What’s been up with me

So it’s been a while since I last posted. And the post before that was a while back as well.

So what’s been up with me? I been freaking busy!

Haha, to give you a run down, I sold my house (full price in six days, thank you very much), packed and moved into a rental while I am building a new house, we had a kid a few months back. Baby #3, boy #2. And I changed jobs. Yep, in this time of economic uncertainty I changed jobs.

Speaking of getting a new job, I was reminded of an interview that I had right after I graduated from high school. To give you a little back ground, I grew up in a very small town, we are talking Mayberry here. And since it was such a small town everyone pretty much knew everyone. So there I am, recently graduated from high school, no job and not sure what I was going to do. Being the great parent that my mom was she pretty much pulled a few strings and got me an interview with a local company. The job was pretty much mine, I just had to go to the interview.

But here is the kicker, I didn’t want the job.

I don’t know why, but I just didn’t. But I was going to the interview for my mom. There I am in my suit and tie with my resume heading towards the interview. And I was simply dreading it. Then the little devil guy on my shoulder stopped by.

I get to the interview, check in with the receptionist and wait. When it’s my time I am greeted with a great big smile and a handshake. I hand my resume to the interviewing manager and our interview went a little something like this:

Interviewer: Have a seat

Me: Thanks

Interviewer: I appreciate you coming out on short notice.

Me: No problem, thanks for giving me an interview.

Interviewer: (looking over my resume) Um hmm, yes, so you just graduated from high school?

Me: Yes sir.

Interviewer: Very good. So are you going to go to college?

Me: Well, my plan is to go to school at night so that I can work during the day.

Interviewer: Excellent. So, tell me a little about yourself.

Me: (with a straight face) Man, I didn’t kill those people. I wasn’t even there that night.

Interviewer: (jerked and almost threw my resume almost to the ceiling) What?!

Me: Oh, you didn’t know about that. Never mind. Like I said I just graduated and I plan to major in…..

The interview didn’t last much longer.

When I got home I told my mom that I think I nailed it and I was expecting a call any time now. For some reason they chose someone else. I wonder why?

Don’t get dead

This place has atmosphere like a mofo!

Over the weekend I was making some fried rice and as I am standing in the kitchen listening to the oil in the wok sizzle and cutting up some food I was reminded of something.

Years back I lived in the Washington D.C. area. One day my roommate and I where going to a local 7-11 store to pick up some frosty cool beverages to toast a Friday night with. This particular 7-11 was in one of those strip centers and right next to it was a Chinese food restaurant named “The Myoung Dong Café”, I shit you not. Regardless of how it is spelled, to me, that reads my young dong. So as we are getting out of the car to go into the 7-11 the doors of the restaurant come flying open and two women literally come rolling out of the doors each with a handful of the others hair. It looked like something out of a movie, it was just too perfect. So of course we stopped to watch. After bitchslap-o-paloosa was over my roommate and I decided that we had to check this place out sometime. Come on, who could pass up something like that!

A couple of weeks or so later we went in on a Saturday to have lunch and after we got seated we started making small talk with the hostess. During which we mentioned the fight we saw. To make a long story a bit shorter it turns out that fights on the weekends at this place are fairly common. Talk about great advertising! Food and entertainment at any given moment, hell yeah we told our friends about this place. But anyway, back to the story. So while talking with the hostess she tells us that it is a family owned, run and staffed place which sometimes is catalyst for some of the fights and so on, ex-girlfriends/boyfriends and so on come up to make a scene. She continues and points out her relatives and tells us that only a couple of people, mainly busboys where not family. So her mom and dad run the register, her cousins and an older brother are the cooks (who you could see through these big windows in the kitchen), brothers and sisters and an aunt or uncle or two are the other wait staff and so on.

A short while later our waiter brings us our menus, takes our drink orders and pours us some hot tea. The roommate and I start to shoot the breeze and check out the place. There was a bar in the back, the cooks are chopping up meat and people are coming and going and so on. All of which sort of faded into the back ground as we began to look at our menus. But I do recall the fait sound of the cooks cutting up meat in the back ground, it sounded like the drum line for Guns N Roses’ “Paradise City”. You could hear it, boom, chop, boom chop, boom, chop, boom chop over and over again. Then it happened.

The next thing I hear is this loud primal grunt followed by some barking and more grunting. Remember earlier I told you about the family who worked in the place and how you could see the cooks through the windows? Well what our hostess didn’t tell us about was her cousin who is a cook also has Turrets Syndrome.

He let loose with all sorts of noises, my roommate and I looked at each other with silver dollar eyes, decided that it was time to bounce and hauled ass. I had to have the biggest “oh shit” expression on my face and I’m not sure but I might have actually said “feet don’t fail me now”.

Now I am by no way making fun of anyone with this illness but you either have to let people know that ahead of time or don’t let him cook or something. Look, I am from a small town where the rumor mill runs wild and people believe EVRYTHING. And it just so happens that the first Chinese food restaurant in my home town happened to be back door to back door from one of the oldest vets in town, I’m just saying. Rumors get around.

Later we found out that they moved him into the kitchen because he had an episode where he barked at a couple of women while taking their order.

Every weekend that place was packed with all of our friends.

Don’t get dead

Hot Rods and Spring Break in Panama City Beach (long)

Growing up I was friends with a couple of brothers whose father owned a couple of car garages. And they had a huge car barn where we built hot rods and worked on our own cars. The coolest part about building these hot rods was that we got to drive them from time to time. You want to talk about feeling like a bad ass, be in high school and roll up to the school in a blown 23 T-Bucket or a 32 Ford Coupe with a chopped top and suicide doors, shaved door handles and exhaust loud enough to set off ever alarm in the parking lot.

A little before spring break one year, one of the brothers and I was talking about going to Panama City Beach for spring break. Of course moolah was the biggest concern. We were in high school after all. My friend mentioned that his parents were going down and that we could stay with them. This guys parents where cool as hell, what time we came and went was absolutely no concern, knowing his parents they were going to stay in a nice place (bonus). Then he laid the deal maker down on me, if I went we got to take the T-Bucket and the 32. Can we leave now!

Think about it, a young guy with sweet hot rods at the biggest spring break spot, I was in heaven. Spring break couldn’t get there fast enough.

The day of the trip comes and we are both smiling like a couple of rats eating cheese, even though it was a bit cool (probably in the 50’s). In typical fashion we make a quick check to make sure that we have everything before we head out and then go to fill up before we head out. Since these where hand made cars we stopped every now and then just to make sure that they were running fine and so on. At one point my friends dad had decided that the cars where fine and that we didn’t have to stop any more.

There we are heading down the highway being the center of attention to everyone going in both directions. My friend’s parents in the lead in the 32 with my friend and I following in the Bucket. For those of you who might not know what a 23 T-Bucket looks like mash here and if you don’t know what a 32 Ford coupe looks like mash here. Damn we were cool …and cold, but we were cool. Damn it was cold. Very shortly after the trip started we both opted for leather jackets. Not long after that we looked like freaking bank robbers, ski masks, gloves, two jackets, sun glasses and scarves. But we were cool. Shivering like a Chihuahua trying to shit out a peach seed, but we were cool.

Smelling that salt air when we finally got there made it all worth while. The girls in bikinis didn’t hurt either. It was awesome, we were damn near famous. We check in and couldn’t wait to get out and cruise. But we had to play it cool and not geek out. So we went and got something to eat with the parental units and put our plan together. We hopped in the 23 and scoped out the area, made sure to cruise by the beach to make our very loud presence know and so on. That night we decided to cruise the strip and look for tail… I mean see how everyone was doing. It didn’t take us long to realize that this car, which had about the same horsepower as the space shuttle, was not made to cruise in barely moving strip traffic. It was so powerful and geared so low that when we were stopping I had to pull up on the steering wheel to hold the brake pedal down. It didn’t take long to decide that when we were not moving to put it in park. Oh, one thing about that, this car had a slap shifter in it, but was put in backwards on purpose (long story, don’t ask), so instead of park being at the top of the column it was at the bottom. It can be a little confusing. So there we are with the car in park being too cool for everyone around us when traffic finally starts to move, I put the car in what I thought was drive but apparently it was reverse. I figured this out when I pushed down the gas pedal and we went backwards. You know that saying “frozen in fear”, that was the girl behind us in the little Honda Civic that we damn near plowed into. Fortunately I was able to stop the car from changing the aerodynamics of her Civic. I get it in drive and off we go, in the right direction this time.

Ironically I had just told my friend that I bet that car would cause a wreck that week because of people not paying attention, I know, I am good!

After cruising for a bit we needed some petrol and pulled into a gas station. Just as an FYI, if you accidentally put diesel into a blown 23 T-Bucket because you were looking at chicks, when the diesel gets to the cylinders and ignites it will shoot a big ass flame out of the blower. So we had to call the dad and he had to get a bucket from the maintenance guy at the condos so that we could drain the 8 gallons of diesel that some brainchild put into this car. Even as we were sitting there with draining the diesel out we were still cool. After making us feel like complete dumbasses his dad went back to the condo and we went back to cruising the strip for a bit. Remember how I was telling you about how powerful this car was and how it was not built for all of the cruising, well there is another reason this is true. The engine on this car gets hot, damn hot. It didn’t take us long to realize that we needed to get some air blowing over the radiator or we were going to have a problem. So we pull off of the strip to go hit some of the back roads for a bit. No sooner had we pulled off had I decided that to get air blowing on the radiator that we had to get moving so I punched it. If you looked at the pictures in the links above you realize that there isn’t much to this car, so the simple math of light weight car + extremely strong motor + dumbass standing on the gas pedal = the front wheels launching off the ground and two idiots screaming (literally) down a side road while doing a wheelie in a car. Thankfully my cat like reflexes told me to get off the gas pretty quickly. After repeating “holy shit” about 50,000 times each we both did a quick “are we dead” check and decided that we survived.

But we still had to get the car cooled off and we didn’t want to wait on it to cool on its own. As we are making our way to one of the back roads so we can haul ass and get the temps down some jackass in a mustang is trying to race us, yeah we smoked his ass and he suddenly decided that he had to turn, pussy. So we get the car cooled off and head back to the strip. After another hour or so of bumper to bumper, barely moving traffic the temps go up again. But this time we were at a prime place to actually pull over and let the car cool off, right in the middle of the strip. We pull off the road right by the beach (nice breeze blowing, I am a smart cookie) and proceed to hang out on the car watching the traffic. It was great, we were getting cat calls and invited to parties like it was going out of style. It was like the girls where coming out of the sand they were everywhere, life was great. A couple of girls pulled over behind us and where chatting with us for a bit when I noticed that there was no more traffic on the road in the direction that we were facing. The last car was right beside where we pulled over and then nothing as far as we could see. It was weird. Right after I noticed that I kept hearing this noise, this sort of winding noise. I checked and the fan on the car wasn’t running, the fuel pump wasn’t running but I could not figure out what this little noise was and it was getting louder. About this time I see a little light flickering in the distance. It was some guy on a scooter and he was hauling ass (for a scooter). As he got closer we could tell that he was not paying attention to the traffic but was looking at us. Then BAM he slammed at full speed into the car that was beside our car. He flew over their car and crashed face first into the back windshield car in front of them. His little red scooter literally broke into pieces. But it was like something from the circus, the guy rockets himself head first into the back glass of this car, lands on his feet does a 360 looking around and then collapses on the street. A complete WTF moment. Out of instinct we start to pick up the pieces of his scooter and someone went to go call the medics. When we realized that this guy was going to probably be ok was the exact same time that we realized that we had been drinking and that we need to bounce! We were out of there, slinging sand all along the way. Sorry, but I am not going to jail because of the human crash test dummy.

Some time later we were back on the strip and happened to be in the area where the human spitwad tried to carpool at 50 MPH when a cop motions us over. F’ing great, we are going to jail and there are so many reasons why: no seat belts; I have no idea if this car is street legal; the tail lights had this blue piece on them that made them light up purple which I heard was illegal; minor intox; no catalytic converter; being loud as fuck; DUI; oh and that hauling ass after that dude went X-games with that scooter. We pull over and shut the car off and I start to go for my wallet when the cop starts to ask me all of these questions, none of which were can I see your licenses. He says that he has seen us around and then proceeds to ask if the blower is really hooked up to which my friend interjected “You damn right it is!” Thanks jackass. So the cop just keeps asking questions like how many horses does it have, what size is the motor, this and that. Which I am sure is going to be used against us in a court of law. And then he ask us if we can fire it up and let him hear it. Sure, why not, if I’m going to the pokey might as well make it a good one right. So I crank the car and the cop says “rev it up” and I give it this little baby rev. The cops says “no man, get on it” and grabs the fucking throttle and opens that bitch up. People all around jumped, car alarms are going off, people are coming out of their hotel rooms to see what was going on. Turns out he is just a gear head too. So now we are playing this to our advantage we got a cop buddy. Man we let him sit in it, rev it like a drunken hells angel, take pictures and anything else he wanted. After about 20 minutes or smoozing with local law enforcement he ask us if it would spin the tires (33 inch Mickey Thompsons) we told him no because there is just too much traction and not enough weight. He doesn’t believe us and says he wants us to get on it to see. So he stops traffic and lets the traffic on the road get a good ways down the road. Then he tells us to “get on it but don’t half ass it”. So we pull out onto the road, I tell my friend to hang on and we punch it again. We pulled the wheels off the ground about two to three feet or so and got off of it long enough for the tires to touch the ground again and kept on keeping on. When we circled back around this cop was waving and giving us a big thumbs up. I just knew we were going to jail. It was getting late and we had enough fun for one night so we decided to head back to the condo.

I don’t know what we did but for some reason my friend’s dad was really happy the next day and let us carry the 32 out that night. We loved that car. It was totally pimp with a TV, cell phone (this was almost 20 years ago) and the most important thing heat/ac.

After the 8,372,623 time we heard “hey, ZZ Top” it started to get a bit annoying and people started seeing the back of our middle fingers. The car was red just like the car on the cover of “Eliminator” but we also realized that it looked like that car, even way back when we made it. So we didn’t need every geek on the strip to remind us. That car was sweet and so much fun to drive and you would be surprised how many girls you can cram into a car like that. After scoring some brew we wanted to head to a place where we wouldn’t get so much attention so we headed to this steak house and parked out back to drink for a bit. One of the kitchen staff guys came out to have a smoke and saw the car, we thought we were busted but he was cool and wanted to check out the car. Then he went and got some of his buddies and they will all kinds of excited and wanted to take pictures with the car and so on. Being the jackass that I am, I told them if they could score me and my friend a couple steak dinners we would let them take all the pictures that they wanted and I will be damned if they didn’t hook us up. Snap away fellas. Even the manager came out to get his picture taken with it. We just wanted to drink beer without getting busted by the cops, like I said we were still in high school.

After the free meal we decided to see just how lucky we were, off to the bars Batman! We roll into the parking lot of one of the biggest clubs on the beach, La Vela, and just ask the door guy if there was a place we could park where no one would mess with the car. The guy moves some cones so that we could park right by the door and he welcomes us in. We realized that something about those cars made door guys forget to id us. Advantage us! And since those were the only two cars we had with us we had to take one of them every time we went somewhere. Not getting carded makes up for all of the other hi-jinks.

Don’t get dead

Adventures of the young and stupid

I have an older brother. For those of you who don’t have an older brother, that means that I had many, many roles growing up. I was a crash test dummy, test pilot, experimentalist, test subject and so on. In other words I was Jim and my brother was Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Ever notice how Jim had to do the crap jobs while Marlin never got out of the helicopter? But I digress. In other words, I was Pinky while my brother was The Brain. In other words, it sucked!

Not only is Attila older than me, he is six years older than me. So yeah, my childhood contained a lot of ducking & weaving, scraps & bruises and a lot of psychological torture. To this day I still can’t sleep with my feet uncovered *shiver*. And this adventure would be more of the same.

When I was just a wee lad of only six years of age I had a hand-me-down Tonka truck, the big yellow dump truck. And it was made of steel, like toys used to be made, so that they lasted. Just like most young boys we made ramps to jump stuff with on our bikes. Any board we could find we would make into a ramp. On this particular day we had a piece of plywood that was maybe two and a half feet by two feet, not a very big piece of wood at all. This was soon to be a launching pad.

As my luck would have it, the only thing we could find to prop up said Evil Knievel approved projectile starter kit was a pair of concrete cinder blocks that just happened to be concreted together. So with the plywood laid on these cinder blocks the ramp is at about a 75 degree angle, nothing dangerous about that right?

Now we got the ramp, we just need something to jump it with. Remember earlier I was talking about a steel Tonka truck and I was talking about my brother being older and remember how I was talking about being the crash test dummy, you doing the math yet?

It was at an early age that I realized that my brother should have a career in politics. You see like every politician, my brother can lie with the best of them. He was pretty convincing this time. He says “hey, why don’t you sit in the bed of the dump truck and I will push you over the ramp.” Yeah, even at six I knew this was a bad idea. I told him that I didn’t want to do that. That’s what I told him, what I was thinking was why don’t you go F yourself! After a few minutes of discussing it, which went something like “do it or I’ll kick your ass and you BETTER not tell Mom”, I decided to give it a try. That is with the promise of he would just push me to the top of the ramp and if I didn’t like it he would not make me jump it. Yeah, I knew what was coming too.

So I go and sit in the bed of this big yellow death trap, staring at my fate. I get the truck lined up at the base of the ramp and say to my brother “Remember you said you would not make me do it if I don’t like it”. No sooner had the words “like it” come out of my mouth and ZOOM! Houston, we are clear for take off. In some sort of freak Herculean effort my 12 year old brother flung me up the ramp launching me skyward.

Right about this time I realized that we were under a pecan tree with low limbs. Mid-flight I am trying to get as low as I can will still gaining altitude, like an airborne limbo contest. One good crack on the head by a tree limb later and I am making my final decent.

Let me paint the picture for you. I was a normal sized 6 year-old and if you remember the bed of those Tonka trucks is about a foot wide. So I am sort of sitting across the bed of this truck, or should I say WAS sitting across the bed of it. When I slammed onto the ground the momentum that my body had decided to fill any space that was available in the bed of the truck, in other words I was stuck in this truck.

Oh yeah, he thought it was hi-freaking-larious. I on the other hand, failed to see the humor in it at the time. To this day he wonders why I don’t trust him. I can’t wait until we get old, payback is going to be hell.

Don’t get dead

Looking Back - Chapter 16

Before I get into this blog, I want everyone to understand that I have a VERY big soft spot in my heart for the handicapped, senior citizens, children and animals. I am by no way making fun of any of them, just telling a story that happened to me and making fun of myself.

As I may or may not have mentioned in the past, I have had a variety of jobs when I was younger. Dish washer, utility worker, lawn maintenance, peanut mill production line worker, banker, candle stick maker, Indian chief and so on.

One of those jobs that I had was a fill-in driver for a food service company, meals on wheels if you will. Most of our clients were senior citizen centers. Places where the able bodied senior members of society would gather Monday thru Friday. Usually they would play bingo and stuff like that. But in an effort to keep our business profitable we also took clients for day care centers & mental health facilities.

One this particular day I was working with a co-worker named Hector. Hector was teaching me the route, who gets what, how to load the truck in the order of the stops and so on. I liked Hector, he was cool, he had a great personality, liked jazz and loved women. We got a long well.

During the route Hector told me that we had a new client and that he was going to show me how to do an initial set up. When we get there I can see that it’s not a senior citizen center and I could see kids walking around, so I thought it was a day care. I was wrong.

Hector parks the truck and tells me to start unloading the stuff and that he was going to go in and find out where everything went and he would come back and get me. So I get everything off the truck and loaded onto a dolly. One thing that I didn’t mention is that it was August, which meant that it was as hot and muggy as Satan’s balls. After a couple of minutes I thought to myself, “screw this” and wheeled the stuff inside. Now I am standing in the very nice and cool air conditioned foyer of this school when I see this kid sitting on the floor and he starts to row a boat across the floor, but he isn’t in a boat. He is doing motions like he is rowing a boat and just scooting on his ass backwards across the floor. Ooookkkkaaay. As I am watching him row, I see another kid sitting on the floor leaning against wall. This young man is wearing a football helmet and has oven mitts duct taped to his wrist. I thought to myself, “Cool, they are at recess or playing a game”. I was wrong again. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! HOLY SHIT!!! He just starts slamming his head against the wall, HARD! And then tries to unfasten the chin strap, which must have been the reason for the oven mitts.

It’s at this point that I am praying that these kids don’t gang up on me because I would have come through the wall like the Kool-Aid man! I hear that they can smell fear.

So I let out a loud yet subtle, “HHEECCTTOORR!!” A couple of seconds later he comes around the corner and says that he will show me where to set everything up at. Thank god, I thought I was a goner.

We make our way to the room where we are supposed to set up everything and he gives me the run down. After we get everything set up Hector asked one of the teachers if there was anywhere that he could get a drink and she tells us where a water fountain is and mentions that there is a soda machine in the teachers lounge too. Hector opted for the soda and we make our way to the teachers lounge.

When we got to the teachers lounge there was a little girl standing by the soda machine with her hands clasp in front of her with her head down and looking very morose. We thought maybe she had gotten in trouble or something so we were going to be extra nice to her to try to cheer her up. We both said hello to her and asked how she was doing and she didn’t move a muscle. In an effort to not be annoying to the girl we just decided to get a soda and go about our business. Hector walks over to the machine and puts his money in, makes a selection and BAM, this little girl lunges and grabs the soda and then pfffffttt just slobbers all over the top of it. Without missing a beat, Hector says to her, “Yeah, you’re right, that one is yours” and then goes into his pocket to get more change. He again puts his money in the machine and the little girl, BAM/pffffffttt all over this one too. Hector is visibly taken back a little bit and turns to me and says, “Hey man, you think you can run interference for me? I am running out of money!” So there I am standing there like I am trying to block a four foot Kobe Bryant so that Hector can get a drink.

A dollar fifty later and he drops the damn thing walking out of the room!

Don’t get dead

People in the south are trendsetters

I know that the south has this reputation of being backwards and slow but when you examine it, they really are trendsetters, at least in areas of things for the house.

For instance, when I was young most houses had three bed rooms max, so what did people in the south do? They closed in the garage making a fourth bed room. And if that wasn’t enough they would take and close in the back patio, creating another room, which could be a bed room. Now, most houses in this area are at lest four bed rooms.

And I can remember seeing old claw foot bath tubs out in the yard where the home owner would fill it with water so that the sun could heat the water. What do you know, that was the first hot tub! Now people everywhere have hot tubs.

It was also common to see people with sinks, stoves, big grills, deep fryers and so on in their back yards. Now people call them outdoor kitchens. People called them redneck, little did they know that they were ahead of their time!

When I was growing up you could drive out in the country and see people with sofas, tables and chairs on their porch and patios. Well what do you know, those were outdoor living areas, which are one of the hottest trends now. Coincidence? I think not! Matter of fact, I heard a guy from England say how impressed he was with people in the south because they had so much money that they could buy furniture that they didn’t have room for in their house.

I am not here to try to bust any stereotypes here, I just saying … :)


Don’t get dead

Looking back – Chapter 15

Every now and then I remember something from my life that I feel the need to write about, put on the web and embarrass myself about in front of the world. This would be one of those times.

With Halloween right around the corner and we are decorating the offices some co-workers and I were discussing what to dress up as that goes with our theme. I don’t know if I have ADD or something but I started to laugh a little bit to myself. And if you read here you will see that sometimes I get the giggles at the wrong time.

Of course people wanted to know what I was laughing about and I told them that it just reminded me of something and that it wasn’t really related. Well these people work with me so they know I got stories, so I had to tell this one. Although it doesn’t relate to Halloween, Christmas actually, it does relate to dressing up.

Several years ago I lived in Virginia and I met and ran with a pretty crazy bunch, read about it HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. This time was no different.

Let me set the scene for you, four guys (myself, Drew, Winters and Phil) who can’t get home for Christmas who decided to meet at Winters house in VERY rural Virginia. The reason we were not able to get to our home towns was mostly money. Since we had saved money but didn’t save enough, you have four young adult guys with a decent load of cash and nothing to do, so yeah we got pretty drunk. Now we are drunk and bored, not good, not good at all.

We decided that we would go spread some Christmas cheer to the other townspeople. But not without the proper attire, so we raided Winters moms closet. (Side note, Winters family is all in California, which is where his mom was at this time) I don’t recall exactly who had what on but between the four of us there was a rain hat like the Morton salt guy, someone else had on the rain coat, a big cotton bath robe, some wild hats and various other items. I do remember that I had on some sort of silky robe and a beret or something like that. Oh and Phil had on some sort of house shoes shaped like ducks. Big ass yellow rubber ducks.

So we all loaded into my car, MY CAR, MY DAMN CAR, and head off to a neighboring town. As we are rolling down one street Drew yells out “STOP!” Now I have no idea what for so I stopped pretty quickly. Genius boy hops out of the car and runs into someone’s front yard toward a string of lights which were adorning the top of a fence. About half way through the sprint, Drew does an about face and DIVES back in the car yelling, “GO GO GO!!!” So I stood on the gas to get out of there. We all asked as the same time, “what happened?!” He tells us that he wanted to see if it was true that if you pulled one light out the whole string would go out, so that’s why he hoped out but he said he heard a man say “Oh no you don’t!” followed by the sound of a pump shotgun cock.

Once we are safely away we all got a chuckle out of it and we are still riding through town. It would be just about the time that our blood pressure had gotten back to normal levels that we pass THE ONLY FUCKING SHERRIF CAR ON DUTY that night when one of the guys says it looked like it was on the CB and pointing at our car. We joked that he was saying, “Hey, there goes a (my color and make of car) right there”. Well I will be dammed if that isn’t what he was saying because he bird-dogged our asses so quick we had no idea what was going on. It had to look like someone was getting it on as we are shedding our incognito attire and cramming beers any and everywhere we could find. Just about the time that we pull off our “costumes” we hear the sheriff over his PA system say, “You two in the front seats, get out of the car” so Drew and I get out and they separate us and ask us what was going on.

I am with the sheriff and he doesn’t look real happy while Drew is with a deputy. The only thing that kept going through my mind was “don’t get a DUI on Christmas in this godforsaken town out in the middle of nowhere”. I am sure that the dueling banjos scene from “Deliverance” was playing too. The sheriff asked me what we were up to and I told him everything, hell I would have given him a reach around if I thought it would keep me from going to jail that night. So I tell my story and then they open the back doors of their car and tell us to get in, OH FUCK ME! So there we are in the back seat when the sheriff asks Drew what we were up to and he starts to lay on some BS about one of the guys in the back seat farted and how it was making him sick, which is why he jumped out of the car. In about a half second I had to decide if I was going to choke this asshole in the back seat of a sheriff’s car or if I was going to have to set the story straight. Fortunately, I chose the second one. The whole time making promises to God if he would keep me out of jail. So Drew and I are exchanging dirty looks while the sheriff and the deputy are taking down our information.

Shortly there after, they get out of the car and opened the doors to the back seat and told us to step out. After we got out they told us to stay there and the sheriff gets on the PA again and tells the two in the back seat to get out.

Now you would have thought that in the SEVERAL minutes that had passed while Drew and I were being questioned that the two jackasses in the backseat would have gotten their collective shit together, WRONG!

I am standing next to the sheriff by the drives door and Drew is standing next to the deputy on the passenger door of their cruiser. Winters and Phil get out of the car and Phil is still wearing the duck slippers. I look over and the cops have saucer eyes and raised eyebrows. It was at this time that I had an involuntary reaction, I blurted out, “OH FUCK ME!” I thought that I was home free and then dildo Phil, Phildo, is wearing the damn duck slippers still.

The sheriff motions them over and the six of us have a little pow-wow, where at one point the sheriff says, “It appears to me that you boys might have been doing a little drinking tonight” which Phildo follows up with, “no shit”. Thanks jack ass, I hope Bubba picks you to be his Christmas bitch while we are in jail. After a lecture in the freezing we had a conversation that went like this.

Sheriff – “Why don’t you boys go ahead and follow the sun out of town.”

Phildo – “But it is night time”

Me – “Shut the fuck up Phil!”

Phildo – “Well it is!”

Me – “PHIL, SHUT UP!”

Phildo – “But dude, it is dark out, see (pointing to the sky)”

Me – “Get in the fucking car. I will explain it to you later”

Sherrif – “Good idea”

So we walk off towards my car when Phil says, “Hey, I think we just got kicked out of this town!” which was followed by a collective “SHUT UP PHIL!”

I will have to save what happened on Christmas day until a little closer to Christmas.

Don’t get dead

Looking back – Chapter 14

Earlier at my office we were talking about the change of season and what we enjoy about it. Allergies for some, pretty leaf colors for others and so on. Then I got to thinking about it and for me, it is lower electric bills. So we were talking about how it is nice to have the windows open and so on, which of course sparked a memory from my childhood. For any of you who don’t know, I grew up in a very small town in the south and I feel that may be a contributing factor to my skewed views on things.

So for a little back ground on this memory, as a child/young adult (hell to this date if I am in my home town) I had a friend whose family insisted that I visited them (his parents and both sets of grandparents) during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. So to say we were close is a given. And since we lived in a small town we all saw each other a lot. Back in those days it wasn’t any big deal for people to watch the children of friends, and since my buddy’s grandmother was retired she did just that when we were over.

Also important in this memory is that it was a warm summer day and, as most people in my home town were/are, my buddy’s grandparents where a bit frugal. So when the weather permitted his grandmother would open the back door of her house which leads to a screened in patio with a humongous fan, like a huge warehouse fan. And she would use the fan to blow air through the house to cool it as opposed to using the window unit air conditioners. If you were to walk into her backdoor you would be in a small storage room where she kept dry goods and a deep freezer, from there you would walk into her kitchen, this comes into the story in just a bit.

Now my friend’s grandmother was in her late 60’s early 70’s at this time, her hearing was not the best and she moved a bit slower than she once did but she was a super great woman.

So there my friend and I are in his grandmother’s backyard playing. I am sure at some point we were playing war, I would guess that playing cars occurred at some point and many other things that boys do to entertain themselves. At some point we worked our way over to grandma’s vegetable garden. She had a lovely garden with a ton of tomato plants in her garden. My friend and I thought it would be funny to throw some tomatoes into the fan to watch it chop them up so we gathered as many tomatoes as we could in our shirts and made our way over to the fan, probably about 15 feet or so away. Now we were expecting to see this thing blow tomato chunks everywhere, but that’s not what happened. My buddy chucked the first one into the fan and it disappeared. We thought he had his timing just perfect and must have missed one of the blades so I heaved one into the fan and the same thing. So we devised a plan that we would BOTH throw tomatoes into the fan at the same time because there was no way that we could both time it just right. So tomato after tomato we launched them into this fan and … NOTHING.

About this time my buddy’s mom pulls up to the grandmother’s house and lets herself in. What she saw was her mother slumped over the sink with all of this red stuff all over her back and the back of her head and this red liquid dripping off of her. Thinking that her mother had been shot, his mom let out a blood curdling scream and we hauled ass inside to see what was going on.

What really happened was my buddy’s grandmother went into the storage room to get some stuff to make for lunch and apparently as she was walking out and doing stuff in the kitchen we where just covering her with tomato puree, which is why they tomatoes just disappeared into the fan. And the reason that she was slumped over the sink is because she was peeling potatoes.

I am not 100% sure, but I think that I am still on restriction and I know my ass was sore for a long time.

Don’t get dead

Last Night

I did something bad last night, really bad.

When I came home from work yesterday I went and cut the lawn and did a couple of things that needed to be taken care of outside. So after the lawn work was done and I got to a point on my outdoor projects that I was satisfied that I was at an acceptable stopping place so I went and sat on the back porch to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

For some reason, I felt the need to start a fire.

Don’t worry it was in my fire table. In case you don’t know, a fire table is an outdoor coffee table with a pit (for the lack of a better word) that you can light a fire in.

So there I am in the back yard with all of the exterior lights out, a fire burning and enjoying a nice drink.

And that’s when it happened.

I started to daydream just a little bit and decided to enjoy some music. I went to get my iPod and had this uncontrollable urge to listen to a mix of classic rock and southern rock. As I am gazing into the flames with a nice gentle breeze blowing I started to reminisce. I am sure that the memory inducing sounds of Boston, Bad Company, The Black Crows, Y&T, Autograph 38 Special, The Eagles & The Allman Brothers didn’t contribute to this preverbal trip down memory lane. But it was the first handful of notes and the words “Turn it up” of Lynard Skynard’s “Sweet Home Alabama” that kicked this trip into overdrive.

So there I am thinking back to bonfire parties at Jason Jones’ house, Chad (whose last name escapes me right now) land, the old Barn, the clay pits, Hollywood or any of the other places that we used to hang out at back home.

My mind couldn’t help but to think back to a multitude of Friday or Saturday fall nights with 30 – 50 of my best friends circling some form of burning wood, be it pallets, a tree that someone cut down or God knows what, with someone’s car stereo playing The Eagles’ “Seven Bridges Road” with almost everyone singing along. Of if I only had a tailgate to sit on at that time…

As this stroll through the outer banks of my memory continued, I can clearly remember talks of either the next day’s or that day’s SEC game and the friendly bickering back and forth between fans of rival teams. And I can remember knowing that if you saw this person, that person was either at the party or would be there shortly. So I guess I was getting a bit home sick.

That’s when it happened. As I looked back to the people in those memories I would this about this person or that person or this couple and then I would remember, oh they aren’t together and this person isn’t alive any more oh and I haven’t seen this guy in …. wow 15 years, I wonder what they are doing now and so many other things went through my mind.

And as I was looking back at some of the best memories of my life, I realized that life has moved on. And not that people have changed necessarily but that life has changed. And even though I am happy for everyone, I got a little sad for a moment thinking about how those are just memories now. Those times are no more. Not that the people are gone, but the situations are gone. No more will we be able to rally the troops for those great parties that we used to have. Of course I should be one to talk considering that I live half way across the country now. But what I would give for one more.

One more time where all of those faces would be there again. Once more, where we could all enjoy those laughs one more time. Just one more time to just see everyone, as we were, living the greatest lives known to man.

I know that they are just memories now, but I cherish them.

Don’t get dead

The Fourth of July is almost here!!

And hospitals all over the country are getting their burn units ready! The good times are about to roll. Oh and my wife wont let our children get anywhere near fireworks. Want to know why? Because they have my DNA in them, that’s why. Let me hip you cool cats to some history.

As it draws closer and closer to the holiday we have noticed children playing with fireworks. First it was some kids throwing those little white paper things that pop when they hit something hard. That’s cute, little kids jump when they throw them at each others feet. One day we saw some kids who were throwing firecrackers at each other, my wife made a comment on how dangerous it was and I, without even realizing I did it, said “lightweights”. This is where I should have given myself temporary amnesia or something but NOOOO I couldn’t let me ego go unnoticed, I had to say something.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but I have a brother, an older brother. Not only is he older, he is six years older than I am. So yeah, we got into a lot of trouble as kids. You ever watch that cartoon “Pinky and the Brain”? Want to wager a bet as to who was who? So yeah, hell yeah, I got burn scars all over my body. Roman candle here, bottle rocket there and so on. You see, not only is my brother the brains in many of our operations, he and I both have my fathers DNA in us too and my dad was an extremist. For example, our pool only needed a ½ horsepower motor for the pump, but my dad had a 1 ½ hp motor put on it. (Can you hear the Tim the Toolman Taylor grunt? Agh agh agh, more power!!) At one point you could wakeboard in our pool from the jets. So yeah, we might tend to go overboard just a bit from time to time.

So anyway, back to why I should have kept my mouth shut. After I made my little comment I proceeded to tell my wife how when I was younger we used to have full on bottle rocket wars. There was one time that if you didn’t know better you would think that we were getting ready to go on a special ops mission to capture Castro ourselves. We had those brown paper grocery sacks full of fireworks (see going overboard comment above). If it exploded, we had it. If it flew AND exploded we had a lot of them. Then we put our game plan together. Not only did we shoot self propelled explosives at the neighbors (they shot back, its ok) we improvised some ourselves.

So there the Brain and I are, ready to release shock and awe on the neighborhood. The first part of the plan was the smoke screen, literally. We took a propane touch, which we used to light everything with, and lit the fuses on bags and bags of smoke bombs and throw them all up and down the street as close to the “enemy” as we could get them. You couldn’t see their house any more we had lit so many smoke bombs. Then we unleashed a barrage of roman candle fire upon them. But that just didn’t have the right kick, we need more firepower!! So we found a piece of metal fence post and used it as a bazooka. Yeah, there I am posed like one of those little green Army men, my brother behind me with the blow torch and dozens and dozens of bottle rockets. We didn’t even unwrap them, we just lit the whole damn thing and shoved them in the end of this pipe which I had aimed at the neighbors house. They never knew how many of what was coming at them, poor souls.

But it wasn’t just the bottle rocket wars, I couldn’t stop there. Once while at one of the neighborhood kids house I just happen to be in the process of sitting down on their porch when one of them light a bottle rocket that they were going to shoot across the front of the porch. Yeah, I timed it just right and caught right between my butt and the porch. I also have a really nice fireball shaped scar on my leg where, in the mist of a roman candle war where we were about 12 feet away from each other, I got shot in the leg and the fireball went into the top of my untied high top tennis shoe. Not only did it hit me in the leg, my shoe held it against my ankle. One of the kids across the street shot his brother in the chest with a whistler which blow his shirt to pieces and left him with some nice small burn marks.

So I may have ruined the Fourth of July and New Years for my kids.

Don’t get dead