| Straight
from the holler.
by "Buck" January 3, 2007 Well, a new year has arrived and yet again, I’ve done nothing to keep last year’s resolutions. It may have been a record that they remained intact for about a week. Screw it. I’ll give it another shot. I resolve to stop flipping off my neighbor. I resolve to watch every episode of the Sopranos, no matter how painful it may be—more on this in a moment. I resolve next New Year’s NOT to use firearms to mark the arrival of the New Year. I guess there’s more on all of these that needs an explanation. I’ve shared with you my neighbors. There’s the vixen across the street who’s now got a biker shacking with her. He’s apparently a keeper since he’s lasted past an entire yard mowing season. Her normal modes was to find a keepable man for the summer, then once the snow was flying and the yard was dormant—he was out the door and the recruiting process for his replacement was underway. This guy however has really taken over. He apparently has more value because of his toys. He has a brand new Dodge truck, a four-wheeler, a dirt bike, and a Harley. He also apparently has a pretty good cash flow. Now the little vixen who owns the home has her own gravy train. She’s a 20-something widow with a child, and apparently got a nice little settlement out of the hubby’s demise. She’s a filing clerk, in a doctor’s office. It’s a decent job, but you don’t make enough money to live the way she does. Then there is my next-door neighbor. A divorcee’ who waited a year after her divorce to kick her ex-husband out of her house. Crazy lady. I haven’t told you too much about the neighbor on the other side. He’s quite a treasure. He reminds me some of Poppa Half-Shirt, but with a more harmless twist. The guy is a former member of the Pipefitters Union or something. He used to work out of town cutting steel and making scads of money, until he’d get laid off for three months and have to stretch to the next job. He drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and can be a real mean ass when he’s drunk. In the last couple of years he got hurt on the job and has been living on a disability check, Jim Beam, and pills. He’ll wander around in his yard all fucked up. He’ll then go over and rummage through his half-built tool shed for something and forget what he’s looking for halfway through the drill. The other day, they must have bought a bunch of new electronic components and left a pile of Styrofoam for the garbage man. A wind storm made short work of that and scattered it across the woods of my back lot. I spent the better part of a day collecting that shit off my property—but the unsightly mess is still littering the landscape of his back lot. Bastard. I flip him off every chance I get. Did you ever have to give somebody a tracheotomy? I’m not sure I could do it. I remember in health class in high school they gave a brief summation of how this was done. My memory is a bit cloudy, but it went something like, “find a sharp object, cut a hole in the choking victim’s neck, and insert a straw.” I always wondered, if you were actually able to achieve this much of the exercise—then what? Do you sit around and listen to the guy gurgling on his own juices? When they say “A sharp object” does that mean anything? Certainly I’ve never been without a pocket knife, but I’m not like others. Is somebody going to break a beer bottle and use a shard of a PBR longneck to make the precise incision? Plus, if I used my pocketknife—is that really sanitary? I mean really—I’ve used that knife to gut squirrels and cut Velveeta slices, I have issues with the potential for infection. Oh, and don’t get me started on what happens if you cut the wrong spot. What if somebody makes a wrong move and slices a windpipe or a jugular? How much blood should we expect? Is there a problem if it’s shooting five feet into the air in spurts? I probably need a better training exercise, other than a drunken high school gym teacher in dire need of a cigarette. If you ever get choked on my watch, I’m afraid you’re just fucked. Sorry in advance. When was the last time you used a laundry mat? I’m here to tell you, those things have become as frightening as a bus station. There’s an enormous comforter that we can’t wash in the household Maytag, along with my hunting coat that includes just too much fabric for the home machine to digest. Therefore I had to visit the laundry mat the other day to use their industrial sized machine. Man, I gotta tell you that place is just a little bit scary. There was a woman in there that had to weigh 500 pounds. She was folding a bra that either was hers, or fit over the front end of a Miata. Then there was the crazy looking man who literally REEKED of b-o, cheap aftershave, and bad wine. It was my humble opinion that he should have just climbed into the cleaning chamber fully clothed if he truly wanted his money’s worth. There were a couple of teenagers with various tattoos on their necks and weird hair. They had no clothes, and I’m pretty sure they were casing the place for a robbery attempt. Then there was the obligatory woman with a half-burned cigarette clinging to her lips as she literally CUSSED her three children. The kids were a wild band of hooligans playing a soccer game with a Mountain Dew bottle and using one of the overturned carts as their net. I tried my best not to make eye contact and got the hell out of there as fast as possible. I’ve only been to laundry mats a few times in my life, but damn, I don’t remember anything like that. Gotta go, happy new year..and as always I’m available for an attack at Moonshinebuck@yahoo.com Buck Out |
