An embroidered cloth at her feet was spread with appetizing picnic foods, and by their side a magnum of pink champagne fizzed invitingly."Pink champag...e?" Hal lifted a quizzical eyebrow."A bit too much, is it?" She waved her hand languidly, and the champagne was transformed into a delicately fragrant Zinfandel blush. "Better?" I suppose so." He flopped down on the grass at her feet. "And yesterday it was Chablis, and the day before ... Who remembers what it was." Still remembering what life. The cars were required to be at what had been called the ‘Targafest’ on the main street of the inner eastern suburb of Norwood and all cars had to line up so that people could wander up and down the street looking at the cars. It was a cold and miserable and we felt sorry for the scantily clad girls that danced their way up the street to the beat of Latin drums. I guess the exercise kept them warm. I saw Jason and Bethany walking towards us but my parents weren’t with them, instead they were. In bed with munitions factories, the military was big business in government contracts that built armaments, ships, tanks, and planes, and there was no bigger business than fighting a war somewhere thousands of miles away. Even though he defended the United States government with his life, he didn’t trust the United States government to tell him the truth about anything, especially the capture of bin Laden. Deemed classified, if the Seals raided his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, unless. Italians, Americans, Russians, Czechs, Germans, Bavarians, English, Irish, Hungarians, all swarming around as thrilled and ecstatic as I was. It reminded me of the bastard offspring of a state fair and Las Vegas. There was a lewdness to their grins that hinted at the festival being two steps from an orgiastic Saturnalia. I had been told a handful of colorful ante dotes about Oktoberfest, but like Amsterdam they failed to sink in properly. I created my own vivid image of these places. Even after.