Saturday 31 January 2025 19:02:54 PM CST





Saturday 31 January 2025 11:05:19 AM CST

Destroyer was released in 1976 and was where the got big. They'd been around a bit and were fairly well known but this was where it took off. At the time I wouldn't have expected them go get as big as they did but times change and by 2000 marketing - if one chose do do it and was good at it - could could get people to buy anything. This was the first with Bob Ezrin - best known for his work with Alice Cooper - and the sound was markedly improved. I had a new Sansui 9090 and Pioneer HPM-100 speakers and the it would shake the walls.

Still got the foil poster somewhere, wherever those things ended up after the last move. Knew a couple of younger folks still livin' with the folks had the poster up and their parents took it and threw it away an account of some people sayin' that the name was something was something satanic. The local newspaper and radio station had people goin' on about it and people writing to the editor and all. That was long before the Judas Priest controversy and Tipper Gore and all that stuff.

Cover is by Ken Kelly and I got a ton of paperbacks with his covers. Conan and stuff, somewhere I got some Conan paperbacks where they had a foldout about twice the size of the cover with a larger version. Anyhow did some album covers for Kiss and Rainbow (the Rising cover) and some Manowar covers. I actually didn't know or had forgot - either is likely - that he was (according to Wickedpedia) the nephew of Frank Frazetta's wife. Cool.

What, Chris?

Probably both but if I didn't know I couldn't forget it so that don't work.

Whiskey of the day is Beam black and seegar is a Swisher mini - back to simpler times. Back and forth between cold and just cool, occasional rain but not the regular heavy winter stuff just yet. It'll be here soon enough. Tree planting is possible a day or two some weeks.



With the success of the Executioner and Destroyer books it was inevitable that by the 1980s there would be a lot of folks tryin' to cash in. Some fared better than others and this one fared less well than the Death Merchant series although neither measured up to the classics. I believe this is one of only two I bought and this was in the 1980s when paperback prices were two bucks and change for average-sized ones. I would pick one or two and usually a couple of magazines about ever time I went into a bookstore. I only bought a couple or three of the seventy Death Merchants so they both impressed me about as much. There were only about nine of the Mercenary books so apparently it didn't sell as well.

The Death Merchant has the usual quirky bio - degree in engineering or something, interested in occult stuff, ranch out west with a couple of pet pigs and such, prefers cold buttermilk to bourbon. Naturally skilled in martial arts and weaponry, Mostly it's Executioner-style mayhem without the philosophy and character development and such.

The Mercenary is well written and with decent plotting but a misdescription of various players - political groups and such - are inaccurate but it's hard to say if it's ingorance on the part of the writer or a woke agenda that would become fashionable a couple of decades later.



While we're doing merc stuff, classic movie is The Wild Geese from about 1978 or so. My favorite merc movie would probably be Dogs of War if they hadn't tried to cram the book into a two-hour movie. This has Richard Burton and Richard Harris and Roger Moore. I haven't seen Roger in much outside of the Bond films but he was pretty good in those - one favorite being with Lee Marvin in Shout at the Devil. Reportedly the filming was accompanied by a good bit of drinking. Ya think?

It's about some mercs hired to break an deposed African head of state out of prison before he can be executed. Mad Mike Hoare - who knew a thing or two about African mercing - was a technical adviser and the title was a patch Mike's operation used. Had some other folks with some experience in those things and overall pretty good.

Christopher Walken was more fun as a merc but probably not as realistic as these old guys but realistic isn't generally as much fun as the real thing. Worth a watch or two.







Weird snack of the day







A young cop on the Twin Falls police department. Where he came from I don't remember but he had a decent-looking wife who claimed to be a close relavive of a famous (and dead) person. The deceased famous person had been dead for two decades and was famous primarily to a dying (of old age) cult and the tabloids. Both were in their late twenties or early thirties. Later on she would try to cash in on her relationship to the dead famous person and scammed a lot of people out of a fair amount of money but eventually it caught up with her and she ended up broke but still trying to scam people.

John seemed a decent sort for a person who would be a small-town cop but you never know. He was a patrolman or whatever they were called and ran speed traps and investitgated accidents and 911 calls and such. One day he was taking a prisoner into the jail, the part where the cop takes the prisoner through a door and they close the door before opening the next door which opens into the cell block to let the prisoner be put into a cell. Cops aren't supposed to be carrying their weapons when they go in there but John had his stun gun. If they'd had tasers then he would probably have had that but maybe he would have taken that off.

When the first door closed and the next one hadn't been opened the prisoner attacked John and wrestled him down and got his stun gun and went to shocking him with it. By the time they got in and separated them and secured the prisoner John was in bad shaped. Soiled himself and that's always embarrassing.

John quit right after and set up as a private investigator. The only thing I know about him after that is that a relative who was disabled due to an accident at work noticed him snooping around his house a lot. My relative was having some difficulties with this disability income and suspected that he was being watched to see if he would do anything physical that could get him disqualified.

John died some years later and I never heard why. At 53 he was old enough to have a heart attack or stroke but that would be unlikely. If it had been a suicide it would have been in the news. One never knows about such things. His wife continued her grifting with increasingly less success.

Worse Than I Thought (2022)



A lot of horrible crimes are being committed by the illegals this guy wants us to keep what we got and get more of same. Pretty sick person. Mass shootings vary and the pharmaceutically induced types seem to be down lately and mass murders by trannies and other lefties are way up. As for PRESIDENT TRUMP's social media posts (he owns the multibillion dollar company that he puts them on instead of X-formerly-known-as-Twitter which must rankle a bit for a little pissant like this. The merger of PRESIDENT TRUMP's company with another billion dollar nuclear energy company really be painful for them to see. As much as the renaming of the Kennedy Center? Hmmm, I hope so since he can't help but react in the usual asinine way.



If the universe always made sense the Dims would be even more unpopular than they are. 300K is a lot and the few thousands killed by illegals - whether drunk driving regulars or those given CDL licenses by California and Illinois and other such states or the rape/murder of children is a smaller number but the final justice for the ones who let them in and let them out or jail time after time will be - if there are degrees of final justice - worse for the latter. How much worse is hard to say.



From nature.com: Physician and science communicator Kristen Panthagani talks about why public trust in vaccines has fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic. Ya think? ~~ Where I live anyway a dying city (Memphis) had lots of real estate formerly occupied by industry and people like X bought it cheap and put in big data centers. Locals tried to obstruct every way they could so new ones are being built over in Arkansas and Mississipi. ~~ I always figured my personality was pretty complicated. Do some people not think theirs is? Probably. ~~ Plymouth Rock was supposed to be under six feet of water ten years ago, along with most of Florida. I just checked and they ain't. ~~ I wouldn't call it Tea Party style as the Tea Party thing was returning to constitutional rule. The Dim rebels are pushing further to the extreme. ~~ Affirmative action (didja know AA benefited mostly white people? White women that is.) became DEI and stuff got broken even more. In my day you hired AA types and just hired a qualified person to do their work so you had to hire two people for one job. DEI hires were so bad eventually they couldn't cover up the damage or repair it fast enough. ~~ Yeah, couple of places they still shooting at each other occasionally. ~~ People start up a new business and don't last long because of crime. People stealing them blind and the law don't do anything and people being around and sometimes in the business. ~~ About half of those weren't truths so I can kinda see how popularity declined. There was one good one that somehow got in.

What say we start with some Memphis news? A triple shot of weird stuff sounds good.

What, Chris?

The Memphis news has stuff about NEA all the time and we're pretty close. Anyhow so much of the crime spills over here even if it seems it ain't been quite as bad lately. Maybe the trash collected by the feds over there was a big part of the problem. Dunno how big a slice 650 is but it's a lot. Anyhow we got - well, I'll just let the local tellystation narrate:

Just after 1 a.m., officers say it started when they responded to a prowler call in the 100 block of Sawyer Circle after a woman said a naked woman kicked her door in.

When they arrived at the scene, they reported hearing a woman screaming for help. While running toward her voice, they saw a grey pit bull start charging them.

Officers say they had to fire two shots towards the dog to prevent injuries. The dog was not injured.

WREG.com

I guess if I was being charged by a pit bull I'd be skeert some but hope I could hit something coming right at me. Dunno what they carry - lot of cops carry forties these days and a couple of them should slow a big mean tough dog down but I wouldn't stop shootin' until it was down or headed somewhere else. Maybe the dog took evasive action.

I've heard tell of people doin' drugs and one of them checks out and they just heave the body out if they're in a vehicle or in a building just leave it layin'. Seems they left this one layin'. News said he was actively overdosing but apparently actively just means in the process of and not thrashing around. Be hard to use him for a table if he was.

Think that's strange? This one wasn't nekkid when trying to break into a dwellin' house but he had an axe. Guy was apparently using the axe to break in and when they found him bleedin' thought he hurt hisself with the axe. Probably had he been nekkid he would be more likely to but turned out he'd been shot and then tried to break in a house with the axe. Okey-dokey, but now I think on it how does a nekkid women kick in a door?

What, Chris?

Hang on.... grep -c nekkid blog-articles/* | grep -v :0 ... once in each of six previous entries. Wanna know which ones? How about some Arkansas news? Say Jonestown.

Rector ain't in Jonestown and pretty far north actually but the Jonestown TV station had this. Not sure I put that in but I guess not many people live in former church buildings. I know Alice did and I seem to have seen one or two in my time. Guess a church building would might be pretty roomy even if it was a small one. That is about the only Arlo Guthrie song I know and probably the only good one. Well, he did do City of New Orleans but I heard others do it.

What, Chris?

He didn't write it but he was the first to record it? Okey-dokey, seems his is probably the one I heard most. Anyhow Alice's Restaurant is so freakin' funny I'll cut him some slack.

Most of the Jonestown news outlets covered this one. Of course NEA Report had a thing and Jonesboro Right Now had something. All said that one cop shot another. Accidentally. What they said. Jonestown PD put it on Facebook. Probably the Jonestown Sun had something but I didn't check. I just make fun of their lame editorials and cartoons.

The mayor - former mayor or ex-mayor or whatever of Helena is in more trouble. I guess he's an ex-mayor since he was removed by a court order. Didn't have even the decency to resign? Like the crooked governor Jim Guy Tucker tried to hang on after he'd been convicted. Seems died a few months back. Anyhow the replacement appointed by the governor looks like a real winner but apparances can be deceiving. Talkin' about earrings here but I suspect of the few residents of Helena-West Helena that are qualified to be mayor this probably isn't one. Those are unelectable in such a place.

In Wynne news the CEO of the bank that used to be in Parkin but now is in Left Memphis and got real big somehow decided to cop a plea. This dude is 68 and looking at 15 to 30. If he gets the minimum and does five before parole things still ain't looking good. Hard to rebuild your life after that and even harder whey you a convicted sex offender. I was pretty well set up when the Medical Industry gave me a life sentence of being crippled and while I don't have any financial worries I can't put some of the other stuff back. Knew a couple of guys went up in their seventies - one a repeat offender on a federal drug rap and he may never get out. Other was under-15 rape and I believ he did half of a fifteen-year. It ain't smart to break the law whey you young but less smart when you ain't got time to start over.

I been that crossing many a time and there's no reason to ge hit by a train there. You can see a good ways both directions and while I can't remember the last time I saw a train on that track apparently there occasionally is one as that feller found out. This feller was wanted for a homicide in Wisconsin and he had him a Glock switch when the Marshals caught him in Wynne. I would guess there won't be any prosecution locally since he won't be coming back for a while. If he does get off easy back home - and that may well happen - it should still be a while before he's seen in Wynne again. This dude got big problems too. Around here that stuff gets you some time.

This dude may be in big trouble. Dunno if the one that stopped when the police got after them will be in as much - seems both were involved in the crime that started it all. Yahoo has more details - not that it's pleasant to read. They will most likely throw a big book at him and should. No info on the type of cars involved. Some talk on Facebook about it bein' on Broadway. That's pretty much the main drag in Left Memphis and generally not that much traffic. Used to be a gun shop there that some of us patronized as when we wanted to buy a gun from some of the shops in Memphis they would transfer it to that shop and we'd pick it up there. Haven't been by there in years as I don't to to Left Memphis.

This was a PBS outlet and on account of government media being defunded. Some people sayin' it now gonna be an organ of the Republican administration in Arkansas. Well, for years it was a tool of the federal government so there's that. They say they believe they can secure ongoing and increased support from individual donors, foundation partners and corporate sponsors in which case it won't be the government. I suppose who pays for it could have some influence. Way it generally works anyway.

Eighteen is some progress, kinda like school choice and both vary from state to state. Interestingly there are about eighteen states that do both but not the same ones. They say the SNAP reform will affect about 14 million peoples in the eighteen states - California alone has over five million and three million in New York. Illinois and Michigan got over three million between them. The maybe-unintended result may be

A great many people on welfare are obese and unhealthy in other ways caused by drug and alcohol consumption and smoking. Many of those are on Medicaid. If reducing their access to junk food mitigates those conditions they will consume less in medical services. With all the illegals leaving there should at least be less strain on health care. Unfortunately subsidized housing is not affected - can't have everything.

MAGAHurtz@MyndCryme

How about a break?

Oscar was a retired Air Force colonel. We talked shop some as I had done a few years. He was a C-130 pilot and pilots who made a career of it become squadron commanders and then eventually - if they play the game right - a wing commander - a wing being usually a base with several squadrons. Sometimes it was two bases with several squadrons as or two bases as was the case where I was. You get the chicken you're over a unit at that level.

He had some weight on him when he arrived, having been retired for a while. Wife a bit mouthy but not as bad as some. Had a house up on Cumberland road - a twisty road through some hills and little side streets usually with a cul-de-sac at the end. When I was a kid in high school some of them cul-de-sacs weren't developed beyond having the asphalt put down and realtor signs up and the girls that were inclined to fornicate in the back seats of cars sometimes got caught doing in those cul-de-sacs. In town it was mostly middle and upper class types so the cops pretty much ignored it. The cops were familiar with the cars - usually the car of the boy that was getting some - and didn't bother to investigate. The lower class types did it on country roads but a buddy of mine had a non-upper-middle type - good looking though - and got caught by a sheriff's deputy on a gravel road. He hadn't got it yet and after the cops intruded he didnt't get any.

Where was I? This was after the area was pretty much developed and his wife has a local and they moved there and bought a house on Cumberland. He was probably in his sixties and why he went to work at a bank I have no idea. A bird colonel was pulling down some serious bread and with all the health care paid for didn't much need to work. As I just remembered his wife was related to one of the guys that owned a Chrysler dealership in Twin Falls. Chrysler and Dodge and Plymouth. Dodge trucks did OK in those days - I bought one of the first Dakotas there in 1987 - and it was a pretty good business. Nothing like the GM or Ford - the Chevy/Oldsmobile dealer and Ford/Linclon/Mercury had pretty fancy operations but Harris-Holden Motors was in an old place on the main drag. He married one of the Harris girls and moved to her hometown when he retired.

Twin Falls National hired Oscar as a business development officer. I didn't read the job description of know if there was one but it seemed the job involved in drinking coffee and schmoozing with important customers - those that had a lot of money in the bank or a lot that bank wanted to be in their bank. He drank some coffee for sure. It was believed then that more than one or two cups a day was bad but these days it seems the more the better is how it works.

He drank some coffee for sure and not much else. He sometimes dealt with people like the guys that stocked the vending machines in the breakroom and some grounds maintenance people. And presumably developed some business. His wife being in the family of the car dealers and one of them being on the board of directors probably had something to do with his employment.

One thing he didn't drink was adult beverages. He was about the only one that didn't and so he was often the designated driver. In fact if he was present on an outing he was the designated driver. The president insisted on it and if he was present Oscar would be the designated driver. The guy that was screwing the president's secretary and got beat up by her ex-husband (the ex was trying to get her back) liked to tell stories about their escapades said one night one of the other guys - who may or not have believed he had imbibed sufficiently little to be driving offered to do so Dean (the president) said "No, I want my boy Roscar to drive." He said Oscar wasn't pleased with the pronunciation of his name but was glad to drive. Dean Billings liked to drink but even being a bank president never bought liquor on these trips - whether he bought it for use at home I never knew.

As I said Oscar didn't do much except schmooze with customers or potential customers and drink coffee. He was still there when I left but later departed. I was still in the bank occasionally as I had gone to work for the software company that they used and was in there occasionally. One day I was there and was told that the bank had fired some people for whatever reason you suddenly fire four people that didn't seem to be somebody that was about to get fired. Some insider I knew said they. One of them was Cheryl, another was the secretary Bill had been banging for a good while, one was a gal in the loan department and one was Oscar.

They all sued the bank but you know how that went in an at-will state. Cheryl probably had the best case as she was pregnant (unmarried) and her boss had suggested she have an abortion but they all lost. Oscar as I said didn't really need a job but whatever. He died a few years later. There was this time his wife came to the bank and had some kind of beef and they called the police and they came and arrested her. Times change and their family wasn't one of the local chapter of the Big Club. The president was still the same but was getting on in years and Oscar being married to a upper society woman didn't help. C'est ta la vie

Worse Than I Thought (2022)



Since they self-own and few of the people squealing about the subsidies maybe going away are libs. Wealthy with six-figure - often two six-figures in one household. So there is scant sympathy from the right we mostly don't care or call it karma. Obviously we're pissed that it's being used to extort more of same and a few RINOs will probably let it happen. Not so sure they'll get three years - since the previous shutdown worked so unwell the Dims may not have the stomach for it.



I believe the whole time Joetato was ifesting the presidency Branco drew him with the sippy cup in a bloody hand. After the Afghanistan debacle anyway. I like the way the third world invasion looks like sewage or something.


It wasn't a Trump backlash unless you consider that Trump's election was par of the backlash. The big ones like Walmart and Target just going with the flow. I reckon Target took enough of a beating over the tranny thing they're trying to act reasonable but I was still surprised they let an employee wear a Charlie Kirk shirt. ~~ That's from an... well everything racist to them. Back in the '70s people dressed nice and you just didn't see some stuff you do. People coming or going on vacation might dress kinda casual but that about it. By the late '80s I flying Northwest a lot and a lot of times the last leg was Chicago to Memphis. That could give a feller a bad attitude. ~~ And of course you racist if illegals comin' in with all kinds of diseases annoys you. ~~ I believed I observed earlier that Plymouth Rock is as above water as it was four hundred years ago and fish not swimming in the streets of Miami. ~~ Fact is if Paramount wins connection to President Trump is irrelevant - Ellison and son are conservatives from way back so any properties they acquire will become less left. ~~ Suppose you found a way to cool the planet and it doesn't need cooling. Could you reverse it? Cooler means less agriculture but that's what they want. ~~ ICE is just forcing illegals to leave. ~~ They were considering it? If it needs doing why consider it for so long? Or were they considering whether it was needed and blowing money the whole time? ~~ Hard to say what is and isn't with all the fake statistics in some of the cities. Where most of the crime is.

Of course local officials disagree while crime goes down to half what it was. This from the Jonestown other teevee station. Actually some quietly admitted it cut crime and a lot of citizens weren't quite so quiet about it. And they aren't immigrants. They're illegal aliens and the fact is a lot of them are demonic in their behavior so they kinda self-demonize. Fact is President Trump is about as far from insecure as one can be. The fact is he's so confident he gives a lot better than he gets from the state-run media clowns like her. His insults burn a little more because they know he doesn't give a fig what they think. The fact is that a pilot who had not been flying regularly (she was a society coorinator or something in the White House) shouldn't have been flying there at night. In fact it was pretty dumb for a competent pilot but it could have been avoided. As Harry said that's a hell of a price to pay for being stylish.

In Wynne big Methodist church that got smacked by the tornado is being removed so they can build a new one. It'll soon be three years and hadn't heard or asked why the holdup. I did ask someone if the congregation had stayed with the old church when it went woke and was told that it is but there weren't very many members now or it didn't look like it from the small attendance at the temporary facility. Knew some of the older folks there from business, most of them dead now. Anyway I built a new one in three months.

Cherry Valley gonna use Jason's Junk Removal for their trash collection. He don't have a website but the guy that picks up at my place in the country don't either. He does call it a sanitation company though. One of the few bills I have to write a check for but it only four times a year. Sends out them little cards you tear off half and send it with the check, like old-fashioned utility bills.

Never really knew much about what they did. Some kinda business development thing, stuff about economic development, education and workforce, community development, and leadership development Whatever it was they won't be doin' it any more. They was in the old Kmart building in the main drag - one of the shortest-lived Kmarts I ever seen. Probably wasn't open for even ten years and was empty for a long time. It was eventually fixed up and has East Arkansas Community College classes and there some other office like these folks had. Sez the Chamber of Commerce gonna move in. Never knew what a Chamber of Commerce was good for except to give jobs to some people.

What, Chris?

Ribbon cutting about all I ever seen'em do. Everbody stands in front and gets their picture taken and it in the newspaper - or the newspaper website if there ain't no more paper like in the Wynne Regress.

What?

Just kiddin. Wynne does pretty good for a dying city. It dying slowly. Somebody buy the old Kelly's restaurant and bring that traffic back would be good but word is the guy wants too much. Guess if I's filthy rich I'd buy it and the old hotel and fix it up good. Old hotel got a lot of business while they was building the windmills but that all gone now. Course if I's filthy rich I'd buy a restored Pacer station wagon and drive around just because.

Well, that used up my mental energy for the hour. Think I'll take a nap.






























































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xxxx@MyndCryme

Xxxxx Xxxxxxx (2022)


Steve was a pretty cool guy. He arrived in town in the sixth or seventh grade, I seem to remember it being in the sixth. So he had an academic record that got him in the H section. His family had moved to Twin Falls with a big company from up north that was building a new factory and his dad was an executive. His mom was a hottie and pretty cool, real personable. Always drove a sports car - the one she had when we were old enough to drive was a Firebird, '71 or '72 I believe. It was later than a '69 because of the abrupt appearance change after that year. She also had a little Toyota station wagon that was pretty neat. The Japanese stuff was getting pretty good by then, and Toyota one of the best. So he was always driving one or the other of them until he got his own car, the Toyota if there were several of us.

Him being a new kid and from up north he had a few problems getting adjusted. Some of the kids gave him grief because of it, one guy was always trying to get us to fight, telling one or the other us the other one said something bad about him, the sort of things kids do. One day he and a couple of others got us into a scuffle, we rassled around on the ground a bit and said "what the hell are we doing" and got up and walked off together, ended up being close friends.

Steve was on the short side, a bit shorter than me and I ain't tall. Close to average I guess at five-seven full grown. He was better looking than me and that and being a little short girls liked him. He liked them too, big time. We all did obviously, except the usual one or two in a hundred. His older brother put together a little band and Andy played sax but they figured out pretty quick they didn't need a sax that bad if it was Andy. Jim, that was the older brother, did pretty well and was in one or two bands that actually got a recording contract and cut a record or two. Steve's interest in music was the latest rock releases, 8-tracks in those days. Turned me on to some pretty good bands that I still listen to today, Queen being one. Their second album was played in our cars regularly with accompanied by respiratory exposure to cannabis.

Once we were in high school Steve - being in the H section and a rich kid - was readily accepted. Two or three of the ones that fancied themselves elite didn't care for him but he didn't care. That would be the girl elites - the guys in that category, two or three of them, were going to be doctors like their fathers and didn't engage in the usual classroom politics. They didn't mind buying drugs from him though. He became a botique dealer, supplying the upper-class kids and being ignored by the local law.

The only drug I used was marijuana. I took what I was told was acid once but nothing happened, and some alleged mescaline had no effect either. But smoking a joint and listening to Queen or Hawkwind was fun. Back then the football field at the high school had parking for a row of cars at each end, just yards from the end zone. About ten cars could be parked there and I smoked my first joint there in Steve's car - he'd gotten one of his own by then - '71 Chevelle with a 454. The Heavy Chevy they called it, had a little decal on the side so you'd know. Most of the vehicles I drove that had a 454 was trucks and I think maybe it was pretty much built for that. Never liked them as much as the 455s in the Oldsmobiles and Buicks and Pontiacs. Especially when they put in the Trans-Am. Tell you a few stories about that sometime. Anyway it was pretty ballsy parking at the end of the football field and smoking pot but there were those that could get away with it. When he left town some years later he sold it to a guy I knew, year younger than me. We hung out and he married a gal we had both dated casually, hung with both of them some until I went off to the Air Force. She was pretty wild and they got divorced a few years later.

He sold more than just pot, and I would have disapproved if I't thought much about it. Not heroin, the really bad drug then, but pills of various kinds. Whatever they wanted, he had a connection in Memphis. And as can happen when you do something you shouldn't for too long something bad happens and one day it did. One night actually.

Steve's dad was out of town a lot and his mom had a pretty busy social life so he had the house to himself a lot. Weekend parties that went on pretty much all weekend, sex and drugs and rock and roll. Plenty of all, good-looking girls too, not the elites from our classes but good families generally, no skanks anyway. That went on after graduation for the two or three years before I left for the Air Force. It was not long before that Steve had to bail.

Whatever possessed him to be in Woodside - now that I think about it he had a girlfriend who lived there - and he was stopped by the local police. Woodside cops came down hard on out-of-towners. In-of-towners too if they weren't paying off the sheriff. The political setup in that county was like you see in the movies about corrupt southern sheriffs. The 1973 movie 'White Lightning' could have been about Cook county. In fact the sheriff there did eventually go to prison when the feds finally got him. The state police had studiously ignored him for years. Anyway Steve had a nickel bag about half used. Off to jail he went.

No sweat, possession rap might get him a year or two back then but as long as he could get out of jail and get to the lawyer he'd be all right, and if it looked to be bad there was always Plan B. So he used his phone call to call his supplier in Memphis, guy named Mark. Needed a thousand dollars for bail. No problem Mark said, I'll be there in an hour. Hour goes by, another hour goes by, Steve calls Mark. Mark's girlfriend answers, says Mark is dead.

I said Steve was living dangerously, but I don't know whether he knew how dangerous. A biker gang ran a lot of the drug trade in Memphis then, and it turned out Mark was one of their dealers. But his sales to Steve weren't approved, the way she told it, and they whacked him. Strychnine in some powder, coke maybe, that he sampled.

Steve's supplier worked as a hairdresser at a high-dollar joint there. I was working at the bank then and the guy that married the rich guy's daughter (and later went bust in selling liquor, selling insurance, and operating a Radio Shack) was shooting the breeze with some of us one day and mentioned that his wife went to Memphis to get her hair done a lot and that last time she went the guy that usually did her hair wasn't there. Seems he got some drugs that had been adulterated with something toxic.

Steve called one of his high-society clients back home and several of them got together the ten bills and got him out. Within a few days he had executed Plan B, heading for Georgia where his parents had a house. He supposedly came back to Twin Falls once in a great while, very quietly, but generally stayed in Georgia. Shortly afterwards I went off to the Air Force and never did drugs again. I quit afew months before enlisting so I'd be clean and never had an interest in it again.

Some years back I googled his name to see if I could find what he was up to. I got a hit with his brother's name on a Triumph motorcycle blog. Seems Steve was riding his bike in the rain and when passing a car hit a puddle while changing lanes, went down and slid a good ways. Might have lived but his head hit a guardrail post and the helmet didn't save him. Forty-eight years old. Made it further than Andy and the guy that quit school and went to work for the railroad. And Kenny and some others.

Of my classmates and the guys I hung with in those days Steve was one of the best. Pretty happy-go-lucky, just being around him you might think he was a little closer to the average line than he was. He was pretty sharp, had grades above average even for the H section, running his own business and had people working for him when he died. And he was a real likeable guy, never really knew anyone that didn't like him. Except that one sheriff'sa deputy, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Worse Than I Thought (2022)

Elliot was a classmate occasionally through the first six grades. That was before they divided us by learning ability. He was just a bit below the top tier but fairly bright. Real nice guy, never in any trouble or had any kind of problems. His family was one what they called "prominent" which as mostly social status and money - most of the time the two went together but not always.

He had a cousin about the same age, we were in the same grade anyway. She was pretty but flat-chested - not a problem until we were in high school - and we somehow got pretty familiar on the bus and she was the first girl I kissed - and anyway time went by and I don't know that happened to her. I know what happened to him though. His daddy as a pretty prosperous insurance agent, one of them where if you had the area franchise you was pretty well off if you didn't screw things up. Raised show horses and all, had a company that manufactured horse trailers. Seemed to have a lot of money but that wasn't always certain in that particular scenario. Working in a bank for a while you learned something about who had real money and who didn't. Anyway they did all right and the insurance thing was a pretty guaranteed thing in those days as long as you didn't screw it up.

Some people did screw it up and lost it but for the Barkers it went on until it was time for the old man to retire and leave it to the son. OK, good enough. Elliot took the helm of the insurance agency and his dad spent more time with the family and the horses and other business enterprises. Elliot married his high school sweetheart and ran the insurance agency.

She was a hottie as they say these days. Sweet girl too it seemed but I knew her rather casually and so don't know how accurate that assessment is. Women are like that and men are the way they are so you never know except in the long term. Anyway she was a good-looking gal and I expect Elliot was attractive to women. He wasn't ugly so I guessed he was all right for the women of the opposite sex. And there was the money.

They were apparently happily married for a few years. Elliot was running the insurance business and all was going well. A guy named Stevie opened a business in Twin Falls. A dance and gymnastics thing, teaching little girls to be cheerleaders and majorettes and dancers and such. Most of the time those were women who had been cheerleaders or dancers or whatever in high school and maybe college and came back to their hometown to teach younger generations. A man doing it was less common.

He had his studio in a strip mall there on the main drag - it was fancy as strip malls go and most of the businesses were upscale for the place. I didn't think about it until one day some commented that Elliot had been caught in lagrante delicto with Stevie.

Now scuttlebutt was that she was shocked and outraged and real soon filed for divorce. That was accomplished and there wasn't much noise about it and it seems to have gone down that way. Elliot pretty much disappeared - the insurance agency ended up with another owner and that must have hurt financially. I knew a few homosexuals who were in prominent families and while it was common knowledge they didn't make a big deal of it and neither did the normal people. Live and let live. But Elliot pretty much disappeared. At least when you have money it's not so bad but sometimes I wonder about their lives when they go that way.

Worse Than I Thought (2022)