So on and So forth

I said that about 198 times on the phone with F the other day. It would seem that talking about the myriad of ways my mother has ruined my life will cause me to use redundancies. (It does seem a little fitting, as my mom is running quickly out of new ideas and repeats herself quite often.)

I am more than ready for my fucking chronic neck and shoulder pain that spirals into a migraine to break up with me. It's one of those relationships that has been dead for a long time, you know, where one party is more in love than the other, but the un-loving partner stays due to not wanting to hurt feelings and so on and just does ass-hatty things in hopes of pissing off the other party enough that they will end it and absolve the un-lover from any wrong-doing? Yeah. I'm trapped in a loveless marriage with my neck.


I am totally at a loss of something to blog about. Perhaps I should let loose a yarn about the white-trash-Mecca (Welcome, googlers!) I used to live in.

Hrmmmmm....there are so many to choose from. The dude that pulled all his own teeth? His brother, who cut his face in half with a chainsaw and walked out of the woods and then drove himself to the hospital for stitches and came immediately back to work logging? My ex's brother, the taxidermist, who had his ceiling 'raised' (Cut a hole in the trailer's ceiling insulation) to make room for the rack from his prize bull elk? (And yes, he used it as a gun rack.) How he and his wife were caught having sex in their 'garden' (Wife posted fake flowers in the dirt rather than plant real ones) by their son's friend at three in the afternoon? The 60 year old woman with no teeth who, for $50, sold her dirty panties to a stranger at the local bar?

Oh, I know.

Clown Faced Jimmy, aka 'Sparky'.

Clown faced Jimmy was an electrician of sorts. He wasn't licensed, to my knowledge, which never stopped anyone in that neck of the woods from doing anything. He was also famous for shitty work and being an alcoholic, which I believe is where his nickname came from.

Sparky, that is.

We called him Clown Faced Jimmy because, well....He looked like a clown.

Let me explain.

Jimmy was Canadian (I don't know how this applies, but my step father teased him about it a lot.). He was slender, about 5'9". He had insane black hair that stood up around his Stihl baseball cap at odd angles. He also had a very wide and pale face, and electric blue eyes. Like, not pretty blue, scary, 'there's-something-very-wrong-inside-this-man blue. And one tooth.

One. One of his front top teeth--that was it. The rest were small, worn, black nubs. They looked like he had fallen into warm road asphalt, come up with a mouthful and called it good.

Now, I know you are all wondering where the 'clown' part comes in. I guess I can't really do it justice by putting it in writing.....trust me. (I'm freaked out by clowns. Not because of Jimmy, but that fear may have something to do with the nickname.)

Anyway, other than questionable electricians work, I have no idea where Jimmy received any income. I know that he had a lady friend for a time who supported him, but I don't know where he lived, what he did with himself during the day or anything else.

Jimmy drank cheap ass beer and smoked cheap ass cigarettes. He laughed a lot, (Showing his road warrior teeth) and was generally a nice person. He was friends with a man who was quietly said to have a marijuana farm, but no one said for certain.

One day, in the middle of the summer, I was working at my parents store with my step father. I was about 17 or so. The store was busy-ish, it being the summer months. Our store was RIGHT ON THE HIGHWAY--not the busiest highway, by any means, but a major thoroughfare just the same. This is important.

So my step dad and I are working away, when we hear a rumbling 'Bang!' of a backfiring vehicle. We turn to look out the window and see just who it may be....

It's Jimmy. And his friend, the pot farmer. They have pulled into the store parking lot, next to the gas pumps, to reattach a tarp that was supposed to be covering the bed of the truck before they head to the nearest town.

They needed a tarp to cover the bed of the truck because the bed of the truck is piled, literally piled, with pot.

Now, take a minute and imagine this. Really.

My step dad and I just stood there, watching them use rope and tie-downs to cover this mountain of pot and make it road ready. The saw us, smiled, waved, and left.

In what reality is this even remotely possible? Plausible?

The best part? They didn't get caught. They drove through a town at 25 mph with a literal truck load of cannabis, cars all over the place, and no one thought twice about it.

I don't know whether to laugh or....be confused. I vacillate, really. At least we know how Jimmy supported himself.