Friends, Acquaintances, and The Hoo-Haw Incident (Parts 1 & 2)

Lester

Lester was a good natured country boy whose family rodeoed locally on the weekends and were pretty well known for it, particularly his brother and father in the team roping event. That ain't got shit to do with anything else, just thought I'd toss that out there.

Me and Lester got along real well, him being one of those guys that always had a big grin on his face and would gladly offer you a hand if needed. 

I was standing in the bathroom one day admiring my rugged good looks in the mirror when I noticed a gray hair in my beard, right there under my lower lip, my very first gray hair at the tender age of 24. I yanked that cheeky bastard out and was standing there studying it when Les walks in and greets me with, "Hey Ken!" using a little more enthusiasm than is appropriate in a bathroom.

"Hey Les, you know what that is?" I asked handing it to him.

He takes it, holds it up in front of his face and says, "Nope, sure don't," and grins even bigger.

"That my friend, is my very first gray pubic hair."

"AAAUGH!!!" he screamed as he flung the offending hair down on the floor. "YOU'RE A NASTY FUCKER!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU SICK FUCK???"

Such language. Give me a break here. I mean, if somebody tried to hand you a coarse curly hair in a bathroom, would you take it?

Paul

Lester's dad. Worked in the machine shop with Pops. Paul was a hypochondriac of the nth degree. 

There were only three tool and die makers out there at the time and they all took their breaks together in their own section of the machine shop, away from the half dozen machinists. There was nothing against the machinists, the tool and die guys just couldn't be bothered to walk the 50 feet to their break area so they set up their own wooden picnic bench.

My dad's best friend out there was a tool and die maker and a retired patchholder named John who was blessed with a wicked sense of humor. Dad called him Wopahoe on account of him being half Indian and half Italian. 

My day started at 3 AM, so I decided to take my second break of the day over at the machine shop, and have a smoke and a cup of coffee with the old man before he started his shift at 7.

As I walked up to the table, John and Dad are giggling over something and me being nosey as hell, I asked what was up.

"We're gonna make Paul go home sick. Watch, heh heh heh" John said, then he looked at his watch and told Dad it was time, and Dad walked away.

Paul came walking in the door, whistling and all cheerful and shit and when he gets to the table, John looked up with a concerned expression and said, "Damn Paul, are you all right?" 

"Uh, yeah. I feel fine. Why?"

"You're just looking a little peaked there," John said as Dad came walking around the corner. He stopped short and said, "Whoa. You better sit down, Paul. You feel okay? Here, let me get you some water."

Paul doesn't say another word, he just puts his lunchbox down and heads to the bathroom. Dad motions me to follow him in.

Paul was splashing cold water on his face and panting. 

I reported back and we all had a good laugh, but I had to get back to work and they had to start their shift. As I was leaving, John told me to come back for 9 o'clock break.

At 9, I walked in and saw no sign of Paul anywhere in the shop, and as I rounded the corner John and Dad were sitting at the table alone. "Paul go home sick already?" I asked

"Shit, he never even clocked in, heh heh heh. He was here 8 minutes," John said without even looking up from his morning paper.

Jimmy Pearl

Jimmy P was one of those guys that I saw more of after work than I did at work. He worked in the chem lab and I had no business at all over there, so we just didn't see each other during the day. He did make it a habit of coming out to my place on Fridays to visit and socialize with other folks he also didn't see at work.

Jimmy P was a long tall Texas boy, very soft spoken and always had a wide-eyed serious expression on his face. Hell of a nice guy, He had a real laid back personality and was well liked by everybody right from the git go.

He was also baby-faced as hell and for good reason as we later found out. One night there's a bunch of us guys gathered around the beer trough shooting the shit while the ladies were doing their thing over at the table under the tree, probably exchanging recipes and shit, and Jimmy P mentions something about graduating high school a couple years ago. "Wait a minute," Skidmark says, "You graduated 2 years ago? How fucking old are you, 19?" and Jimmy P says "Just turned 20." 

Jimmy P's underaged ass has been coming out there and getting fuuuucked up for well over a year. We've all been contributing to the delinquency of a minor. A bunch of guys started razzing him and giving him shit, and Johnny Jones turned to me and said, "How you gonna tell him he can't drink out here for another year?"

"You tell him. I'm not telling him shit. I ain't his daddy."

Johnny Jones laughed and said, "No, you sound like you're trying to be one of those cool uncles."

From a post a couple years ago:  A couple years later, Jimmy Pearl was driving home from The Cattleman's Club one night at closing time and saw something rising up from his back seat in the rear view mirror. Jimmy P started screaming like a little bitch as he drove his car through a barbed fence and into a field before bailing and running a hundred yards or so still screaming.

Turns out one of the other patrons at the bar got fucked up and passed out in Jimmy P's back seat thinking it was his own and woke up, wondering just who in the hell was stealing his car.

One Saturday afternoon I'm in town doing my shopping and running errands and as I turn the corner near my favorite taco truck, I see Johnny Jones, Real Pancho and Jimmy P seated at one of the picnic tables there in front of the truck. Jimmy P is soaking wet and calmly munching on a taco while Johnny Jones and Real Pancho are howling and pounding on the table and slapping Jimmy P on the back. I don't know what's so funny, but I need to find out.

As I walk up, I see the two of them are laughing so hard they're crying. Literal tears are flowing down their cheeks. "What's going on, boys?" I asked.

"You know that barfly that's been hanging out at the Cattleman's Club lately?" Johnny Jones asked. I nodded. I hadn't seen her yet because it wasn't a regular hangout of mine, but I had heard of her - one of those skanky-ass women that shows up every day, then goes home with a different guy every night.

Real Pancho takes over. "We were in there knocking back a couple pitchers and she comes up and says to Jimmy P, 'Hey youngster, you ever fuck a 40 year old woman before?' and starts rubbing her crotch up against his leg. Jimmy P steps back, looks her up and down and says, 'FORTY? That's all? Gawd DAMN!!! What in the hell happened to you?' and then she throws our pitcher of beer on him and starts screaming and spitting on him! It was fucking hilarious, homie, we're pulling out of the parking lot and she's still screaming and bouncing rocks off of Johnny Jones' truck!"

Fucking Jimmy P.....

I've already told my all-time favorite Jimmy P story in a post about the Friday night parties HERE we had out at my place, but I'll stick it here so you don't have to go to another page. It's worth a re-read.

One evening just before dusk, an unfamiliar Jeep turned into the drive as me, Mexican Bob, Johnny Jones and Stony Joanie were getting ready to fire up a doobie on the porch. Now my driveway was once a gravel road, right at 150 yards long, and rutted as hell most of the way down. Anything over 5 miles an hour and you'll lose a filling, but this woman was moving right along, hair flying everywhere.

"She better slow down or she's gonna bust a bra strap," Mexican Bob observed.

Johnny Jones glanced up momentarily from the joint he was rolling and said, "She ain't wearing one. She's sportin' a pair of 34s, I'd call 'em a heavy C, light D cup. Kinda hard to tell with that shirt." Shit, she was still a good hundred yards out. He inspected his joint, fired it up, spat out a crumb of weed and added, "No kids."

She came sliding to a stop almost running over a dog or two, grabbed the roll bar and swung herself out. I turned to Johnny Jones in awe. Damn, he's good. She stomped past us and over to a half dozen other people standing there bullshitting under the only tree within a mile, pushing people aside until she was standing face to face with easygoing Jimmy Pearl. "YOU BASTARD!!! YOU'RE FUCKING MY SISTER???" she screams as she starts pounding poor Jimmy P in the chest. 

Jimmy P takes a step or two back with an utterly bewildered look on his face and asks a question that we all later agreed was fairly reasonable, "Well, I don't know. What's her name?"

She lunged at him, but was held back by 3 or 4 women who escorted her to her Jeep and deposited her in it with a warning to leave and not come back, which she did, driving out as fast as she did coming in.

It happened so fast my little group hadn't budged. I hollered "Hey, Jimmy P, who was that, a new ex-girlfriend?" and he tells me with that same bewildered look that he was going to wear on his face the rest of the night, "Man, I don't know who she was. I ain't never seen her before in my life!" 

Everybody broke up laughing. Fucking PsychoChicks...

I felt a tap on my arm and as I turned to take the joint, I said, "Damn, Johnny Jones.  I'm impressed. You called them breastworks for sure."

"It's a gift," he says as he glances over at Stony Joanie who instinctively crosses her arms over her chest and then says, "Perky li'l 34Bs. Left one hangs about a half inch lower than the right."

Repeat/Re-Pete  (either spelling is acceptable)

Repeat was a line inspector, and his father was a mechanic. We called him Repeat for a couple reasons, the first being he was a Pete Junior so it was just natural to call him Re-Pete and the second reason was he had the most annoying fucking habit of saying 'huh?' every time you said something to him, making you have to repeat yourself constantly. It wasn't because he repeated, it was because he made you do it.

"Hey Repeat, pass me that gauge if you would, please," I'd ask.

"Huh?"

"Pass me the fucking gauge."

"Oh yeah, here ya go."

"Thanks, man."

"Huh?"

It got to the point that any time I had to talk to him, which wasn't often, thank you Jesus, I'd just automatically say it twice. "Repeat, do me a favor and pass me that gauge, do me a favor and pass me that gauge." Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

His dad was doing some repairs on my machine and we were shooting the shit while he was working, and I asked if Re-Pete had hearing problems, maybe a fever or something that affected his hearing when he was a baby, and Pete told me, "No, we had him checked out several times. His hearing's fine. Near as we can figger, that boy's got the attention span of a goddamned termite. Either that or he's just fucking stupid."

Woodrow

Woody was a mechanic, one of those Okies that was only about 50 years old but looked 70, carrying a hard life on his face.

I didn't know him well, only enough to nod at him and get one back as we passed in the plant, then one day he came up to my work station and asked, "You know a woman name a' Darlene Puryear, widow of a fella named Floyd?" Darlene was Mom's aunt with only 4 years between them.

"Yeah!" I said. "That's my momma's Aunt Darlene! How would you know that I knew her?" Like I said, we had only a nodding friendship.

"Aw, we've known each other since we were kids. Our families come from the same county in Oklahoma.  She come by my house last night to visit my wife and mentioned your name."

Well, shit. From the same county? That makes us almost homeboys, so over the next few days when we'd pass each other, I'd give him a friendly wave, a big grin, and a "Hey, Homie!" 

At least until he called me over, jabbed a finger in my face and said "Don't call me that no more, youngster. I'll have you know I like women."

Chammy

Chamuel was a mechanic, a naturalized Pole, I think. Dude had a real heavy accent, making him almost indecipherable, especially when the machinery was running. His real name was Swietopock or some such shit, but when he first got hired he told everybody his new name was Chamuel. We all thought it was a little weird but not as weird as Swietopock, and it was easier to pronounce. But if you were going to pick out a new American name, wouldn't you pick a normal one?

But then the motherfucker would get all huffy when we'd say "Morning, Chamuel." He'd scowl and mutter "Chamuel" before walking away, leaving us thinking, "What the hell, that's what I said."

It wasn't until a week or two later when we heard a boss call him Samuel that we realized he had a minor speech impediment and pronounced his s's as ch's if they were at the beginning of a word.

Oh shit. We were being insensitive to his disability. He thought we'd been fucking with him. Our bad. Did we let up on him or even apologize? Fuck no. We went ahead and nicknamed him Chammy.

He loosened up about it after a while and hung around with us after work occasionally. He loved to fish for chalmon and was forever trying to cajole one of us into going with him when the chalmon were running, so those conversations always provided some entertainment, but the funniest shit I ever saw was a crowd of guys laughing hysterically when Chammy drunkenly tried to say 'spaghetti'. He couldn't pull it off, but he kept trying and trying. We were fucking dying, man.

The Watt Boys

The Watt boys were identical twins, and I do mean identical, late 20s maybe. They worked in site maintenance together, the sons of a retired line boss. 

While the ammo plant preferred to hire family and friends of current or retired employees, they generally wouldn't let them work in the same department, probably to keep family drama out of the workplace. For some reason, they didn't enforce that rule with the Watt brothers. They did landscaping, shit like that, but in different parts of the complex. They did the same job, just not together.

Their real names were Mitchell and Mitchum. They went by Mitch. Both of them. For real. That just wouldn't do, so everybody called them 40 and 60 Watt because one was only slightly brighter than the other. Let me show you: 60 Watt overheard somebody refer to him as such and got pissed off. He said he was the oldest by however long it was, so it was his right to pick and he wanted 40 Watt because it sounded cooler. I'm serious. We all figured, sure, why not? It's not like we can tell them apart anyway.

The Watt boys had not one but two claims to fame, the way they got fired and 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know) getting his ass beat by a girl.

First the asswhipping, but I have to tell you about the girl.

When I hired on, they were putting on a whole new crew to open up the 60mm line, so they were hiring 5 people a day, and me and Kathy were hired the same day. They hadn't even finished up the R&D for the new line so until that was done we were doing general labor, mostly make-work jobs, and they put me and Kathy in the same area.

Kathy stood about 5' 10" and weighed in at about 200 pounds, a great big bull dyke. She was so manly looking that I didn't even realize she was a girl until we took our break together and I heard her voice. She also had a man's sense of humor, so it didn't take long before we were friends.

Once we'd been there for a couple three months and I started have people over at my place on Friday nights, she asked if she could come and I said sure - she got along great with everybody and I just didn't see where there would be a problem. 

She pretty much became a regular. Not only was she a regular on Fridays, she was one of the few people that would come by after work during the week for a couple beers or to shoot.

One day she told me the house she rented from her uncle was being renovated. Her grandmother had loaned her a little Airstream travel trailer, and she was going to be staying at the campgrounds at Modesto reservoir. "Hell," I said, "Let me call my landlord and if he doesn't have a problem with it, why don't you just park the trailer next to my shack and save yourself the camping fees?"

Nope, she said. She didn't want to intrude and besides, at the lake she can step out of her little trailer and fish any time she wanted. It would be like a vacation after she got off work.

Well, that lasted a little more than a week. One day she stopped off and asked if my offer was still good. There were no laundry facilities at the lake, the nearest store was miles away, the bathrooms were nasty and even worse, she didn't like a public shower and a cold one at that. Not a problem, I got Manuel's okay and we drove right out and hauled her trailer to my place, then I went and had her a key cut so she could use the house bathroom, washer and dryer and kitchen when I wasn't around.

The first Friday she was staying there, a bunch of people showed up and the Watt boys were among them for the first time. I didn't care for them all that much, but as long as they behaved and didn't try to make conversation with me, I didn't care if they stayed. Hopefully it was just a one-time thing.

Well, they got fucked up and made asses out of themselves, getting loud and rude. A couple guys had already gone over and told them to cool their heels and watch the language around their wives, then Kathy stepped out of the house munching on a sandwich. She sat down between me and Johnny Jones on his tailgate and right about that time 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know) hollered to her, "What, you finally decided you like dick?" then he pointed at me and asked, "Or is she giving you the dick?"

I'd had enough. I looked over at Johnny Jones and said "Strike three and they're outta here," and started to get up, then Kathy put her hand on my shoulder and said, "I got this, Kenny." She walked over to 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know), jabbed a finger at him and said "I'm gonna knock your ass out." Then she did before anybody could stop her. Well, almost, She knocked his drunk ass so senseless he wasn't able to recite his own phone number. One punch, and he dropped like a bag of shit. All the women jumped up and started clapping, all the men went "Daaaamn" and we had a new hero.

60 Watt (or maybe it was 40 Watt, I don't know) started for Kathy only to have Real Pancho push him back and say "I wouldn't if I was you, fool."  A couple guys picked up 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know) and piled him into the cab of his truck, then told his brother it was time for them to leave.

The funniest part of the whole deal was as they were leaving, 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know) regained his senses and started crying about being sucker punched. Sucker punched? Kathy walked straight towards him and even told him she was going to knock him out before trying her damnedest to make good on her promise.

So yeah, all those years of people drinking out there, and that was the only act of violence that I can recall. That's not a bad run.

The Watt Boys lasted about a year before getting fired for theft of wages. Because they worked in landscaping, they had no real supervision to speak of, so after a while 40 Watt (or maybe it was 60 Watt, I don't know) would clock in, then a few minutes later he'd clock in his brother who was still at home in bed, and they alternated weekly doing that. Basically they were working every other week and getting paid to sit at home and watch Gunsmoke reruns on their off week. Personally, I didn't think they were that smart. Anyways, that went on until the plant manager saw one of them in the bank and went over to ask why he wasn't working, and he told the manager he'd called in sick. The manager thought something was a little off, so he checked their timecards when he went back to the plant the next day and saw they'd both clocked in and allegedly worked a full 8 hours.

That stunt did cause a change in policy, though. After that, instead of just walking through the gate and flashing a badge at the guards who were inside the shack reading gun magazines, the guards now had to verify each employee by their badge numbers even though they knew the rest of us employees by face and name, and we had to sign in and out.

About a year after that, both of them got busted hijacking a delivery van full of pharmaceuticals and got sent to the joint. I never heard anything about them again, thank God.

Kathy stayed at the plant until it closed, then went to work at the Safeway warehousing complex I retired from but in a different department. She didn't last a week after we started shipping orders. She had bad knees and just couldn't handle the work. She eventually went to work for the County and one day just happened to run into my little brother who also worked for the County. Kevin got to talking with her and when he found out she'd worked at the ammo plant, he asked if she knew me. He said Kathy spat on the ground and growled, "Yeah, I know that dog motherfucker," and Kevin told me later his first thought was, 'Man, I really need to quit asking people if they know you,' before Kathy busted out laughing at the panicked expression on his face.

Rex & Amber and Connie & Jo

I've introduced y'all to Rex before, HERE down near the bottom and HERE about halfway down.

Childhood sweethearts. I'm talking pre-school sweethearts here.

Rex's mother and father and Mama Jo and Connie, Amber's mom and dad, were best friends and lived across the road from each other, halfway between Riverbank City of Action and Oakdale Cowboy Capital of the World, so whenever they got together to visit, Rex and Amber would play together. Then Rex's mother was killed in a car accident when he was just 4 years old and Jo offered to take care of Rex when his daddy was at work. After the two kids started school, the bus would drop them at Amber's house and he'd stay there waiting for his father. Then his dad had a heart attack and died when Rex was just 14 or 15, so Amber's folks jumped through the hoops and fostered him. What the hell, he was already family.

I never  heard the story until one day I was in Oakdale and saw Rex walking across a store parking lot, so I pulled up and asked if he wanted to get something to eat. He told me he had a couple things to do for Amber's 24th birthday and their anniversary, but to park my truck and join him so we could visit while he was doing his running, then we'd grab a bite at his house and he'd drive me back to my truck.

We went into a bakery where he picked up 2 cakes. I looked at them and one said 'Happy 24th Amber' and the other said 'Happy 20th Anniversary Rex and Amber'.  "Hold up, partner. They got this wrong," I said.

Rex studied them for a second and told me no, it looked fine, so I pointed out that the one cake said Happy 20th Anniversary, then Rex told me the story as we drove to his house to drop them off.

Once we got to Rex's house with the cakes, both Amber and her mom Jo were there, and Rex continued with the conversation over lunch with both of them joining in. Jo went into the living room and came back with a framed picture taken from inside the house of two little kids sitting on a porch with the little girl's arms wrapped around the boy's shoulders. "That's Amber and Rex waiting on Wheeler to come get him. It was heartbreaking, every time his dad would pull into the yard Rex would jump up and run to the passenger's side of the truck hoping his mama was there. And of course, she wasn't.

"So you were basically his mom from the time he was four, then? That explains why he calls you Mama Jo. I thought it was just a pet name for his mother-in-law."

"No, we never let him forget his mother, but I was the mama figure in his life. It was the Christian thing to do," she said.

I looked over at Rex and Amber. "So when did you realize that you were in love and were going to get married?" I asked.

Amber smiled. "When we were four. That's why we celebrate my birthday and that anniversary on the same day."

Rex grinned back at his wife and then turned to me and said, "I ain't never not loved Amber, Kenny." Both Amber and Jo shuddered at his butchery of the English language. "You know, you're always talking about how much you like being single, but I wouldn't trade places with you for anything."

I nodded. "I wouldn't trade places with me either, Rex, not with what you have here and how you got it." And I almost meant it, too.

Rex worked in the wastewater treatment facility at the plant and Amber was the bookkeeper for her dad and uncle's business of repairing farm equipment out in the field when there was a breakdown while working. I'm not talking major repairs, but enough to get your planting or harvesting done before going to the shop. They worked from Bakersfield to Redding and sometimes Connie was gone a week at a stretch depending on the time of the year.

I don't know how Rex slid into that water plant job, but he scored. The ammo plant had been in operation since the Korean War and the water table surrounding the plant was heavily polluted. When I got laid off in 1991, they figured it would take another 20 years to take care of it. I know Rex was still working there in 2005 or 06 when I saw him last and planned on working there until the job was finished, and then retiring from the plant and going to work for his father-in-law.

They did pretty well unlike most young couples. They both made decent money and were paying low rent for a mother-in-law apartment on her folk's place, saving their money until they could pay cash for a few acres of their own. Rex told me they lived off her paycheck and banked most of his.

They were the opposite of each other. Rex reminded me of Dennis the Menace, short squatty dude, corn colored hair and a fatheaded motherfucker to boot. He was slow, too. Not stupid, shit just took him a little longer than most. 

Amber was a fucking hottie, a real natural beauty. Rex scored there too. Go Rex. She also had a degree in business. She was smart and so quick on her feet that we all felt so sorry for Rex because we know that poor motherfucker never won an argument.

While Amber drove a new(ish) truck, he still drove his first one. Talk about a fucking beater. He never made proper repairs to it, choosing instead to just patch it as long as it was able to roll. I never saw new or even matching tires on it. He'd only buy a single used replacement tire as one either blew out or wore out, never a pair or four with matching tread. Johnny Jones joked that if you ever got too far behind Rex on a dirt road, just follow the tracks of the truck with 4 different tread patterns and you'd eventually come on him broke down on the side of the road. 

To roll the window up on the passenger side, you reached down into the door and with your fingertips, you pulled it up to the desired height. To get it to stay up, you used the provided wedge of wood and jammed it between the window and door. To roll the window down, yank the fucking wedge and it would slowly lower itself down. I asked him one time why didn't he just go down to the junkyard and get another crank assembly? He looked at me like I was stupid and says "The wedge works." Thank God somebody finally broke the window.

His tailgate was hopeless. Sometimes you'd have to slam it 4 or 5 times before it latched. His solution to that was to just take the damned thing off. What fell out, fell out.

Amber had this little Yorkie named Bug. Well, his registered stud name was Sir Charles Alfred Something Something Something, but they called it Bug was because when they first got him as a pup, Rex said "I've seen cockroaches bigger than him. That's it, he's our little cockroach." They settled on Bug.

She took that little dog everywhere with her, even going down to the saddlery and having Jacob make a hand tooled leather sling to carry him around in if he got tuckered out or if the pavement was too hot.

A bunch of us guys were up on the front porch one Friday evening clowning each other while the women were at the table under the tree knocking back pitchers of margaritas. They're getting hammered and loud, and we could her Amber talking about how much Rex spoils her. "He takes me to dinner every couple weeks, he helps to take of the horses, I get cut flowers every Friday, he helps with the housework, he....." and all the other women start talking about what their men DON'T do for them, and the 2 husbands up on the porch panic and corner Rex with, "Hey man, you need to tell your old lady to shut up and we mean right fucking now!" and I'm dying laughing.

I had met Jo 3-4 times around town with Rex or Amber but had never met Connie until one day a work truck follows Rex in. Everybody gets out of their respective vehicles, Amber and Jo join the other girls, and Rex and this lean tough looking old guy comes over to me. The older gentleman introduces himself. "The name's Connor. Call me Connie.

"Hey, Connie. Kenny Lane. Rex told me a lot about you," I said, shaking his hand. 

He looked at me. I looked at him. "You the old boy that's running this show?"

"Um, I reckon," I said.

"Then how come you haven't offered me a beer?"

"Mainly because I didn't realize both your arms were broken?" What the fuck.....

He looked at me. I looked at him. We both started laughing at the same time. "Make yourself at home here, Connie. Beer's over there, piss behind the barn. Don't fuck with that big black dog unless you want to get bit."

We're sitting on the porch facing the road drinking beer and watching the dogs playing out in the pasture and they started busting pheasants. Connie's watching this and says, "Damn, they're thick as flies here. I haven't seen a pheasant on my place in a couple years." I explained that the farmer up the road a ways raises them for Bay Area hunters, and they do their drives in my direction, so I got fresh birds every year My landlord never cut his entire property at once, so the pheasant had plenty of their natural habitat.

"Huh," he says. "Think I can buy a dozen or more of those pheasant off of you so I can stock my pasture?"
"No sale. Free to me, free to you. How you gonna catch 'em?"

"I'll net 'em. I'll be back tomorrow if that's okay."

The next day, him and 3 youngsters show up pulling a trailer with a dozen poultry cages. Connie comes over and grabs a beer and tells me he's gonna try for 10 hens and a pair of cocks, maybe more if he can get 'em, if that's okay. He's completely nonchalant, like he does this shit everyday. Not a problem, I said.

I have to stop and explain to anybody that's never been pheasant hunting is that their natural reaction to danger is to first run until they think they're safe, then squat and freeze. You can literally get within just a couple of steps of a pheasant before it says fuck this, I'm outta here and takes wing. And when it does decide to take flight, it just explodes into the air.

So Connie goes into the pasture a little ways and the boys spread out about a hundred yards out and started driving towards him, yelling and stomping and chucking cow chips into clumps of grass while he gets this seine net ready to throw.

Right about then, Johnny Jones pulls in. The drivers are getting closer to Connie. Johnny Jones goes and gets a beer from the refrigerator, then joins me at the fence. "What's going on?" he asks.

I nod towards Connie. He makes his throw, the net settles to the ground, then erupts in 3 spots. Each of the boys crawled under the net to retrieve the pheasants.

Johnny Jones takes all that in without saying a word, then turns to me and says, "You always got some weird shit going on out here. The sight of seeing somebody fishing for pheasant in a pasture is a new one, though. What's next, Buddhist monks meditating in the hay barn?"

Sidenote: Those youngsters found out that day that pheasant don't like to be caught. Fighting cocks ain't got shit on a freaked out wild pheasant. The hens will try to beat you with their wings and they have a surprisingly vicious peck, and the cocks have all that as well as an attitude and a pair of spurs as one kid found out.

The Day Mom Met Dana

I meant to tell this story on the post about Dana HERE, but didn't realize I left it out until I ran across the draft the next day. I might as well post it here. Better late than never.

My mother was a bit of a control freak and felt that anybody I dated had to meet her approval which nobody did with the exception of my first serious girlfriend. It was so bad I just quit bringing new girls to meet my folks. I mean, they'd eventually meet them around town or something, but it wasn't something I set out to arrange because when Mom finally did meet them, I knew the critiques would start.

She didn't liked Susan because she didn't wear a bra.

She didn't like Wendy because she wore too much makeup.

She didn't like Denise because she didn't wear any makeup.

She didn't like June because she was Catholic.

And she damned sure didn't like Dana because, well, first impressions and all that.

Dana had a great idea one Saturday in August to go up to Sonora Pass the watch the annual Perseids meteor shower. We had seen some of it the night before, but there was so much damned light pollution from Riverbank City of Action and the dairies in the area that it was hard to see. Fuck yeah, Sonora Pass was a great idea. It's almost 9700 feet in elevation with no nearby towns, so the show oughta be nothing short of brilliant. We tossed a couple lawn recliners, some blankets and a cooler of beer in the back of the truck and headed to the mountains where we spent the day waiting for nightfall.

It was everything she hoped it would be and was so enjoyable that I was shocked when I looked at my watch and saw it was 3am. We packed everything up and headed back to the valley, getting to bed an hour past the time I normally wake up at. No big deal, I had no plans for that day so I figured to sleep in.

About 9am, something woke me up. I laid there for a minute and didn't hear anything unusual, so I rubbed Dana's butt and asked if she was ready for coffee. "Uhhhnnnhhh, " she mumbled, which I took as a yes. Dana was not a morning person.

I got out of bed and slipped into a pair of jeans and went into the kitchen to put on a pan of water for the coffee press. Just when I walked back into my living room, my front door opens and my mother strolls on in like she owned the fucking place. Where in the hell is my watchdog? 

Then Dana picked that very moment to stagger out of the bedroom clad only in one of my raggedy-ass shirts she liked to sleep in and a pair of panties. She's rubbing her eyes with her left forearm and her right hand is inside her drawers scratching her hoo-haw. 

Mom's standing just inside the house and has a shocked look on her face. Dana doesn't even realize she's there. Again, Dana wasn't a morning person. The decent side of me is freaking out, knowing I needed to something, anything, then the normal side of me is thinking, "Don't you do a fucking thing. This is going to be a great story for the bar. Let's see what happens."

Poor Dana finally realizes we're not alone and gets this shocked look on her face, yanks her hand out of her panties and then holds it out to Mom to shake while saying, "Hi. I'm Dana." One last time, Dana wasn't a morning person but at least she was trying to show some manners.

Mom looks at that hand, then at Dana's face and says, "No thank you." Then she sneers, "You need to have that thing checked if it itches that much." Then she looks at me and says, "You too," before slamming out the door.

I'm having a giggling fit and Dana's looking thoroughly distressed. "Please, please tell me that wasn't your mother. Oh dear God, it was, wasn't it?"

Dana was fucking mortified until I pointed out that she did absolutely nothing wrong. All she did was get out of bed to get her coffee, something everybody did every morning. Whatever happened was purely on Mom.

I heard about it the next Monday at work from Dad. He advised me it might be a good idea to avoid Mom for a good long while, maybe even until the next death in the family so her mind would be occupied with that. Apparently she was outraged when she entered my shack without knocking and found that her 26 year old son was keeping a nearly nude 28 year old slut in there. Oh, the horror of it all! 

Two or three months later and early in the evening, I get a page from a phone booth judging by the number after the prefix starting with a 9. I plugged in my phone and called it back thinking it was a friend that was broke down somewhere and needed a ride. 

It was Dad. "Yeah hey, Bud kept getting lightheaded all day so he's here at Memorial hospital. He's fine, they're putting him in a room so they can run tests, no need to worry, but your mom wanted me to call and let you know." Because he made it a point to mention Mom, I realized that was Dad-code for "Your grandfather's in the hospital and if you don't get your ass up here most ricky-tick, neither of us are going to hear the end of it." She was probably standing right beside him.

I went to the hospital figuring to visit with Bud and listen to his latest drama queen bullshit, then try to track down Dana who was on schedule there, and take her to lunch.

I found Bud's room and when I walked in, Pops was the only one there trying to make conversation with Bud who he didn't care for very much. Mom had ran back home for something or another and would be back soon. Right on, I hadn't seen Mom since the Hoo-Haw Incident and I was glad there were going to be other people around even though I knew the both of them had already heard the whole sordid story.

After about a half hour of listening to Bud bitching and moaning about the brain cancer he surely had, the door opens and Dana of all people walks in, "Well, hello Mr Wallace, I'm Dana and I'm here to..... Ken!  Hi, baby!" She gave me a quick hug, then she asked Bud a few questions, checked his vitals and stopped for a few words with me before going back out. As we're standing a little too close talking and smiling at each other, Mom walks in the fucking room. Oh shit oh dear, I know Mom won't be able to hold her tongue. Maybe I should call security real quick and get a jump on it.

Then I looked at Mom and she's got  a surprised but not pissed look on her face, and I realized she doesn't recognize Dana! Hell, the only other time she'd ever seen her she was half nekkid in drawers and a tore up nightshirt and her hair was everywhere. Now she's in scrubs, her face is made up, her hair's pinned up and she even has a bra on.

Fucking crisis averted, bro.

Then Mom, who can't leave well enough alone, looks at me and says, "Well, I see you've upgraded since the last one," then she turns to Dana and says, "I'm Cleda, Kenneth's mother."  Dana got an evil look on her face knowing it was payback time and uttered five words that never failed generate gales of  laughter every time I told the story, "We've already met. I'm Dana," as she offered her right hand and wiggled her fingers.