Tip's Truck Mart 1: The Tow Truck

Back in 95, I was living in Crackville, and my relationship with the girl I was living with was pretty much in its last throes. It got to the point that a rain day from work wasn't much of a bonus, given that I'd have to spend it with her. So when, on a rainy Friday morning, "Jim" called me up and proposed a harebrained scheme that would net me two hundred bucks, I said "sure!"

At the time, Jim was working at an auto auction. Dealers would buy used cars at the auction, then rent a car hauler to get them back to their lots. If there was an odd number of cars, though, they'd pay someone to drive the thing there. It was good money, if you could find a cheap way back.

That was to be my job--following Jim to Topeka KS in his mother's car, picking him up, and driving him back to Oklahoma City. HIS job was to drive a 1978 Chevy 2 1/2 ton tow truck. When he came to pick me up, he insisted on spending fifteen minutes digging through my tape collection, because he thought he'd seen a tape deck in the thing. While he did so, I perused his "contact sheet," a printed order showing the address and contact info. The vehicle was going to Tip's Truck Mart, and the blank beside "contact" was filled with "Max Mart." I made sure there was a phone number.

On the way to the auction lot, Jim told me how it was gonna go: we'd drive up there, drop the truck with a guy named Max, who lived behind the lot in some sort of shack at the top of some wooden steps. Max would give us cash, Jim would give me two hundred bucks, and we'd drive home. The whole exercise should take no more than thirteen hours, including the drive both ways.

Of course, I wasn't foolish enough to believe it was actually going to work like that, but it was attractive because a) it got me out of the house and away from a clingy girlfriend, b) it was a road trip, and c) it paid two hundred bucks. In no time, I was following him out of town.

14 Years Gone Now...

Damn, I'm surprised this thing hasn't been deleted yet...but here we go, a short story pertaining to my recent life:

I got my job at NWL through the auspices of the mother of TLJO, who was the mother to a lot of us back in those heady days of the early, early 90's. Later, I found out that my dressing up for the job interview (complete with sportcoat and tie) was kinda unnecessary, because mom had loaned the Man some money, and was using it as a kind of crowbar to get me on there.

So, knowing the Man, he hired me with great resentment in his heart. On my 19th birthday, in fact.

The first day, I walked to work, which was all of a couple of blocks. The Man looked at me and said "you weren't supposed to start til tomorrow. Ah well, I guess I'll find something." He sent me out on a mow crew full of stoners, but warned me that I would be helping on the "bed crew" for the duration of my stay there.

A couple hours later, a guy on another of our crews caught me at a yard and asked me where the water faucet was...it was his first day, he explained, and he didn't know anything. I guess I already looked like a mowhand. That was Chuck Phoenix, Dan.

The next day I met my foreman, an idiot named Mark. Mark talked like Divine and had some serious dental issues, plus he wore baby blue sweatpants and shaved his legs, for reasons I'd rather not get into...but he had been to school for horticulture, and so I respected his authoritay.

Mark taught me to detect bullshit, actually--not because he knew how to detect it, but because he was constantly spewing it. In a way, it was like watching some indestructible moron walk through a minefield--you learn what NOT to do by watching him fuck up.

The first couple of days we spent picking weeds, and that went OK. Then we were sent to a bed install job, which basically entailed humping giant wheelbarrows of topsoil over curbs and up steep ramps, without chipping brick at the end of it. Mark lasted 3 whole days, then quit. In retrospect, Mark wasn't the one the Man wanted to quit.

A week later (a week I spent pulling weeds at old ladies' houses, listening to them talk about their grandkids or dead cats, getting fed candy, and wondering when I was gonna get paid), Mark was back, and the summer well and truly began.

Don't kid yourself. It was menial, tedious work, and I was very glad when I was moved to a mow crew, that fall.

Mowing was different, and better--I lost my fear of dangerous machinery, the day went much faster, and I might have even gotten a little raise. And the people were cooler.

The following spring, I got my own mow crew. I thought I was doing pretty well--less than a year, I went from low-man to bossing people around...and I think I did pretty well. I took to the regularity of mowing, although I still hated the drudgery of doing the same thing every time, and thus got to know a large part of the city by taking alternate routes to the various jobsites. I coulda been a cabbie.

Five years later, we got an employee named Ed. Ed was about forty years old, gray where he wasn't bald, smelled bad, and talked about "pussy" and "weed" in a way I thought was the domain of people even younger than ME (I think I was 24 at the time). But for Ed, I might still be there--because when I looked at Ed, I saw me, 20 years from now, taking orders from some longhaired punk and not being real sure where all the years before had gone.

And, hey, I was 24 in 1996--the world was my oyster, yo. TLJO and I made plans--floating the Mississippi (foiled by the floods and our giant-ass LSD habit), walk the Continental Divide, etc.. Stuff MY dad dreamed of doing, and I think everyone does (Twin B and the Appalachian Trail, for instance)...but instead, I gave my notice and my reasons, and the Man talked me out of it.

The company was in dire need of technical support at the time--schedules were being printed off a spreadsheet at the time, but billing was still being done by hand, and that looked pretty bad to the bigger contracts we were getting. So in 1996, I sold out.

Two years later, I had a company owned car, a company owned computer, life insurance, a HOUSE, two company credit cards, and an ulcer.

Two years after THAT, I had health insurance, credit card debt, and a bleeding ulcer.

And six years after that, I'm here.

So, add it up--fifteen years. And you know what I got?

"Well, thanks!"

Yup. No watch, no fucking bonus, no nothin'. Don't let the door...sayonara, sucka. ..

Beh.

Merry Holidays

tgiving17, originally uploaded by houdinisblind.

From the Minuard Foundation.

Flock of Seagulls 1: Housewarming

Sometime in 94 or 95, Chuck had moved into an apartment fairly close to my place in Crackville, and began having regular parties. The first party was a housewarming party, since he'd lost most of his household stuff when he moved out of his ex-girlfriend's place. I dutifully brought some kind of kitchen implement, but it appeared that most people were just there to drink. Which was fine, I guess. Chuck didn't seem to care.

Over the course of the evening, I got to meet all sorts of people. Edless, of course, was right in the middle of everything, as were various current and former skinhead guys, including a crazy dude named Ben, fresh out of the Marines, and Dusty and John M, who were not. There were also twenty or thirty people from Cox Cable, where Chuck worked, and it seemed like fifty people of the hipster/rockabilly crowd. Yes, it was a Big Party, but it didn't really get started until Terry showed up.

Now, I've talked about Terry before, over on Midian, but it was a while back. Terry was a big, loud guy who sold cable television door to door with Chuck. Terry was quite a bit older than us, but nevertheless managed to fit in because he was utterly crazy. In this case, he walked in the door, located Chuck, and handed him a flyer. "I stuck about 500 of these on cars down on 10th Street," he said, grabbing a bottle of rum out of someone's hand, "they'll probably start showing up after the strippers leave at 2am."

Chuck handed me the flyer. The top of it said "PARTY!" in big black letters, and below that was a grainy picture of a topless girl. Below, various phrases caught my eye: "oil wrestling," "naked chicks," "free keg." And Chuck's address.

Yes, it was utterly over the top. Surely he wouldn't do that, right? Right! He agreed that it was all a joke, fished for compliments about the flyer, and rummaged in the fridge for one of my beers. The flyer was forgotten.

Sometime after one AM, the party thinned out. The remaining revelers were snoozing or policing the apartment, as I recall, when the doorbell rang. Two rather scruffy looking guys stood outside:

"Hey, they a party off in here?"

"Huh?"

"We got a flyer, man. Where all the women at?"

"What? Let me see that. Where the fuck did you get this?"

"Down on 10th Street, man! Now come on, where's the party? Where's the oil rasslin?"

"Look, there's no fucking party. There's no girls here."

"What? Sure looks like a party!"

"The party's over. Just go home."

"No girls?"

"No girls."

"I see why. You so mean, you ran 'em all off!"

"Ha ha, very funny."

"All right, man, better luck next time."

MLWS: Against My Better Judggment

I stole a song that reminds me so strongly of my manchildhood (that period between age 22 and 26 or so) that I had to tell you guys about it. I don't know how long it will last, or what form it's going to take, precisely, but it's another part of my life that I haven't really talked about...

GG and Rebecca, you know some of these people. Keep it to yourself, although feel free to correct me via email if you feel I'm getting something wrong.

Sometime after the giant acid retailing days of the early nineties, and after the brief social remission I had as a result, I somehow hooked up with a couple of old friends from my second go-round with college. We had drifted apart after I left college the second time, mostly because they didn't approve of drugs and I didn't approve of gun running...which sounds kind of melodromatic, but it's the truth. Although I didn't really have any problem with gun-running morally, you understand, I just didn't feel comfortable storing crates of contraband in my rather limited closet space. I prefered wafers and doused papers to crates and gun oil, in other words. Inconvenient.

Anyway, they were my friends, and while I'm not sure how we jumped the gap between "friends" and "hanging out regularly again," I'm pretty sure it wasn't my fault.

There was a lot of deep background that I could expound upon, if I felt like giving you the best foundation in My History, but this isn't a history blog, it's a story blog, so I'll just pick it up...sheesh...what was the first memorable story?

Ah, jeez. The first memorable story...no, it's not memorable, at least not for you. For me, well, let's see:

Edless was a big guy, smart, but with a short temper and a broad waistline, which seemed at odds with his abundant energy and professed lifestyle...I wasn't really sure if I liked him or not, but he sort of came as a package (one of those annoying heat-sealed-plastic packages that takes a boxcutter to get into) with another friend of mine, Chuck. Keeping it simple, Chuck and I had met the previous semester because he was doing a paper on Satanism in Oklahoma....and...well, we became friends. Not due to Satanism, you understand (although lots of Evil Dead movies and whiskey were involved), but due...well, yes, perhaps it was whiskey. Anyway, by the end of 1995 I was a regular invitee to some of Chuck's parties.

It soon became apparent to me that Chuck had a lot of rather colorful friends. Now, I'd pretty well plumbed the depths of colorful people as far as punks, acidheads, hippies, hipsters, homos and hoodlums is concerned, but I found in Chuck's crew a gang of people who seemed...as energetic, as happy, and as dissolute as my own crew. The difference was their...creed, you might call it. Most of the specific group I want to talk about were skinheads of various sorts--I want to be clear that Chuck's friends were not predominately skinheads, but rather the group that I'm talking about was primarily skins.

Eh, I know this is rather disjointed, but I've been working my way up to telling these stories for quite some time. Personally, I'm not one for joining any group, much less one that requires a haircut and a uniform...

But tomorrow, or sometime soon, I'll tell you drunken stories.

Yes, feel free to jump the gun and start a comment thread about consorting with fascists and such. I'll be here, and I have a much bigger font than you. Sucka.

Rudy Jones: Predatory Mites

Since I can't seem to Google any references to Rudy on my own fucking blog, I'm hoping I don't tell the same story again. For those of you who weren't reading (assuming anyone still IS reading), Rudy was a chemical applicator for me several years ago. He's absolutely wacko, but quite charming in his own way.

Now, Rudy was really superhuman when it came to a lot of things. He sprayed more turf than I've ever seen anyone spray, ate hugely (my boss once followed him down May, and watched him stop at six fast food restaurants in the span of half an hour), and had an optimism about life and his place in it that I haven't seen matched anywhere outside of the White House.

But Rudy had weaknesses. Gurls, as you're all aware, could wrap him around their cruel talons with a smile. The sight of his own blood caused him to shut down for a week. And he had a fear of the microscopic that bordered on supernatural obsession.

Rudy believed to the core of his being that there were bugs that lived in and under his skin. These bugs came and went periodically, and made their presence known by boils or eruptions on his skin. To me, these looked like quarter-sized scabs, but to Rudy, they were tiny parasites, or monsters. He regaled me with earnest tales of cutting them open to try and dig out the little critter inside, with varying results. "Normally I get 'em," he said, "but sometimes they just move."

Once I saw what Rudy was using to dig around (in his own flesh, let's be clear on this), I was sure that the problem wasn't anything other than a very bad skin condition (brought on by not fucking bathing for weeks on end) complicated with unclean "surgical tools." The original tool was an X-acto knife, which was crusted with matter and secreted in the glove box of his work truck, but later he switched to a swiss army knife the company handed out as gifts one Christmas. Sometimes, when his flesh was very tender, he'd dig into his face with a toothpick.

Gross, huh? Where did these bugs COME from, you ask?

Off trees. Cedar trees, specifically.

See, his face was bad, but not truly horrifying, until the second winter he was living in his car. Previous to this, he'd taken a shower pretty regularly (although not exactly frequently), but upon losing his apartment and moving back into the MMRU, the whole hygiene thing just fell apart for him. Further complicating this was the fact that he spent most nights in a crappy little restaurant very close to my house, which had both off track betting and the dubious patronage of Jamelle Holloway.

(As an aside, will someone please tell me I'm not an old coot because I know the name Jamelle Holloway?)

Thus, he spent most evenings that fall and winter hunkered over a draw beer and a plate of greasy steak, eyeing the big screens and the firm buttocks of the serving staff, who soon learned they made a lot of money if they'd just shut up and smile.

But as time wore on, his face became a serious problem. It got bad enough that children (and not a few housewives) were scared of him, and I began urging him to see a doctor, or barring that, start bathing nightly.

"Aw, man, them doctors don't know nothin'! I know what it is already!"

"What, then?"

"Predatory mites! They jumped off them cedar trees we put in a few months back, and I been trying to get the little suckers out of my face for the longest time!"

He went on to tell me that it's a well known fact that predatory mites get on people all the time, and while they rarely do serious injure to people, they're also hard to get rid of. Rudy felt that the only way to really get them to leave was to keep their little entry wounds open, so they could crawl out on their own. Thus, the X-acto knife in the truck, so he could work on them during lunch.

This went on for several months, but as his face worsened, his outlook worsened, so by springtime (that is, after his wrongful arrest for DUI, which is another story), we forced him to visit a doctor.

Of course, we paid for it, and had to pitch it to him in terms of our own peace of mind, but he did go. The doctor wrote him a prescription for an antibiotic, and told him to start washing his fucking face already.

But Rudy wasn't convinced. "Aw, man, them doctors don't know what they're talking about. It was one of them minimum wage doctors, anyway. He never even heard of predatory mites!"

Yowza. What An Angry Bastard I Was

I was sitting here diggin' on this cold, slippery twelve pack of mass-brewed beer and looking back through the archives of this thing to see what exactly I could write about Rudy Jones that I haven't already, and came up with this post. The gist:

Get Your Own Blog

I can't say that I love you, kids. At least some of you. I can't say that I care too much about you, either--not because I feel like I'm some sort of blogstar or whatever, but just because I've emptied out my compassion and patience reservoirs over the last few months, for good and bad reasons...but really, sirs and ladies, what the fucking holy Jesus Christ on a stick do I owe any of you, at least w/r/t this blog? Not a damn thing, other than my own self imposed madness concerning telling you stories about my own life.

So, to get to the specifics, fuck you. Fuck you, you idiots that can't imagine anything beyond your next paycheck. Fuck you, you bitches who can't understand anything beyond the driving of an SUV from work, to Wal Mart, and home. Fuck you, you dipshits who don't understand that it's only yours inasmuch as you bought it and there are more important ties in the real world than a goddamn bill of sale, or treaty. There are things that supersede pens and paper and the agreements that treacherous bastards in Washington think are best. It's nothing==The feel of earth in your hands, the feeling of having dirt on your hands, and knowing it's your soil, your land, your life....

The IRA. Steinbeck, and anarchists and labor organizers and the motherfuckerst that truly understand what it takes to live a life on this planet, a life without getting kicked in the face by The Man, a life without getting bled dry by some asshole on welfare...

OK, I can ramble for days about what is good....but I've got someone already here to help load, and I've got another surprise visitor who doesn't know he's being suckered into helping load, so I must go and snaggle my snares. Extra good, since I've now found a second G and T that needed to be made.

Sigh...ah well, I don't know who's still checking this thing now, but I'm sure you've been disappointed recently. There's more in there, but...well, the stuff on the top is just excuses, and you've got to have a prybar and a snorkel, or be willing to sleep with me, to get at much of what's below that recently.

Perhaps it's becoming all drab and mundane--perhaps I should start lying, or rather, introducing some fiction into things. But you know me now, so I'd have to surreptitiously start another one, and develop a following over THERE (which I'm not sure the writing would be enough to pull...).

Shit. Well, I can't seem to find ANY of the RQJIII stuff, so I'm going to let this post do for now, and think about something easy. I think I have a couple that I can edit and throw up real quick...