TALES FROM THE EDGE OF THE EARTH: SO I MARRIED A STRIPPER

By Grant McGee

  It was a slow day for the drivers. Me, Jason, Castro, Jack and Amy were standing in the morning sun in the parking lot of the local car distribution center.
  We were waiting to take deliveries to dealerships around the area. It was a simple job but sometimes it got boring, like this day when a big wreck was blocking the interstate. The bosses didn’t want us burning gas sitting in a traffic jam, they apparently decided workers standing around burning up the time clock was better.
  “Let’s grab one of the vans and go for lunch at Jimmy’s,” said Jack from behind his sunglasses.
Jason, Castro and Amy gave a knowing laugh.
  “Let me tell you something,” said Amy, one of the few women drivers, “It’s a good thing The Good Lord put a few extra pounds on me because I’d give those babes down there a run for their money.”
Jimmy’s was the city’s premier strip club.
  “So what goes on there?” I asked.
  The group fell silent and stared at me.
  “You’re kidding, right?” asked Amy.
  “You’ve never been there?” asked Jason.
  “Noooo,” I said. “I KNOW it’s a strip club but I mean is it like a topless joint or…”
  “Yeah,” said Jack, “It’s probably the classiest place in town. It’s just a topless joint. Those other places in town they’re kind of nasty. But I did get a lap dance there and ended up marrying the girl.”
The group turned and looked at Jack.
  “For reals?” asked Castro.
  “Yeah,” said Jack. “Even got a daughter out of the deal.”
  My mind flashed through my wonderment at the world of strippers. I used to wonder at such things, why a person would choose to be a nurse, another a lawyer, another a stripper. Then I ran across a short story by the writer Raymond Carver with a line that was my answer: “Who knows why we do what we do.”
  I got another angle on the question when I was living in Phoenix. At the time I was living with someone who had a job at the local mall at a place called “Body Talk.” 
  Body Talk was where someone could buy swimsuits at the front of the store and stripper wear in the back of the store.
  “My customers are Mormon wives and strippers,” she told me one time.
  Body Talk was very popular with the ladies who were looking for a snazzy swimsuit. It was also THE place for a number of Phoenix’s “exotic” dancers to come buy a new costume.
  She would come home and tell me tales of working at the shop. Of young women who were turning to stripping because their man had left them and left them with a kid to raise. Of how the only way they could figure to get cash, get lots of it and get it fast was to go to work at one of the many strip joints in The Valley of the Sun. Of how many of these young women were visibly upset at the prospect of having to report to their new job. Of how the hardened veteran dancers would drop in on the store.
  “Did you know a lot of the older ones I’ve encountered are lesbians?” she told me one day.
  “Nope,” I said as I raised my eyebrows.
  “And a lot of these dancers really hate the customers, the men in the audience, they think they’re pigs,” she added.
  Such were the thoughts that shot through my mind as I listened to Jack.
  “I gather you’re not married now,” I said. “Just something in the tone of your voice.”
  “Yeah,” said Jack. “It only lasted about a year.”
  “I mean, she would come home every night with these wads of cash,” Jack continued.
  “You guys got married and she continued stripping?” I asked.
  “Sure,” said Jack, “The money was GREAT. She made more money in one night than I did in a week. So I said, ‘Babe, why don’t I quit my job and stay at home with the kid.’ She had a boy from a previous relationship and we had one on the way.”
  “Every week when we went to WalMart it was like Christmas,” Jack went on. “Want another flat-screen TV? Sure! Put it in the cart. Want this? Want that? Get it! Put it in the cart. Hell, practically every shopping trip we’d have two shopping carts to carry out our stuff.”
  “But then I found out she was banging the guy across the hall from our apartment and it was over,” said Jack. “I said, ‘So why don’t we just stay roomies? You have him and I get another girlfriend and our kids don’t know the difference.’ She didn’t go for that.”
  “Now,” said Jack, “She has five kids from five different fathers.”
  “So is she still a stripper at Jimmy’s?” I asked.
  “No,” said Jack, “She’s a part-time nurse. But she spends most of her time with the kids.”
  We all stood in silence and looked at Jack.
  “But hey, I got a beautiful daughter out of the deal.”

                                                                    -30-

APPALACHIAN TALES: I WONDER WHY

By Grant McGee

Doc Taylor* had a little gun shop out on the main highway outside of town back in the hills of western Virginia.
Every day I was at work I’d make my rounds to “Doc’s Gun Shop” to stand around with other town notables to catch up on the freshest gossip. I was the newsman at the local radio station and Doc’s Gun Shop was where I got a lot of my news tips.
Doc got his name from being a medic in the Vietnam War. He spent a lot of time in government work after he got out of the Army. He’d been a policeman, he’d been a county deputy, he’d been a volunteer fireman and now he was the local volunteer fire chief.
Daily trips to Doc’s Gun Shop would mean time spent shooting the breeze with Doc and some of the other folks who dropped in. Maybe a working guy who had the day off, maybe the chief investigator of the town police force, maybe the owner of the local Chevy dealership.
They didn’t mind me sitting there and listening to the talk. If they were too worried they’d lean over and say, “Now you didn’t hear this from me…” 
I never broke their trust.
If there was a story to be had I’d start from scratch. And if anyone asked where I heard it I’d just say, “Folks are gossipin’.”
One time there was a fire at the radio station.
Grumpy Dave the general manager was a smoker. This particular morning he dumped his ashtray into his trash can. Next thing any of us knew, Grumpy Dave was yelling “Call the fire department!” He was standing at his office door, big flames dancing behind him.
I got on the phone and called Doc’s Gun Shop.
“Doc’s Gun Shop,” said Doc on the other end.
“DOC!” I yelled over the phone, “It’s the radio station, there’s a fire here!”
Doc laughed.
“Daggone it,” he said, “You call 911 first! Not me personally!”
Doc laughed some more.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll call dispatch for you.”
A few moments later the siren to call the volunteers to the firehouse sounded across the town.
By the time the fire truck got to the radio station Grumpy Dave had found the fire extinguisher. The blaze was out. Doc and his guys went into Grumpy Dave’s office to make sure the fire was dead.
There was Doc in his fireman’s outfit talking with me and Grumpy Dave and laughing at me calling the gun shop first.
It would be years in the future, it would be miles from western Virginia, gone were the days of land lines and faxes to be replaced by the time of cell phones and The Internet…it would be in this time and space that I would query the computer as to how things were getting along at Doc’s Gun Shop only to learn that Doc is dead.
Doc died in 1999.
Doc went into the woods near his gun shop, put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He left behind a family, left behind friends who no doubt tried to make sense of what he did.
I was stunned at the news.
I leaned back in my chair in front of my computer years and miles from where it happened.
If you’d had asked me such a thing I would’ve told you Doc was one of the last guys I’d ever suspect of taking his own life.
Doc was there in my memory, holding court at his shop, sharing the local gossip, talking about hunting season, chiding me about my news work, saying it’d get me in trouble with the wrong people someday and I’d end up in the county jail. “But don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll bring you smokes and gum.”
Doc killed himself.
And I wonder why.

-30-
*Name changed

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: THE LAST HITCHHIKER

My high school chum Dick gave this to me for my 17th birthday.  A tome from another time.

by Grant McGee

            I saw a hitchhiker the other day.

            I don’t pick up hitchhikers anymore.

            I used to pick up hitchhikers.

            I used to think, “Gee, what if that was me?”

            I like the catch-all term “karma.” 

Shoot, even Willie Nelson had a song about it, “Little Old Fashioned Karma.”

            Willie sings, “…it really ain’t hard to understand, if you’re gonna dance, you gotta pay the band.  Just a little old fashioned karma coming down.”

            And it was a hitchhiker who introduced me to the term “karma” back in the fall of 1973, but that’s another story.

Seeing a hitchhiker brings up another saying, “There but for fortune go you or I.”

There are plenty of stories to go around about the pitfalls of picking up hitchhikers.  Most of the hitchhikers I’ve picked up have just been everyday people.

I have been a hitchhiker.  Not the coast-to-coast-with-a-backpack kind, but out of necessity.

Once on my way to work the Volkswagen I had threw a rod (what an incredible noise that made, sounded like a chain was flying around the engine compartment).  I pulled over, turned off the engine and sat there for a bit.

I had to get to work.

So I locked up the bug, went to the side of the road and stuck out my thumb.

Car after car passed me by.  Finally a car that had been flying toward me came to a screeching halt, it left skid marks. 

The passenger door flew open. 

“Hurry up buddy,” yelled the driver.  “Get in, I’m gonna be late for work.”

It was an old car that made a loud thunking noise as we zipped down the highway at 60, 70, 80 miles per hour.

“Overslept,” said the driver.  “Me and the old lady were f#*~ing all night.  WOO!  She was in a MOOD!”

“Well how ‘bout that!” I said, smiling a polite nothing-I-can-do-about-this smile and nodding.

The thunking vibrated the car as we zipped past all those who had passed me by on the highway earlier.

THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK….

“What’s that noise?”

“My front axle’s bent, wheel could fly off at any time.”

“Oh,” and again I nodded and smiled my polite nothing-I-can-do-about-this smile.

Well the wheel didn’t fly off.  The guy dropped me off by the side of the road not far from work.  While waiting to cross the highway the cars that had passed me 20 miles back passed me again, a couple with apparent “how did he do that” expressions on their faces.

It isn’t as if hitchhiking is entirely a bad thing.

If you read “Made in America,” the Sam Walton story, you’ll find he even engaged in hitchhiking on an apparent regular basis.  Walton would fly into towns to visit one of his many Wal-Marts.  He would wait at the small airport for a local pilot to come through then ask if he could catch a ride into town.  When he was done with his visit he’d get the store manager to give him a lift back out to the local airport.

It may have been Sam Walton, he may have worn a suit and tie, he may have had a dog named “Ol’ Roy,” he may have had his own plane at the airport, but it still sounds like hitchhiking to me.

One time I picked up an old hitchhiker.  No sooner had we gone a mile than he asked me for twenty dollars.  When I told him I only had five dollars he proceeded to curse me and call me a liar.

I started laughing.

“What you laughin’ at you sumbitch?”

“I give you a ride, you hit me up for money then you cuss at me and insult my momma.  You’re obviously a dumbass.”

I pulled over and told him to get the hell out of my car.

But I’ve been digressing here, the name of this story is “The Last Hitchhiker,” let me tell you about him.

It’s spring 1998, I’m on my way to work in Sierra Vista, Arizona…about 20 some-odd miles from my groovy pad in Bisbee, Arizona.  There, standing at the overlook where drivers could pull over and admire the view of the town of Bisbee I spied a hitchhiker by the side of the road:  no shoes, no shirt.  The old phrase “there but for fortune” came to mind so I pulled over and let him in.

“Just got out of jail,” he said. 

“Oh shit,” I thought to myself.  I thought about all those folks who had given me a hard time over the years about picking up hitchhikers, that they were finally right.

“Where’s your shirt and shoes?” I asked, smiling my nothing-I-can-do-about-this-now-because-you’re-already-in-my-car smile.

“They arrested me while I was sleeping.  I was at home on the sofa and they busted in and hauled my ass away. This is what I went in with and this is what I came out with.  I called my girl but her phone’s disconnected.  I think she left me.”

In my rule book of picking up hitchhikers the guy owes the driver conversation.  If it’s good storytelling, that’s a plus.  This guy delivered.

“Yeah, I got in a bar fight up in Benson and bit off a hunk of this guy’s ear,” he said with pride.  “He ran out of the place cryin’ and hollerin.’  I went home.  I never thought he’d call the cops.”

“You bit off a hunk of his ear.”

“He insulted my girl, called her an old whore.”

“So you wandered around jail just wearing your pants.”

“Aw hell no,” he said.  “In jail they give you this orange jump suit and you get a pair of cheap flip-flops.  But when it was time to go home they took back their stuff and gave me my pants back.”

We came to an intersection, I pulled over.

“Well, my work’s that way,” I said pointing toward Sierra Vista.  “Someone will probably be along here shortly and you’ll get another ride.”

“Hey, I appreciate the ride this far.  You have any money you can give me?”

I thought about it.  Thought how I might feel if I was in his situation (I was about to say ‘in his shoes’ but he didn’t have any).  I gave him five dollars.

And I haven’t picked up a hitchhiker since.

                                    

                                                           -30-