One of the things I love about living in a rural area is being able to be swept away by the sights, but Sunday proved to stand out a little bit among any other day.

I was driving to church, and the usual things I see are houses, corn fields, folks out mowing their lawn and the occasional vehicle from a century ago coming from the other direction all shiny and new. I wasn’t in the mindset for surprises, but I got one.

As I was passing the local high school, on the other side of the road was a somewhat beefy man (overweight beefy, not muscle beefy) who was dressed in a red tank top and khaki shorts with a straw cowboy hat on his head sitting on a utility box and snacking on an apple with a basset hound also on the box.

I was all alone in my Jeep, and yet I still said aloud, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

It was definitely an unusual sight—and I double-checked when I told folks at church, and they agreed that it’s as rare as seeing a unicorn. Okay, they didn’t actually compare it seeing a unicorn, but they definitely were surprised by my description.

The first thought was the cowboy hat with the shorts. I grew up in a town where almost everyone wore or at least owned a cowboy hat. The unwritten rule in cowboy culture is that you don’t wear shorts with a cowboy hat. You’ve got to be wearing full jeans.

The top is usually not as much of an issue. You can wear a plaid shirt, solid color button-down shirt, T-shirt, even a tank top like the aforementioned gentleman. Heck, you can even wear no shirt at all—of course, that exception only applies to men as women might get locked up for indecent exposure. However, shorts and cowboy hats are akin to hydrogen peroxide and vinegar (Look it up; they form an acid that can cause chemical burns).

After the fashion choice faded from my thoughts, my next thought went to the dog. Don’t get me wrong; basset hounds are adorable. They’re also very low to the ground, so I didn’t envision this dog being able to hop up onto the utility box like an Australian Shepherd hopping onto the couch.

That meant that the owner had to have brought the dog up on the box. The weather wasn’t too warm yet, so it’s not like the hound’s tootsies were frying on the metal surface. Still, it’s not often you see a basset hound on a higher perch like that. It definitely stuck out in my mind.

Then there was the fact that the man was snacking on an apple. Whenever I’ve gone out on walks, the maximum time I’ve been out and about was 90 minutes, so bringing along something to snack on has never occurred to me. It’s something more affiliated with hikers that are out on the trail for several hours, but this power box was in a residential area with sidewalks and no backpacks in sight, so the possibility of man and dog embarking on a cross-country trek seemed unlikely.

Granted, I’ve had some people who are joggers joke about how they’ll stop at a bakery to grab a donut or something else sweet, but more often than not, they’re eating inside the building. Kudos to the man for picking something healthy, even though it’s something not commonly seen.

The unusual amalgam of what I saw stuck with me for most of the drive, but as I was getting closer to church, I saw a sign for a rummage sale. However, the word “rummage” only had one M to make it “rumage.”

Funny side note, as I tried to type in the misspelled word, the autocorrect tried to give it two M’s. Still, American illiteracy—not that uncommon, and definitely not that impressive.

Part of me wishes that I had stopped to take a photo of the man and dog. The man might have given me a funny look and wondered what I was doing, but other odd sights have had photographic evidence, so why not this?

The sign misspelling will likely be gone from my mind by the end of the day. However, seeing a somewhat beefy man dressed in a red tank top and khaki shorts with a straw cowboy hat on his head sitting on a utility box and snacking on an apple with a basset hound also on the box—that will be one of the things I will remember for a long time about my travels on the roads of Wisconsin.