franksolich looking for a primitive for Martin Luther King's day

[franksolich]

Saturday night, about 10:30, the neighbor, the neighbor’s older brother, and two of their friends came over here, as the bar in town had closed for the night, and they weren’t done yet.

I dunno what the attraction of this place is, given that there’s no television or jukebox or radio or stereo or other noise-maker around here, accoutrements oftentimes necessary for comfortable imbibing, but they put up with it, sitting around the dining room table gabbing and drinking for a couple of hours before going home to their wives.

I’m ill, and so didn’t pay much attention, but at some time one of them suggested it was long past time for me to get the Christmas presents unwrapped; they needed more room on the dining room table.

I was going to take the biggest one still remaining, one wrapped in a box big enough to hold a microwave oven (but it’s obviously no microwave oven), but after looking at the tags, they agreed I should open up one of the smaller ones, from the femme.

Apparently curious as to what “[my] woman” gave me.

So I opened it, and was confused.  It was a cellular telephone.

Or so one thought at first.

Actually, it’s a fake cellular telephone, and a real stun-gun.

I was impressed.

Upon reading the owner’s manual, I learned that it’s illegal in Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois, and that while legal in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, one at the same time must have a concealed weapons permit to have it.

This place seems to be turning into an arsenal.

[franksolich]

The property caretaker braved the frigid temperatures this noon and came over to see how things are going, because his wife was concerned. 

“He doesn’t eat when he’s sick, and he’s probably not eating.”

There weren’t any leftovers from their Sunday lunch, so he stopped at the convenience store on his way here and picked up a $10 large pepperoni pizza--which he knows I do eat, but even in normal times only a slice at any one time.

Fortunately, pepperoni pizza’s one of those things one can stick in the refrigerator, and it’s still good after two weeks, and just as good cold as hot.  I had one slice, and hoarded the rest.

He told me it’s going to be his 69th birthday on January 18.  I’d always assumed he was in his late 60s, as he’d been in Vietnam, but his slight build, bald head, and bug-eye as a result of a motorcycle accident a couple of years after he came back, made guessing his age “iffy” at best.

But at any rate, he’s a gentleman, the salt of the earth, a prince among peasants.

I looked at the stack of unopened Christmas presents on the dining room table, but he got my drift.

“No, boss, I don’t want one of your presents.”

Even though I’d already done it in writing, I thanked him again for his Christmas present to me, that black rubber-gripped baton, which means I can restore the 17”-long S/K adjustable wrench to the tool-box, rather than always leaving it out where it’s handy in case I need it.

I also showed him the “cellular telephone” the femme had given me.

- - - - - - - - - -

“You know, boss,” he said, “Swede down at the bar was talking about this the other night; he says you don’t need any of these things, and that you’ll never use them, because you’re the luckiest son-of-a-bitch he’s ever met in his life. 

“He says it’ll never happen; that you’re one of those who could unknowingly walk through a criss-crossing of bullets flying through the air, and by chance slip in between every single one of them.”

I admitted that I have a tendency to be lucky, but I don’t think I’d be that lucky.

He disagreed.  He thought my goose had been cooked a couple of years ago, when the Packer clan was up here, and camping on the river in the back yard.

“Those worthless freeloading bums and hippies from Oklahoma, and the leering hippywife who kept looking at you with salacious motives, sizing you up for bedroom fodder.

“But hippyhubby was the one who had us all worried, the way he kept staring at you, with those cadaver-carvers in hand, as if sizing you up for supper.”

Oh bosh, I said; while Wild Bill was grouchy, not very friendly, he was no threat to me.

“I dunno, boss.  You trust people too much."

[Big Dog]

A friend recently asked me why I carry a gun.

I said, "Because nobody makes a holster for a 17" long S&K adjustable wrench"!

[franksolich]

The femme came by today, even though I’d told her not to, given the arctic weather.

Per my request, she’d stopped by a medical equipment rental place, and gotten a pair of aluminum crutches; I’m not sure if one would call them ”crutches,” because they’re just hollow aluminum poles with places to attach the upper arms near the top.  They were ubiquitous when I was a child, but one rarely if ever sees them anymore.

I don’t need them, but I might need them.

She also brought along a lot of books from the library in the big city, none certain to make me feel melancholy at reading death-bed scenes.  There’s death-bed scenes in them, to be sure, but the sort that gives one a great deal of satisfaction--a biography of Leonid Brezhnev, another of Adlai Stevenson, a third of Che Guevera, a fourth of the gross corrupt decadent Tipsy O’Neill.

She also brought along four books I haven’t seen in decades; Thomas Costain’s The Conquering Family, The Magnificent Century, The Three Edwards, and The Last of the Plantagenets.

When I was 18 years old and compelled to go to college, I’d decided I’d major in history.

Problem, however,  Because I didn’t want to be in college, and wanted to get out as quickly as possible, I took various of the CLEP examinations (College-Level Equivalency Program), and other courses offered by the University of Nebraska via examination, rather than the classes themselves.

I’d cleared away a whole semester and a half in one sitting, for the CLEP examinations (and later, another whole semester in courses by examination), and stated my intention to major in American history.  But that wasn’t wise, the advisor suggested; I already knew American history, and I was in college (ostensibly) to learn something new.

How about majoring in some other sort of history?

About the same time, I’d by chance picked up a paperback copy of Costain’s The Magnificent Century, about England during the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), and was so taken up that it had to be British history, which it ended up being.

Of course, unlike a primitive, franksolich never had the slightest intention of making money off of his academic degree; I just wanted to be done with college as soon as I could.

[franksolich]

The property caretaker was here about noon, with a friend of his, to work on some piece of agricultural machinery owned by a friend of theirs.  It involved a lot of welding and took up a lot of space, so rather than trying to repair it in town, they hauled it all the way out here to fix it.

I suppose that’s another attraction of this place; one can do half of a really messy job, and having to stop, can just leave everything laying as it is, until one comes back several hours or days or weeks later to finish the job.

The caretaker noticed the aluminum crutches.

Not to worry, I told him; they’re simply a “just in case” precaution, nothing more.  As I was obviously ambulatory even if slow, he seemed reassured.  I reminded him that having had much experience living alone far away from any possible assistance--the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, for example--I’d long ago learned to plan for certain contingencies.

And in the end, probably 99% of the time it’d been wasted planning, but it was good to do anyway.

- - - - - - - - - -

I told him I was going to work on Thursday. 

Now, I work various jobs, about one-third of them really strenuous manual labor, about another third of them manual labor, and the third third of them sitting-at-a-desk accounting.  Ever since the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) passed twenty years ago, hiring the “handicapped” has posed potential liabilities to potential employers, and so no one hires the handicapped; we’re weeded out even before any interview.

It’s part of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to drive us onto the plantation; nobody on that side of the aisle has admitted it, but their motives are so obvious even a blind man can see it.

It’s a bitch, being a protected person.  One feels like George, the uncooperative slave who’d rather be on his own, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Anyway, the caretaker knows I check and correct store receipts and disbursements on Thursdays, one of those six-hours-a -week “regular” jobs, and so it’s just a sitting-at-a-desk job, nothing strenuous.

However, he pointed out, “You’re in no shape to drive.”

The neighbor’s wife decided to do her shopping in the big city on Thursday, and would take me there, I said; and then the femme, who lives in the big city but has an event going on nearby that evening, would drive me back here circa seven or eight hours later, whenever I’m done.

“It’s a win-win situation; nobody’s put out, nobody’s inconvenienced.

“Being a nice guy, I bend over backwards so as to not impose.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The caretaker’s friend noticed the arsenal on the dining-room table, although he had to be enlightened that the cellular telephone’s no telephone at all, but rather a stun-gun.  He admired the baton, and wondered about the two large canisters of pepper-spray, all of these things Christmas presents.

“Well, if I were a primitive, I’d sooner confront a machine-gun wielded by someone else, than confront you with any of this, or with your S/K adjustable wrench.  The idiot in the White House has no idea what a dangerous weapon is.”

“But Swede says he’ll never have to use them” the caretaker pointed out.

The caretaker’s friend had lost a friendly wager of $10 betting against me last month, and so knew what that was all about.

- - - - - - - - - -

“I’ve always wondered about your fascination with primitives,” he commented; “and so too everybody else around here.  We’d just as soon they’d all turn belly-up and die.”

Anthropology and biology, I said; I want to find out what makes them different from real people.

“Lincoln was congested with primitives--although they weren’t identified as ‘primitives’ then--and Omaha had a fair share, but alas I never paid much attention to them when I lived in those places.

“And now I’m out here, interested in primitivity, but not a primitive to be found.

“I’m desperate for a specimen to observe and study.”

He recollected there’d been one here once, after I’d moved up here.

Ah, yes, “Auntie,” the every-Thanksgiving guest of the neighbor and his wife, from that halfway house down in Kansas City; the older hippiechick who’d messed up her mind w-a-a-a-a-y back in the 1960s, and had been a parasite on the body public since then.

I’d had ample opportunity to examine and test her every Thanksgiving for about six years, but then she died last year, her body overtaxed by fat, water retention, and pharmaceuticals chomped down by the handful as if popcorn.  After “Auntie,” no more primitives around here.

“True, I’ve had primitives camping down along the river, but other than fleeting encounters, I’ve only ever seen them from far away.  This time, I want one up close, so I can use that craniometer and microscope, to minutely examine what makes them different from decent and civilized people.”

The caretaker, who’d one time met “Auntie,” described her to his friend.

The friend didn’t believe it.

“It’s true, all if it, very true,” I affirmed.  “I don’t have a picture of ‘Auntie,’ but if you examine these three pictures and combine all the features, you’d get an idea what she looked like.

“Don’t just take some features from one and add them to some other features from another, to get a good picture; combine them all together, every single feature in every single picture, adding some dollops of more flaccidity, sagging skin, more body decorations and ornaments, and you get an idea what ‘Auntie’ looked like.”

[franksolich]

Last evening, about suppertime, when I was laying on the couch, the retired banker’s wife poked her head inside the door, startling me.

Her husband, Grumpy, was still sitting in the car, the engine running, so I figured it’d be a short visit.

They were on their way to the big city, to attend the every-other-month potluck of veterans of the Korean War.  It’s a big deal, but alas their numbers are thinning, and so recently they added others who simply served in the military during the 1950s, anytime, anywhere, to keep it going.

It’s not a small group, though; maybe ten dozen or more.

“You’re sick, and I thought I’d bring you a little something while on our way,” she announced.

It was two things; a quart Tupperware container of her home-made coleslaw, and some bottles of different vitamins.

The coleslaw had been subtracted from what she was taking to the potluck.  Usually I’m hesitant about accepting home-made stuff unless it’s just a single ingredient--people have a habit of putting unpleasant surprises into elaborate mixed dishes--but I popped open the lid.

It was her home-made coleslaw, and it didn’t have any raisins in it, so it passed.

The vitamins--the retired banker’s wife is big on these things--I also accepted, despite that I don’t use chemical vitamins.  Probably somebody else some time might have a use for them.

I thought she was going to leave, but looking at the now-diminished-but-still-substantial pile of Christmas presents on the dining room table, she asked if I could open one, so she could see what it was.

(I’d already opened the one from her and Grumpy some days ago…..and had sent a “thank you” note even before then.)

I told her sure, pick one out.

The one she selected, without reading tags, was from the neighbor (but not his wife, too), and as it looked to me it was probably a “gag” gift, I opened it very hesitantly, pulling out a glass globe with a chimney on top, and a stem coming out of the middle.

I held my breath. 

The retired banker’s wife is 79 years old, and has lived in this area all her life, excepting when she was away at college (Radcliffe, of all places).  On one hand, I wasn’t sure if she’d even realize what it was, but on the other hand, she’s been around, and perhaps she might have.

“Oh, what a most unusual vase,” she said; “but what a lovely one too.”

I’m still not sure if she knew, but I’m glad that before opening it, I’d speculated out loud that it was probably a “gag” gift, not to be taken seriously.

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor came over just before I hit the sack for the night.

I pointed to his present sitting on the dining room table, thanking him.

“You know, this is going to be like cheese in a mouse-trap, perfect bait for a primitive.”

[franksolich]

Okay, it's painfully and woefully obvious I'm not going to get a primitive for the holiday tomorrow (Monday), so I'll put a "the end" to this.

Maybe I'll get a primitive for my birthday, I dunno.

A lot of other things have happened since the last installment, including more Christmas presents opened, but as I'm still ill, I'm not up to writing about them; I've been making sporadic appearances on conservativecave the past several days only to reassure the lurking primitives that no, nothing bad's happened to franksolich, and I'm sure I'll be back in form in a few weeks or so.

So the primitives may breathe easy; franksolich is still here, still around.

[ChuckJ]

Okay, it's painfully and woefully obvious I'm not going to get a primitive for the holiday tomorrow (Monday), so I'll put a "the end" to this.

Maybe I'll get a primitive for my birthday, I dunno.

A lot of other things have happened since the last installment, including more Christmas presents opened, but as I'm still ill, I'm not up to writing about them; I've been making sporadic appearances on conservativecave the past several days only to reassure the lurking primitives that no, nothing bad's happened to franksolich, and I'm sure I'll be back in form in a few weeks or so.

So the primitives may breathe easy; franksolich is still here, still around.

Sorry to hear that you're still sick frank. I know a lot of folks around me that have been or are still sick. Mom is finally getting over whatever ailed her. Thankfully, I've been free of it thus far.

I hope you get better soon.