Fast Eddie Friday......Just plain crazy

Fox 4 just ran a short piece on the Glore Psychiatric Museum. You can view some pics and commentary on the Saint Joe museum here. The story got me to thinking about the crazy people I've crossed paths with over the years. Crazy people fascinate me, always have. The first truly insane person I ever encountered was the mother of a childhood friend. The kids name was Pat, we were budding juvenile delinquents back in the day. Pats father worked at a transmission shop, he looked like String Bean from the Grand Old Opry, he permanently smelled like transmission fluid, was perpetually drunk, mean as hell, and an easy mark. I'd spend the night at Pats, was probably 12 0r 13 at the time. Pats old man would come home drunk as Cooter Brown, smack Pat or one of his three brothers around, then pass out. Once we were sure the old prick was deep asleep, Pat would belly crawl across his bedroom floor, lift his wallet and liberate his cash and his car keys. The keys fit a pale yellow early 1960's Lincoln. We spent many a night, barely able to see over the dash or reach the pedals, tearing up the streets of Waldo and the South end of KC. Somehow we managed, and we would usually end up at Sambo's restaurant on Bannister road, well after midnight.

Pats father was a mean spirited drunk, but he wasn't crazy. Pats mother however was as crazy as an Arizona road lizard. I'm talking bat shit insane. Her hair was always fucked up, her doo was a cross between a bouffant 60's style and Buckwheat of little Rascals fame. His mother was the original Butter Face. She had that crazy hair that looked like she had been electrocuted, her face had red patches and open sores from digging at it, and she was joop eyed, one eye was half closed while the other seemed to constantly bounce around in its socket. As faces go, hers was none too nice to look at. She also had a tendency to walk around the house mostly naked. For a crazy lady with 4 kids, she had a killer body, at least as I remember it. Then again, in the eyes of a just pubed boy, maybe any female flesh looked good. Time has a way of softening the edges of our memory. Like a photographers lens with a thin coating of Vaseline, the rough edges softened, the hard lines blurred. So maybe her body wasn't all that rockin, but that's how I remember it. Hence the original Butter Face analogy, everything looked good, butter face.

Pats mom would have periods of lucidity, seeming almost normal, then she would relapse into long stretches of pure insanity. She would eat from the trash can. I recall one day when we walked in the house only to find her sitting in the middle of the kitchen, in her underwear, eating garbage like it was a KC strip from Morton's. Coffee grounds and eggshells clinging to her face, chewing away at God knows what. I had to look away, so I focused on her breasts, which were unencumbered and quite spectacular for a 30 something woman with four kids. Kids can be viscous little bastards, and we were no exception. During one of her semi lucid periods, we taped 3 smoke bombs to the window unit a/c, lit them, then ran through the house yelling fire. As the house filled with smoke, Pats crazy mother ran outside buck naked, followed by an extremely pissed off transmission mechanic in boxer shorts. Pats old man chased him around the front yard, well after midnight, while the neighbors peered from their front porches and out their windows.

Somehow, maybe Divine intervention or perhaps blind luck, Pat turned out to be pretty normal. He grew up, managed to avoid following me to boys homes and prisons, despite his having a family as fucked up as a soup sandwich, while my own was relatively normal. His other brothers, not so much. One is up in the Crossroads serving life for a contract killing, another is long since dead by his own hand, and the third is living in Grandview, over 50, still trying his best to be a teenaged deadbeat. As for his father, he drank himself to death years ago. Pats mother is still living. Housed in a residential group home, her madness quelled by medication and old age. I spoke to the deadbeat brother in Grandview about a year ago, he filled me in, then proceeded to hit me up for money. I'm sure Pats mom no longer is possessed of that body, at least not as I remember it, if it ever did look that good. Like I said, we often see the past through a fuzzy lens. What I know is this; Every time I smell transmission fluid I think of Pats drunken father, and there are few things in life more disconcerting than a mostly naked woman eating trash in her kitchen.

True Story.