Note: This is not about current politics. It is a story put here for the amusement of those on KOS who have said they enjoy my writing. If your only interest is current politics, please return to the other diaries. Thanks. Will)
I’ve been putting off writing this.
Maybe because I was sort of, possibly, probably in the wrong.
But my conscious bothers me so I’ll apologize for my evil doing...
After of course, wandering all around the topic and starting with something from the long ago past. Which I am sure, those of you know me have come to expect.
So here that is.
Way back in 1982 when I came back from California after quitting a job there, I was unemployed for a year. At least that’s what I tell people.
But actually I did have a job at that time. It’s just that I’m not proud of it.
It's been a well kept secret but I am sure I can trust it with you.
I was so depressed at that time in my life that I had actually started going to church, and you know that’s the last resort of a lot of people - those of us who like to lay in bed late on Sunday Mornings, and possibly not get dressed all day. Until we realize: Hey, we're starving. Better ago to church and pray for a job.
Well in church, I met a guy who was even more depressed than me. How that is possible I don’t know. But he was. His wife had ran off with somebody more handsome than him and he had gotten out of the Air Force and had returned to Florence, Alabama, from Minot South Dakota or some other cold ass place, just as I had returned from some hot ass place in the opposite direction, San Diego.
He had arrived earlier than me, so he had also gotten the only job available in town.
A newspaper route.
So being the newly charitable Christian that he had become, he offered to share his job with me. Well, at least some of it.
Like Ten dollars a day of it.
But I wasn’t doing anything at 4:AM in the mornings anyway, so I decided to give it a shot. Besides, it would look great on my resume some day.
"Help! Give me a job! I will do anything. And I can prove it!"
Bill had evidently thought about this a great deal before letting me in on this "gravy train." For there was a carefully thought out division of labor.
He would drive the car with his right hand, and throw the newspapers out the window and over the roof of the car into somebody’s yard (or ditch), with his left hand.
A pretty cushy job if you ask me. For which he would claim the lion's share of the bucks, as founder of the "business."
I on the other hand had to fold each newspaper and put a rubber band on it and hand it to him, all before we got to the next lucky newspaper recipient (Try spelling recipient (It took me three times!) Plus if it rained, I had the extra, but not more pay job, of sticking the newspapers in a plastic condom so they didn't get wet. PLUS, have you, sitting there in your Miami or Beverly Hills Mansion, ever tried folding a seven hundred pound SUNDAY paper. No, of course you haven't.
(I interrupt this story for a little known trivia fact: If your newspaper route has hills in it, you CAN get seasick. Stop. Go. Up. Down. Puke.)
Anyway, I got to where I could fold and band (and not throw up) without thinking about it. Just like picking your nose. And I’m sure if I were to get downsized, I could do it now, about 30 years later, without skipping a beat. Fold papers, I mean. Not pick my nose. I am way too grown up for that these days.
Now there’s two things I remember in particular about my formative newspaper experiences, only one of which is related to the story... Area 51 Yard Sale.
But naturally, I’m going to tell you the irrelevant one first, so just accept it and get over it. And if you get hungry while I tell you, it's not really my fault.
If we - Bill and I - in the newspaper business, had an exceptionally good day, Bill would reward me with a bonus. We’d go by a Barbecue place, and we’d both get big beef barbecue Sandwiches. I know it doesn’t compare to the millions of dollars bonuses paid on Wall Street today... but when you’re hungry... you tend to overlook that.
Oh... Smell that beef!
Please can I go back in time and get just one more of those?
Ok, back to the story. The second thing that stands out about my newspaper tycoon days, is one house in particular that we went by, in Sheffield, Alabama every day.
Keep in mind that Sheffield, Alabama is a dying town. It was then, and it still is. Maybe someday it will expire completely. It’s disease started long ago when the city elders decided they did not want an important road to come through their town, and so voted against it, and the road bypassed them.
Big mistake. Commerce went down the new road and the old road and the old town began it’s slow withering away. Someday it will die completely, but it's taking it's sweet time, like the old spinster aunt who you are hoping to inherit from.
But some people there at the time, for some reason unknown to me, still wanted newspapers.
And me an Bill were just the young entrepeneurs to deliver them.
And there in an even more dilapidated (Try spelling that correctly the first time by God!) part of town than the rest, was one house even worse than all the others.
And all over this house and all over the trees in the yard were big signs that said, NO TRESPASSING! KEEP OUT! POSTED! DON"T COME NEAR!, ETC! At least thirty six signs!
And every time Bill and I would go by this house it would renew a deep philosophical discussion between us, which I guess could be summed up as follows: What the hell is that all about?"
I mean, why would anyone WANT to go in there.
One of Bill’s major problems, and he did have a few, was that he was a great "What If?" man. He could get carried away doing that and I’d sometimes have to hit him with a heavy object to stop. He would say, "What if the guy inside is a CIA agent and he’s going to destroy the world, and what if our car breaks down right here in front of his house, and what if..."
And I’d have to hit him over the head with a heavy object and say, "Bill, would you shut the F**k up and drive the car!"
Then we’d laugh and maybe go get a barbecue.
Well the whole point of the twenty or so paragraphs you have just wasted your life reading is this. That house way back then reminds me of a yard sale I have passed for twenty years, and never stopped to go in.
I never stopped there before, because there is nothing but absolute and total rusted out junk there, scattered over a two or three acre weeded in lot, with the owner’s house way back up in the left part of it. Surrounded by even more junk. And in the woods behind that there is yet MORE junk.
It reminds me of what an Area 51 Yard sale must look like, because it looks like Martians hovered over the area looking for a place to take a much needed dump of all the junk they have stolen from humans over many thousands of years, and finally digested and needed to "deposit" in the proper toilet.
I can see them with their lunar road maps now. "Look Marvin, there is a rest stop bathroom up ahead. The earth people call it a YARD SALE. And I feel like I’ve got to go!"
"But Marge, you just went in Buffalo, not half an hour ago!’
"I don’t care. I’ve got to go again, so pull over!"
This particular morning, I decided to stop. It all has to do with starting to take pictures again after many years, a story which I have previously written about.
But I saw all this old sh*t out there and I thought, maybe there’s something out there worth photographing.
I pulled off the side of the road onto the "yard sale" land, behind another truck whose people had been lured by the strange Martian junk littering the earthscape.
The very first thing I saw just steps outside of the truck was an old refrigerator from about 1930 I imagine. I knew my daughter would not know what in the hell it was, so I took a picture to show her.
Near that was an old sink and man did it have artsy craftsy potential, so I took a shot of that, too. And pretty soon I was taking pictures of stuff left and right, as I made my way up the hill toward where what appeared to be the owner was - including a photo of a giant saw mill saw blade totally rusted out, and possibly ten feet in diameter.
I was on a roll.
Then I came to the jewel, the creme de la creme of what the time monsters had left deposited there before they took off for distant galaxies.
It appeared to be a hearse from the 1950's. But with the words U.S. AIR FORCE just barely visible after having sat there fading all those years, visible on the driver’s side door.
This was the motherlode. This was proof that the whole place had originally been part of Area 51 and they had time warped it here, to rule the world with it, and then sell it at a yard sale.
I was in heaven.
"What if... I was the only one who knew it was there, and what if I could get it cranked and just take off into unknown time space dimensions, and what if..
Finally I had the photos I needed. I could now save the world from destruction.
And I still had time to spare, so I thought I would wander around, take some more pictures, then contact the President with my findings.
So my wanderings took me up near what appeared to be the owner, but he was busy talking to other UFO investigators, so I just walked by him, taking shots and not thinking anything about it in the world.
And I saw an old car and it was just crammed full of newspapers and books and unrecognizable garbage, with even more on the hood, top, and trunk, and I knew everyone of those were probably important files the government would pay big to get their hands on.
So I decided to take pictures of it, and just as I took one looking straight head on from the front, the owner leaned up against the car and I snapped the picture, and that is when
THE ALIEN GOT ME.
He bit my butt, good!
Caught me completely unprepared, unable to defend myself.
He said something like this, these are not his exact words, but you can put whatever you want in here, as he was mad as hell, and whatever you add would probably be right.
"SOME PEOPLE GOT A LOT OF NERVE TAKING G*d D*MN PICTURES WITHOUT EVEN ASKING!"
I looked around. Some people? Was he talking to me? He was looking at me.
I was astounded. I will be the first to admit I do not think fast on my feet, but I also do not run from a fight.
I said, very wittily, I might add, "What?"
"YOU HEARD ME! YOU BEEN TAKING PICTURES EVER SINCE YOU GOT OUT OF YOUR CAR!"
I said, "Isn’t this a public yard sale?"
"DOESN"T MATTER. YOU SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ASKED PERMISSION.
I had mistakenly thought that permission was something you asked for when you took pictures of something VALUABLE inside a museum in Paris or Rome. Not old bathtubs laying full of rain water and algae that have been there since 1944.
I said, "Well, do you want me to stop taking pictures?"
"YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED FIRST!"
There were other yard sale lookers around and I was getting the worst a** chewing I had ever had since I was in the Navy, and the XO had invited me to step off the base with him and he would rearrange my attitude for me, for never polishing my shoes, among other things:)
Then I made matters worse. I said, "What do you want? Money?"
That set him off on another five minute diatribe of how I had dissed him.
He finally ran out of steam, and we both said nothing.
I didn’t know what to do. I don’t run. And I didn’t want to slink off like a scalded dog, especially as I was sure there was more Area 51 stuff around that international agents the world over would like to know of.
So... I gave him the best apology I could muster. I said, "I’m sorry I took photographs without asking your first. But you were way up here and I was way down there when I started."
That set him off again, but at least it was in capital letters this time.
When he ran out of steam the second time, I asked him, "Well, can I keep taking pictures?"
He said, "Well, I guess so."
So I wandered around this way and he went the other way, and then I saw a lawn jockey and took a photo of it.
And I thought to myself I have just apologized to a guy who sells racist lawn jockeys.
That about did it for me.
I had lost all interest in anything for the rest of the day.
I had "dissed" an old man even older than me and he had railed on me until he felt I was sufficiently chastised.
And all I have to show for it is a few artsy-craftsy photos of old stuff...
And a photo of the Area Fifty One hearse the government used to quickly carry away the dead alien bodies from the crash site so they could forever more deny their existence.
And though I’ve only got one ass cheek left now, after all that chewing that old timer did on it, it was worth it.
Because, what if Glenn Beck reads this and what if I am whisked away on a magical mystery media tour,,,
and what if I become Paris Hilton famous...
And what if I meet the Octomom...
And we decide to go for 32 kids...
And what if...
Wait a minute.
You know what?
Maybe I’ll just try to be more respectful next time.
Because one man’s junk
May be his life’s cherished work.
I know that most of my work is junk.
And if I gave my own Area 51 Yard sale...
Not even Marge and Wayne the Aliens would want it.
But they better not disrespect me.
Cause now I would know how to handle them.
In all CAPS.
And the strangest part of this whole deal is this:
When the old man was screaming and yelling at me he spoke clear and perfect English.
But after he calmed down and I tried to get him to talk about the hearse...
his normal way of talking was to mumble incoherently.
Just a coincidence?
Or a part of the coverup?
Whichever, I am NEVER going back to the Area 51 Yard Sale.
I need what little ass I have left.
Will Bevis.com
April 20, 2010