Windham, N.Y., is a ski town, nestled in the Catskills, about two and a half hours from New York City. Main Street, a short, quaint strip that cuts across the bottom of Windham Mountain, is where you can find everything you really need: a post office, a school, a deli, a diner, a gas station, and toward the end, an old restaurant and bar called Madison's.

Last Sunday, my friend Dawn and I found ourselves at this local haunt after a day of skiing. The place was dead. A lottery game and a golf tournament quietly flickered on the two TV sets. So we started making polite conversation with the bartender, and then the two men sitting next to us.

One was a 40-something, recently laid-off businessman from Little Silver, N.J., a town that's 15 minutes from where I grew up at the Jersey Shore. The father of two young girls, he had spent the day skiing with his family. His friend was a lawyer, a local, and the father of four, including three girls. They seemed amused to be sitting next to two young, single women from Manhattan, who were both journalists. After they gave us a tip about tax evasion at a local nightclub, they asked us what we thought of the war.

When Dawn and I said we were against the war, the men's expressions tightened and they looked down at their steaks. They were huge supporters of the war. They argued that if America didn't disarm Saddam Hussein, no one would, and that America usually acts alone anyway, so who cares what those European bastards think. I'd encountered opinions like theirs many times before. Their attitudes reminded me of many of the men I grew up with -- fiercely patriotic, desperate to protect their families from terrorism, bursting with faith in the president.

But when we suggested that Sept. 11 had nothing to do with Iraq, the conversation immediately shifted. Their faces reddened, and they began to talk quickly at the same time, the businessman slapping his hand against the bar to punctuate his outbursts:

"At some point, you have to trust your president! You have to believe that he knows something we don't!"

"They attacked our country. Now we have to get them!"

"I was down there at the Trade Center. I had a burning piece of paper on my face! Burning. Piece. Of. Paper. On. My. Face!"

The businessman seemed to have forgotten that thousands had perished at the towers -- he didn't mention them, anyway -- so consumed was he with his personal vendetta against the Sept. 11 terrorists, I mean, Saddam. In fact, our increasingly irate new friends accused us of supporting Saddam over Bush. When we explained that nobody "supports" Saddam, they went ballistic.

"You know what? You two are the reason why this country's going down the fucking toilet."

"This is why I hate you city folks. Fucking city folks. Why don't you go back to New York? The fucking toilet."

"Communists. That's what you are. Communist feminists. Fucking liberals."

As disturbed as we were, at that point all we could do was laugh. They were behaving so preposterously, each yelling louder than the other one, slamming the bar and sweating. A couple who'd arrived halfway through the conversation looked at them and shook their heads at us sympathetically. We shrugged.

They didn't appreciate our indifference to their anger. The calmer we were the more enraged they became.

The businessman slowly turned to face us directly.

"How 'bout this. You like those people so much? You like those fuckers so much? How 'bout I throw a veil over your head and drag you by your ponytail out the door? Veil. Over your head. Drag you. By your ponytail," he said, dissolving into a bizarre, almost tribal chant.

As I said before, these men had seemed familiar to me in some way. But their vitriol genuinely surprised me, especially since the prospect of gagging us with lace and pulling our hair really seemed to turn them on. Their excitement, as much as their hatred, was palpable. We grabbed our coats to leave.

"Hey, so I guess this means we don't get a kiss, huh!" the lawyer called after us, cackling ecstatically as we slammed the door.