Steve Stratman Writer

What if I don’t want to fight?

“You have to,” said my niece.

“You mean, if I’m at a bar, and a guy comes up to me and says, ‘I’m going to kick your f***ing ass . . .'”

“You have to fight,” she said.

I’ve been in a fight. Me and another kid beat each other until our eyes swelled shut. “What if I call the cops?” I asked.

“They won’t come,” she said.

“Why?”

“They figure you can work it out yourselves.”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

“It’s The South,” she said.

Louisville

On a hill, overlooking a grim stretch of Kentucky freeway lives The Concrete Lady but I don’t know what she looks like. I only heard her voice come from behind a curtain.

“Shot glasses?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” I said.

“There’s a few over by the Blues Brothers exhibit.”

The Concrete Lady’s operation wasn’t hard to spot, even at 70 mph. First a row of hippos lined into view. They hulked along the chain-link fence, bellowing silently at the sky. Then a field of winged saints emerged, surrounded by a platoon of lawn jockeys and marching rabbits, cherubs and mermaids. A titanic chicken arose, squared off with a rhino. Giant gargoyles and chest-beating gorillas and prides of lions, all frozen open-mouthed and canted toward the freeway as if it was the highway to God.

I exited and circled back. The road quickly funneled into a labyrinth of Home Depots, fried chicken joints and Waffle Houses. At first I thought it was a trap, a place where roads entered yet never left. Walled off from the world by Jiffy Lubes and Mattress Kings, CVCs and Chinese buffets. I could survive for months, I thought, rolling from cul-de-sac to service road, ever-circling in a Whirlpool of Everything-ness until I went insane. A tiny sign flashed past. It pointed up a street that looked like a back road to the Ukraine. It said, The Concrete Lady. 1/2 miles.

In the center of a dirt parking lot, a pod of Sasquatch stood shyly in various sizes. I imagined The Concrete Lady out back, pouring cement from a crucible in an oil-heated workshop, bending giraffes out of rebar and chinking molds off of 400-lb toads with a chisel, then hauling fresh troops of flying monkeys out to the field in a flat-bed. Figures spanned out around me in disarray like Disneyland prisoners of war. Free them, I thought. Let the cement Indian ride his cement horse into the sunset and set the cement cheetahs free . . .

The Concrete Lady’s gift shop was Americana dipped in day-glow and put on a shelf. Foam hats and 60-lb piggy banks guarded by armored suits holding broadswords and yes, the Blues Brothers in both large and small.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you The Concrete Lady?” I heard a whisper and the shuffle of feet. The curtains parted and a young man stepped out.

“Shot glasses?” he asked with a smile. “We’ve got some over here.”

Click here to visit The Concrete Lady