franksolich gets occupied by primitives

[franksolich]

Note: this is a work of fiction although the people and events described therein actually took place in the real life of franksolich at one time or another; I don’t have the imagination to make up such things.

This literary work is dedicated to nadinbrzezinski of Skins’s island, who provided inspiration for the story with her expertise on hazardous materials; one sincerely hopes that she enjoys it.

franksolich gets occupied by primitives.  The other night, when the neighbor and I attended a Christmas dinner hosted by a fungicide company, it was snowing very heavily here, on the eastern slope of the Sandhills of Nebraska. 

We supposed however we would get back before it got really bad.  We had a good time at the party; being two unescorted males, we were matched with two similarly-unescorted femmes, in this case an 82-year-old widow and a 67-year-old widow, both of whose husbands had left them very well off indeed.

The neighbor has a gift for making an 82-year-old woman, more than twice his own age, feel like a courting 20-year-old maiden again.  franksolich looks at a 67-year-old woman as, essentially, a deep fount of long-ago history and lore, but at any rate, both women appeared very much flattered by the attentions given them by much-younger gentlemen.

The snow worsened as the party went on, and so the neighbor and I had to leave about an hour early, circa 10:00 p.m., to get back before we were blocked out of our homes.  When we drove up to this place, guided by the flood-light that shines clear over to the highway, there was a motor vehicle parked in the front yard, already half-covered with snow.

Uh oh, the neighbor said.  You got overnight visitors.

The vehicle was a luxury sedan, with New York license plates.

The lights in the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen of the house were all lit.

When we walked inside the front door, we saw five hippie redux sitting in a circle on the floor of the living room, one of them banging on a drum, the rest of them chanting.  It was obvious they were drunk or stoned or drugged, and it took a bit before they realized we’d come in.

Three males, two females.  All between circa 20 years and 30 years of age. 

The “leader” appeared to be some tall thin kid with wire-rimmed eyeglasses.  There was a really heavy young woman with bleached blonde hair; the second woman was slightly younger and somewhat better-looking, but the whiny type.  There was a cross-eyed fat kid, and a thin fluttery kid.

They’d been taken by surprise at the blizzard, and consulting a road-map, learned the nearest motel was more than 60 miles away—nearly three hours’ driving in these conditions—and so sought refuge in the nearest human habitation.  The house looked unoccupied, although they wondered because the lights, heat, and water all still worked.

“Well, what are you going to do?” the neighbor queried me with his eyes.

Walking into the kitchen, I sighed in resignation.  Well, they couldn’t go anywhere tonight, I said, so I supposed I could put them up until the roads were cleared.

“You know, it’s really a pain, out here in the middle of nowhere, and I get guests all the time.  I suppose I must’ve done something to offend God, and God’s getting even with me…..”

“Are you going to be okay?” the neighbor asked; “they might be trouble, they look like hippie wannabes.  And if they’re trouble, you could probably take on two or three of them at once, but not all five.  Especially the big girl.”

“They’re drunk,” I replied, “or stoned or drugged or whatever.  They’re out of it.  I can handle them.”

Then, thinking about something else, I collected all the cats and gave them to the neighbor.  “But take the cats, though, because if anything happens, at least the cats’ll be safe.”

The neighbor seemed skeptical, but he took the cats and left.

I sat on a chair in the dining room, watching the action going on in the living room.  The tall thin wire-rimmed eyeglassesed kid spoke with me for a bit, but not being able to hear, and his body-language foreign to me, I just nodded my head in agreement to whatever it was he was saying.

It was fine with me that they spend the night here, I assured him, the fingers on my right hand gently tapping on the handle of a 1-3/8” S/K adjustable wrench parked on the dining room table.

About half an hour after the neighbor left, the sheriff came by, on one of those snowmobile things.  My uninvited guests huddled in a far corner of the living room as he spoke with me in the kitchen.  The neighbor, upon getting home, had illuminated him of the situation.

“They look pretty harmless to me—although I’d keep my eye on the large broad—and I could haul them out of here, if you want.  But there’s no city mission excepting forty miles away, and to board them in jail overnight would run up a tab for the county taxpayers, for which they’d get scant gratitude.

“I suppose they have illicit drugs on them, but I’d have to bother with waking up a judge and getting a search warrant…..and the weather…..”

I told him not worry; I was confident I could handle them, especially given that their cerebral facilities were considerably crippled by drunkenness, stonedness, and druggedness.  Even though there were five of them, a piece of cake, I assured him.

“The only thing I’m concerned about is whether or not they’re housebroken.”

Good, the sheriff said, considerably heartened.  He also informed me he’d run a license-check on the vehicle (the neighbor had written it down before leaving), and it belonged to a certain wealthy investment banker in Westchester, New York, a big name among contributors to the Democrat party, and that one of the males was the guy’s son, although he didn’t know which one.

“If they do any damage to your valuables, I’ll arrest them, and probably the kid’s father would be willing to send you a check to cover it, just to get his kid off the hook.  And I’ll be accommodating myself, swearing that the five-dollar thrift-store recliner in the living room was actually an antique Louis XIV chaise longue, and whatever else you want.”

I told him it was fine by me.

The sheriff, before leaving, surreptitiously handed me an electronic thingamajig, a sort of pager thing, telling me to push the button to summon him if there was any trouble.

Leaving, he tipped his hat to the five huddled in the dark corner, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy your stay.”

The guests, finding they were to remain here after all, checked the refrigerator and cupboards so as to take inventory of the available chow.  The thin woman found milk, half-and-half, orange juice, cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, mayonnaise, eggs, a gallon container of sour cream, two pounds of real butter, and six loaves of whole-wheat bread in the lower part.  In the freezer above, she found three gallons of vanilla ice cream, a package of frozen hashed brown potatoes, and some smaller packages of frozen corn and peas, along with about $400 in Canadian coinage.

Inspecting the cupboard, she found eight cans of Campbell’s beef noodle soup, two unopened boxes of saltine crackers, various tins of antique herbs and spices, a jar of fake beef bouillon and a second jar of real beef bouillon, two jars of instant coffee and one can of ground coffee, a large bottle of unopened V-8 tomato juice, and packages of shoe-laces.

“There’s nothing to eat here,” she whined; “and I’m a vegetarian.

“I’ll guess I’ll have to starve.”

I then gave them all a tour of the house, most of which is shut off during the winter, because the furnace doesn’t reach that far.  They could either sleep in any of the four bedrooms there, where it was about 35 degrees—but there were plenty of covers and electric blankets, I pointed out—or they could sleep in the living room, where it was about 25-30 degrees warmer than that.

They opted for the living room, which surprised me.  After all, they had been camping when occupying.

Then I showed them the bathroom, in its pristine cleanliness and sparkle.  I made it a particular point to show off the commode, flushing it three times to show how well it worked.  In case they didn’t know, I carefully explained, “You pull down your pants, you sit on it, you let loose, then you wipe yourself with this paper, and then you flush.”

I’m not sure, but I suspect such was a novelty to them.

I even showed them the cellar, where even I rarely go.  The ceiling is low and one tends to bang one’s head against it.  It’s a large cellar, about thirty feet by thirty feet, but with a dirt floor.  There was a 25-watt light-bulb therein, but I didn’t turn it on, wanting to make the cellar look as ominous as possible.

“This is where one’ll spend the night, if anyone leaves a stinking brown pile anywhere but in the commode,” I said, showing the strength of the door and its lock. 

Undressing for bed, I went into the kitchen to set up the coffee-maker for the morning.

The fluttery one came in from the dining room, and stopped in his tracks.

“Hey, man, you’re like you’re totally naked, man.”

Whoop-whoop-de-do, I said; this was my territory, my terrain, and my place.  “If I was in somebody else’s place, it’d be different, but this is my place.”

The fluttery one turned and went back into the living room where he announced, “Hey, let’s all get totally naked…..t-o-t-a-l-l-y n-a-k-e-d, tossing off the rainments of our one-percent oppressors!  Totally naked’s the way to go!  Let’s do it!”

Standing under the archway dividing the dining room from the living room, I watched, aghast, as they all disrobed, flinging clothes all over the place.  It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, sharply reminiscent of sauna “bathhouses” in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, although in that case the sexes had been segregated.

But I worried about something else…..and then discarded that worry.  There’d be no acts of copulation, natural or unnatural, among the hippie wannabes, as they were all too drunk or stoned or drugged; even superdoses of Viagra or ovarian stimulants wouldn’t get anything going.

I might’ve been wrong, though, because after I went back into the kitchen, the big broad followed me, in all her natural glory, her pendulous breasts sagging back-and-forth, her upper arms quivering in anticipation.

She started rubbing the bottom-most part of my lower back.

“No way,” I said, and then I lied, “I’m gay, not interested.”

Oops, because after she disappointedly flounced out, the fluttery one came in, suggesting we “do something together.”

“Not tonight,” I said; “I have a headache,” after which I went to the bedroom and went to sleep.

When I got up in the morning, as I carefully walked from room to room, I noticed with gratification that the occupiers had been using the bathroom, rather than the floor, for their leavings.  Probably the threat of the cellar had reinforced their determination to be good.

I donned some garb, and went into the kitchen to get the coffee-maker started; my visitors were still all asleep, but probably they’d need some wake-up liquid soon.  The fluttery one came in, and seeing me, expressed disappointment that I was, uh, dressed.

Too bad, I said; day-time calls.

The fat boy, also still sans clothing, went into the bathroom and ran the hot water only in the bathtub.  I like hot water, water near the boiling-point, and have the water heater thus set, and in hardly any time the bathroom was full of steam, steam coming out even from underneath the door.

Then the fat boy ran out, all hot and pink and steaming, and with a yelp, rushed out the back door, flinging himself into the snow.  It was like the socialist paradises all over again, such idiocy.  I momentarily thought about locking the back door so he couldn’t get back in when he got cold, but remembering I’m a nice guy, I didn’t.

I consulted with the tall one.  We looked out the windows and doors, the snow still cascading down.  The drifts were already halfway up the side of the house.  Given the temperature, the weather forecast, and the day of the week, I told him, it’d probably be mid-afternoon before the road here would be cleared, and the state highway.

He was concerned because they were running short of a certain dried tobacco product.

Too bad, I said, but at least they seemed to still have a lot of booze and some other pharmaceuticals, and would have to make do with that.

It was about mid-morning that one of the occupiers whined, “There’s nothing to do here—there’s no television, no stereo, no radio, no nothing.  Even your computer doesn’t have speakers on it so we can watch movies.  And no games either.

“This is like living in the caveman days, so primitive.”

Rummaging around some drawers, I came across an unopened package of playing-cards, the tax stamp from 1948 on it still intact, and opening that, the six of us sat in a circle on the floor of the living room, aimlessly playing cards. 

I didn’t care much that the fluttering lad and the heavy girl sat on either side of me, he occasionally trying to fondle my kneecap on his side, and she occasionally trying to rest her head on my shoulder on the other side.  I wished I had a primitive-repellant of some sort.

It was about 3:00 in the afternoon, darkness starting to descend, when the familiar yellow snow-plough of the property caretaker hove into view over the hill, being followed by the bright red snow-remover of the neighbor.  The flower-children who were still undressed, which was nearly all of them, scrambled to get some clothes on.

The caretaker and the neighbor came inside, the caretaker announcing the state highway was clear all the way to Omaha now—or Sioux City if they chose to go that way—and that he’d have the front yard cleared in a few minutes, so they could get out.  The neighbor, looking me over and seeing no damage done, heaved a visible sigh of relief.

When the occupiers left, I opened the front door and the back door, to let the wind cleanse the interior air, as the place had gotten rather odoriferous in its warmth.  “Whew,” the neighbor said.

“Actually, that wasn’t the worst part,” I said.  “I had to watch them like a hawk, and every time one of them started squatting down in a certain manner, I had to yell at him to use the commode in the bathroom.  It was like trying to housebreak a new pet.”

[BattleHymn]

Then I showed them the bathroom, in its pristine cleanliness and sparkle.  I made it a particular point to show off the commode, flushing it three times to show how well it worked.  In case they didn’t know, I carefully explained, “You pull down your pants, you sit on it, you let loose, then you wipe yourself with this paper, and then you flush.”

I’m not sure, but I suspect such was a novelty to them.

 

Man, this one has some gems in it.  The above bit is probably my favorite, though. 


I'm curious about the $400 in Canadian coinage in the freezer.  Any particular reason?     

[franksolich]

 

Man, this one has some gems in it.  The above bit is probably my favorite, though. 

I'm curious about the $400 in Canadian coinage in the freezer.  Any particular reason?

No where else to put it.

It may be different in other parts of the country, but people in Nebraska aren't too fond of getting Canadian coinage in change.  In the border states, it's probably inevitable, and people are used to it, but Nebraska's a bit further south than that.

One of these days, I'll go up to Canada and spend it.  For the meantime, whenever I get Canadian coinage, I just put it away.