From grief to relief to anger. 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds

The old woman next door, hair so white it almost seems colorless, back so bent her stance resembles an upside down letter J. We speak across the backyard fence from time to time. She tells me she and her husband were the first people to move on the block, in the mid 50's, a few years before I was born. The couple who originally owned our house, both long dead, were friends of hers. Our house sat unoccupied for close to 8 years, all the utilities stayed on and the children of the previous owners came by every couple of months to check the pipes, maybe to visit the ghost like memories that fill a childhood home, everything seeming so much smaller than they recall. Not long after we moved in I found hundreds of time cards in a box. 35 years worth. The mans name, small square holes punched in the cards, marking time like a convict making x's on a calender. The yard went to seed, the once manicured lawn grew ragged and bare in spots. The flower beds, just like the former occupants, died, leaving behind an empty impression lined with rocks and bricks. They were all friends and neighbors. Now it's just the old woman next door, and another across the street who rarely ventures outside. When she does come out, wearing those giant black sunglasses that practically cover the entire face, the two old women will meet in the middle of the street, talk, then retreat back inside their respective homes.


The woman's children show up about once a week. sometimes it's the son, other times it's the daughter. The son lives down in the Ozarks, has the look of an aged hippie.  The daughter drives a high end imported SUV with JoCo tags. This week it's the daughters turn. She is standing just outside the front door of the house as I'm leaving for work.
"Mom " "Mom"  She leans inside the doorway, like a frightened child peering inside a closet trying to see what's back in the darkest corner of it. I make myself look busy like I'm looking for something in my car. I don't want to appear to be intruding on her moment even though I am. Her voice gets softer after about the 4th or 5th "Mom".  As I watch it all unfold, I wonder if  this visit will end with an ambulance out front. No sirens, no rush to leave. The daughter seems to want to walk through the door, one foot is over the threshold. she is frozen in place. She is on her 10th or 20th "Mom" at this point, reduced to little more than a whisper. Just as I'm about to walk over to see if I can help, the old woman comes around the corner of the house. She gets within a few feet of her daughter. She speaks, but I can't make out what she says. The daughter jumps. she goes from concern, to relief, to chewing the old woman's ass for scaring her. As they go inside the softness gone from her voice, I hear bits and pieces. "Door" "Unlocked".  The tone is like that of a parent scolding a child, the roles reversed now.
As the door closes, I hear "Mother". The tone no longer soft.  The moment seemingly forgotten.

Understanding cultural differences...

When I first got out of the joint I dated this crazy Laotian chick, which proves 2 things. One, I'm not racist. And two, I don't discriminate against crazy people. Before you get the wrong idea and conjure up some fucked up vision in your mind of me running around banging some wrinkled up old Laotian woman in a conical straw hat and betel nut stained teeth, I wasn't, and she wasn't. Her grandmother pretty much fit that bill, but I never laid a paw on her. In fact her granny didn't like me, or any round eyed cracker for that matter, but she especially disliked me. I'm pretty sure grams was what passes for a racist in Laos, and I'm equally convinced that she made racist comments about me, but the old bitch didn't speak a lick of Gods Language, which everyone knows is English, American English, not that fucked up gibberish English that the Limeys speak. So every time I happened upon the old bat, she would start speaking in clicks and whistles, shrill ear shattering, nails on chalkboard clicks and whistles.  I'd ask the woman what the old bag O bones was saying and she would laugh and say ," nothing". 

The entire family lived in an old brownstone building in Columbus Park, which the Asians have pretty much usurped from the Italians over the last 15 years or so.  Everyone had their own apartment. The building was as clean as the Board of Health, but it smelled funny.  Now the woman I was dating was about as Laotian as I am Irish or German, which is to say she had never set foot in Laos. She was born  in Texas the late 1960's, maybe early 70's. She inherited her looks from her mother, who you could tell was once upon a time quite a looker. She inherited the crazy gene from her grandmother. One time the woman was bitching at me for something or the other and I tried to ease the tension with a little humor. I'm paraphrasing because I don't recall the exact words, but it was something about her calming down before she lost her temper and used Kung Fu on me. She went ballistic and got all ethnic prideful on me. Which seemed a little ludicrous to me, beings she was only Laotian genetically speaking. She had the black hair, almond eyes, porcelain doll features, but she also spoke with a Texas drawl, except when she was speaking gibberish to one of her family, and her voice took on that shrill tone just like the rest of them.   We parted ways shortly after that.

I came away from that short lived relationship with a little better understanding of cultural differences. Foreigners eat fucked up food, but they find our food equally fucked the fuck up. If you think I'm oversimplifying cultural differences, you need look no further than this very blog for proof. A Cambodian boy, a real one, from Cambodia, and not Galveston, has made the news. Here's the skinny on this kid. He is around 2 or 3 years old. Hard to tell because the Asians don't age like we do. Sure you see some old ass wrinkled up Asians, but they are like 130 before they start to wrinkle. So in reality this kid could be 15 or 16, you can't judge by height, since the Asians aren't usually tall. His parents left him with his Gramps. Apparently the kid was still breast feeding when mom and pop dropped him off with the old man.

So the kid isn't eating. He is all the time crying. Then one day he has an epiphany. He sees a calf suckling at momma cow. Kid elbows the calf out of the way and goes to town. Which just proves that real Asians will eat anything, and they are genius innovators. Which explains how they have come to own more of America than Americans.

 Meanwhile we Americans have organizations like PETA, who would probably be all over this kid if he were over here sucking on a cows tit like some frat douche on a beer bong. If PETA did show up protesting, they would probably be met by counter protesters from some mommy blogger million mom group, protesting the kids right to fresh milk.  Me, I'm just glad the Cambodians don't keep dogs as pets, otherwise the little squirt might have got nipped by Duke the lab for getting fresh, if you catch my meaning.

Fast Eddie Friday..New Begining, or the begining of the end.

As we all wait for impending doom, anyone with an Internet connection and half assed vocabulary will be waxing philosophic on the 9/11 anniversary. Despite meeting those qualifications, I won't be one of them. The last thing anyone wants to hear is some middle age prick go all Juan Williams on the Muslims. Hey, if I'd been around during the Spanish inquisition I wouldn't trust Spaniards, catholics, or anyone with a red hot set of pincers.  So I'll continue to harbor suspicion toward anyone that remotely looks middle
eastern-ish including the guy who moved in to the house behind mine. He looks Syrian, or Hispanic, hard to tell.  I've rigged up trip lines with empty cans to alert me if he tries to overrun my Independence compound. Just. In. Case.

With my racial profiling out of the way, we can get on to more pressing matters. I've  got my own anniversary on the horizon. This bloggy endeavor will be 4 years old next month. It pains me to admit it, but this thing has gone to seed, untended, and largely ignored for the last 6 or 8 months. So, I'm going to make one last run at getting my creative juices flowing. If I can't get back to posting with a semblance of regularity, I'm gonna pull the plug on this blog like the life support system on Sunny Von Bulow. So stick around. Over the next few weeks you rubes are either going to witness the slow death spiral of this once promising blog, or the rebirth of same.

Nothing says, deluded douche bag blogger playing writer, like a blog series. Who can forget my ground breaking Urban Blight, Prison for Dummies, or Ruthless Worthless, and Clueless series?  While the links remain in the side bar, they have long since quit working, you'll just have to take my word for it or search the archives. So without further ado, I give you my latest series................
The Route

Monday through Friday I drive the same tired ass route. Passing through the small towns and corn fields of northwest Missouri. If it sounds boring, that's because it is. But at least once a week I encounter that special brand of country crazy that you just don't find here in the city. In the days and weeks to come, you lucky readers will marvel at the oddities, eccentricities, and plum fucking nutty shit that I see from my cracked windshield.  Either that, or I'll abandon this series in one or two posts, like the last few times I've started something.

That's one big dog. My first thought at seeing some knucklehead driving down a 2 lane blacktop with a Mule in the back of his pickup. The mule took up the entire truck bed. No tailgate. Wasn't tied in. Just standing there catching the wind like a big ass dog. The road to Trenton Missouri is pockmarked with a few small dying towns, Amish dudes in buggies, and slow moving dust covered pickup trucks. And at least one Mule that prefers to ride rather than be rode, or ridden, whatever. See ya next week.