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73118-7526
Phone: 405/848-1919 | Fax: 405/840-1581
In the morning we would head to Arlington, TX with a stop in Paul’s Valley, OK for a lunch hosted by Covercraft Industries.
