franksolich acquires a primitive harem (now rated R)

[franksolich]

In the morning, I was out in the yard on the north side of the house cleaning and polishing croquet balls when I saw three figures walking from Big Mo’s camp-site towards the house.  As it’s quite a distance, it took a while to sort them out.  But obviously Big Mo had sent them to introduce themselves.

The first was a middle-aged man, although one who looked healthier than most his age, a little bit pudgy rather than flabby.  I suspected that 30-35 years ago, he might’ve been a California beach boy, surfer boy, playboy, but now he was just simply a playboy.

He had skin that showed the premature ageing that happens when one spends too much time out in the sun; it wasn’t horribly bad, but noticeably bad.  He spoke with a slight lisp that could be detected by lip-reading, and one got the impression it bothered him more than it bothered other people.

But the giveaway was the poor choice of his haberdashery, as if he bought polyester clothing by mail-order from Blair in Warren, Pennsylvania, or Haband in Oakland, New Jersey.  Not “California cool” at all.

As long as he was going to look ridiculous, he would’ve looked better in lederhosen.

This was, obviously, Skippy, who’d been educated in one of the premier engineering colleges in America, bright enough to get a full-ride scholarship…..a first-class, top-notch, education, but he’d later become a run-of-the-mill desk-sitting governmental bureaucrat, throwing all the “investment” in him out the window.

He was wearing thigh-high leather leggings and carrying a rod with a loop on the end of it.

“What’s up with that?” I asked.

“There’s snakes around here, and I don’t want bitten,” he said.

And here I was, standing in my bare feet, in shorts and sleeveless t-shirt, no weapon.

I silently snorted.  “Did you see any on your way here?  That’s a long walk through some rather high grass and thick brush, favorite places for snakes to hide.  If this were like other places, surely you saw nests and clumps of them, on your way over here.”

“Well, I was told there were snakes here,” he insisted.

“Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t,” I replied; “I’ve lived out here nine years, I’ve never seen a snake.”

- - - - - - - - - -

A woman was walking alongside Skippy.  She was reasonably ancient, of the old-maid great-aunt sort, although unlike most of them, instead of being tall and thin, she was of average height and squarely built, including her face.  Doughy, matronly, and gave the impression of one of those unfortunate elderly women who eats daintily, like a sparrow, but the bulk stubbornly remains. 

There was a touch of hair on her upper lip, and she probably keeps a bird in a cage hanging in her dining room.

“Would you happen to know a franksolich who lives around here?” she asked.

Yes, the great-aunt from Chicago, who’d been one of the late red round one’s acolytes during the Scamdal nine years ago.  She’d been duped, just like all the others, but for a while she was also living in a peril about which she was wholly ignorant, being a real-life neighbor of Fat Che’s, and not knowing what the benburch primitive really was.

Fortunately for her, nothing happened, and Fat Che long ago left the neighborhood, his house foreclosed.

Yeah, I said; “he does live around here.  A nice guy, franksolich, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.  Would give the shirt off his back, even if he didn’t have a spare one in the closet.

“A friend of the friendless, a benefactor of humanity, franksolich.

“How unhappy, the lives of those who don’t know franksolich.”

The great-aunt had no idea who franksolich is in real life, and the business partner had proposed to play the role himself, while I simply played myself.  I’d leave him to play franksolich as he wished, with no prompting from me.

“Well, does he ever come around here, to this place?” the great-aunt asked.

Yeah, he does, I answered, hesitant about saying more.

“Will he be coming around today, or sometime this week?”

Now I could be honest.  “I dunno; he comes and goes at random.  He’s the kind of person who’s here today, gone tomorrow.  He might, or he might not, be around the next few days.

“But if you run into him, you’ll be awed by his uprighteousness, his moral rectitude, his decency and goodness, his all-encompassing compassion, his embrasure of all mankind.”

The great-aunt snorted.

- - - - - - - - - -

The third was a melancholy-faced woman in her late 60s, shy and hesitant, as if she wasn’t exactly sure why she was out here, other than that Big Mo invited her.  She’d obviously never been in this part of the world before, but seemed bravely to try to adjust to it.

She was of the Hebraic sort, but alas, short.

I also gathered that fifty years ago, she’d been of the “sorority girl, college co-ed” sort, and perhaps almost a debutante.  My “gold” standard on judging women of Hebraic derivation is given by the wives of graduates of Brandeis University who, from the first time I met any of them--and I’ve met many--impressed me by their grace, class, elegance, and good manners.

The elleng primitive fell far short of that, but she was at least of the “bronze,” maybe even the “silver” standard, which is saying something, especially when it comes to the general run of primitives on Skins’s island.

Since she seemed intimidated by her surroundings, I decided it was best to not complicate things by myself intimidating her too, and so other than some formal cordialities, I decided to leave her alone for the time being, until she got more used to things, and to me.

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife was here after the three visitors had left.

“You know,” I said, “of the four I’ve met so far, Big Mo has them all beat by a mile.  The other three aren’t so hot, and it’s obvious they aren’t going to like me no matter how much I kiss their asses.

“Big Mo’s a little better than I’d thought she’d be, especially the way she gets along with people here.  There’s no reason for outsiders to not get along with people here, but these are primitives, after all, who are always looking for excuses to dislike people.

“But Big Mo’s a little bit irksome in one way; she’s always asking me about pharmacies in [the big city], and while I tell her, I remind her I really don’t know this stuff.

“I’ve lived in this area thirteen years now.  There’s dozens of pharmacies in [the big city].  I’ve been in any one of them, what? three times in thirteen years.  I just went in, gave the prescription to some guy wearing a white smock, got the drug, paid the twenty or thirty bucks, and that was it.

“She seems to think everybody goes to get pharmaceuticals about as often as they go out and buy groceries.

“But other than that, Big Mo’s okay; she’s the best so far.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

I was chitchatting with Italianate Jesus, the head of the four carnies already here, late this afternoon, when I was illuminated I’d gotten something wrong.

Such is par for the course; if I get a fifth of all that I’m told right, I’m doing good.  It’s not because of stupidity, of course; it’s simply because if one’s deaf, one’s always doomed to get a whole lot of things wrong because of ineffective, spotty, random “communication reception.”

Being deaf is as if one has a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, but only 278 or 142 or 67 of the pieces are in the box.  One puts those together, and then uses speculation to fill in the blanks, to get the whole thing.

And I’ve speculated pastoral landscapes out of puppies, for example.

Excresence happens; one lives with it, as obviously I do.

- - - - - - - - - -

Anyway, the carnies--there’ll be 30-40 of them--aren’t coming tonight.  It’s the last night of a county fair somewhere up in South Dakota, but as Italianate Jesus told me, there’s a whole lot of work with taking down a carnival, too.

The fair up there officially ends tonight and things are taken apart and loaded in the morning, beginning Sunday morning, after which on to the next venue.

“But there’s always still people lingering around on Sunday, so we pick up a few bucks giving them rides and letting them play games, until the last minute when something has to be taken down.  Louie, the owner of the carnival, doesn’t get in on that; it gets us beer money for the following week.

“Based on past experience, they’ll show up here on Monday,” Italianate Jesus said.

I brought him inside the house, telling him that the four already here, given their straitened circumstances, were free to raid the refrigerator, for leftovers.  He took some half-cooked steaks, a large salad meant to feed ten, a couple loaves of bread, a three-quarters chocolate sheet-cake, and a half-ham.

I handed three large bags of chips his way--they got plenty of condiments (ketchup, mustard, other sauces) where they’re at--and two cases of beer.  Strictly speaking, the beer isn’t mine to give away, but I’m sure all those who keep three ancient refrigerators in the garage stuffed to the gills with beer, won’t mind; they’re generous people.

- - - - - - - - - -

After I drove Italianate Jesus back to the carnie camp-site on Meyer and Alberto’s real-estate next door, and came back here, there were three women standing on the ground in front of the front porch, hollering for someone to come to the door.

“That won’t work,” I said, without saying why it wouldn’t work. 

“You’re supposed to just walk inside,” I added, without saying why one was supposed to do that.

I nodded to the first woman, whom I’d immediately recognized as the cbayer primitive.

She wasn’t Miss America, but then and again, neither had been my own mother of sacred memory, which scarcely hindered her in being an aesthetic person.  She was about sixty, tall and thin, and obviously took care of herself.  A preacher’s kid, she had good manners and grace, betraying that she hoped everybody’d get along, everybody’d do well.

She seemed a little ill at ease, because while she’d been all over in her chequered life and career, she’d never been here, and Nebraska’s sui generis, the only of its kind, nothing like it anywhere else in the world.  But as with the elleng primitive, she radiated the notion that she was going to wait a while, look around, and then make up her mind.

- - - - - - - - - -

The second woman was a challenge, because I couldn’t stop staring.

It wasn’t her incredible bulk that surprised me--after all, I’ve seen blue-state country girls the size of barns before--but rather that she had a potato-sized protuberance jutting out of her chin.

Now yes, of course, it’s not nice to stare at bodily deformities, but because I’m deaf, I have to “read” faces, and even a slight anatomical anomaly can distract me from getting any “message” the person’s trying to convey.

If she’d just get that thing plastic-surgeryized off, I thought, maybe it’d give her better self-esteem, a desire to look better, and she’d drop some pounds, scores and scores of them.  That unsightly protuberance was more of an obstacle to my understanding what she was saying to me, than her sheer size.

LynneSin seemed to be a nice person, a down-home country girl born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, and her manners were impeccable, but until I got used to that chin, there were going to be obstacles in communication.

I’d inevitably get used to it, after which everything would be strawberries-and-cream if she wanted things that way, but not right now; later.

- - - - - - - - - -

At seeing the third woman, I stopped in my tracks.

Whoa.

She was tall, svelte, light-skinned, dark hair, with long slender fingers, a pair that was exactly the right size for the rest of her, and with a nose slightly larger than “average.”

I was awed, floored, by her utter pulchritude.

In addition, she oozed, seeped, Grace and Class out of every pore.

She introduced herself as the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive, but I wasn’t paying attention; all I was thinking about was ways and means of getting to hop around in the sack with her.

- - - - - - - - - -

Much to his misfortune, Romeo came after the women had left, and fired up the grill for supper. 

Usually it’s the neighbor, the neighbor’s older brother, or the property caretaker who take such liberties, and so often, but since they’ve been away, Romeo’s been doing this.  It’s okay, copacetic, cool, and all that, but if any of the others were still around, he wouldn’t.

I went to town to get supper, a $1.69 slice of pepperoni pizza at the convenience store, and got detoured “listening” to a local farmer describe the current trend in chicken-and-egg prices to me, and so I didn‘t get back here for nearly two hours.

When I did, however, Romeo and Skippy were sitting on the back porch, all chummy-chummy and getting uproariously drunk.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Early Sunday morning, the business partner and I had some business to conduct near the town in the heart of the Sandhills, where I’d spent my adolescence.  Done with that, we passed through the same place coming back home; given the day it was, the business partner thought I should do something.

I know that at times the business partner wishes I were “more conventional” in my behavior, thinking it’d make life easier for me, but there’s some things not worth taking the time and trouble to be “conventional.”

We were headed out into a little-penetrated part of the Sandhills--because really, there’s nothing there--to check on the state of an abandoned cemetery.  He’d been surprised, a few years ago, upon finding out I’d never gone to the graves of the parents, or other members of the family, after each one’s funeral.

“Look,” I tried getting away with explaining; “there’s the mortality of the human body, and the Immortality of the human soul.  Once one’s dead, the body doesn’t matter any more; only the soul.  One’s supposed to not care about any earthly remains soon to rot away, but instead about Immortal souls that’ve passed on to another sort of existence with God.

“I’m not dishonoring the parents, or any other members of my family, by not visiting their graves.

“However, I’d be dishonoring them considerably, by not constantly expressing my gratitude to God, for all that they gave me.”

Such noble sentiments, however, have never swayed the business partner enough so that we omit going to a particular cemetery every time we’re near my old town.

- - - - - - - - - -

The abandoned cemetery’s far west of town, and is rarely visited, unlike the main cemetery south of town, with its curving lanes, cul-de-sacs, pavilions, benches, fountains, botanical gardens, and grass that’s always green, bushes and hedges that are always trimmed.

This particular cemetery is a recent one, its oldest graves being from November 1918.  It’d been sent up in hurry by the panic-stricken citizenry, housing the victims of the influenza epidemic, whose numbers were overwhelming, and so one had to temporarily dispense with the usual funerary amenities, burying them as fast as they died.

After the epidemic, everybody forgot this isolated cemetery had been meant to be “temporary,” the bodies moved into regular cemeteries when more convenient, and it was used to inter bodies of children, the indigent, the unknown, and those not willing to pay the rates of the regular cemetery.

It was especially heavily populated during the dry dusty 1930s.

It used to be that people, whether they wanted to be or not, were interred here out of desperation; now it’s a case that one has to ask to be buried there, as my parents had.  It still has two or three grave-diggings a year, one of the most recent being that of the wife of a prominent surgeon in a major metropolitan area.

- - - - - - - - - -

This time, however, I wasn’t so reluctant to go there.

There’s six members of my family buried there; the parents, two brothers, and two nieces (all the others are, quite naturally, interred in other cemeteries elsewhere).  One of the two brothers there had been very popular in high school, and after he’d died in 1986 at the age of 40, his graduating class took to meeting at his gravesite during every reunion.

Since the weather’s usually good, they stand around in the darkness drinking beer and talking about him.

But I always thought it rather peculiar they did so by getting drunk around his gravestone, as this brother, like all members of the family excepting myself, never drank.

- - - - - - - - - -

His high-school graduating class had their 50th-year reunion over the 4th of July holiday, and when the bars closed for the night, they loaded eight cases of beer in the back of a pick-up truck, and with a long line of cars bearing forty survivors of that class (and their spouses, if any), drove out to the cemetery.

Again, I have to stress that this cemetery is way out in the middle of nowhere. Unlike the crowded congested blue states where there’s so much artificial light it’s still as bright as midnight as it’d been at noon, the Sandhills at night are totally, utterly black.

Someone driving on the highway a mile south of the cemetery noticed something was going on, and contacted law-enforcement. Since it was obvious it was something “big”…..and in the middle of the night…..and in an abandoned cemetery, the state patrol, the county sheriff, and the local policemen responded.

They brought with them a couple of vehicles that had massive flood-lights, and stealthily surrounded the cemetery (it’s not very large), slowly driving by Braille getting close in the darkness without being detected.

Once in place, the flood-lights were snapped on, and by megaphone the party was ordered to “freeze,” to stay where they were at…..revealing a whole bunch of startled 68-year-old senior citizens boozing it up.

to be continued

[franksolich]

The road from the cemetery actually isn’t a road, but rather a rutted path over rough terrain that would challenge a lunar rover.  Of the six burials I’ve attended there, only one took place in dry weather, but it as also 100+ degrees that day.  All the others took place in December (four) and March (one), in knee-deep snow.

I no longer remember how vehicles maneuvered that road, getting to the burial site, other than that it seemed to take an awful long time, and that there was much use of tow-chains and snow shovels.

The business partner was driving a pick-up truck meant for re-sale, and had to be careful, going forward very slowly, like a person gingerly stepping forward an inch at a time, testing the footing.

The place teemed with wildlife; deer, antelope, rabbits running around to get away from us, and flocks of birds flying overhead.  And this being the Sandhills, of course there were prairie dogs scampering under, and rattlesnakes slithering away, although we didn’t see any.

At night, coyotes rule the place.

The grass in the cemetery ranged from ankle-to-waist high, hiding many of the tombstones, but that didn’t matter.  Given the socioeconomic status of most of the interees, if there had been gravestones at all, they were cheap ones, the names and dates long ago having been eroded off by the harsh Sandhills winters and summers.

I recognized the gravestone for the parents, sitting at the top of a gradual slope.  The business partner walked around it, while I lit a cigarette and sat down on another gravestone, considerably weathered, WAYNE BAMGAARD, June 4, 1916-November 29, 1918.

I’m sure it pleased God long ago take little Wayne into Eternal Life, and so I didn’t consider it a sacrilege, or unrespectful, doing that.

“It’s tilting forward again,” the business partner said, referring to my parents‘ gravestone.

“I already knew that,” I said.  “And in a few more years, it’ll fall flat on its face, and then over the next century or two, gradually be washed down the slope to the bottom.”

The land on which the cemetery sits is highly unsuitable for such a use, the ground being fragile and always shifting.  More money had been spent shoring up that gravestone, than on the gravestone itself, until I decided to call it quits about fifteen years ago, leaving nature to follow its natural course.

A big bullsnake, about as big around as my arm, meandered near the business partner’s feet, and he prodded it away.  I got up to go look, but saw only the last half, as it disappeared into a hole.  Then the two of us walked down the slope, to the grave-sites of the others. 

The two brothers were buried under a tree, and while their gravestones remained upright, they were obviously sinking.  This was the site of the famous parties taking place here every five years, and standing, there, for the first time I realized how conveniently visible it is, to the highway a mile south.

to be continued

[franksolich]

‘Your two nieces out there,” the business partner said, “how come you talk about them so rarely?”

Oh yes, I said, “of course I cared about them, but one died too young and the other became a primitive.

“The first one, when still a newborn infant, was crushed to death in an automobile accident--this was before child-seat safety was invented, about two months after my father died.

“It affected her mother the rest of her life.

“Yes, yes, yes, it’s a terrible thing, a horrible thing, an almost unimaginable thing, for a mother to lose a child, and one wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  The pain has to be incredible.

“However, her mother, a sister-in-law of mine, was a hippie, and had her own mind set about how to deal with the grief, the loss, the melancholy.

“Scorning God, she decided mood-altering drugs were the answer.

“Well, you know what happens.  If one lets God take care of it, after the initial shock and grief, the sadness over time dissipates.  It still shows up all the rest of one’s life--a mother after all can’t forget a child she bore--but only in short, fleeting moments of melancholy.

“She didn’t want that, though; she wanted instant relief, rather than giving the effects of the tragedy time to pass through and out of the system, like when one‘s had a bad dinner.

“Time and patience heals all.

“It bothered her the rest of her life, because pharmaceuticals wouldn’t let her sense of loss pass.

“And of course she needed more and more of them, as the years went on.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The other one died at the age of 30, from a microscopic internal haemorrhage in which she gradually bled to death from a pin-point-sized leak at the end of her intestine.  It runs in my family; it’s killed plenty.

“The tragedy is, although it’s nearly indecipherable, it is detectable, if one has a clear head.

“And someone on cocktails of pharmaceuticals does not have a clear, alert head.

“She’d gotten on drugs when she was a young teenager, just barely past a girl, to deal with the ‘pains’ of growing up female.

“Women can be idiots; never mind that just as with males, there’s certain pains to growing up, but they pass with time, if left alone.

“Women have no sense of fortitude--the only known exception being my mother, of course--and want ‘instant relief.’

“Her mother, a hippie, was heavily into pharmaceuticals at the time, especially the mood-altering ones, and daughter imitated mother.

“She also emulated her mother’s attitude, ‘oh, I can do whatever I want to do, and if something bad happens, the doctor and drugs’ll take care of it.’

“As far as she figured, she didn’t have to do a damned thing herself--like changing attitudes or life-style--she could just sit back, relax, and let physicians and drugs take care of it all.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The niece ‘married’ another hippie, a guy about the size and looks of Omaha Steve, in some sort of ‘wiccan’ ceremony up in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

“This guy was something else; besides being a slob and a primitive, he was as lazy as Hell.

“She worked to support the two of them, while he sat around home all day long, thinking of ways and means to get aboard the social security disability gravy train because he was ‘too depressed’ to work.

“They made some money going around to places buying, trading, and selling ‘beanie bag babies,’ or whatever they were; they were a ’hot commodity’ at the time.

“After she died, I saw him one more time, up here when he dropped out of the clear blue sky.

“At the time, he was still conspiring to get on the gravy-train, having failed thus far. 

“We had an okay visit, I guess, uncle and big fat slob nephew-in-law, and I was pleasant with him, but he’d always seemed afraid of me, and still was.

“I dunno why he was afraid of me, because I’m a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

When I got back home in late afternoon, I was elated to see the property caretaker was back from Iowa; delighted, ecstatic, joyful.  His buxom schoolteacher wife was with him; they were going to the big city to pick up some things.

This means Romeo won’t hang around so much, like he’s been doing, while the caretaker, the neighbor, and the neighbor’s older brother, and their families have been out of town.  As far as I’m concerned, I’d be perfectly content not seeing Romeo again until the party Friday night.

One can have too much of a person.

- - - - - - - - - -

After the caretaker got done welding something and he and his wife were getting ready to leave, a superluxury rented sedan pulled up into the yard, out from which emerged four people.

Aha.  The last but two of the primitive she-women coming for Big Mo’s anti-men get-together.

They’d stopped at the house because that’s what they’d been told to do, as directions to Big Mo’s camp were too complicated, and best that they get those in person.

But with four, there was one extra, on whom I hadn’t counted.

She introduced herself as the passionate primitive, the Sarah Ibarruri primitive from Florida, where she’s still living despite her promise back in the autumn of 2004 that if George Bush were re-elected, she was leaving the country.

Perhaps she misplaced her airplane ticket, and is still looking for it.

She was “average,” although she probably would’ve looked better if she radiated some pleasantness; silent negativity radiated out of her.  I decided some positive vibrations might do her some good, but she wasn’t going to get any from me; some jobs are just too big to handle.

At that moment, Romeo, who’d been drinking all afternoon with Skippy on the back porch, came out front.

Pointing to the Sarah Ibarruri primitive, Romeo indicated to me, “That one’s mine; I can do her some good.  I can give Ms. Sourass thrills enough she‘ll still be in Happyland even after she goes back home.”

I looked at him as if he were Bozo from Outer Space.

He shrugged.  “Sometimes women are too easy, and one wants a challenge.  That one‘s mine.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The second was the smallest woman, by far, to show up for Big Mo’s shindig, slight in build and frail.

It was the Aerows primitive from Mississippi, the raccoon-bitten primitive, and I wasn’t sure why she was here, because she’s a womanizer.  Preferring women anyway, she couldn’t possibly have any feelings, warm or hostile, about men.

But what was most marked about her was her sheer timidity.  Nebraska was new to her, and franksolich too, but one got the impression she was afraid of everything, everybody, she met, even if she’d been around there, or them, before.  This was a primitive woman perpetually nervous, fearful.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The third was Wills, the William769 primitive, from Florida, apparently.  I was shocked when I saw him.

People afflicted with AIDS aren’t generally to be found around here, and while one has a general idea what it does, one really has to actually see it, to believe it.

Such are the wages of unrestrained bacchanalian decadence, one supposes…..

One can’t control one’s feelings, but one can control one’s conduct.

So while Wills was getting some sympathy from me for his condition, he wasn’t getting as much as he probably thought he warranted.

I decided I’d hide the framed photograph of Vladimir Putin that sits on the table by the computer, so as to not offend, but that was as far as I’d go.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The fourth one, who’d driven the luxury car, was an old woman wearing a big floppy hat, and loud and brassy enough even a deaf person could easily understand her.

flyarm had been at one time a principal acolyte of the late red round one, at whose Streisandian digs in New Jersey he’d stayed when he was alleged to be in a hospital down in Maryland.

But that was now a long time ago; and even if she knew I was franksolich, flyarm’d love me anyway, being the sort of person she is.

Although now on Easy Street, with palatial luxury homes in both New Jersey and Florida, flyarm was no stranger to Deprivation and Want.  True, she’d met and married a rich guy, but before then, she’d been a working girl, an airline stewardess…..back when airplanes still had propellers.

She enthusiastically hugged me, and I promised I’d show her a good time.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, that’s it, all but two,” I said to the neighbor’s wife when she and her husband dropped by to let me know they’d gotten back.  As Romeo and Skippy were still sloshing on the back porch as if they’d been pals since forever, we sat on the front porch.

“CaliforniaPeggy and the NJCher primitive arrive tomorrow, but as far as I know, they’ll go straight to the hotel in [the big city] rather than coming out here.

“CaliforniaPeggy’s probably going to be okay, but I have the feeling Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor’s going to need her decolletage shaken up, rattled, so that she gets a more-realistic idea of who and what she is; she’s got a great deal about which to be modest or even ashamed, and as she’s growing older every day, the sooner she learns, the better for her.”

to be continued

[GOBUCKS]

Recalling from one of her photographs, Sarah Imaboobi had a mustache that would rival that of Groucho Marx.

Maybe while in the Sandhills she can get a shave.

[franksolich]

Recalling from one of her photographs, Sarah Imaboobi had a mustache that would rival that of Groucho Marx.

Maybe while in the Sandhills she can get a shave.

But based upon another self-posted photograph of herself, she's such a sourass that the mustache in the one you saw probably improved her looks.  She's just, really, a negative person.

[franksolich]

When I got up this morning--rather late, so I had to hurry and get dressed--and stepped out on the back porch, I noticed Romeo and Skippy had left a mess there, empty beer cans piled up on the table, or laying on the floor.

I arched my eyebrows; people leaving a mess here is something that hasn’t ever happened.

I was hoping to not see Romeo until Friday, but made a mental note to talk with him if I saw him before then; it’s not a good idea to emulate primitive habits.  This was obviously something Skippy did, and then he imitated.

- - - - - - - - - -

Looking to the southwest, at the grove of walnut trees near the bend of the river, separating this property from Meyer and Alberto’s, I spied a solitary figure walking around, a light shawl draped over her shoulders.

Taking the telescope mounted on the railing of the back porch, I turned it that direction, and saw that it was the husband-hating elleng primitive.  As she looked as if she were merely walking around, examining the various phenomenons around her, rather than walking around just to be alone, I left and went to get better acquainted with her.

The elleng primitive had struck me as a shy person, and so I had to be careful; I didn’t want to intimidate.

“These trees,” she said, when I approached and she recognized me; “they aren’t native here, and they’re so evenly-spaced they had to have been planted.”

Uh huh, I replied; “they were planted out here in 1886, eleven years after this place was first settled, and they’re all still here, all sixty of them, planted ten trees by six rows.

“Some fast-talking snake-oil salesman from Michigan had convinced the family, who wasn’t especially interested in planting more trees--as God knows, there’s plenty of trees around here, the place is choking with trees--that Michigan walnuts were a hot commodity on the market.  He thought he was going to get by selling only half a dozen, or a dozen, saplings, but he was such a sharp talker they bought all he had.

“They’re more than a century and a quarter old, but they don’t look like they’ve ever been happy here.”

“The weather in Michigan can be rougher than it gets here, and so in theory walnut trees should be able to take our winters too.  Well, obviously they do, but they just don’t seem very happy here.”

“I’m surprised at the number of trees you have,” the elleng primitive said.  “I’d heard Nebraska has no trees.”

“A damnedable lie, madam; Nebraska’s got plenty of trees, probably more trees than what Ohio has.

“Don’t believe everything you’ve heard…..or seen.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“You see,” I said, “we’ve always had a problem here, with outsiders coming from the east, telling us all sorts of things we need to do, to make Nebraska more aesthetic.

“Near where I spent my adolescence in the heart of the Sandhills, there’s the largest man-made forest in the world, put there about a hundred years ago by some professor from New York who thought we needed more trees.

“It’s true there hadn’t been any trees where he ended up putting some, but hey, there was a reason there weren’t any trees there; God and nature had made that land for something else, that didn’t require trees.

“They not only made the land for something else, but they also made it hostile to trees.

“That, the largest man-made forest in the world, burns down about every thirty years, from a naturally-occurring fire, causing the overburdened taxpayers a great deal of expense to replant it, so as to suit the egos and tastes of easterners.

“I think it would be fitting, on every Arbor Day, to burn in effigy, the guy who put trees there.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

I was outdoors this afternoon, in the yard on the south side of the house, switching the shoe-laces in my shoes, when an apparition, given away by its shadow falling over me, suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

I got up; it was the raccoon-bitten Aerows primitive, the reedy-thin primitive woman who prefers other women, from Mississippi.  She’d struck me as being extraordinarily shy, shyer than even the husband-hating elleng primitive, and it startled me that she was brave enough to approach me so closely.

“I’m looking to be sure there aren’t any raccoons around here,” she told me.

“You assured us there aren’t any raccoons.”

Well, I said, “I’ve lived here nine years, and I’ve never seen a raccoon.

“There’s all sorts of wildlife around here but no raccoons, sorry.”

“What about snakes?  The NJCher primitive and Skippy say there’s snakes around here.”

Well, I said, “I’ve lived here nine years, and I’ve never seen a snake.”

“But the internet also says Nebraska has raccoons and snakes, sometimes poisonous ones.”

Maybe, I said; “I was born and raised in Nebraska, and I’ve never seen a rattlesnake.  A live one, I mean.

“When I was a teenager, my best friend and I used to spend summer afternoons swimming in the Dismal River--the river’s nowhere near here, it’s out in the middle of the Sandhills--and we got yelled at a lot about it, because the place was infested with rattlesnakes.

“Lots of people, usually outsiders, ignoring warnings to stay away from there, ventured in there anyway, getting bitten.  Just because something looks ’pretty,’ doesn’t mean it’s safe.

“Other friends of mine, who knew the Sandhills even better than we did, stayed away from the Dismal River, preferring instead to swim in the North Loup, the Middle Loup, and the South Loup Rivers, no matter how many times I pointed out that the terrain being so similar, there had to be rattlesnakes there too.

“Anyway, you’ve probably seen rattlesnakes down in Mississippi and other parts of the south; they grow much much bigger down there and back east, than they apparently do here. 

“Ours are small, almost tiny--I’m telling you only what I’ve been told, because I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.

“It’s because we have prairie dogs and bullsnakes around here, both of which are predators of rattlesnakes--they eat them right up, as if strawberries-and-cream--and so rattlesnakes tend to not live long enough to grow big.

“I imagine it’s the same with raccoons and coyotes.

“I’ve seen coyotes; sometimes the cats get into fights with them.

“There’s plenty of prairie dogs and coyotes around here, so I think it’s reasonable to assume there’s not many, if any, raccoons or rattlesnakes.

“The NJCher primitive and Skippy are full of it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

[franksolich]

“You really need to be more careful about what you tell them,” the business partner said when he was here Monday evening.  “Being primitives, they’re probably not paying attention to the finer details.”

Oh now, I said; “I haven’t said there’s no snakes out here; I’ve said that I’ve never seen any snakes out here myself.

“If they can’t see the distinction, there’s a problem here--why are such people even allowed to vote, if they don’t pay attention to details?

“And besides, there aren’t any snakes out here; I’ve lived here nine years, and I’ve never seen one.

“And since I live here, I’m out here more often than anybody else.”

We were sitting on the front porch, for two reasons.  I wanted to catch sight of the carnies coming to camp--that road runs in front of the front yard, behind the William Rivers Pitt--so I’d know they were here, and Romeo and Skippy were once again boozing it up on the back porch, as if they’d been pals since forever.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, you forget,” the business partner said; “a lot of times, you aren’t paying attention.

“I have no doubt a big old snake’s slithered right in between your feet, and you didn’t notice.”

He was of course subtly taunting my talents of perception, referring to the time I was 14 years old, and my younger brother 12, and a rattlesnake followed me as we were playing golf.  I don’t care to play golf, but if I owe someone a favor, I will, although I really hope to get out of it.

My younger brother, concerned because I seemed to be doing something to get it all hot and excited, landed the head of his club squarely on its head, instantly killing it (my younger brother was good at “targeting”).  I turned around, surprised; I hadn’t even been aware of its existence.

Something similar happened a second time, too--although not on a golf course--a couple of years after that, after which I attained the unfortunate reputation of “not paying attention.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The business partner, changing the subject, inquired about Big Mo’s girls.

The final two, CaliforniaPeggy and the NJCher primitive, were scheduled to come in this very evening, I said, excepting that they’ll go to quarters in [the big city] rather than coming out here.

“I dunno what the others do down there.  They of course spend the night in that luxury hotel in [the big city], but they hung around here all day.  I don’t want to interfere, but it seems from a distance, they sit around chanting anti-men slogans and doing some rituals suggestive of being anti-men.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

In the morning, after getting here from their digs in the big city, the cbayer primitive, CaliforniaPeggy, and the great-aunt from Chicago drove here, as they wanted to check out “farmers’ markets,” and sought guidance.

That’s what the neighbor’s wife is for, I thought, but being a gentleman, I decided to take them myself.

This was the first time I’d met CaliforniaPeggy who, although she didn’t seem too confident about me, remembered her good breeding and manners, and complimented the fine Nebraska scenery.  She also illuminated me that once she gets back home, she’ll probably write a poem about the Sandhills.

- - - - - - - - - -

On the way out into the hinterlands, we were oftentimes interrupted by birds

I don’t care much for birds--when the bald eagles are here, usually in July, I have to keep a stash of frisbees on both porches to fling at them, scaring them away, if they get too close to the cats.  I’m not sure if bald eagles capture and eat felines, but if one doesn’t know, best to be careful.

Big, dirty, nasty, grouchy birds, bald eagles, when one sees them up close.

Birds seemed of particular interest to the cbayer primitive, whose eccentric English husband is obsessed with the idea that the thought-extinct passenger pigeons in fact still do exist, a phenomenon that hasn’t been noted because they’re out here in this remote, isolated area where nobody goes.

This had been a wet spring--after a rough, arduous winter--and all was green, and remains so into late summer.

- - - - - - - - - - -

We reached my favorite “farmer’s market,” a big stand out in the middle of nowhere, heaped high with locally-grown vegetables and fruits; not stuff shipped up from Florida, such as one finds in “farmers’ markets” in New England.

This was the same place I’d taken BainsBane, when she was here.

“There’s nobody here,” the cbayer primitive said.

“They all work during the day,” I explained; “and so they can’t sit around here and wait on people.  It’s wholly self-service.”

The bins and shelves were piled high with peach-sized strawberries, ears of sweet corn, apples, carrots, still-podded peas, beans, asparagus, broccoli, cranberries, blueberries, cabbages, peaches, pears, onions, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, whatever else grows here.

The cbayer primitive passed on the tomatoes, though; “the ones on that small hill in front of your house look better,” she said.

I said nothing; she has no idea, no idea at all, that the tomatoes there are descendants of tomatoes that once passed through the intestinal channels of long-ago pigs, the seeds still undigested.

Which is why, when I want tomatoes, I buy them at the grocery store in town; more sanitary.

She was disappointed however that there was no kale.

“The kale, I sorry,” I replied, “has to be gotten at the supermarket in [the big city]; it’s not locally grown around here.  Our kale comes from Australia, why, I don’t know.”

Unlike when BainsBane had been here, this time there were big piles of watermelons and pumpkins, finally ripened enough for sale.  CaliforniaPeggy was kind enough to observe, “they make Texas watermelons look like walnuts.”

- - - - - - - - - -

We collected eight bushel-sized boxes of vegetables and fruits, nearly all of it for Big Mo’s camp, as I already had plenty of this stuff at my place.

There’s going to be a cookout in the back yard--if Skippy and Romeo aren’t there, getting sauced--or in the front yard--if Skippy and Romeo are in the back--tomorrow evening, Wednesday, as it’ll be the first day of the county fair.

The county fair’s just five miles straight down the road from the William Rivers Pitt, and nobody likes to stay home and cook when the county fair’s going on; they’d rather go out and dine.

- - - - - - - - - -

The tab came to $86 for all of it, and being a gentleman, I pulled five $20 bills out.

“But how are you going to pay?” the great-aunt asked.  “There’s nobody here to collect.”

Here, I said, indicating a coffee can.  “One totals up one’s bill and puts the money in here.  Like I said, self-service.  And then when the people who have this place get home from work in the evening, they come out to re-stock everything and pick up the money that’s been left.”

The great-aunt arched her eyebrows.

“This isn’t Illinois,” I reminded her, “where everybody steals.  You’re in red America now.”

I opened the can.  There were lots of personal checks, twenties, tens, and fives in there, plus a couple of hundreds and three fifties.

But only a scant three $1 bills, and I needed four, for change.

“Let’s just get another dollar’s worth of something, and then we’ll be even,” I said, taking the three singles.

to be continued

[franksolich]

When I got up in the morning about 5:00 a.m., since Big Mo & Co. were spending nights in the fancy hotel in the big city, there wasn’t any need to get dressed before going out onto the back porch to marvel at the Sandhills morning scenery.

When looking through the telescope mounted on a railing of the back porch, at Big Mo’s camp-site, I saw two figures inspecting the miniature Swiss Alpine chalet, in which was set the Clivus Multrum.  They were the carnies Gerta, the heavy-set heavily-tattooed chain-smoking overly-mascara’d woman, who apparently served as cook for the carnies, and the handkerchiefless one, the old guy with short white hair that stood straight up, a bug-eye, considerable carbuncles, whose nose perpetually ran.

If such snooping had happened a few days ago, I would’ve gotten all upset and bent out of shape, the carnies discovering the existence of the she-women, but no longer.  It still stung, Big Mo’s she-women, under the manipulative genius of Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor, the uppity NJCher primitive, accepting only part, and not all, of my hospitality, when there’s plenty around who’d be more than happy to actually camp here rather than using it only for a day-time meeting place to commune with nature.

Now, I no longer cared; let the carnies discover them, and let whatever’s going to happen, happen.

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife came here about mid-morning, to drop off some things for tonight’s cookout; she really enjoys such activities, because it keeps her own kitchen clean.

She was then going to the big city, to meet Big Mo’s crowd and take them, as I’d suggested, to a fabric shoppe, so the blue state she-women would get an idea of how life was in the old days, when people had to make their own clothes.  I didn’t expect they’d buy anything, this being simply in the nature of a museum field-trip.

She hadn’t met any of them yet, and inquired of my opinions of them so far.

“Well, Big Mo’s okay, laid-back and accepting of anything and anybody.  You’ll have no problems with her.

“CaliforniaPeggy, the cbayer primitive, the husband-hating elleng primitive, and flyarm might, or might not, enjoy it, but they’ll have enough class and manners to be positive about it.

“Skippy got uproariously drunk last night with Romeo, and probably has a hangover, so won’t go; you won’t have to worry about pleasing him.

“The great-aunt’s an odd case; in some ways she’s the traditional 1940s woman, and’s an old maid to boot, so in theory it should be of some interest to her, but she’s also a hardened, hard-core, iron-clad icy-cold holder-of-grudges, so one can’t tell.

“The raccoon-bitten Aerows primitive probably won’t like it, but I’m not sure if her southern breeding can overcome her primitivity.  She might be nice enough to lie and say she enjoyed it, she might not.

“Wills, the William769 primitive, I dunno.  Maybe he’s into fairy costumes and such, and might find it interesting.

“One of the two you’ll have to watch out for is the Sarah Ibarruri primitive; she’s such a totally negative person about everything, always a downer.  She probably wouldn’t even enjoy Disneyland if one took her.

“Romeo swears he’s going to take her on another sort of trip, but I dunno; because of her sourass attitude, she might be too big of a job for even Romeo to woo and romance.

“The biggest problem’ll be Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor, the NJCher primitive; I haven’t met her yet, but she’s quite a piece of work, what with all of her effete elitist eastern attitudes and smugness.

“Someone’s going to have to put her in her place, bring her nose back down to earth, and I got the uneasy premonition it’s going to have to be me.

“But anyway,” I concluded, “try to have at least a reasonable time, and look at it as a dress-rehearsal for when you take them to the Ladies’ Altar Society soup-and-salad lunch and bake-sale on Friday.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The wife of the property caretaker came by shortly after noon, to drop off things for the big cookout here tonight.

There was a salad there, with strange-looking lettuce in it; it had purple in addition to the usual green.

“Kale,” she reminded me; “in case the cbayer primitive shows up.”

This is mostly a cookout for locals to celebrate the opening of the county fair, but I’d invited Big Mo’s crowd too, if they wished to come.

I nibbled a piece.

“It tastes just like the ordinary run-of-the-mill standard green cabbage to me,” I said; “okay, but not anything I‘d cross the street for.  I wonder what the purple does to it.”

“It adds color, nothing more,” the wife of the property caretaker said.  “And one pays for it, too; it costs nearly twice as much as regular green cabbage, because it comes all the way from Australia.”

She also brought over a couple of other salads with peas in them.

I looked.

“Yikes,” I said; “you used canned peas, not fresh peas.  Why the Hell why?”

“Well, from reading the cooking and baking forum on Skins’s island, it looks as if the primitives prefer canned vegetables to fresh ones, although I don’t know why.”

I don’t know why either, I replied; “if fresh peas aren’t available, better to simply go without than to use canned ones, which are nothing more than glop and gorp, like other canned vegetables and fruits.”

“I also made the NJCher’s soup, in case she shows, but don’t worry; I won’t take the lid off to show you.”

“Yikes,” I said again; “when Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor first posted a photograph of it--she was so proud of it she even took a picture of it--the first thing that came to my mind was that someone had a really bad case of diarrhea, and forgot to flush.

“Ew.

“Maybe it’s actually good, but looks are part of cooking; one doesn’t want food to look like runny shit.

“And Ms. High-and-Mighty Vanderbilt-Astor was so proud of it.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, given that everybody else is bringing things to please us, I decided to cater to the tastes of Big Mo’s crowd, in case they come.  If they don’t show, or if it doesn’t get eaten, we could toss it into one of the gardens here, to help fertilize the soil.”

None of the gardens here really need any more help getting fertile, as I toss all unwanted food in them, to rot and decay, but it beats trying to coerce the cats into eating it.  Cats as a general rule don’t care much for canned vegetables and fruits anyway.

- - - - - - - - - -

A little bit later, Romeo stopped by.  He works for the largest cattleman in the county, whose properties are scattered all over, and so it’s never been unusual for him to be in this area, and coming in for a beer and a few minutes of chitchattery.

What’s been unusual is that lately, he’s been coming in for lots of beers and hanging around for the longest time.  And if Skippy’s around, the two of them might as well spend the whole night here.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“You know, you’re uncomfortable with the idea of only the two of us with three women, the Italianate, the Greek, and the Argentine, who’re coming from Omaha Friday evening.

“I think the two of us can handle all three, but you don’t, being a one-woman man.

“How about we have Skippy join us in the party, to make it three-and-three?”

to be continued

[franksolich]

I was left speechless--besides outraged--at Romeo’s idea, and motioned for him to leave.

“Okay, okay,” he said; “we’ll talk about it later.”

Yeah, sure, I thought; we’re not going to talk about it at all.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife got here about 5:00, in time to help set up things for this evening’s cookout, which should start about the time the others trickle in from the first day of the county fair, maybe about 8:00.

“It went okay.  I guess,” she sighed; “but the owner of the fabric shop has you on his enemies’ list.

“It was like a bunch of barbarians coming across a lost tomb of an ancient pharoah; they had no idea, no idea at all, that such a thing as a fabric shoppe even existed, and in their excitement at looking at things, unrolled most of the bolts of cloth and disarranged the paper patterns.

“Even Big Mo was so fascinated she forgot her manners, but at least the cbayer primitive and CaliforniaPeggy retained theirs.  Barely, though.

“They all went excepting Skippy, who was feeling under the weather.

“The NJCher primitive came with us, but in the parking lot even before we went in the door, changed her mind and drove back to the hotel.

“She spends all of her time there being pampered like a queen, and when not being pampered, sits around the swimming pool trying to pick up men.

“I don’t think she’s ever going to come out here, but no great loss; she’s a real piece of work.”

Well, the neighbor’s wife still has two more chances, I pointed out to her.  “There’s the community-wide garage sales on Thursday, and the Ladies’ Altar Society soup-and-salad lunch and bake-sale on Friday.

“I dunno what’s up for Saturday, their last full day here; I haven’t thought beyond Friday night yet.”

Oh, the neighbor’s wife said; “is there something you’re doing Friday night?”

- - - - - - - - - -

Fortunately,  I didn’t have to answer the question, because at that moment the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive walked into the kitchen from the back porch, inquiring if she could help.

Now, of all of the primitive she-women currently here, cali’s the only one who arouses the carnal senses in me, being so much my idea of the perfect-looking woman.  I rather more admire women for their brains than for their looks; I make an exception for cali.

Never in my life had I ever felt such a passion for the mere body and flesh of a woman, until I’d been introduced to cali three days ago.  I wanted to have that woman; hold her, possess her, poke her.

But ‘tis never to be, as my manly powers of restraint are stronger than my manly lusts.

So I was simply cordial to her, although man, I ached…..

- - - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife and I had a discussion about the place for the cookout.  Usually they’re held in the back yard, where the scenery’s more aesthetic, but I decided we’d have to have it in the front yard, under the looming eyes of the William Rivers Pitt and all the parked vehicles.

“Romeo and Skippy’ll be here, and they’ll monopolize the back porch.  The front porch is smaller, more cramped, and the view’s not so good, but it’ll do.  We’ll just keep the front door wide open so people can come into the dining room or kitchen to get what they need with their suppers.”

While cali and I were laying out tablecloths on the ancient picnic tables--hand-built of oak, circa 1922, and heavy as lead--she commented upon the flowers.

“Oh, it’s wholly natural,” I assured her.  “I don’t do a thing for them; they just naturally spring up out of the ground every year, and since they look aesthetic enough as they are, I just leave them alone, don’t do a thing to, or for, them.

“I grew up with gardening; one can endure too much of something, and so once I became an adult, I decided I didn’t have to bother with it any more.  If one needs vegetables, they’re cheap at the grocery store, and cleaner too.  If one needs flowers, they can be gotten at the floristry.

“I don’t even know what kind of flowers these are, just as I can’t tell you what kinds of vegetables grow in those gardens, other than the obvious ones.  Like the flowers, the vegetables go to seed, die, rot, hibernate all winter, and in spring come back to life.

“Nearly all this stuff--and none of it by me, I assure you--was originally planted here by the woman who occupied this place from the time she was born in 1884, until six months before she died in 1986.  She’d had a very hard, bitter life with few rewards, and was actually blind the last thirty of them, but obviously she found gardening an outlet for ameliorating her disappointments.

“After she went blind, she still weeded by hand, by Braille.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

While everybody, including some of Big Mo’s crowd--not all of them came, but most of them did--was eating at any one of the five ancient picnic tables in the front yard, the great-aunt sat in between myself and the business partner.

I was spending most of my time talking and “listening” to CaliforniaPeggy who sat across the table, and who waxed greatly about the scenic wonders of the Sandhills, quoting to me possible opening lines for a poem she wished to compose about them.

And so I caught none of the conversation between the great-aunt and the business partner, but noticed the great-aunt was slowly shifting closer and closer to me, so as to distance herself from the business partner.

He was probably playing the role of franksolich, and so well that it scared the old biddy, who at the end was practically sitting on my lap.

Skippy hadn’t showed up yet, and so Romeo was wooing and courting the Sarah Ibarruri primitive on the swinging bench on the front porch.

- - - - - - - - - -

Since we finished before anybody else did, the neighbor’s older brother, cali, LynneSin, and I dabbled in croquet on the yard that faces north.  I dunno why LynneSin got done so quickly, other than that she was already chowing down before most of the company arrived, and so perhaps was sated.  At least for the moment.

LynneSin was a pain with whom to communicate--and not because of the potato-sized protuberance on the end of her chin, which I by then had gotten used to, but rather because of a lack of subject matter about which we were both familiar.

She’s a product of rural Pennsylvania--although she now lives in Delaware, taking up three-fifths of that whole state--and radiates the impression of being a “down home” “country girl,” but man, she knew nothing, nothing at all, about things such as recipes, cooking, sewing, quilting, horse-riding, pitching hay, ice-skating, house-cleaning, laundry and ironing, &c., &c., &c.

It appeared that I, a guy, knew more about such womanly things than she did.

Things she seemed to know about--rock stars famous during the 1970s but pretty much forgotten now, for example--were beyond the pale for me.  And she seemed to be an inveterate reader of teen fan mags such as Tiger Beat and television celebrity gossip.

A big overgrown girl, destined to be that way forever.

- - - - - - - - - -

Skippy finally showed, in time enough to get some food that was still cooking, but first headed to one of the three ancient refrigerators in the garage, to get some liquid refreshment to have with.

Romeo, having obtained some sort of agreement with the sourassed Sarah Ibarruri primitive, deserted her and came up to me.

“Skippy wants to talk to you,” he said; “and I think you should.  Skippy’s a nice guy, willing to help us out at the party Friday night.  I figure I could do the Italianate, you already want the Argentine, and so Skippy can take the Greek.”

No way, I said; “I don’t want to talk to Skippy, and I’ll invite him to our party when pigs fly.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

Romeo left with the Sarah Ibarruri primitive, probably going to his “sex palace” on the other side of the county, abandoning Skippy on the back porch.   However, as the menfolk, finished with supper, moved back there to imbibe, he at least had company.

They were indifferent about Skippy; he was just another human body doing the same thing they were, getting drunk.  They accepted him, not knowing him that well, especially that his hero is Bill “25 Million Dead” Ayers, or that he once called for the extermination of those opposed to Obamacare.

To me, that’s not his greatest sin; to me, the worst is that some time in the past--maybe when Skippy was in college nearly forty years ago--he’d surrendered his brain to someone else, either a woman who star-struck him, or a charismatic “international student” in college.

His thoughts aren’t his own; he’s just a parrot, a puppet, for someone else.

- - - - - - - - - -

Wills, the William769 primitive, came in late, as the womenfolk were clearing up things, but as he hadn’t eaten yet, being a nice guy, I consented to dine again, so he’d have company.  Wills took a three-quarter-pound sirloin steak to grill; I reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a two-weeks-old already-cooked hamburger, left over from an earlier cookout, and warmed that up.

He preferred his food nearly raw.  I put blue cheese salad dressing on the top half of the bun, and sour cream on the bottom half, and slipped my hamburger in between.

Since darkness was slowly falling, I suggested we dine inside, at the elongated dining room table in the dining room, the front room of this house.  The table’s made to seat sixteen, seven on each side and one on each end.  It’s one of those ancient heavy mahogany or oak tables sold by Montgomery Ward & Co. during the 1920s, and still has all its original chairs, too.

Since the table was mostly occupied by offerings of food that hadn’t been taken away yet, Wills sat at one end, and nearly twenty feet away, I sat at the other end, as we talked.

I was secretly glad I’d remembered to put away the framed photograph of Vladimir Putin that usually sits on the table next to this computer, because Wills, afflicted with a terrible ailment, didn’t look as if he needed any more subtle teasing.

The only comfort one could derive from his situation is that it’s always better to pay for one’s sins in this life, than in the next, and Wills was, obviously, paying in full.  Not for what he was--one can’t help being what one is--but rather for how he’d behaved, conducted himself, having been so careless and promiscuous and hedonistic.

Wills when a child and teenager, had once read a large set of encyclopedias all the way though, and so I’d assumed there’d be broad range of topics about which to talk.  But alas, it soon became obvious that only the “P” volume had left any impression on him.

- - - - - - - - - -

I was rescued by the sudden appearance of Big Mo, who came in all upset and bent out of shape.

“Three of my chickens, including my favorite, ‘Blackie,’ are missing.”

Alarmed, I got up and collected the property caretaker, who was out on the back porch, and we drove down to Big Mo’s campsite on the river, to check things out.

After a thorough examination, the caretaker said, “it’s all good, tight and secure, nothing broken so any chickens could get out.  I’m guessing someone opened something, swiped three of them, and closed it again.”

Well, there’s nothing that can be done about it, I said.  “Big Mo’s just going to have to write them off as one of the costs associated with taking risks, in this case bring them out here, far from home.

“It’s too bad, but when one takes risks with things, sometimes one loses.”

- - - - - - - - - -

Since we were already out, and since the caretaker didn’t need getting drunk anyway, I suggested we take a drive to inspect Meyer and Alberto’s land.  The carnies were of course working the county fair, whose lights could be seen in the distance, but it’d be a good chance to be sure everything was okay there.

Not all the carnies were absent, though.  The overly-stout, overly-tattooed, overly-mascara’d chain-smoking Gerta, the carnies’ cook, was stirring something in a big kettle hanging over a campfire, when we arrived.

“Oh,” she said, delighted; “It’s not quite done yet, and nobody’ll be around to taste it until the middle of the night, but you want to try some?  I’m making chicken stew.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“I think Big Mo’s lost it,“ the neighbor’s wife told me this afternoon.

“This morning, she noticed there were four more chickens missing.

“And so when I took them to the garage sales, she found and bought an antique Gatling gun, an ancient Lee-Enfield rifle, a big Nock volley gun, a goose gun, and an old Browning automatic rifle. 

“She said she’s going to situate them at the campsite and stand guard.”

Well, I said; “it serves her right.  If they hadn’t listened to Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor, and accepted only part of my hospitality, they would’ve been there, camping, serving to deter chicken thieves.

“But n-o-o-o-o-o; they had to listen to Ms. High-and-Mighty, and be in that fancy hotel instead of camping right about the same time chicken thieves were afoot.”

Not all of Big Mo’s company had gone to the garage sales; the Sarah Ibarruri primitive was absent, probably still hanging with Romeo, the NJCher primitive had insisted upon staying at the hotel to be pampered, and Skippy had been indisposed.

“How’d the sale go?” I asked her.  “Did the stuff from when hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer and hippyhubby Wild Bill were here, sell?”

Oh, that stuff was about the first to go, she said.

“That was good stuff,” I said; “and all of it nearly new too, probably having been shoplifted from camping-goods and sporting-goods stores on the way up here from northeastern Oklahoma.  First-rate stuff.”

“Well, the old boat and that hand-made trailer were gone too, when we were there,” she said.

“And the cadaver carvers, although she was afraid she may’ve priced them too high.  But she got the posted price for all of them.

“When we left, the only part of those goods still unsold were hippywife’s white cotton underdrawers with the 56” waistline; there just weren’t any women coming to the sale fat enough to have to wear them.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife had brought me four rhubarb pies gotten at the same sale, which I slipped into the freezer of the refrigerator, they being my private stock.

“You know,” the neighbor’s wife said, “everybody’s wondering what’s up with the Sarah Ibarruri primitive; she never got back to the hotel last night.”

“She took off with Romeo before everybody was done dining last evening,” I said, “before Wills got here, and before Big Mo discovered the first instance of chicken-heisting.

“I figure he would’ve dumped her by now, given that it’s already Thursday afternoon.

“But on the other hand, I haven’t seen Romeo either.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

On Friday morning, the neighbor, the business partner, and I were having breakfast on the back porch, leftovers from the cookout.  As far as we knew, the Sarah Ibarruri primitive was still absent from the rest of Big Mo’s crowd, and no one had seen Romeo excepting at work, where he was unusually quiet.

“I hope it clears up pretty quickly,” I said; “as Romeo and I had some plans for tonight.”

The other two, eating, made no comment.

We all however kept looking towards Big Mo’s campsite down by the river.  Big Mo herself was visible, sitting cross-legged on the roof of the miniature “house boat” that the property caretaker had built to keep her chickens, the Gatling gun mounted in front of her, ready to swivel any direction chicken-thieves appeared.

But as there were two of the rented cars down there, we assumed some others of her party had spent the night here too.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Any late news from the other edge of the state?” the neighbor asked me.

No, I said; even though he’s reduced down to 85 pounds and has been ’out of it’ for months, he stubbornly hangs on.  “It reminds me of our maternal grandmother, who did that for nine months--although she was simply a case of long-time senility and old age, in which pharmaceutical overuse wasn’t any factor.”

“Is he on life-support?  I thought that when someone was hospiced, they took all that off,” the business partner said.

“He was never on any life-support mechanisms,” I said.  “Some drugs were given intravenously, but no, he’s never needed anything to help with basic life-supporting functions; he for example breathes on his own.

“He’s just laying there, and when awake, in his senility curses and rants against God.

“Far better if he’d curse and rant against his false gods of science, medicine, and technology, which not only failed to keep him young, but are failing to keep him alive.

“Science, medicine, and technology have their uses, and I’m all for them, but they’re not God.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The femme came here for lunch, about noon, during which time we supped on more leftovers from the cookout two evenings before, when Romeo and the Sarah Ibarruri primitive had taken off.

The Sarah Ibarruri primitive’s not been seen since.  Romeo has showed up for work both days, but never broached the subject, probably because only Big Mo’s crowd and a few of mine are the only ones aware of the absence…..if even aware of the existence of the Sarah Ibarruri primitive.

I was getting concerned, because here it was Friday noon, and Romeo and I had a commitment with three women from Omaha in the evening.  It entailed his having to drive down there to get them, and I myself had no way of contacting them; didn’t even know their names.

Romeo had shut off his cellular telephone, so I had no way of contacting him either.

- - - - - - - - - -

Friday evening was the femme’s last official duty for her soon-to-be-former employer, as she’s getting ready to move up into South Dakota, to teach dance and theatre arts there. It’s some sort of show at the county fair, of renaissance dances, costumes, and music, a great part of which I’d written for her a few years ago.

While we were dining, the property caretaker showed up, and grabbed a plate himself, joining us.

The neighbor’s wife had been here earlier, just before going down to Big Mo’s camp-site to pick up the primitive she-women interested in going to the Ladies’ Altar Society soup-and-salad lunch and the accompanying bake sale.

The caretaker illuminated me that Big Mo, CaliforniaPeggy, the cbayer primitive, flyarm, the elleng primitive, the great-aunt, LynneSin, the raccoon-bitten Aerows primitive, and Wills, had gone with her. 

Hmmm, I said; “then who’s that on top of the houseboat down there, sitting at the Gatling gun, guarding the chickens so no more of them get ripped off?”  One could see someone sitting there, but as it’s quite a distance, one couldn’t make out who it was.

“That’s the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive,” he replied; “she wasn’t feeling social today, and so decided to stand watch so that Big Mo could leave for a while.”

I didn’t hear it, but the other two did; there was a sporadic rat-tat-tat from the roof of the miniature houseboat, cali apparently shooting off the gun so as to ameliorate her boredom.  The back porch is out of range of the gun, so I wasn’t concerned, although I’d like to know what it was she was shooting at.

Well, I suppose, I said, “Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor’s at the fancy hotel trying to pick up men, and Skippy’s probably in a tent down there, sleeping off last night’s drunk.  He was kind of unhappy Romeo wasn’t around, and I wasn’t feeling social, but that didn’t stop him from pulling a bender, solo.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“That Wills guy, the William769 primitive, is a sad case, isn’t he?” the caretaker said.

“Yes, it’s so tragic,” the femme added; “it’s hard to not feel sorry for him.”

True, I agreed, “but we all make our own beds.

“You know, I at various times tried to engage him in some social intercourse, some chitchattery, some conversation, but it always led to a one-way dead end.

“Talk with him about the weather, or the upcoming college football season, or the wildlife around here, or what he thinks of Fermer’s theorem in mathematics, and sooner or later, he twists the subject into a discussion of the big ‘P.’

“That’s all he apparently thinks about; that if he could only find the ultimate big ‘P,’ he’d need nothing else out of life to feel fulfilled and happy forever and ever.

“I’m mighty attached to mine, and would die before I let anything happen to it, but geezuz, it hardly dominates my life.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The femme inquired about happenings at another end of Nebraska.

“Nothing’s changed,” I answered; “still the same, leaving me living in suspended animation.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The neighbor’s wife came by in early afternoon, having returned Big Mo’s she-women from the Ladies’ Altar Society soup-and-salad lunch and bake-sale.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Better than I’d guessed it would,” she replied, pointing out that she’d bought three rhubarb pies for me at the bake-sale, all of which I immediately put into the freezer of the refrigerator.

“Despite that they think we’re all hayseed hicks around here, they all behaved.

“But I don’t understand their penchant for giving things that already have names, more names.

“I don’t understand why chicken, ham, Swiss cheese inside of bread needs to be called anything but that.  Going around with Big Mo’s people, one might as well carry along a French-to-English dictionary.”

Yeah, I agreed; “the primitives can be pretentious at times.”

“By the way,” the neighbor’s wife told me, “they’re having a big cookout Saturday evening down on the river, and we’re all invited--but Big Mo says ‘don’t anybody bring any chicken.’  They bought about half the stuff at the bake-sale, for it, including the poppyseed rolls and dough-wrapped potatoes, which they called by some other names.”

Hmmmm, I said; “of course we’ll all go.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Do you suppose [the business partner] would show up for it?

“I have to tell you that the great-aunt she-woman is quite the snoop; she kept asking all sorts of questions about him, darkly hinting that she ‘has something on him’ that’d get him into a lot of trouble.”

“Well, if that’s the case, he’ll definitely be there,” I assured her, omitting to tell her that the business partner had agreed to “play” franksolich while Big Mo’s she-women are here.

“Who else do you think’ll come?”

“Your family, of course,” I replied, “myself, [the business partner], [the femme], [the property caretaker] and his wife, maybe [the insurance man] and his wife, [the wife of the retired banker] and her nerdy nosy grandson, and maybe some friends of [the femme].

“About twenty of us, I suppose, so we’d better bring along some chow too, to bolster the buffet.”

“What about Romeo?” she asked; “you’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, and so maybe he should come, too.”

Yeah, the stress-relieving “sessions,” I said, “but the problem being, I haven’t seen Romeo since our cookout Wednesday evening, when he took off with the Sarah Ibarruri primitive.  No one’s seen either one of them since.

“And Romeo’s not the sort who’d have to take a shovel and dig a hole to hide something.

“So I dunno what’s up with him.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife was going to the county fair, where four of the five children (the fifth is still only a toddler) had things boasting purple and blue ribbons, and as I wasn’t doing anything other than sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for Romeo to show and illuminate me as to what was up with the three women from Omaha coming here to party this evening, I decided to follow her, but first left a note in case Romeo showed up, telling him where I was, and to stay here until I got back.

While there, I encountered Gerta, the overly-heavy, overly-tattooed chain-smoking woman who was the cook for the carnies, who are camping on the Italianate tract next to this.

“So…..how come you’re here, and not back there?” I asked.

“Friday’s the second-biggest day of the fair, after Saturday,” she said, “and Louie needs all of us to work the carnival.  Nobody’s going to be back there until one or two in the morning, after shutting down the carnival for the night.”

- - - - - - - - -

Some time after that, maybe twenty minutes or half an hour later, I ran into a certain woman, the one that the now-retired property caretaker used to call “franksolich’s kept woman, that brazen hussy.”

She’s in her late 30s, and other than wire-rimmed eyeglasses that make her look stern, she’s generally aesthetic, being tall (for a woman), svelte, pert, her only flaw being that she looks nothing like anyone of Hebraic derivation.

She works as a paralegal in the big city, where she also lives.  It’s true that base carnality has always been the only thing attracting the two of us to each other.  But it’s been a long time since we last hopped around in the sack, and I began waxing nostalgic.

She was with two other women, neither of whom I knew.

“Are you maybe up to going to the river to have some fun, to re-live old times?” I asked her.  “I’m not talking my place, but the place next to it, where nobody’s going to be around.”

to be continued

[JohnnyReb]

DUmmie emailed me and wants me to ask for a friend of theirs, "Can you smoke that?"

[franksolich]

DUmmie emailed me and wants me to ask for a friend of theirs, "Can you smoke that?"

I dunno what that is; some weed or something, I guess.

It wants to grow here, so I let it grow.  I suppose it looks aesthetic--if so, that's because we had a rainy spring and a moderately-temperatured summer, causing all foliage to flourish.

There's s-o-o-o-o-o-o much that grew out here this summer.

If any primitive's paying more than a buck for a dozen big ears of sweet corn at a "farmers'" market in a blue state, then some "farmer's" making windfall profits.

The William Rivers Pitt is coated with tomatoes, but because I'm aware of the progenitors of these tomatoes, I still buy them at the grocery store in town instead. 

[BlueStateSaint]

I dunno what that is; some weed or something, I guess.

Crabgrass?  That stuff'll grow almost anywhere.