Fear and Loathing at Dan’s Bake Sale

According to the first entry in the journal we kept, on Monday, May 17, 1993, at precisely 2:50pm, Bill Herrin and I embarked upon an epic cross-country road trip that has, over time, become the stuff of legends. Driving Bill’s 1984 Plymouth Horizon with over 135,000 miles showing on the odometer and a shift linkage that was literally held together with duct tape and rubber bands, our trip began in Columbia, Missouri and took us southwest through parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, then east from Las Vegas through Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and finally Missouri again. 

Before we hit the road, Bill and I wrote down some goals that we had hoped to accomplish during the trip. They were as follows: Visit our friend Rick in Arkansas. Leave the country(Go to Mexico). See an ocean. Gamble in Vegas. Tour Budweiser brewery and see Rush Limbaugh at Dan’s Bake Sale in Ft. Collins, Colorado. (Bill was a huge fan of Limbaugh’s. Me, not so much.)

The final goal we wrote down was perhaps the trickiest: Survive.

After repairing the car, procuring rations, driving for hours on end, and drinking an entire cooler full of beer at Rick’s northwest Arkansas home on Day One, Bill and I woke up on Day Two with massive hangovers and a stark realization that we would never survive a trip to Mexico. We quickly abandoned the idea of leaving the country, and after deciding Vegas was as far west as we could go before time constraints forced us to turn back toward home, the idea of seeing an ocean was scrapped as well.

Vegas, the Brewery, and Dan’s Bake Sale remained in our sights, and a few new additions were made to the list. Having discovered two cans of Coors Light that Rick had inexplicably deposited in our cooler, we decided to stop at the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado and return the swill from whence it came. We also took a detour to see the Grand Canyon, the sight of which induced Bill to shout into the abyss, “I wonder how much beer it can hold!”

Naturally, we lost all of our money at the only casino we saw in Las Vegas, the Circus Circus, and we were forced to take out high-interest cash advances on our credit cards to fund the eastward leg of our trip. We would need every penny in order to make it home.

In western Colorado, Bill and I stopped at a tourist information center in the town of Rifle. When we told the friendly volunteer about our travels, she insisted that we meet the mayor, because he would be thrilled to meet people driving cross-country to attend Dan’s Bake Sale. (If you are a longtime listener of Rush Limbaugh’s, you may remember that a man named Dan wanted to subscribe to the conservative talk show host’s newsletter, but his wife wouldn’t allow him to spend the family’s money on anything that supported a man whose opinions she so strongly disagreed with. So, Rush jokingly suggested that Dan should hold a bake sale to raise the money.)

The Honorable David Ling, mayor of Rifle, Colorado, was a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. He told us so when Bill and I met him at his restaurant. Mayor Dave served us juicy bison burgers and ice-cold Rockies beer—compliments of the house. When we told him that we were originally from Hannibal, Mayor Dave announced to the entire restaurant that he was making “Tom and Huck” Rifle’s Goodwill Ambassadors to Dan’s Bake Sale. He gave Bill and I stickers that looked like Rifle sheriff’s badges and posed for photographs with us before sending us on our way.

We made a stop at the Coors Brewery before aiming the Plymouth northward, but our timing was off and we found the place closed. We left the two Coors Lights and a note explaining how offended two loyal Anheuser-Busch drinkers were to find the Coors products in our cooler. When we relayed the story to the tour guides at the Budweiser brewery in Ft. Collins the next day, they invited us to stay in the hospitality room after the rest of the tour was dismissed and drink as many complimentary beers as we wanted. We stumbled out the door an hour later and joined the miles-long traffic jam headed to the Bake Sale.

An estimated 60-70,000 people crowded into Old Town Square to buy baked goods and conservative merchandise at various booths and beer out of coolers being dragged around by countless unlicensed entrepreneurs. As a liberal in a sea of conservatives, I was smart enough to keep my big mouth shut, but I never saw any of the ugliness that one sees at modern right-wing MAGA rallies. Dan’s Bake Sale was a party. Everyone had a smile on their face and a cookie or a beer in their hand. 

These are my reflections of the day that I wrote in our journal: “It was an incredible experience. Conservative or not, it was more fun than a man should be allowed to have. Can’t describe the chaos in words.”

Dan’s Bake Sale happened because of Rush Limbaugh, but because of Rush Limbaugh, there will never be another Dan’s Bake Sale. The bigoted, misogynistic, and racist rhetoric that Rush Limbaugh continued to spew in the years following that joyful spring day in 1993 helped contribute to the sad state of political divisiveness we have today.

I, for one, do not mourn the passing of Rush Limbaugh. I mourn the passing of the Conservative Party that existed in 1993—the one that Rush Limbaugh both created and destroyed.