Pyrian on 11/3/2019 at 23:07
Quote Posted by curseofnight
I remember one about how my grandma won a pissin' contest.
...That's not a figure of speech this time, is it? D:
curseofnight on 11/3/2019 at 23:37
Quote Posted by Pyrian
...That's not a figure of speech this time, is it? D:
Nope, not a figure of speech, she pissed over 20 feet. That's the distance she swore by, anyway, lol.
@ tocky - I've heard a variation of that joke before, only in this one the fella who brought the horse was white and the fella who sold it was black.
My step brother is black and my fav crazy uncle is white and whenever they get together, all they do is tell racist 'black' and 'white' jokes to one-another. I mean, they can keep that shit going for hours (when one stops, the other is like 'oh yeah, I heard this from a fellow at work', etc...) That shit is hilarious, lol. I wish I could post some of that here as It's fucking hilarious, but I know someone(aka, some 'white person') would get offended...(this has been a running joke sense I was a kid - about how 'white people' always get offended on behalf of blacks...) I grew up, and still live in a 90% black community and in my experience, black people love a good 'black joke', as long as it's original, contains a grain of truth and, above all - actually Funny! I mean, that is the baseline for all jokes - who woulda thunk it?
Tocky on 12/3/2019 at 04:05
Black folks. Okay fuck it, let's talk about black folks. I've always felt they had a slightly different culture but they are the same in so many ways. I've felt guilty I never had a forever black friendship, not that it should even be a consideration. A dude named Dereck in the service I hung out with and traveled about carousing with. Nothing deep. We drifted. But I've gotten on with them, laughed with them, discussed things both serious and not. I used to sit on a back dock at Kellwood where I met my wife and smoke a J after lunch with a guy named Darius. He used to literally hide from work and that amused me. He had a fort built of boxes near the back of the warehouse he would hide in. I would come shoot the shit for awhile but I have that prol work ethic that guilts me if I do too much slacking. I helped him move a fridge once with my '76' Trans Am. No idea how. The trunk is like three feet deep at most. Must have been wedged good. We ate with his folks (about a dozen of them) after and some of them told racist jokes but I was never that comfortable even if I could have recalled any. I laughed. Not too hard just in case. Saw my first black Jesus painting there. His mom appreciated I could recall the passage where it describes Jesus as having hair like wool. I didn't tell her I recalled it from an episode of Good Times and not the Bible though.
Mostly we drift apart at some point. I only have a core of four long term friends and none of them are black. I've also drifted from a lot of white guys I really like so maybe I shouldn't feel too guilty. I haven't seen my buddy Ace since my father in laws funeral. Ace loved that guy. I reckon my FIL treated him real well. Maybe guilt in his old age. Buying his way into heaven or something. He sure as hell didn't treat my wife well. He had a black son he never saw too. WE didn't even find out about my wife's brother until he was grown. Maybe with Ace (I worked with Ace about ten years before he moved to where my FIL worked) he was making up for being an asshole in his early years. Ace said he told him stories about how bad he was when he was young and felt bad about it. I can't forgive the man though. I know how deeply he hurt my wife. Ace is funny and just as bald faced honest as anyone can get so maybe that was a part of it too. Our paths haven't crossed since the funeral though.
Working on my second Ken black friend now. You wouldn't think there would be that many. I told the first his parents named him that for camouflage. He told me that was right, that they didn't notice he was black with that name. He moved off to Texas and managed a dealership out there. Then I noticed a fellows name was the same last as Ken's while waiting in line at Pizza Hut and looking at the ready board. I asked was he kin and he said they were cousins. We talked about him for awhile before I asked how he was doing now. Dead. Heart attack. He always was kind of heavy. I wished I hadn't asked but that's the kind of crap you learn when you let folks drift away. I remember he asked me should he take money from an ex klansman once. He said some folks were giving him a hard time for doing work for him. I told him hell yeah, take ALL his money, make it an asshole tax in the final tally too. He liked that idea. The Ken now I've been friends with about fifteen years. I sold him my old Camero and then some asshole stole it and blew the engine before he could even paint it. He has been over to eat with us but we don't hang out a lot. He is real religious and I am a devout hedonist so....
I was working toward a story but sidetracked myself with memories too much. Maybe I'll get to it next time. LOL about your grandma. With muscles like that I bet she kept grandpa happy.
curseofnight on 12/3/2019 at 05:50
I had something stupid posted here. Nothing bad or anything. I was just wasted last night, lol.
Oh god Tocky! I did not wanna think about that this morning, lol.
Well, time drink some coffee, get woke up, and go do some grownup stuff. :/
Dia on 12/3/2019 at 16:53
I never had any black friends as a kid, mostly because I grew up in an all-white small town in N.E. Illinois, about 35 miles north of Chicago, in the 50s and there just weren't a lot of black people living in the area. Even through highschool in the 60s there were only maybe about a handful of black students and they tended to stick together; not that they weren't friendly or anything, they just hung out together. You have to consider that 1965, my freshman year, was the same year as the Watts, California riots and racial tensions were high, though not so much at my highschool or even in the area in which I lived. As I said, the black population was very low in our small towns back then, so I and my peers never really had much interaction with them. Throughout my adult life I've worked with black people now and then and have managed to form a lasting friendship with a few. I don't refer to them as my black friends; they're just my friends, period.
You see, my mom was born and raised in Germany and told us stories of what it was like to go through WWII, bombings and all. One story in particular always made me cry and that was the story of how she lost her best friend in the whole world when her friend and friend's family were arrested and taken to Dachau. At the time my mom didn't understand what happened to her friend and didn't know anything about a place called Dachau; one morning when she stopped at her friend's parents' bakery to pick her up for the walk to school mom saw that the bakery had been boarded up and there was some kind of official-looking notice posted on the bakery door. Before she could read it the wife of the butcher next door rushed out, grabbed my mom and dragged her into the butcher shop, telling her to never, ever stop at that bakery again. The butcher's wife only told my mom that her friend and friend's family had 'gone away' and wouldn't be coming back. Mom said that when she got home later that day and asked her mom about it, all my grandma would say is that my mom could
never mention outside the family that she was friends with Lieselotta or that she knew Liesel's family. My mom said that at the time she was crushed and crying and told my grandma that she hated the people who took her friends away and wanted those people to be punished. It was years before my mom understood what had really happened. Mom told my brother & I other stories of how she lost more Jewish friends during the next couple years, before my mom & her family had to flee to western Germany to escape the invasion of Russian troops.
So yeah, my sibs & I were raised by an anti-racist mother and father, even though back then we didn't even know the term. Nor did my brother and I understand the term 'Nazi-brats', which is what one neighborhood man called us when we stopped by his house to see if his daughter Sally could come out to play and he told us to get the fuck off his property (this was the early 50s, mind you, right after WWII). All we knew back then was that it made my mom cry when we asked her why Mr. Bellman called us that and asked what it meant and then it made my dad so mad that he stormed out of the house after mom told him and he paid a visit to Mr. Bellman (Dad was former USAF who'd been stationed in Germany after the war which was how he met my mom). The man never called us that again, but it must've been passed around the neighborhood because for quite a few months my brother and I were remanded to playing in our own yard; none of the other kids were allowed to play with us, but we didn't understand why. Life in a small American town post-WWII when your mom is from Germany. *smh*
Fast forward to a few years ago when my granddaughter (my only daughter's only daughter) told me that her boyfriend of the past two years is black. Have to say I wasn't surprised; she'd attended a highschool where over 50% of the students are black. Keep in mind that my granddaughter's sperm donor (okay, biological father; I don't like him & never did because he's an asshole and I still don't understand what my daughter ever saw in him) is Hispanic; a fact that never bothered me at all, but I was surprised when a friend referred to my granddaughter as 'mixed'. Guess I just never thought about her that way. Two years ago my granddaughter found out she was pregnant by her boyfriend; her BC implant had failed. My only concern was for my granddaughter, her boyfriend and my future great-grandbaby and, considering the political climate that was growing then, how they would have a tough row to hoe because of the blatant racism that started re-emerging with the election of a new POTUS. Not trying to make this a post about politics, but from where I'm sitting, racism
is running rampant .... again ..... and I detest that fact. I guess the only positive to this mess is that the racists are outing themselves and highlighting the flaws that still exist in our society, which in my mind means we obviously need to work on those flaws and fix them. But that's going to take time, I think, and in the meanwhile my granddaughter, her partner and their little boy will have to deal with that ugly racism, as will both of our families.
During her pregnancy I got a chance to know her boyfriend and he turned out to be a great person; a young man who'd worked all through highschool and who was taking college courses to get a degree in business administration. I met his family and instantly took to his grandma and his mom; get them together and I end up with my sides aching from all the laughter. They're good people, plain and simple, and they raised a wonderful young man who is deeply in love with my granddaughter. I stopped thinking in terms of black or white a long time ago; now I just think in terms of people. Currently, my granddaughter and her partner are both working while taking college courses and in the process of looking to buy their first home. I am so proud of those kids that my heart is near to bursting!
I'm still concerned with the racism that's running amok in our country and that my granddaughter, her now-fiancee and their beyond-precious little man have to endure that outright racism on occasion, but thankfully, so far it's just been a few nasty glares in their direction or a quickly-spoken snarky remark, both of which can be ignored. I absolutely HATE it that my sweet granddaughter and her partner have to be on the defensive too often when they go out together and though both hide it well, I know it's there. I just wish I could re-make this world into a better place for them and my great-grandson. Hell, I thought I was doing just that when I marched in all those anti-racism protests and participated in all those anti-racism events and volunteered with several anti-racism organizations back in the day. Well, back to the drawing board, as they say; it's not like I don't know how to fight against racism and bigotry, right? Been there, done that. It's just sad that we have to do it again. In the meantime I plan on enjoying the company of my extended family and doting on my first great-grandchild and spoiling him rotten, just like I did his mother and her mother before her. The devil can take the rest while my great-grandson bestows sloppy baby-kisses on my face. ;)
2017: Daughter and granddaughter (granddaughter just found out she's pregnant)
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/WFtqhYK.jpg2018: Granddaughter, future grandson-in-law and their precious little man
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/pJ2DcBN.jpg2019: Great-grandson at 14 months (he's got his mama's eyes)
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/eBHjyUl.jpg2019: How can you not absolutely love this child?!!
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/Onigl7M.jpg
Harvester on 12/3/2019 at 17:41
Great story and beautiful pics, Dia!
Being half of a mixed-race couple now since a few weeks I wonder if we'll ever encounter the kind of racism you describe, like if we'll ever get racist comments when we we're walking hand-in-hand down the street or in the city center. Hasn't happened so far but I suppose it could happen. I haven't worried about it so far and I don't plan on worrying about it in the future. Of course if push comes to shove I'm prepared to defend and protect my girlfriend.
Tocky on 13/3/2019 at 03:48
Quote Posted by Dia
I'm still concerned with the racism that's running amok in our country and that my granddaughter, her now-fiancee and their beyond-precious little man have to endure that outright racism on occasion, but thankfully, so far it's just been a few nasty glares in their direction or a quickly-spoken snarky remark, both of which can be ignored. I absolutely HATE it that my sweet granddaughter and her partner have to be on the defensive too often when they go out together and though both hide it well, I know it's there. I just wish I could re-make this world into a better place for them and my great-grandson.
I don't think it's as dire as you fear. I've worried too that it's making a comeback but I think it's mostly the assholes are more vocal and, as you said, that makes them more visible and now you know who they are. Most families have at least extended family of color now. Heck, check my pics from last weekend on FB. The Tocky family got some soul. What's funniest to me is that it's usually the most racist member who now has a grandchild of color and has to change their tune. In fifty years we will be so mixed the racist crap will be gone. Of course then everyone will hate blondes so you are still screwed. Nah kidding. You will be dead. Me too.
You have an absolutely lovely family and I'll kick anyone in the nuts who says different. Those eyes and that smile of your grandson tell me that boy needs to be thrown in the air and spun in circles and taken fishing and to the zoo and to a carnival. Thanks for sharing your story. You are a peach.
Tocky on 23/3/2019 at 17:00
What is your earliest memory? Think back. Got it? Nope. That ain't it. We remember a lot farther back than we think we do. I was in an antique store as I'm want to waste a weekend doing and saw an old push walker/stroller thing made of sharpened steel and splintery wood as we used to do it and it sparked a memory. It was a different color but it was the same as the one I recall. I was at my grandmothers between the smokehouse and her back porch minding my own business putting things in my mouth to see how they tasted when I was put into this medieval device by my oldest sister. I have claustrophobia. I cannot stand to be confined. Of course I didn't know the word for it then. Or many words at all. I understood she was doing it for my good and knew they were talking about me but as soon as their attention was diverted I crawled out again and was captured. This time she spun the wooden multicolored balls above the tray and that was kind of cool. I spun them myself. I distinctly recall doing so. The claustrophobia was too strong. I had to escape again. I did it till she gave up.
But here is the thing, I couldn't walk. I walked for the first time before my first birthday. I recall that too. The stretched tan vinyl of the couch was so high and I had to land on my feet holding on before I could toddle on. They discovered I could do it later on and thought I just up and started but I recall the first time and nobody was around. This was before that even. Children remember. Everything shapes them. It does from the start. Never ignore your kids. They are smart little bastards. When I had kids at home I didn't care about anything else in the world. You try to build a sort of cocoon around your family and try to keep the bad out. You can't of course. While Elliott was showing me how to sear steaks Rick brought my daughter up the drive. She had been standing in the road. Jesus Christ. You fail. You are a horrible father. It happens that quick. I just hope she remembers the time I saved her from drowning over that incident. But then, she was a teen at that time so of course she would recall that.
But kids remember, don't think just because they are little they don't. And they learn about society from those memories. I like to say I picked cotton. It makes me sound like I slaved in the fields and knew what my forefathers went through. Hardly. I was four. I rode to the field on a cotton sack and rode back pulled by my dad after he was bone tired the same way. We were doing it just to help a neighbor anyway. If it rains on it then you get a poorer grade of cotton so everybody pitches in before it does, even a kid who can only pick a half row to the adults three rows. Still better than Sally Field and Danny Glover in Places in the Heart. They couldn't pick cotton for shit. It's like this bird pecking motion and done damned quick. And Vivian Leigh? Bitch would have starved to death. Save Tara my ass.
Anyway, you fill these long cotton sacks that drag the ground and take them to a flat bed trailer where a scale is used to tally the weight. Nothing modern looking, more like a long J where you hang the bag on one end and weights on the other. At the end of the day you are given your total and paid. The white folks helping just took the man at his word about the adding up but not the black folks. They knew better, had a better feel for it, what with doing it more often or maybe being less trusting and with good reason. The weight wasn't right. There was a lot of arguing back and forth. Brummett, who owned the field, was telling the black folks they were wrong and making it a racial thing. The black folks were having none of it and saying it was a fairness thing. They were aware they were outnumbered but were trying to stand firm and it wasn't easy for them. A lot of the whites were taking Mr. Brummett's side.
That's when my dad and Mr. Hall stepped up on the trailer. Well now, it's an easy thing to just reweigh the stuff (though most had been unsacked by that time and wasn't possible to redo), how about you let me and Joe here do it and be done with any argument? Well, he didn't like that idea. They were just being niggers and wanting something for nothing and blah blah on and on but as he talked it became clear to me he was hiding something. He was getting antsy. Mr. White stepped up then and grabbed the weights and my dad and Joe the bag and hung it and what do you know? He was cheating them. Well there must be some mistake, why those weights must be off, he would never on purpose cheat anyone. Uh huh. Let's just reweigh them all then to make sure. He had been cheating everyone, black and white, and that shut up the ones on his side because he was cheating them too. It took a long while to re-tally everyone's total and folks were tired and mad. Brummet was sheepish now and when it came time to pay did it quick and without argument.
I rode home on the empty cotton sack. Dad complained a bit that I was getting too heavy and I knew how tired he must be. Soul tired too. But dad, it's fun. "Yeah, I reckon you ain't too heavy yet", he said. I wonder if he knew I would remember that day.
When I was in my thirties I was riding my Harley to Oxford to return some movies I had rented. I took the old way. Mr. White had a store at a bend in the road we called Dogtown. I just pulled up and filled my tank and went in to pay. There was a row of chairs by the motor oil with about six old men in them. All of them were sound asleep and my dad and Joe among them. Funny as it was that these old fellows would fall asleep that way talking over the days news and yesterdays memories it touched me. I debated waking Mr. White but in the end figured it wasn't worth it for a few dollars change. I just slipped a twenty into his shirt pocket and eased on out trying not to let the screen door slap. Those men may not always trust their fellow man, I'm sure they had seen a lot, but they had easy consciences enough to just drift off in each others company and nobody minding the store.
Tocky on 21/4/2019 at 03:19
Dad was more right on more things than I ever gave him credit for. I know I gave him hell being so wild so there was a lot to teach. All I saw was the excitement of situations. He might gripe about things that didn't make a damn but when it got serious he was calm and protective. How the hell do you do that? I can't even fathom it. I remember once when he had taken the whole family to Kiamie's for a burger. It was the only bowling alley in Oxford back then, it had a side room for pool and just outside the door a liquor store. Everything a growing boy needs. It was spacious. They don't waste that much space anymore. Anyway, it also had a cafe and Rosie made the best burger plate in town and we were eating when a fight broke out. It wasn't one of those shouting a lot of words fights. It was a throw down bloody nose meat smacking punches table turning over serious as shit fight. Dad got up and stood between our table and the fight and at one point caught one of the boys going down and asked him wasn't he ready to call it quits. He told them both there are families here and they didn't need to see this. He managed to shame them. I wish I could recall his exact words. Whatever it was it made them quit.
Yeah. That ain't me. I admire that kind of thing. I like to think I would do that but I sincerely doubt it. I would have been one of those boys. I know because years later I was. I was on my way back from Oxford one day in my mid teens and stopped when I saw Aubrey and Lee mowing the church graveyard. It was split by the S curve of the roadway and half had already been mowed. Aubrey had had it with mowing. He said he was there before Lee and Lee owed him just to let him leave and him finish the rest. Well Lee wanted me to help him finish for half of the pay he was going to get. I had only stopped to talk to my buddy Aubrey but sure, I'm no stranger to hard work. No skin off my back. I went home and got my mower and dad asked me was I sure he would pay. The man just knew things. I said yeah, why wouldn't he? Yeah. I went back and mowed till we were done.
He was going to get the money later that week but he never paid me. He avoided me. It wasn't the money really. It was the principle. He promised he would pay me. I told him he would or I would take it out of his hide. You say a lot of shit not really meaning it. It did piss me off but I could have gotten over it. Then I saw him at Kiamie's one night out in the parking lot. Words flew. He was with his buddy Cal and I was on my lonesome. I was tired of his shit though. I was just going to kick his ass. I was tired of empty words. He was a fuck. I was smoking a cigarette and thumped it at him. It hit him right in his white T shirt center chest. Ah it was perfect. Beautiful. Sparks flew when it hit. He batted at the coal like a maniac. It was funny as hell and I knew right then I would remember that moment forever.
We went at each other then. He couldn't fight worth a damn. In spite of the fact he out weighed me by a hundred pounds he was slow and I was quick. He did not use his bulk to try to wrestle me but chose to duke it out which was a mistake on his part. I never caught a blow and delivered a dozen or more. But the thing is he had this layer of fat on him. Body blows were like punching a wet pillow. There was no telling how much good I was doing. I could never quite get a solid blow on his face because his arms were so thick and that was the one place he protected. Finally I found a way around his defense and landed a good one on his jaw. It knocked him back and he had surprise and fear on his face. That was what I wanted to see. By not paying me he was saying he didn't fear me. I was smaller. He could overlook me. He had just discovered he couldn't.
At this point his buddy Cal stepped in and separated us. I didn't want to quit. I wanted to cement that look. I wanted him to know he couldn't do that shit to me and get a pass. I wanted him to remember that. But here was this new problem. Cal figured his buddy was losing and didn't want him to royally get his ass beat. Least that's what I figure. But to quit now was saying he was safe as long as Cal was with him. I didn't want that either. Cal was saying I had done enough and to let it go. I was saying hell no. I hadn't gotten my moneys worth yet. I have to give Cal credit. He stood his ground. Maybe he had been excited by the fight and wanted some but he had no justification yet to just jump in swinging. I don't know. He had me wary though. I looked over his shoulder at Lee and he was gaining some courage back from it but not enough to open his mouth yet.
I wasn't sure I could take them both though and I didn't want to lose the standing I had just gained. I told Cal I would take him on then but JUST him. No two on one shit. Cal seemed amenable to that idea. He was too amenable and that gave me some pause. Maybe he was good. He looked mean enough. I wouldn't find out though because just then some girl came out of Kiamie's saying the cops had been called and we better leave. Nobody wanted to get arrested so we left and it wound up like most of my fights, just a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, like I got a whiff of a steak and they took it away. On the other hand maybe I would have gotten my ass beat. As it was I had the memory of that cigarette hitting Lee in his white T and him frantically beating it out. That was gold.
Lee died about fifteen years ago and the first thing out of my mouth was "I'll never get that money now" which was ignoble of me even as a joke.
I have a lot of good memories of Kiamie's. Tammy took her shirt off for me while we waited in the back seat on Aubrey and his girl to get back with some booze. That was as magical as it was unexpected. Many weekends we bowled or played pool but mostly it was foosball. I was a hell of a goalie. I had that quick wrist twist that burned the ball all the way to back of the other goal. That metal slapping sound and Elton John singing Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting on the juke and all of us cutting each other with whatever burn hadn't gone around too much yet. And now it's gone. Torn down. All of us obsolete and not just us but our way of life.
A couple of years after dad had died I met a fellow at the local store who recognized me as his son. He had known dad as a young man and I drew as much out of him as I could think to about those days. At one point he mentioned fighting a forest fire with him. I hadn't known then he had even worked for the forestry service but found out it had been with the CCC. He grinned as he recounted a big fellow who had tried to push dad around and dad telling him he would just have to bring him down to his level. So what happened? This fellow was just going to leave it at that? He acted like he was. What happened? He knocked him out with one punch. Well there was one more thing the man had bested me at. I've never knocked anyone out.
Not really a moral in this one is there? Here is a pic of Kev, my boney ass, and Aubrey back then. Wish it was in better shape. We never thought to take many pics in those days.
[IMG]
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/m3o5O29.jpg?1[/IMG]
Tocky on 28/4/2019 at 05:53
When we were kids my cousins and I would meet at my grandmothers house and depart on various adventures. Landy and Harvey were maybe eight years older than me so they didn't want me tagging along but I thought they were cool so I tried. Sometimes I was locked in a room until they could escape somewhere but sometimes not. They talked of movies I couldn't see yet like "Last House on the Left" and "Easy Rider", all the cool stuff. They had real rifles they squirrel hunted with, sometimes in the neighbors yard where they got in trouble. One thing we all had were sling shots. Landy had one of those wrist rockets back when they first came out. When we learned old man Herron had tried to molest my sister we vowed revenge. Dad would have killed him so he was never told.
We gathered shirt pockets of rocks and waited for him to use his outhouse. He usually did right after dinner. His outhouse hung over a gully out back of his house and in the back of it was a cut out where his balls hung. Huge gouty bulls balls they were, like two hand grenades in a pale stocking. Ripe and ready for our rocks. Not a one of us missed the first round. There may have been a few misses when he was standing up cussing us but we had done damage by then. We ran shouting things back. A last "leave my sister alone you old pervert" and we were around the bend of the road. They were pretty cool cousins to have... mostly.
Landy was always a little off somehow though. He was always breaking my toys but in interesting ways and for interesting reasons like the time he used my Western Auto big rig trailer to bake bricks in because he had heard that's how it was done with red clay. Never quite got the fire hot enough in that makeshift oven to match a kiln but it was an interesting effort. He didn't give a shit about your stuff though. He didn't care much for anything except finding some interest in something and everything or everyone else be damned.
I was a more sensitive kid. I liked excitement and learning things and adventures and stuff but I had a soft side. I raised a frog from a tadpole and set it loose in a pond near my house. I also raised a robin. It had fallen from it's nest and was just a fuzzy little thing nowhere near ready to fly. Everybody said it would die but I dug worms and picked them from tomato plants and fed him every day after school cramming it down his open beak. I gave him water from a dropper and he grew and thrived. He got big enough to fly and I was going to teach him. I knew it was past time but I had a boy scout camp jamboree thing for a week at camp Yocona. I promised myself I would after that. Meanwhile my parents promised to feed him. He was a greedy little thing bordering on chubby at that point and I had dug a weeks worth of worms in a coffee can for him.
When I got back with my wicker basket and new merit badges and memories of new friends and the things we had done my mom gave me the bad news. He was dead. What? He was perfectly healthy when I had left. Landy had come down and somehow killed it. What? Then I recalled how he had put a toad in a can and anesthetized it using hair spray then cut it open to watch it's heart beat. There was something missing in Landy. I never forgave him for my robin. I looked at that stiff hairspray covered body in the bottom of the cage and ached that I had held onto it too long. A predator had come into my home and gotten it. Had Landy turned out to be a serial killer I would not have been the least surprised.
He didn't so far as I know. His dad left him a few hundred thousand in cash and property but he blew it in a couple of years. He raised a daughter and son on his own after his wife died of cancer. He was always moving somewhere to the next big thing to strike it rich, never satisfied with anywhere or anyone. He married again and was offered a good management job in his wife's fathers company but turned it down and then lost his new family somewhere down the line. He was always a huckster and seemed on something to make him hyper. He was a salesman at several points but never made anything last. Harvey tried to stay his friend but when he went to visit in Iowa Landy would hardly speak to him and left the entertaining to his wife while he drank alone in his garage. He was strange. No accounting for some of his behavior. I pretty much wrote him off and had a family of my own to raise anyway. We lost touch. We aged.
Then one day recently I was looking to see if the town of Mount Airy was worth a stop the next time we went to the Smokies and stumbled on something called- LandumC goes there- on Youtube. Yeah, it was him. He had a lot of his travels on there with little lectures on what happened here or there. One had well over a million views. Some had as little as six hundred. Most of them were of crime scenes and murder sites but I think he finally found most folks liked the Andy Griffith stuff. Even after discovering the money was mostly in the advertising on the Griffith stuff he still was going all over to do the ax murders and robberies and death stuff. I guess he finally found his niche.
Here is one of his episodes- (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_LtKk9yCqc)
I guess this has been a weird sort of story on it's own. Is anyone still reading these things?