tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19999123889061831102024-03-05T23:42:24.912-08:00Grant McGee BlogsGrant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-19485413412199960832019-08-10T14:34:00.002-07:002019-08-18T05:32:54.069-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-34921683143934980662019-03-09T06:03:00.000-08:002019-03-09T08:35:10.009-08:00Dirt-i-cane Season is Here....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWD91GoR-48rotwuTUciyBZVw1Pelua7NV33z8J8fbF8HQKOGvgFrPPFYzCNUWRM9_wQCHGOszeDiqUorBcwORG-K0e8-VEINzycfFeHqHLE4q8hA3hGVm0S-ICm435T1YpH8mi5WOLHk/s1600/chamberocommerceday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWD91GoR-48rotwuTUciyBZVw1Pelua7NV33z8J8fbF8HQKOGvgFrPPFYzCNUWRM9_wQCHGOszeDiqUorBcwORG-K0e8-VEINzycfFeHqHLE4q8hA3hGVm0S-ICm435T1YpH8mi5WOLHk/s1600/chamberocommerceday.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><b><i>A "chamber o' commerce day" in eastern New Mexico (*wink*): Actual factual picture of a windy February day in 2013. Sustained winds of 40 mph, gusts approaching 50 mph. Wind blowing dust into west Texas.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I do believe the "Dirt-i-cane" season has arrived here in The Golden West.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Last night there were wild winds blowing over our fair city. The "breeze" carrying away dust and grit and stuff.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> One Amarillo weather guy said the gusts were up to 60 mph.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I stepped outside to secure some of our yard stuff and almost got blown over.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Either the winds are getting more powerful or I'm getting to be an old fart unable to keep my balance in our "refreshing" spring "breezes."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> If you live on the High Plains of eastern New Mexico and west Texas you live in a “Special Wind Zone.” That’s what the National Weather Service calls it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I learned that one time while looking up the boundaries for America's "Tornado Alley." The map had these little marked zones all over the country. One of them sat right over our area. The map said they were "Special Wind Zones."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Come spring, come fall, the winds pick up and blow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I have no education in meteorology but to my estimation the winds of this part of the west provide the power for storm systems that bedevil the Midwest and east.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Phoenix has its heat, there are hurricanes for the Gulf Coast and the West Coast has earthquakes. In eastern New Mexico and west Texas there’s the wind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I admire those winds. They show the power of nature. I dig how the winds buffet the house, it made me think that inside was a good place to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I first became acquainted with the winds of the region in Roswell. It was May 1990. I had just arrived in the Chaves County seat from Albuquerque. There had been nothing in Albuquerque that would prepare me for the winds of spring in eastern New Mexico.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I had lived in Roswell for about two weeks. Early one morning as I stepped from my apartment I noticed there was a slight breeze from the northwest. I’m a big fan of fresh air so I thought I’d open all the windows of my pad so I’d have a nice fresh place when I got off work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I knew absolutely nothing about spring winds in eastern New Mexico.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> After being on the job for a few hours I stepped outside into a roaring dust-filled wind. I knew this was not a good thing for my apartment with its windows wide open.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I got home everything was covered in dust.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> A year later I got to experience more wind and more dust. I could find the gaps in my windows from the tiny little piles of dust on the window sill. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> One afternoon while gardening I noticed it started to get darker and darker, but it was nowhere near sunset. To the west was an ominous cloud. It was a full fledged dust storm. By the time the thing reached town an eerie kind of twilight was all around and I could only see about 100 feet away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I had heard about these winds. For instance, I ran across an old book of amusing sayings and stories from the 50 states. In the section about Texas it suggested if you wanted to head east from west Texas in the spring just point your car that way and open all the doors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I decided to try this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I had a little Subaru. One spring day our winds were blowing a steady 40 miles per hour. I pointed my car toward Texas, opened the doors and put it in neutral. The car began to inch forward. Five then ten miles per hour. My top speed was 15 miles per hour. It was kind of fun. I was glad no policeman came by, he might have given me a free ride in a police car.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Then I moved to Clovis…just a few miles from the Texas state line.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Riding a bicycle around Clovis I would check on the winds daily in the fall and spring. Made me think I was related to sail-boaters in some way. I have to tell you, when you’re riding a bicycle around town there’s nothing finer than a good eastern New Mexico wind pushing you along. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> One time, the wind was so strong against my back I was able to put my feet on the handlebars and coast for over two miles. I was glad no policeman came by, I’m sure I was probably doing something wrong. I got a scolding from the Lady of the House who told me it’s unsafe to ride with my feet on the handlebars. Unsafe maybe, but it sure was fun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I was fascinated by the winds of eastern New Mexico. I like how power companies put up those big windmills around the towns of Texico, Elida, House and Fort Sumner. I thought maybe when I ran out of stuff to say on the radio and write about I’d get a job with one of those windmill companies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The Lady of the House nixed that idea. She doesn’t want me climbing those 300 foot towers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Leave that to the young guys,” she said. “It’s not safe for someone your age.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> She’s right, of course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I am getting to be an old fart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I might get blown off the top of one of those things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-36892264282388011992019-02-28T15:49:00.005-08:002019-02-28T16:14:16.196-08:00Funny Money<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEwCkqAMm38uCCrcc_f-YQbd5cPQqaqLo9UhJqEde_wKDC926jybYEOeybGTkbsHxem2Ujoex4hfBi6W7Lx7n2FDiwjsihQCuPeX1y-ixAvUBYZcBrDs5lpEmdSuZk7uP-czaXqGdqU0/s1600/IMG_20190215_051318725.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEwCkqAMm38uCCrcc_f-YQbd5cPQqaqLo9UhJqEde_wKDC926jybYEOeybGTkbsHxem2Ujoex4hfBi6W7Lx7n2FDiwjsihQCuPeX1y-ixAvUBYZcBrDs5lpEmdSuZk7uP-czaXqGdqU0/s320/IMG_20190215_051318725.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> There was this dollar coin in the cash drawer of a store the other day.<br /> "If you don't want that in your drawer I'll take it in my change," I said to the cashier. <br /> It ended up in my pocket.<br /> Every time I see one of these a couple of things come to mind...one is how they need to get out and get into circulation...another is how they, like a lot of stuff in our country right now, became a political battleground a few years back...and how I've run into people who have jobs, pay taxes, vote and are cock-sure on what it takes to make the world run their way but aren't familiar with their own country's money.<br /> Case in point: A few years ago I was rolling west on Interstate 10 in Louisiana when I stopped in a fast food joint in Lake Charles to get some munchies. I handed the young woman behind the counter three $2 bills.<br /> The young woman looked at me, looked at the money, looked at me then said, “One moment please.” She turned and called some guy’s name and this dude with a different colored outfit complete with tie comes to the counter.<br /> “I think he just handed me some fake money,” she tried whispering to the man. I say “tried whispering” because I could hear her. She showed him the $2 bills.<br /> The man started laughing. <br /> “No, Darlene,” he said. “I reckon you’ve never seen a $2 bill. They’re okay.”<br /> Then about 6 years ago I happened on another person here in town who also wasn’t familiar with some of our country’s money.<br /> It happened when The Lady of the House and I were doing our regular Saturday yard sale-ing. I handed a woman two freshly minted gold dollars to pay for an item.<br /> "What is this, foreign money?" she asked<br /> I didn’t know what to think. <br /> She looked to be an intelligent person, looked like she might be a working professional like a teacher, office manager, something like that...to me she had the air of a business professional.<br /> "Those are gold dollars, they’ve been around for 10 or 12 years, that's Sacagawea...."<br />"Saca...what?" she interrupts, "So these are foreign, I'm not taking them."<br /> "Those are U.S. legal tender ma'am," I said.<br /> "I’m not taking them, I don't believe you."<br /> There's a saying from back east in Hillbillyland: "Don't get into a pissin' contest with a pole-cat."<br /> I decided that was good advice right then.<br /> I took them back and presented her with a $20 bill to pay for my stuff.<br /> "Don't you have anything smaller?"<br /> I just smiled.<br /> Later, The Lady of the House told me not to take the rejection of my dollars personally.<br /> “Some people,” she said, “Are just…you know…”</span><br />
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-85989909704405089132019-02-23T05:38:00.002-08:002019-02-23T06:11:30.047-08:00The Mysterious Woman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAe3_zE_nqbBSd3x8NkfQT3fRTR0UQNv8HurNhz-bWgijrPNb0PxOH8-bmPwQ7Lim3RyXORzGhUUnATbHt7RIZSemWUxPdDBDDl9w0bSgGoo7UfN_brduzoOGaSoKlqZbf0gfJKHmzlhI/s1600/IMG_20190223_062921525_HDR-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="607" data-original-width="1600" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAe3_zE_nqbBSd3x8NkfQT3fRTR0UQNv8HurNhz-bWgijrPNb0PxOH8-bmPwQ7Lim3RyXORzGhUUnATbHt7RIZSemWUxPdDBDDl9w0bSgGoo7UfN_brduzoOGaSoKlqZbf0gfJKHmzlhI/s320/IMG_20190223_062921525_HDR-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif";"> <span style="font-size: large;">Everyone at my father’s funeral was familiar
to me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Except for one person…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> One woman…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> …who wouldn’t take off her shades inside the
funeral home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I had no idea who she was. I don’t think my mom cared about her being
there, Mom had other things on her mind. It didn’t seem like The Mysterious Woman knew
anyone at the funeral.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I didn’t know how I felt about this stranger
in our midst.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> About 35 years ago my dad died.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Dad “caught ‘The Cansuh’” as I
euphemistically like to refer to getting cancer. It started in that February back then when he
started falling. The doctors probed,
prodded and looked with x-ray eyes and found an octopus-like tumor at the base
of his brain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> They zapped the tumor with radiation, tried
to poison it with chemotherapy, all to no avail. The thing grew and sent it’s “tentacles” deep
into the reaches of Dad’s biomechanical control center.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> By the end of summer Dad was gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> For those of us who had watched him
deteriorate his death was a relief…his suffering was done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> It seemed as if he had been unplugged from
life and spent several months winding down to the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Things crossed my mind: Where did the cancer come from? Was it something he was exposed to in World
War 2? He had been near those atom bombs
they dropped on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>…had
a renegade atom set off a renegade cell?
Who knows. Maybe he simply just
got ‘The Cansuh.’ Mighty trees are
felled by blights and disease, what if cancer is the blight that attacks
humans?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Anyway<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> It was time for the funeral.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Mom was there, of course. My brother and his wife were there…and
me. My sister was MIA from the event. Cousin Doug was there. A bunch of people I recognized were there
too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> And The Mystery Woman was there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> She was a mystery because she kept her
distance from the family and didn’t associate with us or anyone else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> She caught my eye because she was wearing
sunglasses inside the funeral chapel and wasn’t taking them off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> She was much older than me, probably in her
60’s like my dad…she was just a touch dowdy but still attractive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “I’d bet that’s Zelda*,” said Cousin Doug.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “Who’s Zelda?” asked my brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “I reckon your daddy dated her in high
school,” said Cousin Doug. “Grandma
talked about her some over the years. I
thought when Grandma talked like that it was being disrespectful to Aunt
Johnnie, but I never said anything.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Cousin Doug was the only person I knew of
that called my momma “Johnnie.” It was a
name my Grandma gave her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> It wasn’t until I was grown that my mom told
me the story of how she came to be called “Johnnie” and my grandma came to be
known to her and my Aunt Becky, Cousin Doug’s momma, as “Madame.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> It was the classic conflict between
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law sprinkled with the cultural clash between
South and North.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> When my dad came home to <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Virginia</st1:place></st1:state> from his World War 2 Army service
with a bride from <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>
my grandma was not amused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Grandma called Mom “Johnnie.” Johnnie was the name of a maid who used to
tidy up around Grandma’s big house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Grandma had a big house and took in boarders,
the young women who attended the business college nearby. At any given time there were 4 or 5 young
women renting rooms from Grandma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Mom figured if Grandma was going to call her
Johnnie she’d just call her mother-in-law “Madame” as Grandma’s house seemed to
be like a whorehouse with those young women living there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> So with Grandma gone since the 1970’s Cousin
Doug was about the last person to refer to Mom as Aunt Johnnie. None of us in our family thought much of it
and it was something Cousin Doug grew up hearing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Anyway, back at Dad’s funeral…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “What’d she say about this Zelda?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “She never said much and never said it a lot,
just, ‘Your uncle should’ve married that Zelda girl.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “I remember now,” I said to my brother and
Doug. “Just a bit of conversation
between Grandma and Dad one time. Just
the two of them talking in the dining room one day while Mom was out and
Grandma said, ‘You should’ve married Zelda.’
And I wondered who Zelda was and why Grandma would say that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “What did Dad say?” asked my brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “He said, ‘Now mother, I’ll don’t like it
when you disrespect Louise,’” I said.
That was Mom’s name…Louise.
“Grandma and Dad didn’t talk for a few minutes after that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I always wondered why some people don’t keep
such thoughts to themselves…insulting other people, casting shade on other
people, insulting people behind their back, to their face even.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> The service was about to begin and Mom was
making her way back to sit with us after visiting with folks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> My brother turned to me, “Don’t say anything
to Mom about that woman.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “Do I look like I have ‘stupid’ tattooed on
my forehead?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “Well…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Mom sat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> The organ music began.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> After a couple of minutes the preacherman got
up and started talking about Dad, saying good things about him and his life,
saying those magic words, those holy words preachermen say at funerals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> And soon the service was over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> People were leaving, talking to Mom and my
brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I didn’t know anyone they were talking to so
I didn’t see much sense in hanging around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I looked around for The Mystery Woman…she was
gone. I eased on out the door ahead of
the crowd and looked around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> There she was, walking away, down the
sidewalk, by herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Was it Zelda?
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Or was it someone who worked with Dad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> But if it was someone who worked with Dad
surely she would’ve paused to say hello to Mom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Was she one of those weirdos who likes to go
to strangers’ funerals? There are such
people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> If it was Zelda why did she still care?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Who was I to ask?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I was curious about the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> But Dad never would have told me anyway, he
wasn’t a storyteller…not in my eyes anyway.
He never told me shit about anything.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Dad didn’t share.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I could just see me asking him about Zelda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> He and I would be sitting in the living room
some Sunday afternoon, he’d be watching some golf game on TV like he always did
and I’d say…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> “Say Dad, who was Zelda?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> He’d probably turn, his face getting red and
yell, “NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS, BOY!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> The only time he seemed to ever confide
anything in me was the time me and my buddy Catfish were in the wrong place at
the wrong time and got into a “spot of bother” with the police.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> That was when my dad told me about the “spot
of bother” he got into with the police as a teenager when he and some of his
buddies ran the tollbooth on a toll road and got caught. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> What happened to Dad and Zelda?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Why did my grandmother still talk about her
after all the years?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> Grandma had this thing about wanting her two
boys near her. Cousin Doug’s dad didn’t
give a shit what his mom wanted but my dad wanted to be that quintessential
“good Southern son” who bought a home for his momma and daddy and lived
nearby. It’s how we ended up leaving
Hawai’I and moving back to his hometown in The Southland. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> So if he’d married Zelda from the get-go he
never would have left the old hometown.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> And I probably wouldn’t have been born.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> If this was Zelda who had come to the funeral
how long had it been since she and Dad dated?
Fifty years?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> But what’s 50 years to the heart?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> I watched The Mystery Woman walk on in the
distance until I couldn’t see her anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;"> And i never mentioned any of this to Mom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large;">-30-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">*Names
changed…</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-7234743243888891382019-02-15T21:00:00.001-08:002019-02-15T21:01:51.404-08:00UFOs I Have Known...Or Been Told About Anyway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOhr2W67NVKjzZgInVNowsvdYBSkFaT-Jwfj9bDLAKSQO7b58nKOW05mUgRKOFV5X9J6gtE2DulgtB3vKJKEv__yVwCd-YSTrE3x50K1Aykcm2odjgUTh-qZaFZXvRSroZBPS53BWv8sQ/s1600/IMG_20190215_215146388-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="642" data-original-width="1600" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOhr2W67NVKjzZgInVNowsvdYBSkFaT-Jwfj9bDLAKSQO7b58nKOW05mUgRKOFV5X9J6gtE2DulgtB3vKJKEv__yVwCd-YSTrE3x50K1Aykcm2odjgUTh-qZaFZXvRSroZBPS53BWv8sQ/s320/IMG_20190215_215146388-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>Picture of "The Phoenix Lights" of March 1997. It's estimated that about 50,000 people saw this huge craft from Casa Grande to The Valley of the Sun. When two jets scrambled at it from Luke AFB the thing took off to the west like a bat out of hell.</i></b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Mention Roswell to someone from out of the region and they almost always make a space alien or “unidentified flying object” (UFO) joke.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> To most of us around these parts when we think of Roswell is that town down the road a bit…used to play ‘em in football, stuff like that.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> I remember when I moved to Roswell it was basically just known for cattle, oil company offices and pecans.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> I tell folks about the time I left Roswell in 1992 was the time the UFO-ologists started trickling in to town all for that UFO crash off to the northwest of town back in 1947.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> I tell folks I’ve seen two UFOs in my day. Most everything else I know about UFOs is from stories other folks told me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> My UFO encounter happened back in the spring of 1979 when I was living in the mountains of Appalachia. It was night and I had the family dog out for a pre-bedtime walk. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> A light skimming along the ridge of mountaintop caught my eye. It was moving from north to south. A strong, steady light skimming right along the top of the mountain and not making a sound. I watched as it came to the southern peak of the range and continued on off to the south. I’d seen many planes come over that mountain, most of them B52s and jet fighters on training runs from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, but this light was different. And those jets made noise, this didn’t make a sound.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> It would be years before I’d see another UFO. It was within days of arriving in Roswell. Like I said, back then about 30 years ago, Roswell was known for cattle, oil and pecans. I had no idea about the 1947 spaceship crash. The UFO I saw was bright and shiny in the western sky just after sunset. The next day I was told it was a weather balloon, they launch them from Ft. Sumner from time to time. I was so disappointed.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Now my friend Kent, Bard of the Pecos, saw something one evening that summer, again just after sunset: four bubble-like things moving one after the other slowly south to north in front of the growing darkness from the east. When the last one disappeared a small red light appeared to chase after them going about four times as fast as the bubble-things. Now I know Kent liked to have an after-work whiskey, but that wasn’t affecting what he saw; his wife and kids saw it too.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> But then, you know, I was watching “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” not too long ago and that movie had UFOs just like that…hmmmmm….</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Then there was the Roswell woman I knew who may have been abducted by aliens on her way back to Chaves County from Albuquerque one night. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> At least that’s what she said.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> She had picked up a hitchhiker just south of Cline’s Corner.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> It was a normal ride south on US 285…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> …until…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Between Cline’s Corner and Vaughn she noticed lights dancing erratically in the east. Moments later one of the lights came zooming in at her. About a quarter-mile off the highway the thing stopped…a hovering triangular craft. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Her car went dead.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> The hitchhiker started freaking out and hollering out Bible verses.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> She got out to get a closer look at the craft. She started to walk toward it, all the while the hitchhiker sat in the car hollering and praying.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> There was a bright flash of light and the next thing she knew she was standing by her car again.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “AHHH, AHHH, YOU CONSORTED WITH DEVILS, DON’T GET NEAR ME!” screamed the hitchhiker.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “Would you please shut the hell up,” she said as she got back in the car. “What the hell are you talking about.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “YOU WENT UP IN A BEAM OF LIGHT INTO THE DEVIL’S SPACESHIP!!!! YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR A GOOD HALF-HOUR.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh bullshit,” she said as she turned the key and her car started right up.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> She headed down the highway, all the while the hitchhiker yelling out Bible verses and prayers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> As she rolled into Vaughn and slowed down the hitchhiker opened the door, rolled out and hit the pavement. She watched as he got up and ran off into the night.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> She pulled into the Allsup’s store there in Vaughn. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “I need to call the cops,” she told the clerk. “I just saw a UFO.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> The clerk and people in the store were laughing at her when a black car pulled up and a man in a black suit got out, walked in and told the clerk that he too had seen a UFO.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> She thought it was weird, this man in a suit so she left without talking to anyone else. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Well, that’s what she told me anyway. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> I often wondered about this story, she told it so convincingly. But she told other stories too that made me scratch my chin, like she was the person who invented the nationwide advertising slogan, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> I’ve often wanted to have a good UFO encounter, like the famous “Phoenix Lights Incident” of March 1997. I was so disappointed to be just 100 miles away when that happened.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> It seems so strange to be on this giant organic spaceship zipping through the cosmos and to believe that there’s not another single civilization in the universe…there’s only us.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Frank the Trinidadian, my co-driver from my trucking days, dismissed talk of UFOs and extraterrestrials with the wave of his hand.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> “There are no such things as space aliens or worlds with people like us,” Frank said with his Caribbean accent. “The Lord gave us the moon and the stars so we wouldn’t be so lonely at night. We are the only civilization out here.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Well whatever, Frank. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> But I’d still like to talk to these folks who zip around in our skies. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Imagine the places they’ve been!</span><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-85667586752173680332019-02-09T05:42:00.003-08:002019-02-09T05:42:59.227-08:00An Angry Teenager and a Rifle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBp3r73AhuUhaVz4Byz8s7TfS_8xIZ8vG9onp00rdR2P6Jo936p9lgmPbkElDRwX7YdFSPWUqU0tWRFgIQAjIWu-5kzD_9l5Hu1eP2cgARy3yFCd6uq17CtnJWwggDTr7Ad4dZt9whtFk/s1600/IMG_20190205_091858992-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="1600" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBp3r73AhuUhaVz4Byz8s7TfS_8xIZ8vG9onp00rdR2P6Jo936p9lgmPbkElDRwX7YdFSPWUqU0tWRFgIQAjIWu-5kzD_9l5Hu1eP2cgARy3yFCd6uq17CtnJWwggDTr7Ad4dZt9whtFk/s320/IMG_20190205_091858992-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><br /> <span style="font-size: large;"> It’s been a few years now since the television news was filled with reports out of Roswell, over 100 miles southwest of here.<br /> There was a shooting at a middle school there.<br /> A 12 year old brought a shotgun to school then shot and badly wounded some classmates: A 12 year old boy and a 13 year old girl.<br /> When I heard about this my mind went back many years ago to when I was in junior high school...and I remember Kevin*.<br /> Kevin is dead now. He died in the early 1980's, a bullet right between the eyes. I never knew if he was shot by someone or if he shot himself. His parents who lived across the street from our family never told anyone the full details of his death. They just buried him at their old hometown cemetery near the Chesapeake Bay and brought his dog home to live with them.<br /> I remember Kevin because I saw firsthand how bullying can change someone.<br /> Kevin showed up in our neighborhood when I was in 7th grade<br /> Back then, in my boy's mind I came to realize I was glad Kevin showed up. Where once I had been the target of bullying and practical jokes, the focus switched to Kevin.<br /> Kevin was brainy, liked to enunciate his words so it sounded like he had a weird accent…he liked to use little-used words in his talk and asked a lot of questions why 7th graders did the things they did. For a while he was my friend...until he took a general dislike to practically everyone.<br /> I can't remember all the things Kevin endured but he took the brunt of the stuff when I moved away from the old home town. My dad took a job up north a few months after Kevin came to the neighborhood.. When we came back over a year later Kevin was not the smiling, inquisitive kid I used to know. He had become dark, brooding and didn’t say much.<br /> One night there was a knock on my door. It was two detectives from the city police department. They wanted to know if I knew anything about Kevin's house being egged.<br /> I did not.<br /> The detectives mentioned a couple of names: Dax and Lou….had I heard them talking about egging or planning to egg Kevin's house?<br />Dax and Lou were friends, but they liked to play practical jokes, usually with a mean twist. Like I mentioned, I had been their target...these days it was Kevin.<br /> "Because you see, boy," said one detective, "In our state the hurling of an object at a person, vehicle or house is a felony under the 'missile' law."<br /> The detectives left.<br /> I doubt the egging would’ve gotten any attention if it hadn’t been for Kevin’s dad working for the city government.<br /> Some time later Kevin came over to my house.<br /> "I want to show you something," said Kevin in his clipped speech.<br /> We walked back across the street to his place and walked behind the house.<br /> There in the backyard were two deep, rectangular holes.<br /> "Those look like graves," I said.<br /> "They are," said Kevin, "Those are graves for Dax and Lou. Come to my room."<br /> We went into his house. His parents and sister were out.<br /> We went into his room.<br /> He pulled a rifle from under his bed.<br /> "I'm going to kill Dax and Lou with this," he said.<br /> I just stared at the rifle, then I looked Kevin in the eyes.<br /> "You don't need to kill them," I said.<br /> There were moments of silence as Kevin and I looked each other in the eyes.<br /> "You'll get in a lot of trouble," I said.<br /> He put the rifle back under his bed.<br /> "You can go now," said Kevin.<br /> Kevin never did shoot Dax or Lou. He covered up the "graves" in his backyard. <br /> As an old guy I wonder why his parents let him dig those holes in the backyard in the first place. <br /> As an old guy I wonder why I didn't tell someone. Probably because I didn't want Kevin to shoot me.<br /> The last time I spoke to Kevin was that day in May 1972 when George Wallace was shot. Kevin was a big fan of George Wallace. <br /> I was sitting on my grandmother’s back porch when I saw Kevin walking down the street smoking a cigarette.<br /> "Hey Kevin," I called out to him. "Did you hear George Wallace got shot?'<br /> He stopped and looked at me.<br /> "That's sad," said Kevin.<br /> "I think he's just wounded," I said.<br /> He turned and walked away.<br /> For the rest of our school years Kevin hung around with a different bunch of kids. If we encountered each other we acted as if we were strangers, like we had never been friends. We graduated, I went to college, he joined the military.<br /> And then years later came the news that he was dead.<br /> I don't know what to make of it all. <br /> But when I hear news about a shooting at a junior high or middle school I remember Kevin.<br /> And I wonder....<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
-30-</div>
<br />*Names changed…</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-40817719682700078682019-02-01T20:01:00.002-08:002019-02-01T20:01:22.760-08:00Tales From the Edge of the Earth: Found Notes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidBGT0ra3UL9NvEmEp_djQOiDGJzIwTJiUJmGIl4ofJUcrOgdylabHDjEUje6l99zMAGUeea-xOgF6AH13i6gd1ii7IxxZN3-ZOaUB6GTj4rPiP3zjxrhmcQ3ettleg3FvrAlZFGAomZI/s1600/Note.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidBGT0ra3UL9NvEmEp_djQOiDGJzIwTJiUJmGIl4ofJUcrOgdylabHDjEUje6l99zMAGUeea-xOgF6AH13i6gd1ii7IxxZN3-ZOaUB6GTj4rPiP3zjxrhmcQ3ettleg3FvrAlZFGAomZI/s320/Note.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Picture of the actual factual note I found on the sidewalk in West Pensacola...</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> The Lady of the House and I lived by the beach for two years. Actually we were a few miles from the beach but saying “we lived by the beach for two years” adds a sense of fun and frivolity to the experience of living in Pensacola, Florida.<br /><br /> I used to walk our dogs every morning. I’d leave our West Pensacola home and stroll down the big boulevard that ran out of town off to Mobile. It was called Cervantes Street.<br /><br /> One morning as me and the dogs took our stroll a folded piece of paper caught my eye.<br /><br /> I reached down, picked it up and opened it…<br /> <br /><b><i> “Hi Boo! Wot u been? 2 me nuthin. Just chillin –n- thinking bout u so bored. Miss u yo bad azz is green. Did u tell Cheldra sumthin bout Keyshawn –n- dnt let Nekeyla read our notes cuz all she do is tell everybody wat we be talkin bout 4 it take u so long 2 write me bac c if u can cum 2 mi hous dis weekend well mi gum hav no mo flavor so bye talk later kisses BYE BOO”</i></b><br /><br /> I couldn’t bring myself to transcribe the rest…too many thoughts about the fate of the USA in the hands of folks who couldn’t spell or construct a sentence..<br /><br /> I like found notes.<br /><br /> To me, they’re a true view of the human condition.<br /><br /> I mean it’s not like reading a diary or anything. I don’t know who wrote it and if they chucked the note to begin with what can it hurt?<br /><br /> I used to save these writings…notes found while riding my bicycle, a folded piece of paper on the street catches the eye…notes found inside books at thrift stores…just notes I found. I was going to write something extensive about them, but didn’t.<br /><br /> I remember the ones I tossed.<br /><br /> There was the one I found in the street in Phoenix complete with a drawing of a scowling sun wearing shades and a spike-collared pit bull on a chain. Someone had written “The cop and the gangbanger,” a bit of writing devoid of punctuation that detailed a gangbanger making friends with a policeman and how the gangbanger didn’t know how to feel when the policeman shot and killed the gangbanger’s friend.<br /><br /> There was the grocery list written by the person who…okay…maybe they were in school the day they taught the lesson on apostrophes but may have been daydreaming when they got to the part on proper usage. On the list were things like: “Tomatoe’s, tortilla’s, hamburger bun’s,” etcetera.<br /><br /> One gem I found while perusing the pages of an old book at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Roswell. A guy had written a note to his significant other explaining his need to pleasure himself because “I’m not getting enough loving from you.” I got the picture from the writing that his significant other had walked in on him whilst he was having a “hand party.”<br /><br /> I’ll always pick up a note off the ground just to see what people are up to.<br /><br /> That is, unless, it’s covered with some weird schmutz.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
-30-</div>
</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-53103113864320854172019-01-26T05:44:00.001-08:002019-01-26T05:44:17.934-08:00Tales of the Southwest: Can't Dance for Sh*t<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW3vN3y385JTFFLn39R2B0udinLwrhmNKytZKuG-2ff4xKOZwM424_45cgx8QGwEXobGEhyphenhyphenw-qKI6YhkbNH16C59AILfB7VOzFSIk7dYWxmB5wzoAQphSExpCNY58-Lfuxt4SI0P3MdE/s1600/IMG_20190125_065756501-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1600" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW3vN3y385JTFFLn39R2B0udinLwrhmNKytZKuG-2ff4xKOZwM424_45cgx8QGwEXobGEhyphenhyphenw-qKI6YhkbNH16C59AILfB7VOzFSIk7dYWxmB5wzoAQphSExpCNY58-Lfuxt4SI0P3MdE/s320/IMG_20190125_065756501-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I did some checking before I started this story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I checked to see if
an Albuquerque nightclub I went to 30 years ago was still around.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Nope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Midnight Rodeo was
torn down recently. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I don’t believe I’m
wrong in saying Midnight Rodeo was a chain of country-themed nightclubs around
The Golden West. If not there were a
bunch of nightclubs across The Great American Southwest with the same name in
Tulsa, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, San Antonio, Houston, Austin and
Albuquerque.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was new to the
Duke City…I had a groovy pad…a studio apartment in an old motel on the city’s
notorious Central Avenue. It wasn’t half
bad for $200 a month…it was right across the street from a Smith’s Supermarket
and a movie theater cineplex.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I had a job running
heavy equipment at a construction project.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Now it was time to
find a girlfriend.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So where else does a
guy find a girlfriend than at nightclub and the club that seemed like just the
place was Midnight Rodeo where Country music was the big thing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was another
popular club in town called Caravan East, about 30 blocks down the street from
me on Central…but the guys on the construction job said it was basically a club
for old farts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Yep, Midnight Rodeo
was where I needed to go.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So one October night
I threw on my jeans, button-down collar shirt, grabbed a wad of cash, my Moose
River camping hat modified with feather and decorative pins (like the one that
was a tiny bottle of booze with the words “Liquor is Quicker” on it), my crepe
soled chukka boots and headed for “da club,” country style.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Is_UVzvgIbiG1gz2qnXZrunqiJIoVr8bUIWgKdrTl9DMyzN3MCLhHVnHXD1z2bSUaJ4f42gICZnTMn46EsiMx34nzvAZoyZgJ2VduGi9C4YnO11ZKszHRQc-xYqfPQdVXa947XjWXGI/s1600/Screenshot_20190116-193128-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="720" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Is_UVzvgIbiG1gz2qnXZrunqiJIoVr8bUIWgKdrTl9DMyzN3MCLhHVnHXD1z2bSUaJ4f42gICZnTMn46EsiMx34nzvAZoyZgJ2VduGi9C4YnO11ZKszHRQc-xYqfPQdVXa947XjWXGI/s320/Screenshot_20190116-193128-2.png" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIj50vupBdel9KcBsijuPPajFgglTiGvHzSG8GY_DigFCzbaA2q8HMZftdDiOL8qp3O8s6STxequH5RHWKuqzBkBntVFKj-rxcMIATidHDxbB0ECNkn0kJExRQ6ij0coXEqLvjpPyxFgM/s1600/IMG_20190123_190000505-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1322" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIj50vupBdel9KcBsijuPPajFgglTiGvHzSG8GY_DigFCzbaA2q8HMZftdDiOL8qp3O8s6STxequH5RHWKuqzBkBntVFKj-rxcMIATidHDxbB0ECNkn0kJExRQ6ij0coXEqLvjpPyxFgM/s320/IMG_20190123_190000505-2.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>My "Moose River" hat looked like this, except it was adorned with hat pins like these...</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7DzOJkxWgVu-a-ZI4JRLa7-rTlXqOZL_E-HBzwg2oHMFnpVyB9Z5PkYCA3c3QngpkLp59Gkn3QIPb7p0CZe_6zjCo2eYKWqlDnFRmaUQMfnZoDIA0lKgY-OHeDRluztYg9sQwMp5j6w/s1600/Screenshot_20190116-192748-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="720" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7DzOJkxWgVu-a-ZI4JRLa7-rTlXqOZL_E-HBzwg2oHMFnpVyB9Z5PkYCA3c3QngpkLp59Gkn3QIPb7p0CZe_6zjCo2eYKWqlDnFRmaUQMfnZoDIA0lKgY-OHeDRluztYg9sQwMp5j6w/s320/Screenshot_20190116-192748-2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>And I went out dancin' in a pair of these....</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I got to Midnight
Rodeo and found the place packed. I
ordered up a beer from the bar and headed for the dance floor. I thought I’d just hang out and watch for a
bit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The most danceable
country tunes of the day were blaring to a huge, crammed dance floor. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The thing that hit
me was these people knew how to dance.
This was dancing like I’d never seen before…it beat the hell out of
dancing at a hillbilly honky-tonk or bar dance back east in the mountains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t know what
they called this dancing but it sure wasn’t like what I called “The Hillbilly
Shuffle.” The Hillbilly Shuffle was
basically a guy and a girl leaning into each other and moving around the dance
floor. Nope, there was fancy footwork
going on on this dance floor in Albuquerque.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I finished my beer
and made my move to do some dancing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You wanna dance?” I
asked a woman who looked about as old as me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Sure,” said the
blonde, and off we merged into the mass of humanity that was dancing round and
round.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Soon we were on the
other side of the dance floor and my partner was setting me free.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You cain’t dance
for shit,” she said smiling, and she was gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “But…but,” I was
talking to no one. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She was doing that
fancy footwork dance and I was doing a mismatched Hillbilly Shuffle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I scanned the room
again for another prospect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ve been told I
can’t dance for shit,” I said to my new prospect, a brunette. “I was hoping you might give me some
pointers.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The brunette looked
me up and down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I ain’t got time,”
she said and with that she walked off.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I found another
prospect we walked out on the dance floor…she did her fancy footwork and me my
Hillbilly Shuffle and she shuffled me right over to the other side of the room
and let me go.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “YOU CAN’T DANCE FOR
SHIT,” came a voice, an older one that came with a cackling laugh.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I looked around.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was an old
woman with a beer and a cigarette.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She was motioning me
over to her table with her cigarette hand.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “GET YOUR ASS OVER
HERE, BOY,” she yelled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The old woman’s
voice made me flash back to living with my grandmother 25 years earlier, her
calling me in for supper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I made my way over
to the woman’s table. She leaned over,
pulled out the chair next to her and patted the seat cushion with her hand
holding the cigarette. A little bit of
ash fell off the tip on the seat vinyl.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “SIT DOWN,” she
yelled over the music.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I dutifully sat down
next to her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ve been watching
you, boy,” she said while chuckling. She
was probably a good 30 years older than me.
“Jesus Christ, where the hell are you from?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Back east, back in
the mountains,” I said with a measure of pride.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Damn,” she said, “I
shoulda guessed. I wasn’t far off. I was going to say eastern Kentucky.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” I said,
“That was about 100 miles west of me.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You come in here
with that damn hillbilly hat and those pussy shoes.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Pussy shoes?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Who the hell wears
chukka boots anymore? Damn. Boy,” she said pointing at the dance floor
with her fingers and her dwindling cigarette, “Look at what everyone’s wearing
out there….”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I looked out on the
dance floor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Cowboy boots,” I
said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No, not cowboy
boots, BOOTS,” she looked me in the eyes.
“You go around calling a hat a ‘cowboy hat’ and your boots ‘cowboy
boots’ folks around here gonna KNOW you’re from back east.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I smiled and nodded.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Lose that damn hat
next time you come here,” she said, “Save it for when you’re canoeing in
Minnesota. Go out and get you some
ropers and a decent hat.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Ropers?” I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Boots good for
dancin’,” she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What is that
dancin’?” I asked pointing at the dance floor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Two step,” she
said, taking a drag on a newly lit cigarette.
“What the hell is that dancin’ you’re doin’?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Hillbilly shuffle,
I always called it,” I said. I looked
out on the dance floor and spotted this one woman who was light on her feet and
doing a kind of dance/hopping around the floor.
I pointed, “What’s that dancing?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh hell, I bet if
you asked her it’d probably turn out she’s up here from Las Cruces. They dance fancy down there.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The old woman took a
drag off her cigarette.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Boy, if you’re
gonna get a girl here you damn well better know how to two-step. C’mon…” she said as she stood and stubbed out
her smoke, “I’m gonna give you a dance lesson.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We held our hands
like dance partners do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “NOW WATCH MY FEET,”
she yelled over the music, “SEE? DO
THIS…STEP, TOUCH, STEP, TOUCH, WALK WALK AND REPEAT.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “STEP TOUCH, STEP
TOUCH, WALK WALK,” I said loudly, “STEP TOUCH, STEP TOUCH, WALK WALK…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “LOOKIT THAT,” said
the old woman, “LIKE A DUCK TO WATER.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She and I were
making our way around the dance floor with me looking like I knew what I was
doing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We made our way back
to the table.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” I said, “I
sure appreciate your help. What’s your
name?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m Sally,” she
said, “I’m a retired hooker.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I my eyes opened
wide.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Ha ha ha,” said
Sally. “You shoulda suspected something,
not many women talk straight like me.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” I said, “I
just thought you were a teacher or something.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I thought I
recognized a hillbilly when I saw one,” Sally said. “I grew up in western North Carolina in the
Smokies. Came out west and made a lot of
money ‘getting acquainted’ over the years with the boys at the air
bases…Kirtland, Holloman. I come here
from time to time for the atmosphere.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I nodded.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Now tomorrow you
get out and go get you some boots and don’t get no square-toed boots, dead
giveaway you’re an easterner,” said Sally, “And get you a good hat.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Sally smiled and
patted me on the back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I made my way
through the crowd and headed for the door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was done with my
night on the town.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Besides, I couldn’t
dance for shit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">E P I L O G U E</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t go back to
Midnight Rodeo. It’s not that I didn’t
like the place, it’s just that it was populated by people who just weren’t my
“tribe.” So much importance put on
dancing just right wasn’t my cup of tea.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Besides, when I
tried dancing the two-step again I had trouble paying attention to my dance
partner while I was watching my feet and saying, “step touch, step touch, walk
walk…” in my head.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I did find an
enclave of my “tribe” in the mountains beyond the Sandia Mountains. Back at the end of the ‘80’s the village of
Madrid was home to a funky bar that had Bluegrass music on Saturdays. I would make the drive to Madrid, kick back
and listen to the tunes then mosey on back to Albuquerque.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The construction job
ended. I got picked up for a part-time
gig at a pop music radio station but my heart was hoping for a job that never
came at the city’s big Country station.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then one night I
picked up a radio station on the AM band blasting 50,000 watts of Country music
joy<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a> out of Roswell…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> …and knew where I
belonged.</span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl6XDStarFmEuq0Z6L8j_F25nRV5G8hS5-owLHos1pIfVtaZFAMySkwdTG0LQD0cFB_57uM05G0NGsdj1wAdhj7e8QFuXO-11BeFxjq1FxDx9Vh6fXD4taV5uwezLBqLrCVrzTkG73tss/s1600/IMG_20190117_144656719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl6XDStarFmEuq0Z6L8j_F25nRV5G8hS5-owLHos1pIfVtaZFAMySkwdTG0LQD0cFB_57uM05G0NGsdj1wAdhj7e8QFuXO-11BeFxjq1FxDx9Vh6fXD4taV5uwezLBqLrCVrzTkG73tss/s320/IMG_20190117_144656719.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Ain't no pins or feathers in my hat these days.....</i></b></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-34886218490921403772019-01-19T05:19:00.000-08:002019-01-19T05:19:55.141-08:00Tales of the Southwest: A Workin' Man in Albuquerque<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhF8hgVfcwT9QrFESXORvhRPsi695OZNUPmSieT-6IZ0lzCqUzVVV8mnNkZlEnsArwZgL0VFOO6eitg_5Zb6U_aHp7nULvBKadf0J6HKuEy1GBi-VcQzD85wEx5ZbTZu2q_jMuM_8jDFs/s1600/IMG_20190116_094245549-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1600" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhF8hgVfcwT9QrFESXORvhRPsi695OZNUPmSieT-6IZ0lzCqUzVVV8mnNkZlEnsArwZgL0VFOO6eitg_5Zb6U_aHp7nULvBKadf0J6HKuEy1GBi-VcQzD85wEx5ZbTZu2q_jMuM_8jDFs/s320/IMG_20190116_094245549-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Albuquerque...looking east across downtown toward the Sandia Mountains</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I mentioned in a
previous chapter that 2019 marks 30 years since I landed in New Mexico in the
state’s largest city Albuquerque.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> While I came to town
with a little nest egg of under $1000 it was dwindling fast…I had to put down a
big chunk of change on a groovy li’l hippie pad in an old motel on Central
Avenue…The Duke City’s notorious “main drag.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went to the temp
agencies in town and within a week I had a gig at minimum wage assembling
giant-ass shelves at a janitorial supply warehouse. When that assignment was done it was off to
one of the city’s malls of the day to work with a bunch of other temp agency
folks moving a J. C. Penney store from one mall to another.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the meantime I
had my application in at the construction firm that seemed to be working on
projects all over the city…“Dos Picachos Construction*.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As the days passed
still no word from Dos Picachos. I
wanted a job with those guys because of the good money…$12 an hour versus the
$4 an hour minimum wage temp jobs. At
the end of every week after I budgeted for rent I barely had enough for gas and
groceries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There were more temp
jobs: Washing cars for a rental agency
at the Albuquerque airport, scrubbing dried snot and spit off the walls of a
nursing home and working a collections gig at the Duke City office of a credit
card company.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Finally the call
came from Dos Picachos…I was in. I’d be
running what construction folks call a “pan.”
Most folks probably know it as an earthmover…the thing moves along the
ground gathering dirt from one place and dumping it in another.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I had to go do a
drug test. It would be my very first.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Back then there had
been stories about this food or that everyday drug making the results positive
for marijuana or other illegal substances.
When the construction honchos sent me off to the medical center for the
test they gave me a piece of paper with some guidelines. It told about letting the lab people know if you’ve
taken acetaminophen (read that as “Tylenol”) and some other medicines and foods. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Into the drug test office
I went. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I quickly learned
that the drug testing people took their drug testing business pretty seriously
because when I joked that I’d been studying real hard for the test I was
greeted with a cold blank stare.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Of course if I’d
given it some thought I might’ve realized the drug testing people heard that
same lame quip bunches of times a day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The next day I
reported to the work site. Dos Picachos
was doing a job for the railroad south of Albuquerque in Belen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I caused a little
stir when I got there, what with having taken my first drug test and all I had
questions…I’m also the kind of guy known for speaking before I think. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Before the shift,
there was a meeting to go over what we were going to do on the project. Then Jim, the foreman, asked if there were
any more questions. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I raised my hand.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Did I pass my drug
test?” I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> All the other guys
whipped their heads around to give me a stare.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Why,” said Ben, a
co-worker, “do you take drugs?” Ben was
a young guy who had just moved to the Duke City from Silver City. In a matter of days he and I would end up
carpooling to and from the city to the jobsite during which I learned his
beliefs that America was on a downhill slide and “the liberal media” was to
blame. Looking back on some of the
things he talked about I suspect he was an early fan of Rush Limbaugh. He also had an affinity for Metallica and
Andrew Dice Clay. But right then he was
eyeing me with suspicion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No,” I said, “it’s
just that I’ve heard stories about drug tests getting fouled up.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “That’s just
something made up by the liberal media,” Ben said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “If you tested
positive,” Foreman Jim said, “we’d talk to you privately before the shift and
send you home.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Drug tests are
always right,” proclaimed Ben. “If they
test positive, you use drugs, it’s just that simple.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And so the project
began. There were two shifts…the day
shift ran from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the night shift worked from 4 p.m. to 1
a.m.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was on the night
shift…we worked under klieg lights and headlights.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The crew was made up
of a pretty good cross-section of the people of The Great American
Southwest: A handful of white guys or
“Anglos,” the popular colloquialism for white folk in The Southwest. There was a black guy who ran the bulldozer,
a couple of Hispanic guys, a Native American woman blade operator from the
Acoma Pueblo and Vicente, a Native American dude from the Laguna Pueblo. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It was like the
Chamber of Commerce propaganda said…Albuquerque was a place where diverse
racial and ethnic groups work in harmony.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Well…I wouldn’t call
it harmony, but we all worked. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I liked to listen to
the Hispanic guys because of their language.
I found it fascinating how these two dudes would be talking in English
and when they got excited about something they’d seamlessly switch into talking
Spanish. Spanish seemed a lot easier
than the French I took in high school.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One night the crew
was sent home early. It was Ben’s turn
to drive us back to Albuquerque. This
night he got off the interstate on the city’s south side.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">“Where’re we going?” I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">“This bookstore,” he said. “They have a peep show.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ben went in. I waited in the car…for a bit. I always found adult bookstores a bit weird…I
mean it’s not like there’s single women inside waiting for dates. My curiosity overruled my…whatever…and soon I
found myself in an itty-bitty room, strange stains on the wall, a metal-covered window and a coin slot. I put a quarter in the slot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Gears ground, the
metal thingy rolled up to uncover a window that revealed a room with a lone
dancer on pink shag carpet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Well, that dancer
was missing an awful lot of her clothes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> While hip-hop music
throbbed in the room she danced over to my window and was gyrating this way,
shimmying another way and twisting that way, thrusting her bare crotch and
boobs at me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I started to
laugh. The whole thing was just flat-out
funny to me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The woman stopped
dancing. She started laughing too…that
made me laugh more.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The laughing dancer
backed up to sit on the lone chair in the room.
She missed and landed on the floor.
She laughed more.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And then the metal
thingy came down to cover the window.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I went outside and waited for Ben.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Minutes later he popped out the door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We stood outside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">“YOU made the dancer laugh, didn’t you?” he asked. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” I said,
chuckling. “It was ridiculous. I’m in
this creepy little room watching this dancer gyrate and shake on a pink shag
carpet. It was funny. I reckon she thought something was funny
too.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You’re weird,” said
Ben.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What the hell are
we doing coming here anyway?” I said.
“You live with someone.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Seeing this stuff
makes me want her more,” Ben said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “And you call me
weird,” I said as we got in the car and headed on in to town.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I looked out the
window. I pondered the mostly naked
chick in the peep show…she looked like she had a brain. I wondered if she was working the peep show
to pick up cash, working her way through college.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the days that
followed we kept working on the project, dredging river dirt and building a new
railroad bed with it. The dirt was soft
and mushy and I got stuck in it a lot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I had run heavy
equipment in Florida and had no problem with getting out after getting stuck
there. This was not the case in the Rio
Grande mud. I’d get stuck and Foreman Jim
would have to pull the dozer off its job and come over and push me out of the
muck.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One night I got
stuck again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Next thing I knew a
dirt clod exploded on the inside of my cab against the windshield. Chunks of dirt flew all over me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I looked around to
see where it came from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was Foreman
Jim, standing and glaring at me, his hands on his hips.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t even think
twice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I turned off my rig,
got out and marched right up to Foreman Jim and stood there, towering over him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What the hell was
that about, boss?” I said loudly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m God damned
tired of you getting stuck,” he said loudly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No need to throw
shit at me, boss.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I wanted to get
your f*#king attention,” said Jim.
“You’re slowing down the project.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> At mid-shift break I
was eating and I heard the Anglo guy from the mountains talking about me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I bet ol’ Stretch
could’ve kicked ol’ Jim’s ass.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I turned to Mountain
Man.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Talkin’ about me?”
I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah, Stretch,”
said Mountain Man, he called me “Stretch,” “Yeah, we thought you were going to
kick Jim’s ass. We were expecting a good
fight.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Ain’t no sense in
that,” I said. “I just wanted to know
why he thought it was so damn important to throw shit at me. Besides I’d probably get my glasses broke if
I fought him.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Another night
Vicente wanted to fight me…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Just because he
didn’t like me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t like you,”
said Vicente during mid-shift break. He
was standing over me as I sat having my “lunch.” “I’m going to kick your ass.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I stood up and
towered over him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “So,” I said. “Just because you don’t like me you’re going
to kick my ass. That doesn’t make any
sense.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I sat back down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “YOU DISSIN’ ME,
ASSHOLE?” yelled Vicente.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No, Vicente,” I
said. “I don’t want to fight you. I’ll probably get my glasses broken anyway.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went back to
eating.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Vicente went away
and left me alone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Three nights later
Vicente walked up to me at mid-shift break.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You and I drive the
same make car,” said Vicente. “My tire’s
flat…can I borrow your spare?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I laughed a bit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Sure, buddy,” I
said. “We’ll get it when the shift’s
over.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The project ended in
January.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was no work
for a few weeks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ben called me one
day, asked what I was doing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Doing temp work,
working at the credit card company, 5 bucks an hour,” I said. “What’re you doing?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Waiting for my
unemployment,” he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ve never gotten
unemployment,” I said. “I didn’t know I
could get it.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” said Ben. “I won’t work for less than 8 bucks an hour.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was just glad to
get a job.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> That was the only
work I ever did for Dos Picachos.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Not long after
talking with Ben I found out a bunch of the crew got called back for a project
right in Albuquerque.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was not called
back…didn’t know why...really didn’t care.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I had gotten a job
back in radio.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Radio bosses don’t
throw dirt clods at you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Not usually, anyway.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">*All names changed.</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-53696795733798471192019-01-17T12:37:00.001-08:002019-01-17T12:37:12.908-08:00Appalachian Tales: Whatever Happened to That Guy?<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I’ve only been truly challenged to a fistfight once in my life.<br />
I’ve worked at avoiding them m<span class="textexposedshow">ostly because I didn’t want to get my glasses broken.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> It was back
when I was in the 8th grade, junior high school. What it was all about is lost
in time to me. I do know I had gotten tired of the “jocks” hassling me and I
stood up to a member of their clique, Reggie Howell.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “Meet me
after school, I’ll kick your ass,” Reggie said.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “Where and
when,” I said.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> He just
stared at me.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “Okay,” I
said, “Four o’clock in the big field behind Berkowitz’s house.”</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Berkowitz
was one of the school jocks, but he was more easygoing than the others.
Berkowitz was standing there, so was Randy Thomas who liked to bounce
basketballs off the top of my head when I wasn’t looking.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> When school
was done for the day I rode my bicycle home, had a snack and went out to the
big field behind Berkowitz’s house.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> There was
Berkowitz, there was Thomas. </span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Reggie was
nowhere to be seen.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “You didn’t
bring your pal?” I asked them.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “This is
all up to him,” said Thomas. “If he wants to wuss out, he wusses out on his
own.”</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Berkowitz
looked around and smiled. “I guess you win by default,” said Berkowitz.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> The two of
them turned and walked away.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> “Maybe I
won’t bounce balls off your head anymore, McGee,” Thomas said without turning
around.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> And you
know, he never did again. And Reggie never mouthed off to me again.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Then one
day here in the future I got to wondering whatever became of those guys. So
with the help of the Internet, Great and Powerful, I looked them up.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Berkowitz
became a software information technology dude. Thomas runs one of those
publication companies that make regional magazines.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> And Reggie
Howell is dead.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Reggie
Howell has been dead for over 20 years.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> And he died
in a fashion I wouldn’t wish on anyone: He was at the wrong end of a shotgun.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> The details
were all there on the internet.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Reggie at
age 38 had become the boyfriend of a woman he worked with. She was married to
an older guy approaching 50. That guy, Keith Wilson, had been in Vietnam, had
worked for the railroad and become disabled.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Keith’s
wife Lorrie made it public that Keith was abusive and she’d had enough. Lorrie
left Keith and took their two little girls with her.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> The old
newspaper article posted in the local university’s archives was well written,
it told the tale of Keith turning to whiskey after Lorrie left. “It was just to
calm him down,” a brother told the reporter. “It’s not like he was a drunk.”</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Lorrie had
been out of Keith’s house for about 6 weeks, she had filed for divorce and
outlined the terms for child support. She was still letting him see his girls.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> It was a
sunny Sunday afternoon in May when Lorrie went to a local bar to pick her girls
up from visiting with their father. She took Reggie along with her because
Keith made her scared.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Two men
inside the bar told the tale: They heard a “pop” outside. They went to the
window and saw a man lying bloody in the parking lot. There was another man who
had his over and under shotgun pointed at a woman…and he fired, she fell to the
ground. While one of the patrons went to go call the cops the other watched as
the man chased his screaming little girls, shooting one, then the other. The
man then got in his car and drove away.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Keith went
home and as he sat in his car in his driveway blew his brains out with a
pistol.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Reggie
Howell was dead, so was Lorrie.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> Keith and
Lorrie’s daughters, ages 7 and 9, spent some time in the hospital but both
recovered and went off to live with a wealthy uncle in Richmond.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> After
reading all this I leaned back in my chair and pondered how life goes.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> I pondered
Reggie’s fate.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> I pondered
two children, now fully grown, and pondered the scars they must have.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> I pondered
what would make a man decide that killing people, even trying to kill his own
children, was an acceptable choice.</span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"> And then I
thought that I’m probably glad I don’t know.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">*All names, except mine, have been changed.</span></span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-45977324574343132142019-01-12T06:04:00.001-08:002019-01-12T08:57:08.772-08:00Tales of the Southwest: Welcome to Albuquerque<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"> It’s 2019.<br /> This year marks 30 years since I arrived in New Mexico.<br /> I landed in Albuquerque with everything I owned crammed in a 1970’s station wagon and $900 in my pocket. I had decided to move to the Duke City after much thought and falling for public relations stuff that painted Albuquerque as a big city where everyone worked and lived in harmony. <br /> I read up on Albuquerque including crime statistics. New Mexico’s largest city had a crime rate similar to New Orleans. I thought that since people flocked to The Big Easy every year for Mardi Gras then the crime rate may not be as bad as the statistics showed. “So how bad can it be in Albuquerque?” I thought. <br /> In life I have learned when I utter the fateful words, “How bad can it be” I find out, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or a place to live. Its kind of like comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s joke, “What’s a redneck’s last words? ‘Hey, watch this.’”<br /> I quickly settled in to a cheap apartment off Central Avenue…an old motel where the rooms had been converted to studio apartments…then got right to work finding work. I went to a shop that offered a place to get my mail along with a voicemail service.<br /> Remember, this was 30 years ago, before cell phones were all over the place. <br /> Then it was time to get cleaned up for the job hunt. I went to a nearby barber shop to get cleaned up for a job interview. It was your average barber shop in an average strip mall somewhere in the vicinity of Louisiana and Montgomery in the Duke City’s Northeast Heights.<br /> So there I was sitting the barber chair with the barber apron on. I was looking through the shop’s plate glass window at the Sandia Mountains when I noticed a young man with his back to the glass. I watched as he raised his hands up above his head. He had a brown bag in one hand and a pistol in the other. <br /> I was trying to make some sense of what I was seeing when I looked out into the parking lot and saw several Albuquerque police cruisers with policemen standing in a familiar pose like on TV shows. You know, the one where they’re hunkered over and holding their pistols with both hands, each cop aiming at the suspect. <br /> But this was real, not TV, and the suspect was on the other side of that pane of glass right in front of me.<br /> “Guys,” I said with a raised voice, “I think something’s going on outside.”<br /> The barber and the customers looked up. It took them a few moments to take it all in too.<br /> Then came the megaphone voice.<br /> “PEOPLE IN THE BARBER SHOP, MOVE TO A BACK ROOM.”<br /> “I think we all better get in the back room,” said the barber. He lead the way and ushered us all into what was basically a large closet…me still wearing my haircut apron.<br /> A few minutes later a booming voice echoed in the barber shop. “Albuquerque police,” the voice echoed, “It’s okay, everyone can come out now.” We eased out of the closet to find a cop standing in the shop.<br /> “What happened?” asked the barber.<br /> Mr. Policeman told us how a customer walking into the bank across the parking lot saw this kid getting out of his car and reaching under the seat for a pistol. This was back in the late 80’s when the Duke City was seeing an average of two bank robberies a week. So the customer called the cops. <br /> But the kid wasn’t after the bank, nope, the kid had bigger fish to fry other than the bank: The pizza joint next door to the barber shop. When the kid popped out of the pizza joint, pistol and bag of cash in hand, the cops were out in the parking lot waiting for him.<br /> “Welcome to Albuquerque,” I thought to myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
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Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-15344838528848255062019-01-05T05:42:00.001-08:002019-01-05T11:48:00.537-08:00That High Dollar Job Moving Bodies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />We wanted to move to Florida so back in the late summer of 2015 The Lady of the House and I said “adios” to eastern New Mexico and “hello” to Pensacola, Florida.<br /><br />The Lady of the House grew up there. Well actually she grew up in Fort Walton Beach about 30 miles east of Pensacola. Jobs seemed more plentiful and real estate was cheaper in Pensacola. Looking back I wonder if we would’ve had a better Florida experience if we’d moved to Fort Walton Beach instead.<br /><br />Me? I lived in many places growing up…New York City, Honolulu, Baltimore…I’d ripped myself up and landed in Albuquerque and Phoenix with no job prospects and was doing well within a few weeks. In other words I never had a problem in moving to a new city.<br /><br />Until Pensacola.<br /><br />I suppose if I’d done some research I might have discovered wages in the area were low and the city was dominated by a class of people who sought to monetize every human encounter they had.<br /><br />I have never been so quantified, scrutinized and rejected in my life when it came to landing a job. Pensacola is a young person’s city. Oh, and you damn well better have your college degree if you want a decent job there.<br /><br />A car dealership hired me. I sold six cars the first two weeks I was there. Then the next month when I didn’t do jack in the first two weeks I got fired. The Lady of the House and I went and bought a box of fried chicken, had a picnic on the beach and pondered my next move. <br /><br />My career has been in media…radio, newspaper. It was my lifelong work yet that experience mattered little to the folks who ran those things in Pensacola. <br /><br />So while I kept looking for a gig in media I kept looking for a job in other fields to pay the bills.<br /><br />I gave a shot at being a call center automaton…that lasted three weeks. <br /><br />I had a fun gig driving cars back and forth between car dealerships and the local auto auction but it only paid minimum wage and the schedule was just for 20 to 30 hours a week.<br /><br />Then came the interview with a Pensacola funeral home…a job that paid the princely sum of $10 an hour. <br /><br />This wasn’t the first time I’d ever kicked around working at a Pensacola funeral home.<br /><br />There was that time I put on a suit and tie and went just a few blocks down from my west Pensacola house to the funeral home right on the boulevard.<br /><br />I walked right in and noticed right away that I was the only Anglo guy in the place. <br /><br />Everyone else was African-American.<br /><br />“Hi,” I said to a fellow in a suit and tie at a desk handing him my resume’, “I’d like to apply for a job.”<br /><br />The dude reared back in his chair and looked at me like I had just farted loudly or something.<br /><br />“One moment please,” he said. He got up and disappeared down a hallway, my resume’ in hand.<br /><br />Moments later the fellow reappeared.<br /><br />“Sir, if you’d come right this way,” he said.<br /><br />I followed the guy down the hall where he pointed to an open door.<br /><br />Inside, standing with the help of a cane was an elderly woman.<br /><br />I stuck out my hand and shook hers.<br /><br />“Hello, my name is Grant McGee.”<br /><br />“Yes Mr. McGee, I have your resume’ here,” she said, “My name is Mrs. Miller.”<br /><br />I was talking with the owner, I reckoned. It was called “Miller Funeral Home.”<br /><br />“Close the door, Mr. McGee,” she said.<br /><br />I closed the door.<br /><br />“Have a seat,” she said as she went around to sit behind her desk.<br /><br />“We do have an opening for a night receptionist,” said Mrs. Miller. “Someone to greet the deceased’s family and friends when they come in.”<br /><br />I nodded my head.<br /><br />“Mr. McGee, I’m going to speak off the record here…”<br /><br />“Yes ma’am?”<br /><br />“You DO know this is regarded in town as Pensacola’s premier black funeral home.”<br /><br />“No ma’am,” I said. “I’m looking for a job and I live a few blocks west of here. My wife and I moved here from New Mexico a few months ago.”<br /><br />“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Miller. “Well, you speak pretty good English for someone from Mexico.”<br /><br />I thought about correcting her but then I thought about that old saying, “Discretion is the better part of valor.”<br /><br />“Like I said, Mr. McGee, I’m going to speak frankly here,” said Mrs. Miller. “You don’t see anything wrong with a white man working in a black funeral home?”<br /><br />“No ma’am,” I said. “Who we are in terms of race is just all about where our ancestors came from…Africa, Europe, Asia and such. Besides, I think one of the most overlooked news stories of 1997 was that the human genome shows no markers for race, per se. We are basically all human.”<br /><br />Mrs. Miller looked me right in the eyes for a few moments.<br /><br />“Well, Mr. McGee, your view is refreshing,” said Mrs. Miller, “But while you may not have a problem with being the only white man at an African-American funeral home my customers and their families and friends just might.”<br /><br />“Yes ma’am,” I said. “I can understand that.”<br /><br />“But now this is just you and I talking. You having been in management understand that I’m not actually allowed to talk about this with you. But I wanted to be honest with you about this.”<br /><br />“Yes ma’am.”<br /><br />Mrs. Miller stood up as did I. She extended her hand. I shook it.<br /><br />“It’s been very nice to meet you, Mr. McGee. I will give this some thought.”<br /><br />“Yes ma’am,” I said.<br /><br />I went on back home where I found The Lady of the House in the kitchen.<br /><br />“What happened at the funeral home?” she asked.<br /><br />“They want a night receptionist.”<br /><br />“Night receptionist?”<br /><br />“I’m pretty sure it’s like that time I worked the front desk of a hotel. Same clothes too…a nice sport coat, khakis, nice shirt, tie.”<br /><br />“You’re not really serious, are you?”<br /><br />“Sure, you know, people would walk in and I’d smile and say, ‘Good evening, welcome to the funeral home…yes he’s right down the hall’ and I’d escort the visitors down to the parlor. I’d answer phones and make sure the coffee is made and all that stuff.”<br /><br />“You? Working in a funeral home?”<br /><br />“Sure. You know, if someone says, ‘She looks like she’s asleep’ or ‘He looks like he could sit right up and talk to ya!’ Or I might say, ‘Yes, here at the funeral home we do mighty fine work.’”<br /><br />Mrs. Miller never called me for a job. The Lady of the House predicted she wouldn’t call and she was right.<br /><br />So I kept looking for work. People couldn’t understand why a man of my age didn’t have my own business. Others thought I was overqualified and yet others thought I was underqualified for their management positions.<br /><br />I was doing this while I waited for the local newspaper to call me telling me they were bringing me on board in the advertising department. I interviewed with them in October, I interviewed with them in November and again in December. They kept telling me they were working on deciding when they want to hire me. By the way, I never got that job.<br /><br />Anyway, back to the $10 an hour funeral home job…<br /><br />It was an ad in the Pensacola paper: “Drivers wanted” it read. “Flexible hours” it read. I thought it would fit nicely with the part-time gig I had delivering cars.<br /><br />I put on my sport coat, tie and all the other stuff that is “de rigueur” for a job interview and showed up at the funeral home on time.<br /><br />“Do you have any problems lifting?” asked the funeral dude as the interview began.<br /><br />“How much will I need to lift?” I asked, I was looking for a poundage figure.<br /><br />“That depends,” he said. “Some people can be pretty big.”<br /><br />“Oh,” I said. “You’re talking about moving bodies.”<br /><br />“Yes,” said The Funeral Dude, “That’s part of the driver’s position we’re hiring for.”<br /><br />I flashed back to an incident when someone died where I worked. And yes, it was the funeral home dudes who showed up and had to take him away. I mean, SOMEBODY has to do it.<br /><br />“Well how many people are sent out on the job?” I asked.<br /><br />“Two people can usually handle the task,” he said.<br /><br />“What about decomposition?” I asked.<br /><br />He sat back for a moment. I don’t think he was expecting that question.<br /><br />“I knew of this guy who was working for a funeral home in New Mexico,” I said. “Someone had died in the middle of summer in a mobile home and wasn’t discovered for days. When they went in to get the body they opened the door and the stench was incredible awful. Then they stepped through the door and the carpeting was squishy…that was from where the body’s fluids had oozed out and soaked the carpet.”<br /><br />“We have body bags for that,” he said.<br /><br />“And the drivers have to load the body bag?” I asked.<br /><br />“It’s all part of your training,” he said.<br /><br />“So when people die they express urine and feces, don’t they?” I asked.<br /><br />He sat back for a moment. I don’t think he was expecting that question either.<br /><br />“Well,” he said. “That happens but not that often. Our black body bags are for those who have decomposed or expressed shit because they have a deodorizing element built into them.”<br /><br />It turns out it was an on-call job. When the funeral home got the call to come pick up a body the driver was expected to be at the funeral home in about 20 minutes. Attire for a body pickup was expected to be a sport coat and tie. Transporting a body to Orlando for those folks who donated their bodies to science was casual attire. And for those days when I’d be asked to drive a hearse or the flower van I was expected to dress in a suit….something I did not own.<br /><br />I could be watching my favorite TV show and be called out to move a body. I could be enjoying a day at the beach and be called out to move a body. I could be grocery shopping with The Lady of the House and be called out to move a body. I could be enjoying a sound sleep and get the call. All for 10 bucks an hour.<br /><br />The opportunity to take the job was on the table.<br /><br />I told the funeral dude I’d get back with him.<br /><br />And I did.<br /><br />“Hey, thanks for your time,” I said over the phone. “But I need something with more structured hours. Thank you for your time.”<br /><br />That was part of the reason I didn’t take it.<br /><br />The other part was I didn’t feel like forking out over a hundred bucks for a suit for a 10-dollar-an-hour gig.<br /><br />I eventually found a job in Pensacola in my career field for the princely sum of $11.84 an hour. My years of experience meant nothing, that pay rate was low… comparable to what I made when I started out in the broadcasting business. I put up with that for over a year until we had enough of the low wages and that unfriendly, money-hungry city in general.<br /><br />We left Pensacola in September 2017 to return to eastern New Mexico.<br /><br />I’m damn glad we did.<br /><br /> <br /><br />-30-</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-19353431802858445282018-12-29T06:29:00.003-08:002018-12-29T07:13:24.100-08:00It Happened One New Year's<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /> As I have moseyed through life I was delighted to find that I was not the only dumb-ass ever born.<br /><br /> I should explain.<br /><br /> I have missed many “signs” in my life…signs in the form of “red flags” to warn me of people or situations I should’ve avoided, hints that I should have taken or signs that I just flat-out missed. <br /><br /> I don’t know how this happened, how I didn’t come equipped with something to see what the hell is actually going on. <br /><br />I have offered up the excuse that I played by myself a lot as a child.<br /><br />Maybe I'm just an idealist or i just don’t know what “normal” is. And then again, maybe I was supposed to learn this stuff as I went along. <br /><br /> Case in point: An encounter with a young woman at a New Year’s party at the dawn of 1976. <br /><br /> Some friends of mine and I had rented a huge function room at a hotel in the old hometown for “The Big Event.” Matter of fact that’s what we called it, “The Big Event.” We had even gotten rooms so we wouldn’t have to drive home that night. Friends I didn’t even know I had showed up for this big deal. <br /><br /> People strayed into our party dressed up for other parties in the hotel, they told me it looked like we were having more fun at our big bash. And they said the music was better. As usual I was the guy playing the music with a disc jockey setup. <br /><br /> Just after midnight this lovely young lady who was dressed in (what was to me) a dreamy Stevie Nicks-ish style came up to me. <br /><br /> Back then Stevie Nicks was the new lead singer for the band “Fleetwood Mac.” She arrived on the scene with an enchanting voice, winsome smile, dressed in shawls and flowy things and she danced round and round on the stage as the band played on.</span><br />
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<b><i>She looked like she'd taken fashion hints from Stevie Nicks...</i></b></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> So here was this young lady at the New Year’s party and it looked like she had dressed for the occasion by taking some fashion hints from Stevie Nicks.<br /><br />I mean I’d never seen her before and she was absolutely stunning. <br /><br /> To me, anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">After all I was a teenage boy and, at the time, thought all young women were stunning.<br /><br /> “Can I have the key to your room?” she said, looking me right in the eyes.<br /><br /> This was weird: why would she want the key to my room? <br /><br /> “Sure,” I said, “How come?” <br /><br /> “I…umm…need to use your bathroom,” she said, biting her lip, smiling slightly and looking off to the side.<br /><br /> “OK,” I said. So I gave her my key and she sauntered off. <br /><br /> Well, about a half hour passed by and I realized this girl had not returned with my key. I got my buddy Dax to take the DJ seat and I went up to my room. <br /><br /> The door was cracked open a bit and it was dark inside. <br /><br /> I pushed open the door and flipped on the light. And there…on my bed…in her clothes…lay this young lady. Obviously she had been waiting in my room in the dark. <br /><br /> “Hi, what’s up,” I asked. <br /><br /> She smiled at me, “I don’t feel like going anywhere tonight.” <br /><br /> With that she stretched out on the bed and put her arms back behind her head.<br /><br /> I guessed she was tired or something so I said, “Well, there are still plenty of rooms here in the hotel, they’re cheap tonight too…special rate.” <br /><br /> She sat bolt upright, looked at me and said, “I don’t believe it,” got up and left. <br /><br /> I watched her sashay down the hall.<br /><br /> “You really just wanted to use my bathroom?” I asked loudly.<br /><br /> She turned around and then was walking backward down the hall.<br /><br /> “You don’t look like a dumb-ass. I guess dumb-asses can look normal,” she said as she turned around and kept walking down the hall.<br /><br /> “You’re kinda weird,” I said loudly.<br /><br /> She stuck her hand in the air and flipped me the bird as she kept walking. It was a good bird too, knuckles forward, pointed at me. <br /><br /> I went back to the party to play some more tunes. Then by about 130 it was time to call it a night.<br /><br /> Afterward I was winding down, sitting around shootin’ the shit with my pals Dax and Dave.<br /><br /> “Man,” I said, “There was this weird chick…” <br /><br /> I then proceeded to tell them the tale of the girl in my room.<br /><br /> I finished the story.<br /><br /> My two pals just stared at me.<br /><br /> Then Dax started laughing, Dave was shaking his head.<br /><br /> “Dumb-ass,” said Dax, still laughing. “Does someone have to hold up a sign? She wanted to have sex…dumb-ass.”<br /><br /> “Man!” laughed Dave, “Offered up to you on a silver platter and you didn’t even realize it….MAN! I think she came to the party with Laura Whatshername. I think that was Laura’s cousin from around DC. You know I’ve heard about that. Chick comes up to you and asks for your room key you’re just supposed to KNOW, man.”<br /><br /> “Dumb-ass,” said Dax.<br /><br /> They stood up, still laughing, and walked on to their rooms.<br /><br /> I sat there for a few minutes by myself and thought about what I may have missed out on. I mean I MAY have missed out on a good time or I may have missed getting into trouble. I would never know.<br /><br /> I smiled…<br /><br /> It wasn’t the first time I’d missed out on “signs,” it wouldn’t be the last.<br /><br /> I don’t know if it’s a lot of people who miss hints, red flags and signs or just a few…<br /><br /> But since that New Year’s eve long ago I’ve found out at least I’m not the ONLY one.<br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />*All names changed as a “cover my ass” maneuver…</span></div>
</div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-91012592124625373202018-12-22T06:18:00.000-08:002018-12-22T06:25:40.711-08:00The Best Christmas<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">To me, a good Christmas is about lifting
your spirits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good Christmas is about
smiles and sharing and stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
presents, the food and all the other Christmasy things are just icing on the
cake.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">What was your “Best Christmas Ever”?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">While I’ve had some great Christmases I’d
have to say my best Christmas ever was 34 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was right after one of my famous
trainwrecks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, my trainwrecks aren’t exactly
widespreadedly famous, just “famous” amongst my kin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">If life is like a river, well, I’ve paddled
my canoe through some pleasant passages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And then there were some treacherous stretches full of rapids and
whitewater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That “Best Christmas Ever”
came at the end of a year where my li’l “canoe of life” had gone over a
waterfall and all my supplies were lost, so to speak:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had totaled my car in a wreck...taking a
mountain curve at 60 mph when I shoulda took it at 30...went flying into a
creek...ripped a hole in my butt cheek.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And because my gig was a traveling salesman I lost my job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With no job I couldn’t pay my rent so I lost
my apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I figured I could go home until I
pulled things back together.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Boy, was I
wrong.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I called my
folks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mom answered the phone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Hi mom,” I
was smiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Can I come home, I’m in a
bit of a mess.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well,” she
said, “you’ll need to talk to your father.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She put my
dad on the line.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Hi dad,
can I come live with y’all till I get on my feet?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, son.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wow, I was
amazed at how fast he answered me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think they knew I’d be calling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was
dumbfounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took a few seconds to
gather my thoughts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I gave a nervous laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I-I thought that’s what home is for,
dad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A place to come back to when it all
goes down the tubes.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well, son,
we believe if you stay out there and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
you’ll be a lot stronger.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now that I
look back on it I don’t think I would have let me come back home to live
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Things started looking better,
though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Mom and Dad did let me come home
for the weekend, the same weekend my aunt and uncle came to visit from
Ohio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They had stopped on the way and
picked up a local paper from a couple of hundred miles up the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was an ad in that paper for a job and
the guy to contact was a dude I knew.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">I called the guy and got the job over the
phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon I was settled in to a new
town and some new digs…the second floor of an old 1920’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No fridge, no stove, no furnace, no
furniture, no TV, but I had four big rooms, an enclosed second-story porch that
faced the sunny south, a sleeping bag, a trunk, my stereo and all my record
albums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What more could anyone ask for?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">The job didn’t pay much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I did make went for bills, rent and
setting aside some bucks to get a car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
cooked ramen noodles on a hot plate…lots and lots of ramen noodles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was toast, lots of toast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nowadays, when I look at a pack of ramen
noodles I get a queasy feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">Folks at work would be having burgers and
fries and stuff for lunch...I wondered if a jury of my true hungry peers would
convict me for attacking a co-worker for some fast food.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">Winter came and my apartment turned into a
fridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I filled a tub for a bath
the cold, cold porcelain would sap the heat from the water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One room was so cold for a couple of weeks I
could keep ice cream in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
subfreezing morning I even woke up with frost in my moustache.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">Looking back on that time I realize I was
just a step up from living on the street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then I
got a call…my folks were coming to see me for Christmas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mom and Dad were taking me to dinner and
they had a surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a good
feeling, knowing they were coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus
I’d get something other than ramen noodles and toast to eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was happy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mom and
dad took me to eat at one of the nicest places around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We laughed, talked and I caught up on what
the rest of the family was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
folks brought presents too, new clothes; new shirts, new pants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about my
circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before they left my dad
told me not to feel so bad about having to start all over.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yeah,
but you’re not eating ramen noodles and toast every day,” I laughed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He had
some other tidbits of wisdom to share before they left that day, including that
it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t have a car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was right, plus I found the walk to and
from work kind of relaxing. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
father wasn’t with us much longer after that visit, that’s another reason I
remember that Christmas. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
following February he started having trouble standing on his right leg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A trip to the doctor revealed a big ol’ brain
tumor in his head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By August he had “gone
on to Glory.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">I always remember that December
get-together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can still see my dad
smiling from the driver’s seat as he and mom were about to drive away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Things
are a little tough for you now, son,” I remember him saying, “But someday
you’ll look back on all this and laugh, maybe even write about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And so I
have<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-65829766648486841722018-12-15T05:22:00.001-08:002018-12-15T05:22:13.011-08:00True Tales From The Mountains<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHENtENozisLrN1Kb68uFrwMYZ9k_0EBeMUqYWU7XqdZDin9K0ebSPNOHzFJoHy0pS2ULdt7pQ06QsWjO8jxvn0pz8bBg_nROKD382nvvQVedsGxAr1mtPJ5Jl4TEwzKkDj-yK61XYjw/s1600/IMG_20181210_132927696-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="981" data-original-width="1600" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHENtENozisLrN1Kb68uFrwMYZ9k_0EBeMUqYWU7XqdZDin9K0ebSPNOHzFJoHy0pS2ULdt7pQ06QsWjO8jxvn0pz8bBg_nROKD382nvvQVedsGxAr1mtPJ5Jl4TEwzKkDj-yK61XYjw/s320/IMG_20181210_132927696-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>"He waited up in a tree with his rifle, waited for Ol' J.I. to get home..."</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I find it strange how some folks don’t give a whit about their ancestors…what they did, how they lived, what they accomplished.<br /><br /> I once had a friend who had no idea of her ancestry or family tales of long ago and she didn’t care. I thought that was just sad.<br /><br /> When I think about “my people” who lived long ago…their genetic material still vibrates within us…I think how we are the culmination of those who have gone before. I believe we honor them by knowing a bit about them.<br /><br /> I learned a lot about some of my ancestors from my grandmother. My father’s mother was a great storyteller. <br /><br /> Grandma was one of seven children of an iron ore mining company manager that lived in the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia near the West Virginia border. <br /><br /> Grandma was a cigarette-smoking, Bible-quoting, stern yet fun Virginia mountain “girl.”<br /><br /> My folks shipped me off to live with my grandparents for my last couple of years of high school. That’s how I came to hear Grandma’s tales.<br /><br /> It being Christmastime I got to remembering my Grandma.<br /><br /> One Christmas when I was a teenager my brother and sister didn’t come home for Christmas. It was just going to be my mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather. <br /><br /> I woke up Christmas morning and things were strangely quiet, not noisy and busy like many Christmases before.<br /><br /> I walked downstairs and found my mother and father sitting at the table having breakfast like any other day. <br /><br /> “What’s going on? Where’s Christmas?” I asked.<br /><br /> “What do you mean?” said my father. <br /><br /> “There’s no noise, nothing’s cooking, there’s no smell of bacon or coffee,” I said.<br /><br /> “We’re waiting for your grandmother to get up. Why don’t you make a pot of coffee and take it in to her and wake her up?” said Mom.<br /><br /> So I made a pot of coffee, unplugged the percolator and walked into her bedroom where she was sound asleep. <br /><br /> My plan was to wave the spout of the coffee pot with teenage accuracy right underneath her nose thinking that the aroma would wake her up. <br /><br /> I waved the pot under her nose not remembering it was a pot full of hot coffee. I didn’t give it much thought because this was the first time I’d made a pot of coffee. <br /><br /> So the waving action brought hot coffee up and out the spout into her ear. <br /><br /> Grandma sat bolt upright in bed holding her ear and yelling.<br /><br /> Grandma was a storyteller. She would sit in her easy chair smoking her filter-less Raleigh cigarette, watching her soap operas and offering up stories and opinions during the commercial breaks.<br /><br /> “You’ve got a double cowlick on your head, boy,” she told me. “You’re going to be bald when you’re grown.”<br /><br /> You know what? She was absolutely right.<br /><br /> My Grandma also believed that the wild weather she saw in her last years was because of the rockets we sent into space. <br /><br /> “We’re poking holes in the sky and we’re messing things up,” she would say.<br /><br /> Grandma told me of her mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Hill. That’s what they called each other, he called her "Mrs. Hill” and she called him “Mr. Hill."<br /><br /> Grandma told the story of her youngest brother, Teddy, who died in an awful industrial accident in the mine. <br /><br /> “The day Teddy died, his dog sat out in the back yard and howled, nobody at home knew anything had happened but my daddy knew it was an omen. He heard that dog howl and he turned to my momma and said, “Mrs. Hill, I don’t believe our boy is coming home anymore.” <br /><br /> About that time the booming klaxon horn from the mine went off, telling everyone for miles around there had been an accident. <br /><br /> Grandma talked about meeting my grandfather when he came to work as a bookkeeper for the mine. She said when she saw him come she knew she was going to marry him. They were married Christmas Day 1912. <br /><br /> Grandma told the story about their big wedding day. After the ceremony they dashed out the door and hopped in their one-horse buggy.<br /><br /> Somewhere in the rush of things my grandfather dropped the reins and the horse took off with them. “I yelled and yelled at him all the way down the road,” said my grandma.<br /><br /> “What’d you yell?” I asked.<br /><br /> “It didn’t matter,” she said, blowing smoke in the air. “He deserved it.”<br /><br /> My grandma yelled at my granddaddy a lot, it might’ve been where I got the notion in my early years that yelling at each other is a perfectly normal part of marriage.<br /><br /> Well, that and my mom and dad were always arguing and yelling.<br /><br /> Grandma told more stories of life in a mining town in the 1910’s, how “the meanest man in the county,” a fellow named J. I. Jones, met his death in 1913. Word was that Jones had killed two men. The son of one of the men waited in a tree at Jones’ place for the man to return home and when he did he gunned him down. <br /><br /> The area around the mining town was full of immigrants from Europe who worked in the mine. Grandma told the story of the time that she and my grandfather were out for a leisurely afternoon in a rowboat on the James River and as they rounded a bend witnessed two men kill another man for his money. <br /><br /> There was the story of the time the town doctor was called to a miner’s home, the whole family was sick. He finally got around to asking them what they’d been eating when the wife went outside and came back in holding a dead “American chicken” by the legs: A turkey vulture. <br /><br /> Then came the flu epidemic of 1918. By that time my grandparents had two baby boys…one was my dad…who wasn’t quite a year old. Grandma said my dad and the town doctor were the only two people who didn’t get the flu. Grandma believed the town doctor didn’t catch the flu because he had a drinking problem and my dad didn’t catch it because he crawled around chewing on chunks of coal from the fireplace. <br /><br /> The doctor would walk up and down the streets of the town, yelling into houses, asking what folks needed. He’d come back later and walk down the town’s main street throwing a chicken in the open window of a house here, some cans of food in another house there and so on.<br /><br /> I suppose the point is that no matter how small a story might seem to someone it may be a gem to someone else. It fires the imagination. It puts relatives, ancestors in a more real light. <br /><br /> I find it sad when a person knows nothing about their ancestry. Oh, not the kind that requires research and such, that’s more of a hobby. Just to know a little about those who have gone before. Their journeys are a significant part of how we got here.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />-30-</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-31459861525994325022018-12-15T05:06:00.000-08:002018-12-15T05:16:52.531-08:00Mountain Stories My Grandma Told Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68FIVHZ072ULLEcB9nmPqs_ZR9f3_tVsHRA1wU4b96jBVTCX1hln-hTb_T6V44ZQEXcsJGCaKgMb0K3JMGN5sU6oMMpIA_J_LT51W3UFJ_xTyLSze37LNg0YAcYTybmdJuQm15DHOcSk/s1600/IMG_20181215_051611738-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1454" data-original-width="1600" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj68FIVHZ072ULLEcB9nmPqs_ZR9f3_tVsHRA1wU4b96jBVTCX1hln-hTb_T6V44ZQEXcsJGCaKgMb0K3JMGN5sU6oMMpIA_J_LT51W3UFJ_xTyLSze37LNg0YAcYTybmdJuQm15DHOcSk/s320/IMG_20181215_051611738-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>My Grandma's home region...western Virginia</i></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I find it strange how some folks don’t give a whit about their ancestors…what they did, how they lived, what they accomplished.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /> I once had a friend who had no idea of her ancestry or family tales of long ago and she didn’t care. I thought that was just sad.<br /><br /> When I think about “my people” who lived long ago…their genetic material still vibrates within us…I think how we are the culmination of those who have gone before. I believe we honor them by knowing a bit about them.<br /><br /> I learned a lot about some of my ancestors from my grandmother. My father’s mother was a great storyteller. <br /><br /> Grandma was one of seven children of an iron ore mining company manager that lived in the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia near the West Virginia border. <br /><br /> Grandma was a cigarette-smoking, Bible-quoting, stern yet fun Virginia mountain “girl.”<br /><br /> My folks shipped me off to live with my grandparents for my last couple of years of high school. That’s how I came to hear Grandma’s tales.<br /><br /> It being Christmastime I got to remembering my Grandma.<br /><br /> One Christmas when I was a teenager my brother and sister didn’t come home for Christmas. It was just going to be my mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather. <br /><br /> I woke up Christmas morning and things were strangely quiet, not noisy and busy like many Christmases before.<br /><br /> I walked downstairs and found my mother and father sitting at the table having breakfast like any other day. <br /><br /> “What’s going on? Where’s Christmas?” I asked.<br /><br /> “What do you mean?” said my father. <br /><br /> “There’s no noise, nothing’s cooking, there’s no smell of bacon or coffee,” I said.<br /><br /> “We’re waiting for your grandmother to get up. Why don’t you make a pot of coffee and take it in to her and wake her up?” said Mom.<br /><br /> So I made a pot of coffee, unplugged the percolator and walked into her bedroom where she was sound asleep. <br /><br /> My plan was to wave the spout of the coffee pot with teenage accuracy right underneath her nose thinking that the aroma would wake her up. <br /><br /> I waved the pot under her nose not remembering it was a pot full of hot coffee. I didn’t give it much thought because this was the first time I’d made a pot of coffee. <br /><br /> So the waving action brought hot coffee up and out the spout into her ear. <br /><br /> Grandma sat bolt upright in bed holding her ear and yelling.<br /><br /> Grandma was a storyteller. She would sit in her easy chair smoking her filter-less Raleigh cigarette, watching her soap operas and offering up stories and opinions during the commercial breaks.<br /><br /> “You’ve got a double cowlick on your head, boy,” she told me. “You’re going to be bald when you’re grown.”<br /><br /> You know what? She was absolutely right.<br /><br /> My Grandma also believed that the wild weather she saw in her last years was because of the rockets we sent into space. <br /><br /> “We’re poking holes in the sky and we’re messing things up,” she would say.<br /><br /> Grandma told me of her mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Hill. That’s what they called each other, he called her "Mrs. Hill” and she called him “Mr. Hill."<br /><br /> Grandma told the story of her youngest brother, Teddy, who died in an awful industrial accident in the mine. <br /><br /> “The day Teddy died, his dog sat out in the back yard and howled, nobody at home knew anything had happened but my daddy knew it was an omen. He heard that dog howl and he turned to my momma and said, “Mrs. Hill, I don’t believe our boy is coming home anymore.” <br /><br /> About that time the booming klaxon horn from the mine went off, telling everyone for miles around there had been an accident. <br /><br /> Grandma talked about meeting my grandfather when he came to work as a bookkeeper for the mine. She said when she saw him come she knew she was going to marry him. They were married Christmas Day 1912. <br /><br /> Grandma told the story about their big wedding day. After the ceremony they dashed out the door and hopped in their one-horse buggy.<br /><br /> Somewhere in the rush of things my grandfather dropped the reins and the horse took off with them. “I yelled and yelled at him all the way down the road,” said my grandma.<br /><br /> “What’d you yell?” I asked.<br /><br /> “It didn’t matter,” she said, blowing smoke in the air. “He deserved it.”<br /><br /> My grandma yelled at my granddaddy a lot, it might’ve been where I got the notion in my early years that yelling at each other is a perfectly normal part of marriage.<br /><br /> Well, that and my mom and dad were always arguing and yelling.<br /><br /> Grandma told more stories of life in a mining town in the 1910’s, how “the meanest man in the county,” a fellow named J. I. Jones, met his death in 1913. Word was that Jones had killed two men. The son of one of the men waited in a tree at Jones’ place for the man to return home and when he did he gunned him down. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /><br /> The area around the mining town was full of immigrants from Europe who worked in the mine. Grandma told the story of the time that she and my grandfather were out for a leisurely afternoon in a rowboat on the James River and as they rounded a bend witnessed two men kill another man for his money. <br /><br /> There was the story of the time the town doctor was called to a miner’s home, the whole family was sick. He finally got around to asking them what they’d been eating when the wife went outside and came back in holding a dead “American chicken” by the legs: A turkey vulture. <br /><br /> Then came the flu epidemic of 1918. By that time my grandparents had two baby boys…one was my dad…who wasn’t quite a year old. Grandma said my dad and the town doctor were the only two people who didn’t get the flu. Grandma believed the town doctor didn’t catch the flu because he had a drinking problem and my dad didn’t catch it because he crawled around chewing on chunks of coal from the fireplace. <br /><br /> The doctor would walk up and down the streets of the town, yelling into houses, asking what folks needed. He’d come back later and walk down the town’s main street throwing a chicken in the open window of a house here, some cans of food in another house there and so on.<br /><br /> I suppose the point is that no matter how small a story might seem to someone it may be a gem to someone else. It fires the imagination. It puts relatives, ancestors in a more real light. <br /><br /> I find it sad when a person knows nothing about their ancestry. Oh, not the kind that requires research and such, that’s more of a hobby. Just to know a little about those who have gone before. Their journeys are a significant part of how we got here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-20697145613753087302018-12-08T05:47:00.002-08:002018-12-09T05:12:17.452-08:00The Best Job...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpR_lIYmEiGhFH8fQVXXwNjuHUi6hma9fq1mV1vRw9CRcRnRWi9RKJG60RVJPmnWehXPnoJMRJr2ZktjYguOdR-hTSl9Js85NrxLSvil9oKKwS8vZDwgNIVUpvbZ5fZlUSCcB1YdeGrRY/s1600/IMG_20181207_095127021-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="1600" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpR_lIYmEiGhFH8fQVXXwNjuHUi6hma9fq1mV1vRw9CRcRnRWi9RKJG60RVJPmnWehXPnoJMRJr2ZktjYguOdR-hTSl9Js85NrxLSvil9oKKwS8vZDwgNIVUpvbZ5fZlUSCcB1YdeGrRY/s320/IMG_20181207_095127021-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;"><b><i>Mountain Lake Hotel, Giles County, Virginia</i></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dang, has it been 42 years?<br /><br /> Yes, it was 42 years ago, the summer of 1976, I was a desk clerk at Mountain Lake Hotel in western Virginia. <br /><br /> The probability is high that you’ve seen Mountain Lake Hotel. Most of the movie “Dirty Dancing’’ was filmed there. It’s a resort on the south shore of the highest natural lake east of the Mississippi. Here in the future the lake’s levels fluctuate wildly…for a bit a few years ago it was totally dry.<br /><br /> Mountain Lake wouldn’t be famous for “Dirty Dancing” until about 11 years in the future from the time I was there. <br /><br /> I had always wanted to work at the hotel from the first time I saw it. It was miles from anything and on the cool top of a mountain. For $66 a week I got place to live (I had to share a room with the bellhop), three meals a day and one day off a week. <br /><br /> The hotel was so rustic. The main building was made of native stone. There were wooden cabins scattered around the property. There was only one television in the place and it was in the drawing room off from the lobby. <br /><br /> I greeted guests, took reservations, sent out material on the hotel and ran the switchboard — an ancient wires and plugs affair. <br /><br /> My roommate was Chad the bellhop who spent his idle hours reading comic books. I spent mine wondering when I’d meet the girl of my dreams. We spent the summer having almost nightly parties with the rest of the staff. I worked from 3 in the afternoon until 11 at night when I’d get off duty, hop in my car, zip down the mountain, buy “party supplies” (read that as booze) and return. In the morning I’d wake up and swim in the lake. <br /><br /> On staff were a hippie or two, girls from the town at the foot of the mountain who were the hotel maids and an assorted cast of characters.<br /><br /> For instance there was Phil the Chef who was hired at minimum wage and prepared all of his meals step-by-step from a Betty Crocker Cookbook. Phil had told us that he had been in the Vietnam War and that he was supposedly legendary for his nightly bow-and-arrow raids on the Vietcong across enemy lines.<br /><br /> There was Karen the hostler…the horse handler. This was a big, strong woman, from Pennsylvania the likes of whom I had never seen before. She lead the guests on horseback rides. She often stunned my southern-born sensibilities by walking around with little if any clothing on. <br /><br /> There was the time I had fallen asleep on the boat dock after work and was awakened by Karen’s big toe in my ear. I opened my eyes and there was Karen standing there totally nude in the night…she was ready to go skinny dipping. <br /><br /> “Wanna join me?” she asked in her big voice. <br /><br /> I smiled back, “No, thanks, I’m kinda tired” and I was, so I started walking back up to the employee’s lodge. I may have missed some kind of significant life moment there but I was just flat-out tired.<br /><br /> It was a summer of lots of memorable moments like when Chad and I chased bats out of the lobby with badminton racquets, or working with a guy I called “The Bard of the Blue Ridge,” a fellow who had once lived a staid middle-class life, lost it all in a swindle and became a vagabond, a storyteller, a bullshitter. He worked at the hotel as gardener and maintenance man.<br /><br /> It was a great place to spend the summer…most days were mild on the mountaintop, not hot at all.<br /><br /> You know what “They” say, “All good things must end.” So it was with the best job I ever had. <br /><br /> I’d say about 95 percent of the people who came to Mountain Lake enjoyed it. That disgruntled 5 percent, ah, I let them ruin my summer with their mean-spiritedness. <br /><br /> I had been yelled at, cussed at, grabbed by the collar and subjected to obnoxious condescension. <br /><br /> I knew it was time to leave when a lawyer and his traveling party from outside Washington, D.C. came in one cloudy August afternoon. He had reservations and wanted to see his room before he checked in. He came back down and proceeded to tell me how awful the place was...going down some kind of mental list he had made up: That the hotel was like a “class C” roadside motel, there was no television in the room, the room was dingy, the window faced the mountainside, he expected he’d have rooms with a view of the lake because, after all, we should’ve known who he was and that he was worthy of the best rooms in the place. <br /><br /> I’d heard stuff like this all summer and had to put up with it with a smile and a “Yes sir”/”No sir.” But on this day I’d reached my limit. So in an uncharacteristically loud voice I looked Mr. Attorney right in the eyes and yelled, “LOOK ASSHOLE, IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT HERE WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET THE HELL OFF THE MOUNTAIN!!!!!” <br /><br /> I composed myself and apologized for what was truly an uncharacteristic outburst.<br /><br /> I took a sheet of hotel stationary and a pen, presented it to Mr. Attorney and asked him if he’d like to write a note of complaint to my boss.<br /><br /> “Yes I would, young man,” he said. “And in it I will recommend that you should be terminated.”<br /><br /> “That’s your right, sir,” I said.<br /><br /> He finished his note and I called down the mountain to a nice motel with a golf course and made reservations for him and his party.<br /><br /> A couple of hours later the boss got back from his trip down the mountain. <br /><br /> “Something happened while you were in town,” I said and I handed him the note from the lawyer.<br /><br /> He stood there and read the note. <br /><br /> He laughed. <br /><br /> “Hell,” he said, “I might’ve done the same thing.”<br /><br /> He handed the note back to me.<br /><br /> “Just don’t do it again,” he said.<br /><br /> I felt bad after the incident though and two weeks later I packed up my stuff and left the mountaintop. <br /><br /> I liked that work…I even gave serious consideration to being a resort hotel worker, in the mountains in the summer and south Florida in the winter… “working the circuit” it was called back in the day.<br /><br /> I don’t even know if “the circuit” exists anymore.<br /><br /> And desk clerk jobs? I’ve been watching kids do that kind of work these days and “laid back” is not a term that comes to mind when I see them go about their work: They are far more tasked with multi-tasking than “back then” and they do that thing that I so don’t dig here in the future…trying to monetize every human interaction.<br /><br /> As the years would go by I’d call it the best job I ever had. Some would say that was because there were no responsibilities. Others would understand: The simplicity, the camaraderie, the mild summer days, the peace. <br /><br /> Isn’t it something how others can even mess that up.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
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*All names changed…</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-79263090811200710222018-12-01T05:53:00.002-08:002018-12-01T05:53:45.593-08:00Me and Uncle Sam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> </span>Back when I was a radio news guy I had to go cover a change of command ceremony at the nearby military outpost.<br /> All the airmen, the color guard, the honor guard, all in a top notch military performance standing ramrod straight and all that. It made me feel all patriotic and stuff…<br /> But I’m glad I didn’t join the armed forces.<br /> I’m a fidgety kind of guy and I’m sure I would’ve been run out of boot camp. I have an itch here, an uncomfortable muscle there, and I’m sure someone would have come down hard on me for not being still.<br /> I remember in high school we were in an assembly purely to hear a talk from a Marine recruiter. He told us all about the horrors of what the Viet Cong were doing to the people of South Vietnam and that the US needed to be there to stop the advancement of communism.<br /> After the assembly the recruiter dude walked right up to me.<br /> “We’d like to have young men like you in the Corps,” he said. “You’re tall.”<br /> I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say.<br /> But then…<br /> “I didn’t like what I saw on TV from Vietnam,” I said.<br /> “You’d probably get embassy duty somewhere else around the world,” he said. “We like to put tall guys out on guard duty, makes the people in other countries think we’re giants here in America.”<br /> He handed me his card.<br /> I thanked him and he went on his way.<br /> Needless to say I did not join the United States Marine Corps.<br /> Not long after that the USA was done with the Vietnam War.<br /> But…<br /> Once I got a taste of adult life I reconsidered the “joining the military thang.”<br /> It’s not that I didn’t start to “join up” in my lifetime. I started to join three times.<br /> The first time it was a spring day in what I didn’t know was my last year in college. I wasn’t doing so well in my third year at the university. I moseyed off campus to a Chinese restaurant and picked up a couple of egg rolls and a soda. It was a cloudy, cool Appalachian spring day. I sat on the curb across the street from the restaurant and I thought, “I could be eating egg rolls in Hong Kong if I was in the Navy.” I don’t know where that thought came from but I decided to act on it.<br /> I went back to my apartment and called the local Navy recruiter. The next day I was in his office.<br /> “Have you ever smoked marijuana?” It was the first question he asked me as soon as I sat down.<br /> “Ah…” I said hesitantly.<br /> “No,” he said thumping his finger on the desk. “From now on if anyone asks you that question your IMMEDIATE answer is ‘NO.’<br /> “Okay,” I said.<br /> In no time Mr. Recruiter had set me up to take a series of tests, I believe they were called the ASVAB tests, the "armed services vocational aptitude battery.” <br /> I scored a 96.<br /> “With a score like that we’re going to put you in our nuclear program,” said Mr. Recruiter at our next meeting.<br /> I smiled at Mr. Recruiter. Thoughts ran through my head. Me…a loopy, goofy part-hippie guy in charge of nuclear missiles on a submarine…I couldn’t see it. Besides, what if one of those things accidentally went off?<br /> “Your test shows that you have excellent math skills,” said Mr. Recruiter.<br /> I smiled again on the outside and thought on the inside, “You guys are really filling me with a lot of bunk.” I flunked Algebra the first time around in high school but aced it the next year, but I just couldn’t imagine I had mathematics aptitude. I wanted to be a Navy journalist but they were trying to make me a nuclear technician. So I said good-bye to thoughts of eating authentic Chinese egg rolls in Hong Kong.<br /> The next time I started to join the military was right after I dropped out of college. I was living with my folks and working in radio. My brother came to visit that fall. He started doing a lobbying effort to get me to join the military.<br /> “Join the army,” he said. He had spent a few years in the ranks. “You’ll get in there, they’ll teach you some discipline, give you a place to live, food, clothes, benefits, and you’ll see a lot of places. When you’re through if you save your pay and don’t blow it you’ll have a nice nest egg.”<br /> Brother’s logic was good. But he was talking to a young man with a girlfriend, and just like I told the Marine recruiter in high school, I had seen all the Vietnam footage while I was growing up. Plus I had spent my growing up years listening to my dad yell at me a lot and I wasn’t in the mood to expose myself to years more of that crap. <br /> I thought I’d give it a shot anyway, but I gotta tell you I just didn’t have my heart in it when I went down to the Army recruiter. I wowed ’em with my ASVAB score. They packed me up and shipped me off to the state capitol for a physical. I passed. They were ready for me, only they didn’t have any positions open for Army journalist.<br /> “Oh well, guys,” I said as I sat in the recruiter’s office, “thanks for the trip to Richmond.”<br /> As the years passed I began to see what my brother meant in his sales pitch to me to get into the Army. I often contrasted the supposed orderliness of military life against the perceived chaos of everyday civilian life.<br /> I had gotten too old for the Army so I marched down to the Navy recruiter and decided that I would just do it, just join. But I had waited too long. I got as far as the physical. They didn’t like a couple of medical conditions that had developed since I was in my early 20’s. They said I would have to get a medical waiver.<br /> The recruiter went on to say that in boot camp the young guys would probably have a time making fun of such an “old man” in their midst. I did get a kick out of the way they treated me during the physical. I guess it was my age or the way I carried myself, they thought I was an officer candidate I suppose and they kept calling me “sir.”<br /> Over the years I’ve come to realize that the military is not for everyone. It probably wasn’t for me. One thing that struck me about the peacetime military is that of the people I’ve met, like those I met in Arizona in the Army near Fort Huachuca, they seem to spend a lot of time gigging each other, hassling each other…captains hassling lieutenants, lieutenants coming down on sergeants and so on…like an aggravated office politics kind of situation. I don’t do too well with office politics.<br /> On the other hand, if I’d just joined in the 70’s just to eat egg rolls in Hong Kong I’d have been finished by now with a retirement check in the mail.<br /> Oh well.<br /> I always encourage folks in their late teens and early 20’s who have no idea where they’re going in life to try the military.<br /> At least give it a shot, eh? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
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Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-26462916275594499652018-11-24T06:14:00.000-08:002018-11-24T06:14:07.252-08:00Bad Fiction and Dirty Laundry: She Told Him No<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The work day was
done.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler sat in his
living room…time for a beer and the evening news.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The big story was
the sex scandal playing out in D.C. A
man’s confirmation hearing in front of a bunch of senators had come to a
screeching halt as a woman stepped up to say once upon a time, long ago and far
away the man had sexually assaulted her.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> He said it never
happened.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler scrunched up
his face and thought, pondered, reflected.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ever since the story
broke days ago there were times he mined his memories and wondered…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Had he ever gone
“out of bounds” with any girl once upon a time when he was a teenager? In college?
Long ago? Far away?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> No, no he hadn’t.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was that time
he made Lisa* cry because he was angry at some stuff she said to him and he was
driving too fast. He was sorry that
happened. He wanted to send her an
apology a few years ago but found out she had caught “The Cancer” and died.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> And there was that
time he got drunk at the Tri-Delta sorority house party and passed out. The girls got a mannequin and took pictures
of him and the mannequin in salacious poses.
The night it happened he remembers the Tri-Delt girls laughing and
pointing and him being annoyed and stumbling back to his dorm room. It was weeks later when he saw the pictures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But the memory that
came charging back from way back in his memory was the time he bumped up
against a boundary and someone let him know right quick he had hit the
guardrail.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler remembered
Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie and Tyler were
on the staff of the student newspaper at the university. Tyler wrote humor columns, Angie did general
office stuff there…compose the paper, send out bills for advertising, things
like that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Wrapping things up
at the newspaper office one cold January night Angie asked Tyler to walk her to
her dorm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Out into the cold
night they went.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was small talk
about some of the stories that were going to be in the next edition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Did you drive over
here?” asked Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” said Tyler,
“Oh yeah, I’m parked right behind your dorm.
I had class before heading over to the paper.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Let’s go to your
car,” said Angie, “And talk.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And in no time at
all there they were at Tyler’s old ’60 Lincoln.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler opened the door
for Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She stood there and
looked at the old, big-ass boat of a car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Damn, Tyler,” said
Angie. “What the hell is this?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Old ’60 Lincoln,”
he said. “It used to be the old man’s
old car.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “This is BIG,” said
Angie as she slid in on the passenger side.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler shut the door
then went over to the driver’s side and got in.
He fired up the Lincoln.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Didja wanna go
somewhere?” he looked over at her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No,” said Angie, “I
want to stay right here and fog up the windows.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> With that she took
off her glasses and put them on the dash.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie slid across
the big front seat right up to Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Kiss me, Tyler.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Before long they
were both naked in the front seat of the car.
The windows were all steamed up.
From time to time there were shadows of people passing by. Nobody knew, probably nobody cared what was
going on in the Lincoln. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And so it began
between Tyler and Angie.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZlr8NwZUMzNYJShBzb-lG7pGn9situEmtz1gh-q0L8mOTRepWMCo3wdnHeY_7PXHS4LVpAEoN4lXKn4FQk4twWV-fEXfj04hSR__UcsVxNp7MFcsH5JSIcIiI0Ea9WvB7rPIZ2pI1fs/s1600/Screenshot_20181116-104425-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZlr8NwZUMzNYJShBzb-lG7pGn9situEmtz1gh-q0L8mOTRepWMCo3wdnHeY_7PXHS4LVpAEoN4lXKn4FQk4twWV-fEXfj04hSR__UcsVxNp7MFcsH5JSIcIiI0Ea9WvB7rPIZ2pI1fs/s1600/Screenshot_20181116-104425-2.png" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">They would
“make-out” in the dimly lit lobby of her dorm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> They would have sex
in Tyler’s apartment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The two of them
would take long drives into the mountains where a remote meadow or rock
outcropping became the backdrop for Angie posing naked for Tyler’s camera.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> They would have more
sex in Tyler’s apartment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then one night when
Tyler and Angie were making out in the lobby of her dorm…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I love you, Tyler.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler stared at
Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Aren’t you going to
say anything?” she asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What do you want me
to say?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie slugged him in
the chest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “HOW ABOUT ‘I LOVE
YOU,’ DUMB-ASS!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Other couples making
out in the darkened dorm lobby stopped what they were doing and stared.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I love you,” said
Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Too late,
dumb-ass,” hissed Angie, getting up and disappearing upstairs to her dorm room.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler didn’t hear
from Angie for days. He called her but
always got her answering machine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Angie,” he said to
the machine, “I’m sorry. I hope to hear
from you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then Tyler’s phone
rang one Friday night.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Tyler, Tyler,
Tyler,” it was Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She sounded drunk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Hey Angie.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m upstairs in Bryce
Hansen’s place, come up.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie hung up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Hansen was the
photographer for the student paper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler walked up the
stairs to the third floor and knocked on Bryce’s door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Hansen answered.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Hey Tyler, come on
in.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie was sitting on
the sofa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler walked in,
shut the door behind him and sat next to Angie.
Bryce sat in a recliner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “So I’ve been
drinking,” said Angie. “Which one of you
wants to f*#k me tonight?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler and Bryce
looked at each other.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t know why
you’re here, Angie,” said Bryce. “I told
you I have a girlfriend back home in DC.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m here because I
thought you might f*#k me, and we’d be doing it right over Tyler’s apartment.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Wish you’d a-told
me,” said Bryce. “Coulda taken care of
this real quick, just taken you straight down to Tyler’s. I’m not interested.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie turned to
Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Reckon it’s you and
me, Loverboy,” she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler held Angie’s
arm as she stumbled down the stairs to Tyler’s.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> They walked back to
the bedroom.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Are we going to ‘do
it,’ Loverboy?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Not while you’re
drunk,” said Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What a gentleman,”
said Angie as she sat on the bed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll be back,” said
Tyler as he went to the bathroom.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> He came back to find
Angie standing naked in the room.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You’ve never said anything about my boobs,”
she said as she looked down at her boobs.
“Once I started on The Pill they just exploded.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> She looked back up
into Tyler’s eyes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You have nice
boobs,” said Tyler. “Now why don’t you
get back in bed. I’ll sleep on my
sleeping bag on the floor.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No,” said
Angie. “Take off your clothes and sleep
with me. We don’t have to do it.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And so he did.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And they didn’t.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And they slept.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And Tyler and Angie
began again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Or so it seemed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Because they went to
see a movie the next night. When the
flick was over they headed back to Tyler’s apartment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie stopped in the
living room.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I just want to
talk,” she said looking into Tyler’s eyes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You don’t have to
love me and let’s get high awhile,” said Tyler with a smile, rattling off the
words from a song of the day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler took her hand
and they sat on the sofa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler moved in to
kiss Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No, Tyler,” she
said. “I said I want to talk.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler leaned back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What do you want to
talk about?” he asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “If you and I are
going to be a couple I want exclusivity, I want a relationship, I don’t want
this to be all about f*#king like bunnies all the time.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “F*#king like
bunnies,” Tyler chuckled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler leaned in and
kissed Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Had he been paying
attention he would’ve noticed that Angie wasn’t kissing him back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler put his
fingers on the top button of Angie’s blouse and was met by a powerful roundhouse
punch to his jaw.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler flew off the
sofa and landed on his back on the living room floor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie got up and stood
over Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I SAID NO, ASSHOLE,”
yelled Angie. “I’LL NOT BE TREATED LIKE
A BRISTOL WHORE.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler rubbed his jaw
and looked up at Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What’s a Bristol
whore? Is that Virginia? England?
Is that from some book?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">
“ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!” yelled Angie and she kicked Tyler in the
ribs. “YOU’RE SUCH A F*#KING DUMB-ASS! TAKE ME HOME!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The two of them rode
back in stone silence to Angie’s dorm. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Except, halfway
there…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m sorry,” said
Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “F*#k you, Tyler,”
said Angie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The car had hardly
stopped before Angie was out the door and gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Whenever Tyler walked
in the room at the student paper Angie would get up and leave.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Tyler came out of
his memories back to the present.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> He sat in his
recliner and rubbed his jaw.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">E P I L O G U E</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll not be treated
like a Bristol whore.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Angie’s words<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a> would float through Tyler’s brain from time to time. He always wondered about it. Was it a saying from Angie’s home town? Was it something from literature like Charles
Dickens or something?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then one day, well
into the 21<sup>st</sup> century, Tyler was on the job when Ed dropped in to
pick up an order.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ed was a local
businessman who had done some traveling to England, Australia and some other
places.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Say Ed,” said Tyler.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ed stopped at the
door and turned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Hey,” Tyler went on,
“You’ve been to England, have you ever heard the term ‘Bristol whore’?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” said Ed,
“You know Bristol is a shipbuilding town so with a city like that you’d
probably have a lot of women plying that trade there. That’s probably where it came from. But I’ve never heard that exact term before.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I wondered if it
was a saying or something from some literature or something,” said Tyler. “Thanks.
It’s something I heard about 40 years ago. Now I know.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Ed gave Tyler a
sideways look.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s a long story,
amigo,” said Tyler with a smile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">*All names are fictitious.</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-75468157903745803732018-11-22T05:16:00.002-08:002018-11-22T05:16:54.958-08:00Toes in a Whiskey Glass, Foot in a Jar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lYgUb4hrpc9uMAVg1oInGE73sTcDnt4kH78e9E1N3GV6FEW3dCIz8VSmaSaZExh-IMl6jB3Ejr_9pdjJFm_3fvTRz-N-Vsff6pmj47hZZU4_yZjNm3WQD-9ysQznOFqJFyIk3ZO4cQQ/s1600/IMG_20181120_101753903-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1014" data-original-width="1253" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lYgUb4hrpc9uMAVg1oInGE73sTcDnt4kH78e9E1N3GV6FEW3dCIz8VSmaSaZExh-IMl6jB3Ejr_9pdjJFm_3fvTRz-N-Vsff6pmj47hZZU4_yZjNm3WQD-9ysQznOFqJFyIk3ZO4cQQ/s320/IMG_20181120_101753903-4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Word came to the
hacienda the other day that a relative of a grandchild’s other side of the
family was in the hospital and was having toes amputated. Seems the woman has health problems related
to her weighing close to 400 pounds and having The Sugar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I have The Sugar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The Sugar is Southernese
for Diabetes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I imagine if I’d
paid attention in health class back in the 8<sup>th</sup> grade I might’ve been
wiser about the stuff I ate. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Probably not but it
sounds good to say it. Just like when I
say “If I’d a-paid attention on career day in high school maybe I’d a-been a
lawyer and made the big coin instead of being a disc jockey.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I believe I’ve had
more fun working in radio than if I’d done lawyering.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> If I’d cared about
my health I would’ve realized that regularly eating half of a big-assed bag of
cheese curls or a hunk of chocolate cake with a big glass of milk or a mess of
French fries or copious amounts of macaroni and cheese or getting copious
refills of Co-Cola and being over 100 pounds overweight would be hard on my
health.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> It started with a
tingling in my toes then I started to lose a lot of weight without even
trying. Then I got weaker and weaker
until I started to lose interest in riding my bicycle…something I love to do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> When I lost interest in eating THAT’S when The
Lady of the House decided it was time to go see a doctor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “But what if I have
The Cancer?” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Really?” said The
Lady of the House. “That’s your excuse
for not going to the hospital?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The day I discovered
I had Type 2 Diabetes I had a blood sugar level of 420 and an A1C of 16. If you’re not familiar with that stuff they
like your blood sugar to be around 100 and your A1C to be 6.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Maybe it would’ve
been better if you had cancer,” said The Lady of the House, “at least they might’ve
been able to cut that out of you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Well that was back
in 2014 and I’ve been living with diabetes since then…the ups and downs of the blood
sugar levels, the eye problems, stuff like that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I see all the ads on
the TV about the diabetes medicines.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I see that ad for
that medicine if you have diabetic pain in the feet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> And then I think
about my feet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I’ve been lucky, I
guess…there hasn’t been any pain…just numbness and tingling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I think about the
possibility of losing my toes…something that happens to some folks who have
diabetes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Well, if I lose my
toes I’d like to send them off to that bar in The Yukon up in Canada,” I told
The Lady of the House. It was a Sunday
morning she was reading the paper and I was having a cup of coffee. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I was talking about
the Sourdough Saloon in Dawson City in The Great White North. They serve up something called a “Sourtoe
Cocktail”….a shot of whiskey in a glass with a mummified human toe swimming
around in the liquor. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Some folks have
swallowed the toes over the years (you’re not supposed to do that) so I reckon
they could use some fresh toes from time to time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Just wrap ‘em up
and mail ‘em off to Canada,” I said. “But<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a> if they cut off my foot I want that.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “You can’t have it,”
said The Lady of the House. “At
hospitals they keep amputated parts, they consider them biohazards.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “What the hell,” I
said. “It’s MY foot!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “And it’s a
biohazard.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “I could keep it in
a jar of alcohol on the shelf,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “I don’t think that
you’d have a lot of time to enjoy your foot on the shelf anyway,” said The Lady
of the House.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Whaddya mean?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “If you’re at the
point where you’re having body parts lopped off because of diabetes you’re
probably not long for this world,” she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Well, that’s a
bummer,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The Lady of the
House went back to reading her newspaper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I stared out the
window at the sky and had another sip of coffee.</span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-77163507236884207232018-11-16T19:26:00.001-08:002018-11-16T19:41:38.054-08:00Things You Don't Do at Work<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHR4edTRbVQBWDdSWbxZ8R19VR7FlGYb8r1OEp8VrRIIOOWlNdWXMJAP2ddPe_dZzj9O8SI4m3csqvs8CccVjT-eLdstTTY8RxmPh_v71LvGzGXv2EB0eM3wSkewWbhjWwOV3hbFXS-wY/s1600/IMG_20181116_202124694-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHR4edTRbVQBWDdSWbxZ8R19VR7FlGYb8r1OEp8VrRIIOOWlNdWXMJAP2ddPe_dZzj9O8SI4m3csqvs8CccVjT-eLdstTTY8RxmPh_v71LvGzGXv2EB0eM3wSkewWbhjWwOV3hbFXS-wY/s320/IMG_20181116_202124694-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i> I was
in the radio station GM’s office one day waiting on the arrival of an employee
facing disciplinary action. He walked in
with a big ol’ Bowie knife on his side.
The GM asked the guy about the knife.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i> “I’m an
American and I have the right to bear arms,” said the guy.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i> “Not in
my office, asshole,” said the GM. “That’s
the first time I’ve seen you wear that thing in the station. Take it out to your car and leave it or we can
take care of your crap by me firing your ass right now.”<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></div>
<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The
dude left for a minute or two and came back in without the knife.</span></i></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Once upon a time I
hungered to be a radio station manager, and in the best of all my dreams, to
own and operate my own radio station. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> That was before I got years of life
experience under my belt. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> That was before the Internet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Now I am content to do my job and go home. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I learned that, as a manager, you take crap
from above and crap comes up from below. That’s one reason of many I can list
as to why top or middle management doesn’t interest me now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Another reason is you seem to spend a
significant portion of your time trying to explain common sense to subordinates
who seem to lack it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There are some things in life I didn’t catch
(OK, maybe a lot), but among the things I did come to understand were rules on
how to behave at work. To be sure, I’m not perfect, but I do have a general
idea what to do and what not to do on the job. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I have encountered those who have stretched
those rules beyond the bounds of common sense…like a radio station bookkeeper
who got drunk every work day, keeping her booze in the tank of the toilet of
the women’s room. She kept the books
with a system that made no sense, that required a pro to come in and untangle
the mess after she got fired.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There was a fellow named Tom Flowers* I
worked with at radio station once upon a time. Tom liked to send bouquets of
flowers to some of his favorite female listeners, it was part of his “mystique”
he told me...a fellow named Flowers who sent flowers. Thing was, the bill from the florist was then
sent to where he worked. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> That would be the radio station. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Where I was his supervisor. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> After this happened, Tom and I came to an
understanding that he would not do this anymore, things were peaceful for a
while. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then we received the bill for $500 worth of
stereo equipment for his home. I have forgotten how it all happened, but
someone overheard my rantings over the situation and suggested that I call a
certain probation officer two counties away about Tom. It turned out Tom had done something similar
in that county. He had been tried, convicted and put on probation for it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Not long after that Tom Flowers didn’t work
at our radio station anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t run into any other workplace weirdos
for quite a number of years after that. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then I moved out to The Golden West<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In a small town in the Grand Canyon State, I
was appointed to a middle management position. My first week on the job, I was
called into the general manager’s office along with Elmo Smith*, a guy who
worked evenings at the radio station. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo was being called on the carpet because
the boss had just found out that Elmo was operating “The Elmo Smith School of
Broadcasting”….<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">…at the radio
station after hours unbeknownst to anyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo’s operation was discovered when a young
man came in to apply for a job. On the application where it asked for education
and experience, the kid wrote “Graduate of the Elmo Smith School of
Broadcasting.” Upon seeing this, the boss asked the kid to come in his office
and tell him about his experience at the “school.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Elmo charged me $300 to come in nights and
watch him work from 8 p.m. till midnight,” said the kid. “At the end of the first month I got to sit
in the air chair, play the CDs and run commercials while Elmo sat on the other
side of the counter and did the talking. After two months, I graduated.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The kid was part of a “class” of three. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo was unapologetic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo saw the whole situation as…what did he
say? “My American entrepreneurial right
to free enterprise.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> At the time I thought Elmo had listened to
too much talk radio.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “There’s nothing going on at night,” said
Elmo. “I was basically just babysitting
the place so I figured I’d put my time to good use.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “So,” said the boss, “Why didn’t you check
with me first before you started your ‘school’?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo turned red and shrugged his shoulders.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “You’re using station equipment,” the boss
went on. “Station facilities, why didn’t
you arrange for the station to get a ‘cut’ of your business?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo shrugged his shoulders again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Elmo kept his job but had to give the money
back to his three “students.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then there was the teenager who replaced Elmo
on nights who thought long distance calls were free to employees of the radio
station. Examining the long distance bills, it was obvious this kid was doing
nothing but talking on the phone to his friends in Utah, California and
Virginia while he was on the clock. He had to pay back $800 for his calls. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then there was the radio station engineer who
lost his job when we discovered the reason the station’s brand-new computer system
that ran everything couldn’t function because it was full of mass quantities of
porn.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Porn the engineer had downloaded into the
system.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There was the time the boss assigned me the
task of finding out who was tossing toilet paper used for rear-end wiping into
the trash can of the men’s room.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It seems the cleaning crew told him if it
wasn’t stopped they would not work at the station again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Turns out it was the same kid who thought
long distance calls came free to station employees. The story was was that’s what his family did
at their house so that only “pure” sewage went into their septic tank, no paper
products. He thought the whole world
handled their used toilet paper the same way as his family.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Yeah, I’ve run into things done by folks at
radio stations that just made me want to stay home. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then I remembered a
quote attributed to American educator John Dewey: “To think you can be totally
self-sufficient with no need to rely on others is a form of insanity.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "century gothic" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">* Names changed to
protect me.</span></span><span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-86300937481044787682018-11-10T05:18:00.001-08:002018-11-10T05:18:29.101-08:00A Traveler, A Policeman, A Church and a Holy Book...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBdGPr_KTG4QtI65w7YhOpO_aGUrf9CTgW8ougspywBqSmlxpFU52wECah7O5jHWwoH5eLOaJ5C_12kIAUE9Mn5venGH6gTiRmJrYZWgTFTovSF43AGdDQGZhDXv6SdX1mdmz2wD36ajU/s1600/IMG_20181020_163453281.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBdGPr_KTG4QtI65w7YhOpO_aGUrf9CTgW8ougspywBqSmlxpFU52wECah7O5jHWwoH5eLOaJ5C_12kIAUE9Mn5venGH6gTiRmJrYZWgTFTovSF43AGdDQGZhDXv6SdX1mdmz2wD36ajU/s320/IMG_20181020_163453281.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; line-height: 150%;"> There are some religion and philosophy books
in my book collection. I have a standard
issue Christian Bible, you know, the kind with the Old and New Testaments. I have a copy of the Muslim Koran that I
found for $1 at a yard sale here in town, a well-written tome titled “A Course
in Miracles,” a copy of the Tao Te Ching…a book from ancient China with such
pithy thoughts as, </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">“Do
you have the patience to wait ‘til your mud settles and the water is
clear?”</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></h1>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5esMemm4-FP4IeopvU1mtYbxMrruKatyVEZ1a_dF3dixo_2CIJs_kMXh26ssJKNnOgbCrg7RguAl951RLMDvWAUeJAgA0RCVPWrWYFyplfYkn7hJ37P4sAe6ZzB0Gh1VhXw8q9uiVnFA/s1600/IMG_20181105_180957168.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5esMemm4-FP4IeopvU1mtYbxMrruKatyVEZ1a_dF3dixo_2CIJs_kMXh26ssJKNnOgbCrg7RguAl951RLMDvWAUeJAgA0RCVPWrWYFyplfYkn7hJ37P4sAe6ZzB0Gh1VhXw8q9uiVnFA/s320/IMG_20181105_180957168.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">And
then there is a small copy of the Christian New Testament. It was handed to me in Roswell, New Mexico in
1991.</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></h1>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Who handed me this copy? Ah, therein lies the tale….<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I was volunteering with a group that was having
a Saturday meeting at a Roswell church.
There were probably 20 of us in the church’s meeting hall. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And then this guy showed up at the meeting
hall door. The man needed a shave, his
clothes were wrinkly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I was hoping to talk to the preacher, hoping
he could give me some money so I could get a place to stay tonight,” said the
man. “I hitchhiked from the VA hospital
in San Antonio, I was hoping to see my brother, to stay at his place but he and
his wife are out of town.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Well the preacher’s not here,” said Mona,
leader of our group. “You need to go
somewhere else.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The man turned and went back out the door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Couldn’t we call the preacher?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “We don’t want to bother the preacher,” said
Mona. “He’s not here, end of story. The guy probably just wants money for booze.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I didn’t think so,” I said, “He seemed
sincere.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Trust me Grant,” said Mona, “You’re in the
minority here on that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> We got back to the business at hand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> A few minutes later one of our group joined
us late.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Who’s the dude sitting out front?” asked the
tardy one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Some guy?” asked Mona, “Looks kind of
rough?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” said the latecomer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “That’s it,” said Mona, “I’m calling the cops.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Come on, Mona, call the preacher,” I
said. I had no idea who the preacher
was, this was just a church where our volunteer group held its meetings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I’m NOT calling the preacher, not bothering
him with this,” said Mona. “That guy out
there is a nuisance.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Really,” I said. “He’s a stranger in a strange land so he
comes to a church for some help and you call the cops on him. Nice.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I turned and went outside to talk with the
man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He was off to the side of the door sitting on
a sidewalk. I sat down next to him. We got to shootin’ the breeze. He stuck to his story that he had hitchhiked
to Roswell from San Antonio VA hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I ain’t been the same since ‘Nam,” he
said. “Trouble holding a job, trouble
keeping money. I understand people are
suspicious of me.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” I said, “They think that you just
came here to hit the preacher up for booze money.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He laughed and looked at the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” he said, “Like I said, people are
suspicious of me.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> About that time there was a big shadow over
the both of us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I looked up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It was a policeman. His partner was behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “We have a problem here?” asked the cop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “No sir,” I said. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Well, we got a call,” said the policeman.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah,” I said, “That was from my friends
inside. This man came in from San
Antonio to see his brother, his brother is out of town until tomorrow and he
just needs a place to stay for the night.
He came this church to see if he could get some help in staying at a
motel for the night. My friends think he
just wants booze money.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Can I see some ID?” asked the cop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I showed him mine, the stranger showed him
his. Mr. Policeman jotted some notes on
a pad. He handed our IDs back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Y’all have a nice day,” said the cop. He and his partner turned and left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Hang on bud,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I got up and walked back into the church.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “REALLY?” I shouted the one word question as
I walked in the room. I interrupted the
meeting. I had all eyes in the room. “A man comes to a church for help and you
call the cops on him?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Silence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I tell you what,” I said, reaching for my
wallet. I held it up, opened it up and a
$10 bill fluttered to the ground. I
reached down and picked it up. “This $10
bill is all I have in my wallet. I
challenge all of you to contribute toward a motel room for the night for this
guy.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Not me,” said one guy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s okay buck-o,” I said. “I really don’t care, it’s your Karma.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “He’s just gonna buy booze or drugs,” he went
on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Whatever,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Mona forked over a $20 bill.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I looked her in the eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Thank you,” I said. “That really ought to do it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “But,” said Mona. “You and I are going to follow him after he
leaves here. He’s gonna blow that $30 on
booze.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Deal,” I said. “I say he’s gonna make a beeline for a motel
on Second Street.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I walked outside and handed the guy the $30.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Wow,” he said. “Thank you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Good fortune you you, hermano,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled
out a little black book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Here,” he said, “I want you to have this.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I was so wound up by the whole situation I
just smiled, took the book and put it in my back pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I watched the guy turn and walk down the
street toward Second Street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I turned and there was Mona standing there.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Let’s go, Jesus,” said Mona.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Mona and I got in my car and pulled out on
the street. I drove slowly and pulled
over every now and then to keep a good distance between the man and us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In a matter of time the fellow was at Second
Street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He crossed and walked into a motel office.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Mona and I watched as he spent a couple of
minutes in the office. Then he left,
walked by a number of rooms, stopped, opened the door, went in then he closed
the door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “O fu*#ing <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>kay,” said
Mona, “So I was wrong.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t say anything as I drove back to the
church.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I pulled up in front and left the engine
running.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I waited for Mona to get out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “You’re not coming back in?” asked Mona.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “No,” I said.
“Y’all are fu*#ked up. Have a
nice life, Mona.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Mona got out and I drove back to my house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> When I got home I went to the fridge, got a
beer then went and plopped down in my recliner.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I felt the thing the guy gave me in my back
pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I reached around and looked at it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I had first thought the guy had given me a
notebook, something to jot my thoughts in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Nope.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It was a small leather bound New Testament.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I thumbed through the pages.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Mindlessly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Because I wasn’t really thinking about the
little book or what was in it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I was more preoccupied with why he gave it to
me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I looked down and saw that the book had
fallen open to the first book of Corinthians.
I’d actually never read anything from that section of The Bible before. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I was looking at chapter 10. Verse 13 caught my attention…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">No
temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful,
and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the
temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to
endure it.”<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"> </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;">I
thought about those words.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I smiled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Those
words came in handy for me, they fit right in at that time of my life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In a holy
book given to me by a man who just wanted a little help.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif";"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</h1>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-82468341178342635032018-11-03T04:31:00.003-07:002018-11-03T04:52:46.391-07:00CHEAP WINE, BEER AND A FAKE I.D.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8ByDJUhB3YVEf7gEYMLVWwucTatdBT0GA-4-aC6htCMB8lOhXuvzhPYGJN5ZQe3a_ahvKwrUzQFh8KnjPUWXdO3CpO0csvo54R2uZwwXfajWN9R0jv3mXAXhJErft5ULROPg_BHQq6g/s1600/IMG_20181031_125729107-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="1600" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8ByDJUhB3YVEf7gEYMLVWwucTatdBT0GA-4-aC6htCMB8lOhXuvzhPYGJN5ZQe3a_ahvKwrUzQFh8KnjPUWXdO3CpO0csvo54R2uZwwXfajWN9R0jv3mXAXhJErft5ULROPg_BHQq6g/s320/IMG_20181031_125729107-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> An incident at a
high school in Indiana made the national news the other day. Some kid took a whizz on an electrical
outlet. This made a lot of smoke. Some teacher ran in with a fire extinguisher,
the fire department came to the school sirens a-screamin’…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I think about some
of the stuff I did back in high school.
If I did any of that stuff here in the future I’m sure some of it would
probably make the national news.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Like the time I made
black powder and set it off at school (just a lot of smoke).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Or how I used to buy
booze for me and my pals with a fake ID.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But I didn’t get in
trouble….this was back in the 1970’s, and back then this stuff was just a rite
of passage, part of life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My first attempt at
buying booze was a complete failure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It was during a
sleepover at my buddy Dax’s* house the summer between 6<sup>th</sup> and 7<sup>th</sup>
grades. It was me, Dax and Leroy camped
out on Dax’s front porch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “It’d be great if we
had some wine!” proclaimed Leroy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You drink wine?” I
asked Leroy. I was all wide-eyed. Beer was one thing…Cousin Bill’s daddy let
him drink from his beer can, then Cousin Bill would go outside, get on his
tricycle, ride around in circles on the driveway and sing "She'll Be
Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But wine? Wine seemed to be a drink from another place
than beer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Sure I drink wine,”
said Leroy with all the bravado a 12 year old could muster, “My parents never
notice it’s gone.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well we should get
some wine!” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “How?” asked Dax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll just go down
to the 7-11 and buy some,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You can’t do that,
dumbass,” said Dax, “You have to be old.
It ain’t the hotel.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Dax was talking about
the summer after 5<sup>th</sup> grade that he and Leroy and Catfish came over
to hang at my place one Saturday morning.
My dad had this job at a hotel so we lived there. Leroy wondered about ordering beer from room
service and so I did, no problem.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “How old you gotta
be?” I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t know,” said
Dax, “old.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I have a plan,” I
said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Soon I was walking
into the convenience store while Dax and Leroy waited outside around the corner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I grabbed a loaf of
bread, a pack of cheese, a bag of potato chips and two bottles of Ripple wine,
a kind of fortified rotgut wine that Gallo winery stopped making back in 1984.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I took all the stuff
up front and put it on the counter.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDE-G2HM7DHlTW9xN-fvoUD3tXzCWPMnkSHh6ZH-DHTVKOFU8pJtjm2LQbwYpu_EajwlzSPHUkYJrh1ctqc5CT9cGBFs3o-GYs57Kb3orKBK0a6vDyWq6OFbK9-llISMNwz5icoWGG0M/s1600/IMG_20181022_132614087.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDE-G2HM7DHlTW9xN-fvoUD3tXzCWPMnkSHh6ZH-DHTVKOFU8pJtjm2LQbwYpu_EajwlzSPHUkYJrh1ctqc5CT9cGBFs3o-GYs57Kb3orKBK0a6vDyWq6OFbK9-llISMNwz5icoWGG0M/s320/IMG_20181022_132614087.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The clerk picked up
one of the bottles and looked me square in the eye.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Boy…what do you
think you’re doing?” asked the clerk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Getting some
groceries,” I said, looking her square in the eyes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You can’t buy
wine,” she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh,” I said. I turned to walk out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Boy,” the clerk
called out, “What about your other things?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh,” I went back to
the counter and paid for my bread, cheese and potato chips.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went outside and
around the corner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well?” asked Dax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I held out the
bag. Dax looked inside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “No wine,” he
said. “What are we going to do with this
shit?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Let’s eat!” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was a Junior in high school when I
discovered the joys of a fake ID.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It was one of those
things I learned from a cousin. I can’t
remember why he thought it was an important thing to share with me but share he
did. But he had showed me how to
disconnect the odometer so my dad wouldn’t know how many miles I’d burned up
cruising the main drag of town. Of
course I haven’t told you whether I actually DID what he showed me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Anyway, about the
fake I.D., <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>Cuz said I was to go through magazines that
might hold a subscription coupon to a particular magazine. The thing was designed in such a way that if
one typed it up, slapped an official-looking, passport-like black and white
photo in the corner and laminated it, BAM!
Fake ID.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I couldn’t tell you
when I first used the thing…must’ve been at some store ‘cos I first bought some
Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine. I presented
the ID which noted I was from Jamaica and just visiting in the USA.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I took the wine on
my first date with Wanda June Anderson* and a good time was had. Wanda June and I only went out twice. After that whenever I ran into her new
boyfriend in his souped up ’72 Nova he’d call out to me, “Hey McGee, buy me
some wine. MAH-GEEEEEE, pleeeeeez buy me
some wine.” Then he would flip me the
middle finger. I reckon Wanda June told
him about our date.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The big test was
could I pull off getting hard liquor at the state ABC store.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qJ05-Mg6kcyp7CcE6-7HlZCfqpIm0lsKNH1jVYkWQ2c0Sf_0dclnDV3LmNSRNe9VqcwCEBDIUtgRD968kmWaB00bnhZSysCChOIpIuc45snGTrv4s6Wm4KTbLPQ3_I7kxKbbanuPUmM/s1600/IMG_20181102_190754106-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="1600" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qJ05-Mg6kcyp7CcE6-7HlZCfqpIm0lsKNH1jVYkWQ2c0Sf_0dclnDV3LmNSRNe9VqcwCEBDIUtgRD968kmWaB00bnhZSysCChOIpIuc45snGTrv4s6Wm4KTbLPQ3_I7kxKbbanuPUmM/s320/IMG_20181102_190754106-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Surely you’ve been
in one of those states where you can buy beer, wine at the supermarket but hard
booze is sold out of a state run store.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> These aren’t just
clerks behind the counters, these are clerks in uniforms with BADGES. So there is a bit of intimidation involved. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Did I have a death
wish? Would I present my fake ID, its
bogusness realized, guns drawn from under cash registers and I would be shot
down in the liquor store, shot down for being under 21 and trying to buy booze? Or would the clerks gang up on me, shoving
their badges in my face, cuff me, put me in a black helicopter and whisk me
away to prison?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> No.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I picked up a bottle
of Mr. Boston Rock and Rye, went to the counter, pulled out my cash and
presented my fake ID. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicVurr3Te-LEYWad9JMWuhs-SBVXbsALaUCvaxo_NkzoCaAtXCJRcqUrnqO2U69ICfg8n1nWmn6V3ekxItdoFS_rs7q42HijwTPfr3XZqLV6oD9ndn-RJwMAipzu2Ol5xTKK_kTZ0bO_Y/s1600/IMG_20181030_190850872-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1247" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicVurr3Te-LEYWad9JMWuhs-SBVXbsALaUCvaxo_NkzoCaAtXCJRcqUrnqO2U69ICfg8n1nWmn6V3ekxItdoFS_rs7q42HijwTPfr3XZqLV6oD9ndn-RJwMAipzu2Ol5xTKK_kTZ0bO_Y/s320/IMG_20181030_190850872-2.jpg" width="249" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Jamaica,” said the
guy with the blue officer’s shirt and badge, “I was there once. Kingston.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Ah, you visited our
capitol city,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The clerk and I
locked eyeballs for a few seconds.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I had a good time,”
he said, handing my ID back, wrapping up my booze in a brown paper bag, handing
me back my change. “Have a nice day.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I walked out in the
sun smiling…feeling a kind of freedom, a kind of euphoria…I had pulled one over
on “The Man.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I mean, I never
really bought a lot of beer, wine or booze.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But I know my fake
ID is why Chuck Biscuits kept me around in his little rock ‘n’ roll
clique. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Chuck was a year
behind me in school but we were in Art class together. He and I started hanging around. Chuck and some of his pals from over the hill
from my house had a rock ‘n’ roll band, Hombre, that practiced a lot and I was
often invited to come on over…Chuck on guitar, Dale on keyboards, Bobby Painter
on bass and Jordy on drums.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “And hey,” said Chuck
on some practice nights, handing me a 5 dollar bill, “Pick up a couple of sixes
of Bud on the way over.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t drink beer
then, I liked sweet wines and liquors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So Chuck and the
guys would swill the beers and I would kick back. One night I wondered why the guys didn’t do
“We’re An American Band” by Grand Funk, a Top 40 hit back in the day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You come up and sing
it,” said Chuck.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And so I did, pitchy
and off-key.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I mean I didn’t know
I was pitchy and off key and Chuck didn’t tell me I was pitchy and off key the
only way I knew anything was wrong was Dale would wince, screw up his face when
I hit the high notes in the tune.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My role as singer
for “Hombre” may have been tenuous but my role as beer buyer for the band was
secure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then it was the
summer between my junior and senior year and it was time to party. Me, my buddy Catfish, Chuck and the band and some
other guys piled in my car and Chuck’s and headed into the mountains with two
cases of Budweiser and three bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtYKzh5V3AXk2J1wGSOc2snV3PujTc00OQ_jX5B6Djulji0DOGqbOzuC0YCq6ThSvWVpiQVy45r9KyF7n652_-JKuqVGZITIYzwK8qeIB7WWGU90ZzKaJf81yz9AnJuQxcguD2TYAM-M/s1600/IMG_20181022_132430692.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtYKzh5V3AXk2J1wGSOc2snV3PujTc00OQ_jX5B6Djulji0DOGqbOzuC0YCq6ThSvWVpiQVy45r9KyF7n652_-JKuqVGZITIYzwK8qeIB7WWGU90ZzKaJf81yz9AnJuQxcguD2TYAM-M/s320/IMG_20181022_132430692.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">They’re called “fire
trails,” dirt roads that run through the National Forest so firefighters could
get around in the woods.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Our “rolling
party” was probably 5 miles up in the mountains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We drank, we
listened to the rock ‘n’ roll AM station, we shot the shit and I got drunk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One bottle was gone,
I was working on a second one when the gang decided it was time to go back to
town.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My pals wouldn’t let
me drive my own car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And that’s the last
thing I remember.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I woke up the next
morning…late…to hear a mockingbird singing outside my bedroom window and the
sun shining in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was still in my
clothes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was really
thirsty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I got up and walked
downstairs to the kitchen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I opened the door at
the bottom of the stairs to find my grandmother holding her coffee cup in one
hand, a filterless Raleigh cigarette in the other. Her sister, my Aunt Maude, was sitting at the
kitchen table.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well here’s Mister
Man, ready to take on a new day at 10 a.m.,” announced Aunt Maude.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My grandmother
turned around and started laughing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I was living with my
grandmother and grandfather while my mom and dad got set up with a new job and
new digs in Michigan. Aunt Maude was
visiting from New York City.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went over to the
sink, got a glass from the cabinet, got a big, cool glass of tap water and
drank it all down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Do you have
anything you want to say to me, boy?” Aunt Maude said loudly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Grandma laughed
again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Did I do something
wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth from Grandma to Aunt Maude and back to
Grandma.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” said
Grandma, “Me and your Aunt Maude were watching “Hee-Haw” last night when there
was a knock…so I got up, opened the door and you practically fell into the living
room.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh,” I said, I
could feel myself blush.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Then you stumbled
in and I said, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’” said Grandma. “Then Maude says, ‘The boy is drunk’ and you
turned to Maude and said, ‘SHUT UP YOU OLD BITTY.’”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Grandma laughed some
more.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh,” I said. “I suppose you told my dad.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I ain’t gonna tell
your daddy anything,” said Grandma. “I
know stories about him that he doesn’t want told.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I turned to Aunt
Maude. I looked her in the eyes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I apologize, Aunt
Maude,” I said. “I’m sorry.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Aunt Maude had a sip
of her coffee.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s okay, boy,”
she said. Then she smiled and winked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Then I had a start.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Where’s my car?” I
asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “It’s outside, boy,”
said Grandma.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went into the
living room and looked out the bay window.
There was my car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went outside to
check it out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Everything looked
okay, then I walked around to the passenger side.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was a stain, a
mark, a big one that looked like some liquid had been poured out over the side
of the car while it was heading down the road.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I looked closer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There was a faint
smell, there were food bits.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It was vomit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I stood up and
laughed to myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I went inside the
house and called my buddy Dax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Mr. Strawberry
Hill,” said Dax laughing when he answered the phone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Man,” I said. “What happened last night?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” said Dax,
“We all decided that you were NOT driving your car anywhere so I drove off the
mountain.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> This would not be
the last time Dax would commandeer my treasured ’64 Ford “Falcoon.” In college he asked to borrow it to take his
cheerleader girlfriend on a date. Days
later he told me that the two of them had “done it” in my car. I was not amused. Hell, I hadn’t even “done it” in my car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “So,” Dax went on,
“We get back on the main road, and that’s when Painter about shoved you out the
passenger side door.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “What was that
about?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Painter was rather
striking to see because he had this long bright red hair that went down to his
shoulders and covered most of his face.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “You kept grabbing
his hair,” said Dax, “and kept yelling at him ‘YOU KNOW WHAT MY OLD MAN WOULD
SAY ABOUT YOUR HAIR? ‘BOY, YOU NEED A
HAIRCUT.’”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Dax laughed over the
phone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Man, you kept doing
that until you really pissed Painter off.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Then you had to
take a whizz so I pulled over by this field and Chuck pulled up behind us,”
said Dax, “Then you ran out into this field.
We were standing around shootin’ the shit when Chuck says, ‘Hey, where’s
McGee?’ We didn’t see you anywhere.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Oh man,” I said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “So we go out in the
field looking for you in this tall grass and Chuck finds you passed out on the
ground.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “We get you back in
the car,” said Dax, “We’re headed down the highway and you go ‘Uh oh’ then you
lean out the window and puke.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Well,” I said,
“That explains the vomit on the side of the car.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “So then we get to
your house and me and Painter practically carry you to your door, propped you
up, knocked on the door, ran and got in Chuck’s car and got the hell out of
there.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Dax laughed some
more.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll catch ya
later, man,” I said to Dax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “Later Mr.
Strawberry Hill.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">E P I L O G U E</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> That wouldn’t be the
last misadventure I’d have with my fake ID and booze.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Actually about the
only time I came close to getting into trouble was the next spring when I
bought Dax a bottle of Everclear, the straight grain alcohol, which he mixed
into a bottle of cheap wine that he took on a double date. The girls got big time sick and he and Navy
Jeff (called that ‘cos a year later he joined the Navy) took the girls over to
Mr. B’s. Mr. B was the cool high school
English teacher. They figured he’d know
how to sober up the girls. Dax knew the
girls’ daddy (they were sisters) would whip Dax and Navy Jeff’s asses if they
brought them home as drunk and sick as they were.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And if anything
happened I’m sure even in 1970-something they would’ve gone looking for whoever
got the Everclear for Dax.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The only time my
fake ID was rejected was at the Windego Club, a seedy bar on the city’s north
side. The dude at the bar threw my ID
back at me when I asked for a six-pack of Bud for Chuck and the gang.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I’ve seen better,
kid,” he said. “Show me your driver’s
license.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It seems like not
much time passed at all before I was really 21 and didn’t need my fake ID
anymore. I celebrated that birthday by
going into the liquor store and buying a fifth of Jack Daniels and flashing my
driver’s license.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Yep, a bottle of
Jack.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Not Strawberry Hill.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I never could drink
that shit ever again.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">-30-</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">*All names changed… ‘cept mine…</span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-60857665321559778162018-10-27T05:52:00.000-07:002018-10-27T09:21:55.144-07:00Storytellers...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj71Ka5H8Flah0h-7D8zVvv4am5K2C-UQu-oDD12h6ijqdmTTFK3ZZkY-RbUEMUnjFkZmdNd9FNeq2hAfQ3ZEjRcW4mH6nU5bx-sAtUU94QyS6nXXi5nwKWD8U26vq7XJPOMYm2InJNUmk/s1600/IMG_20181025_125327164-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="1600" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj71Ka5H8Flah0h-7D8zVvv4am5K2C-UQu-oDD12h6ijqdmTTFK3ZZkY-RbUEMUnjFkZmdNd9FNeq2hAfQ3ZEjRcW4mH6nU5bx-sAtUU94QyS6nXXi5nwKWD8U26vq7XJPOMYm2InJNUmk/s320/IMG_20181025_125327164-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> Are you a storyteller?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Do you have
the storyteller gene?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Are you nurturing
your storytelling skill?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> What is a
storyteller? I think the first
requirement is you need to remember stuff.
You remember things most folks have forgotten. Of course, when you venture into things other
folks have forgotten they may think your stories are apocryphal, a
twenty-five-dollar-word that simply means they think you’re full of shit, your
stories can’t be verified, they’re pulled from the mists of time, pulled from a
time that few remember. That’s the risk
a storyteller runs. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I couldn't tell you why I like to tell tales. Maybe there's a part of me that wants to tell someone a tale so they'll beware of certain pitfalls in life, that "thar be dragons" out there on the primrose-lined path of life. Maybe I just want to entertain. Maybe it's telling a tale of an interesting tid-bit of family history.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> My brother has questioned a number of my tales of family life through the
years. My brother is not a
storyteller. Many times after I told a
tale of life when I lived with our grandparents and such he’d say, “Oh I don’t
believe that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Are you
calling me a liar, bro?” I asked him one time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He paused.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “No,” he
said, “I’ve just never heard this stuff before.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Veracity is
the realm of the researcher, reporter, historian and teacher. The telling of the tale, ah, that’s the realm
of storytellers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I think I got
the “storytelling gene” from my grandmother, my father’s mother…I lived with
her and my grandfather my last years in high school. My grandmother would sit in her easy chair, a
filterless Raleigh cigarette in her right hand, as she told story after story
of life in the mountains of western Virginia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> My oldest
daughter has the storyteller gene too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I have no
research to back this up but I believe the best storytellers mostly come from out here in "The Golden West" or the American South. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> That’s where
Coach Bob* was from.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Bob’s gone
now, but he’s one of those folks I’ll remember all my life. When I saw the movie “Big Fish” I thought of
Bob, the teller of tall tales, tales you couldn’t really verify, they were
believable but you weren’t quite sure if they were possible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Like his
tale of running the bar at the non-com club on Okinawa during the Korean War. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah, I had
this monkey at the bar,” Bob said, “and if I needed to cut someone off, I’d
have the monkey go over and piss in the guy’s drink.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgr2695fARNXCLKR3l6ru-Lbotlh9FaX3U41837UTG9p_RW1q3yDF0YlCnk9lAyDnrw-381QG1-_1HBoRsHIHPz6WB3qu39lKB67YshjJEmKNHtXYPQ0It864DefcLSzw_DzcWArTTaNU/s1600/IMG_20181025_125110937-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1385" data-original-width="1600" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgr2695fARNXCLKR3l6ru-Lbotlh9FaX3U41837UTG9p_RW1q3yDF0YlCnk9lAyDnrw-381QG1-_1HBoRsHIHPz6WB3qu39lKB67YshjJEmKNHtXYPQ0It864DefcLSzw_DzcWArTTaNU/s320/IMG_20181025_125110937-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There was
the story of how Bob ended up in Roswell.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah, me
and the family were headed west and we broke down out there on the Caprock east
of Roswell. I hitched a ride into town,
asked if they needed a coach. They did. I had a job in a couple of hours, then me and
the players went back to the family, hooked up the car and came back to town.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I found out
sometime later Bob had the job lined up, the family just broke down just before
they got to Roswell. For years I believed
Bob had landed the coach’s job just like he said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In his life Coach
Bob had fought in the Korean War, sold houses, had his own country music show
and more. He told lots of stories, lots
of jokes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And he
remembered.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Coach Bob
had a mind like a steel trap, as they say.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One day in
1996, sitting in his home in Roswell he told me a poem he called “The Water
Cure.” It was so good I wrote it down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> “Sometime
when you’re feeling important, sometime when your ego’s in bloom; sometime when
you take it for granted you’re the best qualified in the room; sometime when
you feel that your going would leave an unfillable hole; just follow these simple instructions and see
how they humble your soul.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> “Take a
bucket and fill it with water, put your hand in it up to the wrist; pull it out,
and the hole that’s remaining, is a measure of how you’ll be missed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> “You can splash
all you wish when you enter, you may stir up the water galore;<br />
but stop and you’ll find that in no time it looks quite the same as before.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> “The moral
of this quaint example, is do just the best that you can. Be proud of yourself but remember, there’s no
indispensable man.”</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I memorized
that for my players,” Bob said. “When
you have a team of young’uns, you have a few that come through who think
they’re the end-all to beat-all. I’d make
them listen to me recite those words.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> For years I
thought it was something Coach Bob made up.
Then when The Great and Powerful Internet was in full flower I did a
little poking around and found out the poem was first published in 1959,
written by Saxon White Kessinger and titled “The Indispensable Man.” What struck me as I saw the familiar words on
a website was I had it written in my journal just as Coach Bob had recited it,
he knew that poem word for word after so many years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Coach Bob was a storyteller, and a good one at that. He may have embellished the truth a bit, but
so what?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">So if you’re a storyteller, tell those tales.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">They help us all remember, make us smile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">And make us think.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">-30-<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "century gothic" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">*Name changed</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1999912388906183110.post-74478816129934598722018-10-20T05:21:00.002-07:002018-10-20T05:21:25.352-07:00Tales Of Rifles, Shotguns and Pistols...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE59im6Tldz6IximSU6oZiiWgTn1Qd9VFyhnvmEl4FfPWWFLGk_xKFETw5fl4QJiyo3-ThPa6M3hYHwZjSB-0N6wyrVVOEFkzSakP7rGxGJPINWa_vw7Ca49PP-1RSs1B9g0jUZH-_zGg/s1600/IMG_20181016_191420863.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE59im6Tldz6IximSU6oZiiWgTn1Qd9VFyhnvmEl4FfPWWFLGk_xKFETw5fl4QJiyo3-ThPa6M3hYHwZjSB-0N6wyrVVOEFkzSakP7rGxGJPINWa_vw7Ca49PP-1RSs1B9g0jUZH-_zGg/s320/IMG_20181016_191420863.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The great Texas singer Steve Fromholz died
back in 2014. I only found out recently
how he died…he was putting a loaded rifle in a pickup truck, going out on his
central Texas ranch to hunt feral hogs that were killing his baby goats.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
rifle slipped and a bullet went flying.
The bullet hit Fromholz and he died on the way to the hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Fromholz wrote and sang good stuff, back in
2007 he was named Texas’ “Poet Laureate.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Helluva way to go…in a rifle accident. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It got
me to thinking about rifles, shotguns, pistols and such. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There aren’t any firearms at my house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s not a big deal. I don’t preach about my position. It’s kinda like politics and religion…once
upon a time it wasn’t polite to talk about either amongst friends lest arguing
ensue. Once upon a time that was a rule
of etiquette.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> But having said that, I never understood folks
who have to have a bunch of weapons in their home. I understand some folks having a rifle,
shotgun or two. But an arsenal?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I come from a time when if The National Rifle
Association crossed my mind I thought, “Oh yeah, the guys who come to our Boy
Scout meetings to teach us gun safety.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> There were no firearms in my mom and dad’s
home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> If I ever wanted to do some shootin’ I knew
folks who had a rifle or a shotgun and they’d let me shoot.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I don’t know why Dad didn’t have a pistol,
rifle or shotgun…it never came up in conversation. There was never any big statement, no
political stance, nothing. There just
wasn’t a rifle, pistol or shotgun in “the old home place.” I mean the closest thing that WAS there was
an old .22 rifle from around 1900 or so.
It didn’t work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Now my dad did have a BB pistol under his
socks in his top drawer but that’s about it.
Then it turned up in the glove compartment of the family car. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One time, when I was about 12, my mom and
sister left me in the car while they went shopping. I played with the radio for a bit, then I
opened the glove box and there it was...the BB pistol I was forbidden to touch. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I got it out of the glove box, turned it
around in my hands, admired it, then I pulled the hammer back. I wondered what would I do with it now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> If I fired it in the car it might ricochet
around and hit me. So I put my thumb
back on the hammer and eased it back into a safe position. But the hammer slipped, then a BB flew and
smacked against the windshield leaving a small nick. My dad had quite the temper so I never said a
word, but he couldn’t figure out why the car’s windshield was nicked from the
inside.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It seems I’ve had some close calls with
firearms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Shotguns were always around when I went
camping in the Boy Scouts. I belonged to
what some have termed a “rogue” troop, meaning it wasn’t like any Boy Scout
troop I’ve ever heard about. I assure
you, 99 percent of America’s Boy Scout troops are unlike this one…it’s seed-bed
of many tales that I may make into a book someday. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One of the guys in the troop, Woody*, seemed
to always have a shotgun or rifle of one type or another when we went camping. One camp-out he might have a .410, another
time a .20 gauge and then there was that time he brought his 30.06 rifle, won a
big box of candy with a busty “nekkid” lady on the cover and got into some
mischief with a stick of dynamite. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One camp out night inside the troop’s big
three sided shelter back in the mountains, after the younger scouts had hit the
hay, some of us older scouts and the adult leaders were kicking back. Woody
produced his .20 gauge inside the shelter.
While I sat nearby, Scoutmaster Pete and Woody proceeded to get into a
terse discussion about the weapon’s safety being on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Sure it’s on,” Woody said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Suddenly there was this loud “BLAM” and
little pinging noises all over the place.
The shotgun had gone off. And the
cabin had a new little skylight about 4 inches across. We were still finding shotgun pellets inside
the place for the next few months.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In high school I had a friend, Monty, who was
always going dove hunting. I was invited
on one “big hunt.” I even went out and
bought some shotgun shells at the local Sears store. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I arrived at Monty’s house unaware that he
and my buddy Catfish raided the fridge at Monty’s and enjoyed a few of his
daddy’s “brewskis” therein.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Out into the fields we went on our merry
hunt. Suddenly a covey of quail took to
the sky. Catfish was behind me, over my
right shoulder. There was an explosion
in my right ear. Catfish had fired on
the quail, the muzzle of his shotgun just inches from my right ear. I didn’t hear well out of that ear for a few
days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In my late 20’s I decided it was time to have
a pistol. I couldn’t think of a good reason
why I shouldn’t have one but then I really didn’t have a good reason why I
should have one. I went to a gun shop
and bought a classic .22 revolver.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And it sat in my home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I took it camping in the West Virginia
mountains one time. I would take it out
and look at it and wonder where I was going to shoot it. I remembered stories of people being hit by
stray bullets in the forest. I put on my
holster and walked boldly through the campground. I had become “The Great Outdoorsman,”
exercising his “right to bear arms,” going off to find an embankment to shoot
into. I found such a place deep in the
woods away from the campground. I fired
a few rounds, knocked off a few pine cones.
Then I sat there, wondering why I had this thing. The pistol was holstered and The Great
Outdoorsman marched back to his campsite.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Later that evening while I was grilling up
some sausages, peppers and onions a guy moseyed into my campsite. He was younger than me, slender, beard. Hell, if we had been suddenly transported 30
years into the future I would have called him a “Millenial.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Hi there,” I said. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah, ummm,” he paused. “Me and my friends were wondering if you
might not walk through the campground with your pistol strapped on. It’s pretty intimidating.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I locked eyes with the guy and smiled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Hell, buddy,” I said, “It’s just a .22
peashooter.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Well, okay,” he said, “But we’re just
visiting here and it’s pretty intimidating.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Where y’all visiting from?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Northern Virginia,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Ah, D.C.,” I said. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Well, that IS where we all work,” said the
visitor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Well welcome to ‘Wild, Wonderful West
Virginia,” I said, laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He smiled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Okay, buck-o, you got it,” I said. “Ain’t nothin’ that says I’ve GOT to wear my
pistol around the campground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Thank you, sir,” he said. The visitor turned and walked away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Like I said, I didn’t know why I had the
thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I had a girlfriend back then who used to get
“spells” where she’d fly into rages. It
was with her in mind that I stored the pistol in one place and its cylinder,
you know…the spinny-thingy that holds the bullets…in another.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> One afternoon, an afternoon that featured one
of those “spells” I mentioned, I woke up from a nap to find her standing over
me, the pistol pointed at my head…the pistol minus the cylinder.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And she was pulling the trigger over and over
again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> CLICK * CLICK * CLICK *<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I kept the girlfriend for a bit longer
figuring all she needed in life was a heavy dose of good times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Months later I found out I was wrong, another
story…one I may or may not tell someday.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> But I got rid of the revolver right away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I took the pistol back to the gun shop where
the owner bought it back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I lived in a remote place one time so I
bought an air pistol.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “What good will that do you against a
burglar,” a friend asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “I figure if I shoot the guy with a pellet
gun it will hurt and he’ll run away.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “That’ll just make the guy mad.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I did like the way a friend handled an
intruder in the Hondo Valley west of Roswell some years ago. He was awakened by the sound of someone in
his ranch house. My friend grabbed his
shotgun and went out in the hall where he found the burglar down the corridor a
ways.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He did the pump action thing on the weapon,
racking a shell into the chamber.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> He kept staring at the intruder down the
hall.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “You see what I got here,” said my pal,
shouldering the shotgun, aiming it at the burglar. “Now if you turn around and get the hell out
of here we can both forget this happened.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The intruder turned and ran. After that my friend started locking doors…he
hadn’t before.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Truth be told I DO have a rifle in the
house…an air rifle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s a nice, solid thing…wood stock, steel
barrel and workings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I haven’t fired it since the day I bought it,
a dozen or so years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I bought it because I had one just like it
years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The guy at the store where I bought it said
it was a Chinese import that recruits in the Chinese Army practiced with for
starters. I have no way to check on the
truth of that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> But it’s got a wee bit of kick to it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Truth be told if someone broke into my home I
probably would break out my air rifle…except…I’d be more inclined to use the
butt end as a weapon ‘cos I’d be pissed someone was messing around in my home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EyZU-YrQky35ok6qLv1XQg9bBC3VfjXa4ppxD53fk3HEU2jztvVLQzlxp6mhz6JyTRNgqLY1JvxPQo8vXfYFya5-7Tz43mYnjPgxOjqnsWXh3_PA5cvHATkHnL9gpK3Y_d-g00USE8Q/s1600/IMG_20181016_191200538_BURST000_COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EyZU-YrQky35ok6qLv1XQg9bBC3VfjXa4ppxD53fk3HEU2jztvVLQzlxp6mhz6JyTRNgqLY1JvxPQo8vXfYFya5-7Tz43mYnjPgxOjqnsWXh3_PA5cvHATkHnL9gpK3Y_d-g00USE8Q/s320/IMG_20181016_191200538_BURST000_COVER.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I suppose there are all kinds of reasons to
have a pistol, rifle or shotgun. But you
know, aside from the safety questions, you really have to take care of them
with cleaning and oiling and such and I’m kinda lazy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Then too, I remember the lyrics from a Waylon
Jennings song “The Devil’s Right Hand.”
The guy in the song gets his first pistol, “but I soon found out, it’ll
get you into trouble but it can’t get you out.”</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> -30-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">*Names
changed as a CYA maneuver on my part. I
reckon the proper acronym should be “CMA maneuver.”</span>Grant McGeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07917918215635101464noreply@blogger.com0