Tuesday, May 1, 2012
\nColumn 431
\nT-minus 30 days until the COOOOOOOP!<\/b><\/p>\n
With just ONE MONTH to go until the start of my favorite tournament<\/span> \u2013 the Chicken COOP Open \u2013 I am so excited I feel like a Pointer Sister. I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it. I’m about to lose control and I think I like it. I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it. And I know, I know, I know, I know.<\/i><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been to a lot of tournaments. I\u2019ve been to the PDC world championships in London and cavorted with the walk-on girls. I\u2019ve been to the World Series of Darts in a cow pasture in Connecticut. I\u2019ve been to the American Darters Association\u2019s national championship outside Disney World. I\u2019ve to the National Dart Association\u2019s Team Dart event in Vegas. I\u2019ve been to the site of the World Cup in South Africa.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve thrown in tournaments in Shanghai, Manila, Bangkok, and dozens of other countries. I\u2019ve sought out competition in bars from Congo to Borneo to Mongolia to Romania to Iceland to Costa Rica.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m telling you here and now: if you haven\u2019t been to the COOP you\u2019re missing the darts experience of a lifetime<\/span>. There is no venue, no tournament, no place anywhere in the world that I\u2019d rather go. I first attended in 2006, was duly initiated as is the custom, and nearly died. I can\u2019t wait to get back.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s COOP \u2013 the 31st \u2013 will be held from May 31 through June 3 at the Wayside Campground (Elk River Floats<\/a>) in Noel, Missouri. You can find the tournament flier and schedule of events here: COOP Flier<\/a> and take in or participate in some of the pre-event banter at the COOP Facebook page here: COOP Facebook Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Or you can just read my report (I\u2019m too frickin\u2019 excited to write anything new \u2013 and also too lazy) on my initial sojourn to the world\u2019s largest and greatest outdoor darts tournament below<\/span>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve said it before, I\u2019ll say it again, and I\u2019ll keep saying until the day I die (which could be just 30 days and a pint of Rumplemint away) \u2013 there done ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 that\u2019ll keep me away from the COOP. No siree, Bob.<\/p>\n But FIRST<\/b>, this weekend I\u2019m headed to Rob’s Billiards & Sports Bar in Ft. Worth for the First Annual Charity Bull-a-Thon and World Record attempt organized by Erik Lusk. Be sure to keep an eye on Dartoid\u2019s World for hourly Twitter updates<\/span> as Chris Allen, Chris Helms, Les Twinam, Andrea Taylor, Byron Dossey, Davis Snider, Connley Litton, and Gordon Goodwin take aim at the Guinness World Record for “The most Bull\u2019s Eyes by a Team in 10 Hours\u201d and, with 1,506 bulls, bring the world record to American (Texas) soil.<\/p>\n Dartoid<\/p>\n What I mean is Hooterville. Don\u2019t nobody know fer shore where that is \u2018xactly \u2018cept \u201cit\u2019s sumpin\u2019 like 300 miles from Chicago, \u2018round \u2018bout Crabwell Corners, Stankwell Falls and Bugtussle.\u201d But everybody knows how the town got its name. There\u2019s lots of evidence.<\/p>\n Back in the \u201860s lots of well endowed wimmenfolk lived near these parts. Must be sumpin\u2019 in the squirrel soup. Fer example, Elly May Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies growed up in the holler here. So did Billy Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo from Petticoat Junction. Even the diamond-clad Lisa from Green Acres settled here fer a spell.<\/p>\n Prob\u2019ly Hooterville is near where I\u2019ve just been, \u2018least that would be my guess, judgin\u2019 from the current evidence. That would be Tessa Marshall and Heather Hunt and iffen you don\u2019t get what I\u2019m talkin\u2019 \u2018bout you best be fixing to get your tail to next year\u2019s Chuck and Sticks\u2019 Chicken COOP Open. It\u2019s a mighty fine shindig.<\/p>\n Founded twenty-five years ago by Chuck Gideon and Joe \u201cStick\u201d Stacy in a chicken coop in Gideon\u2019s back yard in Pineville, Missour-ah, the COOP is one of the longest running darts tournaments in America. It is also, without a doubt, the BEST tournament I have ever attended. I say this not because of any of the promises made to me by Heather and Tessa. I say this because it is an absolute fact.<\/p>\n I also must be perfectly clear: anything I said, did or thought about doing to either Tessa or Heather is not something I should be held personally responsible for. I say this for two reasons. First, because their significant others, Dave Marshall and Matt Keller, are pretty big dudes and have gun racks on their trucks. Second, I was poisoned.<\/p>\n Only a handful of couples attended the first tournament, which was more of a house party than anything else, but word spread fast. The tournament outgrew Gideon\u2019s yard so everybody flew the original coop and moseyed down the road a piece to Noel. Often called the Christmas City because of its unusual name and heralded as the Canoe Capital of the Ozarks, Noel is a sleepy town (population 1,480) cut into the historic bluffs along the tranquil, meandering waters of the Elk River. This is where the tournament is held today \u2013 under a 100\u2019 x 40\u2019 big top tent at a campground called Elk River Floats nestled under the towering trees by the river.<\/p>\n For the past five years the tournament has been organized and run by Mike and Tammy Edwards and Pat and Robin Law, with help from Mike Hensley, Jim Norwood and Matt Keller. For all of them the event is nothing short of a labor of love. This year over 650 darters made the trek to the Noel, almost half again the population of the town itself. On Friday night over 200 darters entered the first blind draw.<\/p>\n So, as I\u2019ve said, the first night I was poisoned…<\/p>\n What you have to understand is that the COOP is not just a darts tournament; it\u2019s a down home doin\u2019 \u2013 a campout, barbeque and fish fry, family vacation, golf scramble, canoe trip, fireworks show, charity auction and a whole lot more rolled into one.<\/p>\n Throughout it all, literally non-stop for four days and three nights, is a series of back-to-back-to-back-to-back blind draw darts events. They never stop. Amidst all this activity, particularly at night time, around and about the scores of tents, camper vans and smoldering campfires, it is quite easy to tangle with some poison ivy or something worse. His name was Johnny Noe.<\/p>\n I was under the big top mindin\u2019 my own business, throwin\u2019 some darts and checkin\u2019 out the evidence when Noe wandered up and invited me to take a gander at his truck. At the time there was quite a gully warsher underway and I hesitated to leave the protection of the tent.<\/p>\n But head into the rain I did. Noe and I sloggged through the mud to his truck where we met up with a few more of the good old boys. Matt Keller was there. So was the \u201cother\u201d Keller (not related), Mike. There were some others but their names were lost forever some time in the five hours between my eighth or ninth shot of Rumpelmint and when I almost drove my car into the river.<\/p>\n The only other thing I remember of my introduction to the COOP (besides the reek of the urinals) was the astonished look in the eyes of my first blind draw partner, some feller from Arkansas, when in the middle of our first round match I weaved, slumped and then crashed to the ground attempting to take out a double.<\/p>\n The next day was beautiful. The sun was bright, the river bubbled along. For hours I threw \u201c3 Strikes\u201d with Robert Perkey, James Atkins, Bob Riederer and Jimmy \u201cScooby\u201d Boone and pretty much lost all my money. I played some cricket with \u201cMean\u201d Irene Goodwin and faired a bit better, mainly because she somehow lost both of her arms while frog giggin\u2019.<\/p>\n Before the evening draw I stopped by Matt Keller\u2019s campsite for some croppy and ribs. Croppy is some kind of a fish. At least that\u2019s what I was told. It could be possum. But it\u2019s good. Like me, Keller was also in Rumpelmint recovery mode but he wasn\u2019t moving so slow as to not be able to have a good laugh when for some mysterious reason the picnic table flipped and launched of a bowl of potato salad, perfectly I must say, at the triple twenty on my shirt.<\/p>\n I threw the first draw with Howard Webb against someone named Dickhead and another guy named Eb or Sketch or Red or something. Webb and I lost. We lost to a Dickhead.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all I have to say about that.<\/p>\n In between the rest of the draws and until the middle of the morning I did my best to take in the full flavor of the COOP without falling down or taking my car on a float trip. I invested considerable time trying to win a stuffed chicken and other stuff I didn\u2019t want by throwing darts at the charity board. This is something all darters will be familiar with even if you\u2019ve never been to the COOP. The board is set up just like a standard dartboard but it has little gold, silver, red, green and blue stars stuck all over it. They are just like the ones you never got because you screwed up your homework in first grade.<\/p>\n If you hit a star you win a prize. The problem is that due to some sort of mysterious aspect of the space-time continuum the little stars are frickin\u2019 impossible to hit. For example, there was a pretty blue one smack in the middle of the triple twenty that I was just dying to hit. With one handful I actually threw a 180 but managed to miss the damn star. Then some kid, all of ten years of age, stepped to the line, heaved a dart, pierced a star somewhere outside of the double ring at the bottom of the board and walked off with MY stuffed chicken. So, throughout the day and night I handed over dollar bill after dollar bill to the two very delighted teenagers, Bethany Norwood and Olivia Givens, who spent the weekend running the charity board, when they weren\u2019t chasing boys.<\/p>\n I also made frequent trips to Ray Faqua\u2019s food truck and this is something that I highly recommend that you do if you ever make it to the COOP. Faqua\u2019s been setting up his little shop for years and it\u2019s quite an operation. The pulled pork sandwiches are extraordinary and his potato salad is the best I\u2019ve ever tasted and he doesn\u2019t even throw it at you.<\/p>\n Into the wee hours the blind draws continued. In between the calling of names, Mike Edwards, (the official COOP announcer), also called out trivia questions. If you were the first to yell out the correct answer you won a free trip to the charity board to throw three darts and not win a stuffed chicken. The questions were tough too. For example, try this one: Which female movie star has been named the most times to People magazine\u2019s list of 50 most beautiful people? The answer: Julia Roberts. Several darters, most in the condition I was in on the first night, missed this one because they thought the correct answer was Dave Bob Marshall.<\/p>\n My second day at the COOP ended well. Late in the night I even met a woman. Her name was Trixie and she was very attractive \u2013 but she was just a head, stuck to a stick. She was being carried past my board by some guy who explained to me that she was \u201cperfect because she\u2019s dead and can\u2019t talk or complain.\u201d My apologies to all y\u2019all wimmenfolk for mentioning this \u2013 I only do so, in the interest of journalistic accuracy, because it did in fact happen. Personally, I prefer my women alive and whole, with duct tape over their mouths.<\/p>\n My final day was the best. There was a float trip, which in Missour-ah lingo means hopping in a canoe and sweating your ass off, so I skipped that. There was a golf outing, which is basically the same sweaty thing, just without the boat, so I skipped that too.<\/p>\n What I did was throw darts!<\/p>\n I hooked up with a contingent of darters from Shreveport or what\u2019s left of Nawlins and was pleased to learn that sometime soon Laweezeeanna may finally be admitted to the Union. Somewhere out there on the Internet is a group photo of all of us. I\u2019m the one with the teeth.<\/p>\n Also in the photo are Ken and Lennis Hearn, Jim Hatchett, Dave \u201cRooster\u201d and Leta Brown, Chris and Julie Procell, Tammy Young, Lana Winslow and Greg Rhubal. Hearn is a former American Darts Organization (ADO) top-fifty ranked player and Hatchett is Hearn\u2019s personal scorekeeper, widely unknown as \u201cthe best scorekeeper in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n IMPORTANT NOTE: One of the ladies in the Louisiana group was a policewoman (and mais me, but dis gal was purtier den a mudboat in de swamps; I guarantee dat) so I want it to be known \u2013 here, now and forever \u2013 that the remark above about the teeth was written purely in jest. It is not true. It is a filthy lie. Honest. I wouldn\u2019t want an innocent little joke to come back to haunt me next year. I want to be handcuffed!<\/p>\n A key endeavor at the COOP is to what they call, \u201cget some wood.\u201d While members of the female persuasion can achieve this quite easily without actually throwing a dart, for people like me it\u2019s not so simple. \u201cWood\u201d in COOP terms is what you get if you and your partner win an event. The winner\u2019s plaques are gorgeous things, large four-color COOP logos framed in antique wood gathered from Noah\u2019s Ark. Today, at least for a while, I had shots at fetchin\u2019 me some wood.<\/p>\n I drew Bobby Childers (whose daughter Ceanna won some wood in one of the youngins\u2019 events) in one of the early draws and we blazed our way through five or six rounds and were feeling confident. But our darts suddenly left us (well mine did) and we were demolished by Chris Madewell and Tony \u201cP\u201d Pendleton who then cruised into the finals.<\/p>\n Sometime after dark, I was paired with a darter named Sanderson for 501. For my life I can\u2019t find the piece of paper where I wrote his first name, so sorry about that. Probably his middle name is Bob though. Everybody\u2019s middle name here seems to be Bob, even the wimmenfolk.<\/p>\n Whatever Sanderson\u2019s first name was, he was a great shot, and so were his kids. Both of his boys, Zach and \u201csomething Bob\u201d (yep, lost the other kid\u2019s name too) won wood. So Sanderson and I were on a mission to make it three for the family. We had a plan too and it was simple. For the first few rounds it was my job to score and finish. Sanderson\u2019s job was to get sober.<\/p>\n We were both successful. I even hit a couple of 140s when the when the lights went out. Sanderson stuck to coke and after a half dozen rounds we were in the groove. We could feel the wood! That\u2019s when the fireworks show began \u2013 a terrific display sponsored by Murphys of Stillwater and set off by Bob Covey and crew \u2013 and the draw was temporarily suspended. Forty-five minutes later we returned to the line and ten minutes after that we were toast. Sanderson and I pledged to each other to come back next year and get the little bastard who fired the bottle rocket into my crotch.<\/p>\n So that how it went on my first visit to Chuck and Stick\u2019s Chicken COOP Open (the 25th anniversary of the tournament) in Noel, Missour-ah. I had a FANTASTIC time, met hundreds of terrific people, and learned some important things.<\/p>\n I learned why a chicken coop has only two doors (because if it had four doors it would have to be called a chicken sedan).<\/p>\n I learned that just because someone is nicknamed Dickhead doesn\u2019t mean he can\u2019t shoot.<\/p>\n I learned that potato salad can fly.<\/p>\n Most important, I learned that Rumpelmint will, well… FUCK YOU UP BAD!<\/p>\n Best of all I was honored to meet the actual real life Chuck Gideon, the guy that started it all and wrote the Bible. The problem is I met him the morning immediately after I was poisoned by Johnny Noe. I remember nothing of our conversation, recalling only that he was wearing a bright orange shirt. Or maybe it was yellow. Or black.<\/p>\n
\nIn my case it was the \u201csomething worse\u201d that whacked me on my first night at the COOP.<\/p>\n