redneck news letter summer 2007

 I needed to make a bathroom stop on the way to Sam's house from the airport. We stopped at a grocery store that smelled like rotten meat. I stood in line (there were more people using the bathroom than there were in the store) behind a very pregnant girl on her cell phone. She continued her conversation in the stall. So I hear "Well, can you give momma that $5 'cause I gotta git cigarettes." Lovely. Pregnant... needs cigarettes.

I went to a flea market. Don't think 'swap meet'. It's more a convention for the unemployed. They have terrible body odor & smoke 7 packs of cigarettes a day, and they really want to sell stuff everybody else has thrown away about 14 times.  It was at this flea market that I saw my first West Virginia drag queen. I've lived in LA and NYC. I've seen a lot of drag queens, I've been friends with drag queens, but holy crap! A WV drag queen is either something you could live your whole life without seeing or you haven't really lived until you've seen one.

There is a store here called "Smoker Friendly". Cigarette smoking is like a sport.

I have been gone too long. I can barely understand some of the people here. Sometimes I wonder if English could really be considered their first language. I heard a guy ask for a gree-ull in Wal-Mart. Gree-ull, 2 syllables. You know what he wanted? A grill.

I met Sam's friend. They told me the story about the night they were out in Sam's old VW Rabbit, that he'd cut most of the roof out of. It rained very heavily that night while they were in the bar. They come back to the car, and it has about 4 inches of water in it. Sam says "Oh, I'll have to drill holes in that when i get home to drain the water. Friend says "You wanna drain that? I'll take care of it." Sam says OK. Friend pulls out his pistol, shoots a hole in the passenger floor board, Sam nods in approval, Friend shoots another hole in the driver side, and they drive home, water draining freely.  I do remember the end of that VW Rabbit and it was fitting. Sam drove it until it couldn't be driven anymore (in his words: "cars come to me to die") He then bought a little VW pick up. He took every useful part he could off of the Rabbit, and needed to take the rest of the Rabbit to the junk yard, but it wouldn't fit into his truck. Sam borrowed Dad's welding torch and cut the car in half. He takes the 1st half to the junk yard. They explain they can't accept cars in pieces lest they be stolen. Sam takes it home and uses the torch to cut the car into several significanly smaller pieces, then unscrews the skirting from around the trailer he lived in (yeah. You heard me. Trailer) and put "the car" under the trailer. It's probably still there. Who's idea was this? Our dad's.