I always wondered what happened to those scholarships given to the artists that drew the best imitation of the "draw this" art in the periodicals of the time.
He isn't in their league. The buffoon cuts and pastes old public domain clipart to produce a primitive (What else?), simple to a fault, and unfunny sort of comic strip, and then gets huffy about his 'creative rights' in his 'intellectual property' if anyone puts one of the sad little things up on the internet.
Ah, my apologies, your monickers for the idiots' own monickers throw me off at times.
Sooner or later, he's gonna blow up.
continued
“Who was that, a friend of yours?†the stranger asked the cowboy as the sudden apparition melted into the darkness of the room beyond.
“I’m his nearest neighbor,†the cowboy told the stranger, “six miles up the road from him. We’ve known each other for a long time, even before either of us was up here. I was born and raised here, and then came back thirteen years ago, and he came here ten, almost eleven, years ago.
“He’s from a good family, a well-known and –respected family—and a large family—but as he was born at the tail-end of it, and late, now he’s the last one left. He’s got grown-and-married nephews and all that, but in his own family, he’s the last one left.
“He’s originally from deep within the Sandhills.
“People around here think rather highly of him,†the cowboy went on; “he’s the only adult male in the county who doesn’t carry a gun, because he doesn’t need to. If he got into some sort of trouble, there’d be guns blazing from all directions, to get him out of it.
“Usually other people notice he’s in danger before he does; he usually doesn’t know until it’s over with.
“He doesn’t talk much. A few times, he’ll open up a little bit, such as when he occasionally tells me about his two years wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants during the early 1990s.
“His friends, and what was still then left of his family, thought him utterly mad, and thought for sure he’d take the next plane home. He left on a Thursday, and I myself thought I’d see him again the following Monday.
“There was a lot of concern about this, but he didn’t pay any attention. He just went. He was tired of having such a dull, unexciting life.
“He went there on his own, paying his own way and not ‘sponsored’ by anybody, knowing nothing whatsoever of the lay of the land or its languages, and because he was afraid all the excitement would be over with before he got there, he was in a hurry to get there; he went there before he had much money--$187 in American one-dollar bills, and no way to get any more…..but yet he lasted two months shy of two years.
“He was in the newspapers a lot back then, but unfortunately the excitement was all over with before he got there. It was kind of like showing up in Berlin in May 1945, too late to see anything.
“He saw the socialist paradises from the bottom up, and obviously it was a rude eye-opener, an abrupt life-changer.
“When he was picked up at the airport after having been there, he weighed 137 pounds and looked like a Russian peasant…..from another century. The friend who picked him up wanted to take him to the hospital to be looked at, but he insisted he was okay, and just needed some sleep ‘between clean sheets.’ He slept through two and a half days and nights straight, and when he woke up again, he said it was just jet lag.
“As you can guess, he’s 6’3â€, and has since fattened up to, oh, about 175 pounds.
“To this day, he won’t even wear a wrist-watch, thinking it an ostentatious decadence in a world where so many have so much less.
“He was never a high-living materialistic money-grubber even before he left here, but after the profound shock of that experience, he’s raised personal spartan austerity to a whole new level.
“Others, like the primitives on Skins’s island, worry they don’t have enough; he worries that he has too much.
“He’s described some of things he saw, but only little parts of them. As for the whole picture, he just says, ‘some things are so incredible they have to be seen before they can be believed.’
“To this day he says he left there, but he never, really, came back ‘here.’â€to be continued
Aermotors were bit robust and finding one still working is a treat.
The old pump valve at the bottom of the hole, no longer works.
They just spin in circles, going *squeaksqueaksqueak* and produce nothing.
They remind me of DUmpmonkeys.
^Since the little darlings like to name each variant of weed they produce maybe what you destroyed was sandhillssensimilla.Or sandhillscenseofsmella. :lmao: :cheersmate:
“And nobody has to ask him for anything; he instinctively knows what they need, to get them a hundred miles further down the road, or through the next twenty-four hours.
Still hoping Pedro meets a gruesome end involving multiple gory chunks.
Still hoping Pedro meets a gruesome end involving multiple gory chunks.
I hope the stranger doesn't see the drawer of knives in the kitchen, before being offered a place to shower.
It would be fine with me if he suffocated in the William River Pitt pig shit.
Mr. Bates took that wrench to loosen the bolts holding the strangers surfboard to the top of the car.
For the illumination of primitives stalking franksolich, 1-3/8" is the spannage, not the length, of the tool.That's tractor fixin' stuff. Doubles as a handy-dandy boinker, too.
It's 17" long, and weighs a lot.
I remember the William Rivers Pitt, to be out back, off to the side of the corncob shed.
Well, at least at my Grandparents, it was.
Used to be a two-holer till the kids grew up and moved.
Gramps dug another, and was just one holer.
Catalogs and all.
The surf board could go missing, somehow innocently, and as the lib makes gas and restroom breaks, he might see the surf board go driving by, tied to someone else's car, like the trip I took once from Atlanta to Lumberton N.C. and as I drove the speed limit or slightly over, saw the same red corvette speed past me on at least 4 to 5 occasions. I guess at the speeds he was going he had to stop for a full tank every 100 miles or so.....or had to pee.
....or had to pee.Oh, so that's it. Peanut bladder syndrome. Better than a peanut bladder and jelly sandwich I imagine.
Oh, so that's it. Peanut bladder syndrome. Better than a peanut bladder and jelly sandwich I imagine.:asssmack: :asssmack: :chairshot:
Well, back to the adventure of "the stranger".
I'm reasonably sure he didn't listen the wise advice of his host, and he soon struck out west from Thedford.
Stranger thought Hwy 89 and 2, was the scenic route.
Silly stranger, he should have listened. Ohhh, noo.
The surf board could go missing.....
No, no, you guys are way off about the ending, but keep trying.One must take 89 south from 20, to get to 2. :rotf:
Nebraska Highway 2 is in fact the scenic route, but that's considerably south of here. However, Highway 2 is "my" Sandhills, where I spent my youth. This story takes place on U.S. Highway 20, the longest highway in North America (Boston-Portland), and while it too goes through the Sandhills, it goes through only the roof of the Sandhills, not the heart of them.
But as mentioned in the story, even that easier stretch makes for the most daunting, the most arduous, part of Atman's cross-country trip.
The story would have ended rather quickly. I am now a LEO in the old hometown.
Atman arriving and stopping into the American Legion on a dance night...
There wouldn't have been much to pick up after the cowboys got finished with him.
Like scraping roadkill off the highway after an 18 wheeler ran him over.
One must take 89 south from 20, to get to 2. :rotf:
I think I just hurt myself typing that. :lmao:
Pedro is gonna be pissed at being outed as an aging queer.
You, sir, probably used to do this river that runs by here, the Elkhorn River.Elkhorn was half a mile south. Hwy 20/275, three blocks south. 281, two blocks to the west. :-) Yup, did it.
:lmao:
continued“They’re nice places, neat and clean and all that, and the food can’t be beat, but you got no more chance of finding one with a vacant room than nadin does of marrying Prince Harry.â€to be continued
So is Atman 1 of those leftists who are snobby and look down at what they view as the "little people"?
You have got to be kidding, girl.
Please tell me you're kidding.
Atman makes the rich bitch kpete look egalitarian in comparison.
This after all is a guy who pipes Perrier water into his commode, because ordinary water isn't good enough for what he drops in there.
It's really odd, this royal attitude, because Atman's not part of the 1%. Part of the 5%, but not the 1%.
A long time ago, I thought that Atman perhaps was a graduate of some elite college, like Yale, because of his attitude. Much to my surprise, I later learned he has no college degree at all. He's just one of those bums, supported by mom's investments in a camera company decades ago, who grew up lounging around on the beaches of Florida, and never got into college at all.
That threw me for a loop.
:lmao:
I know nothing about him at all, and find it amusing that the people they say they care about are the ones they turn their noses up at.He showed up at our old home and tried to pass himself off as educated and worldly.
He showed up at our old home and tried to pass himself off as educated and worldly.
It didn't work.
Pedro should have known better than to mess with the master.
Most however remember his bouts with dutch508.
He showed up at our old home and tried to pass himself off as educated and worldly.That's as laughable as when he showed up at the Mission Impossible junkmail firm and tried to pass himself off as an artist.
As usual, excellent work, sir.
Maybe Dutch would care to illuminate me, and others who are interested.
Thank you, but I do have one regret.Thanks for your restraint.
I wanted to post a certain photograph of franksolich for the lurking primitives to see, but there's some here who don't like it, saying it doesn't show off my best side.
Was he genetically gay, and if so, was he also genetically a surfer?
That was the most difficult decision I had to make, when writing the story.For some reason, that just creeps me out. :tazeme:
Should I put a surfboard, or skis, atop Atman's car?
Atman skis too, although he's probably not good at it (for the record, franksolich himself has never put on a set of skis, so it's reasonable to assume that Atman tops franksolich in skiing), given the problems he had in real life, getting through one of the mountain passes in southern Colorado several years ago.
I wanted his car to stick out.
Well, motor vehicles with skis strapped to the top are as common as Cornhusker football fans in Nebraska, so I went with the surfboard, again, to make Atman stick out.
For some reason, that just creeps me out. :tazeme:
Maybe Pedro learned how to pick winners from Al and Jesse as well.Perhaps that's true, however, Al and Jesse are smart enough not to eat their own boogers. :-)