Redd Foxx sez: 'You GOTTA Wash Yo Ass!" and here's why!

There's only one more episode after this, and this one's a funny one.
Suck it up.
______________________

Driving professionally takes a certain toll on one's hine, and Mr. Meadows was kind of gimpy after twenty some-odd years behind the wheel of a milk truck. At his best he walked like a sailor in a full diaper. When he got up from a chair, though, it would take him a couple of minutes to straighten out while he hitched around the room, bent over at the waist, knocking over potted plants and endtables with his giant ass.
We were watching this show one evening when Kelvin laughed and said to his brother "Hey, aren't you glad you don't have to squeeze his butt anymore?"

WHAT?
___________________________

I thank God that this happened before I knew these people.

Seems ol' dad had been bothering a zit on his ass for awhile and made it nice and infected. The time he spent loading and unloading his truck each night further aggravated this condition, as did hustling back and forth making deliveries. The additional hours spent behind the wheel seated on vinyl might as well have been spent scooting his bare backside across a patch of shag carpeting for the effect it had on his carbuncle. It grew into a distinct, golfball-sized entity one could detect through the heavy twill of his white uniform pants.

Yes, well. The spreading pinkish stain was also a giveaway that all was not well in assville.

But he carried on, brave soldier. And sure enough, his Spartan regimen of shitty diet, hairy crack, poor hygeine and neglect paid off; the thing subsided and went away. See? Nothing to worry about.
And all was well.

Until he hopped up into the seat of his truck one night and a quart of green pus shot out of his asshole, down his leg and filled his shoe. He screamed, he jumped, his forehead hit the windshield and he passed out.
Dad had given himself an anal fistula.

(Now at this point in our story Mr. Meadows himself jumped in, all smiles, and helped tell the tale. By the end even Sunflower had joined the fun and was giving us unneccessarily detailed descriptions of the laundry involved.)

Dad woke up in the hospital on his stomach with a freshly shaved fundament.
The original carbuncle had moved into the meat of the muscle and migrated downward toward a vestigial gland, which it ruptured and emptied into. Because this gland had an open channel to the rectal passage, all the old pus, infected lymph and necrotic guck met up with some brand new bacterial buddies floating around in the fluid that was already there. The whole stew turned into a horrifically toxic ticking bomb. When he jumped up into the truck, it all burst out through the pore-sized exit of the gland, enlarging it to the size of a dime.
All this had happened right at the ingress to his egress.
Yes.
He'd literally been torn a new asshole.

Now that dime, and the tennis ball sized cavity behind it, were cleaned out and filled with cotton packing. They sent him home and told him he could remove it himself in a couple of days.
Oh by the way. Don't leave rejoicing just yet, Mr. Milkman. If you don't keep your ass clean, the thing will FILL BACK UP.

Skip ahead one week.
It filled back up.
With the packing in place.

The only course of action now was to nut up, remove the packing, express the gland and keep it filled with Neosporin.
Sunflower flat out refused. Of course.

So the task fell to Eldest Brother.

There were several YARDS of surgical gauze up there.
Luckily, once the part that had hardened into a solid, cork-sized plug of green matter had been worked out, the rest of it came slithering out pretty easily.

Don't imagine that this was accomplished without lots of commotion on the part of Satan's Milkman. Eldest finally had to tie him to the bed.
With belts.

So every night for a couple of months thereafter, it was Eldest Brothers' job to tie his father to the bed, pinch his asshole between his thumbs and express the gland into a washcloth until it was empty. No matter how many washcloths it took.
Then he had to poke a tube of goo up there and squeeze until the goop started to squit back out.
Then he'd fold a towel into a square and tuck it between his cheeks, and wrap that in place with an ace bandage.
All done!


I never took a shower in that house again.

White Falcon Great : Eleven Time Mob Crimes!

NOTE: SSA, DON'T READ THE FOOTNOTES.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Update.....
this is part of a series that began last friday. if you have no idea what's going on, that might explain it. so might wearing a drycleaners' bag over your head at night. wearing a drycleaners bag over your head at night is bad for you.
_________________________________________


I needed to move out of Milwaukie fast.
It was also pretty obvious from the 'help wanted' section of the paper that I'd have to move back in to Portland if I wanted to work.

Here's the breakdown:
I'd turned 19 in May. I left the Dishrag and moved back to Milwaukie by the 31st. Two weeks into June I was fired, had been been ousted from Sonnyboy's place, and started living in the house on Harrison. Now finally in July my unemployment had come through.
Now I got about 260$ per month in unemployment back then. Half of every check went into the bank along with everything else I could scrape together (and that wasn't much, with 130.00 and change to hold me for the rest of the month.) I still had a long way to go. In order to move out I'd have to save first, last, cleaning and another couple of hundred dollars over, just in case I didn't find anything right away. And that merely to be able to move in to a shithole and live on brown rice.
The longer I stayed in Milwaukie, though, the better that looked.

No, the Meadows' sideshow didn't get any less weird as time went on. Oh my no. In fact I came to realize that they'd been holding back.

I did my best to spend as much time as I could away from the Meadows' home. I put a permanent bend in the fence between their place and Sonnyboy's house, sneaking over in the middle of the night like a goddamn sixteen-year-old.* (Mommy dearest kept a weather eye on his front door. She'd even gone so far as to ask the Meadows to call her if I showed up at Sonnyboy's. I was getting the distinct impression she didn't like me.) I partied with people I knew around town, I visited Portland regularly looking for work, I even started eating meals out, even though this cut into my bankroll. (Well, that and the cigarettes. Fine; and the Two Fingers tequila. Hey; why drink piss? I may have been living in an abandoned house but I was a good hostess. )

The problem with that was that the weird ramped up exponentially. Each time I tried to sneak back to pick up a jacket or nab a sandwich there was another scene waiting for me. And Kelvin was always there. Maybe asleep. Maybe not.

I was having a sneaky sandwich one afternoon when Eldest Brother blew in, bent down and said 'be quiet and come look at this."
I should have known better at this point.
The door of Kelvin's room was in the utility room entry (see floor plan last post.) Of course, in a high-traffic area such as that, it was hanging wiiiiide open.
In the middle of his bed was a heap of sheets and blankets. It was hitching and bucking like one of those horsie rides at the supermarket.
Eldest brother whispered "Guess what."
"OH MY GOD KELVIN! CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!" I shouted in horror.
Kelvin poked his head out of the sheets and grinned. "My God, can't a guy jerk off in peace?"
_______________________________________

For some reason Kelvin seemed to take this for a 'bonding moment', and decided to make me his confidant. Whether I liked it or not. And I did not. So he stalked me.
Now Kelvin had the unfortunate and vastly dysfunctional family role as his mother AND his fathers' confidant; two people with no appropriate boundaries whatsoever. When he in turn confided something in me it was like being smeared with shit. It wasn't only the content of the revelations or the people involved, but also the fact that they dumped this insane, depraved bullshit on their youngest son. And he was so fucked up he lapped up the attention like a dog.

One of the stories he told me actually concerned him, though.

Kelvin had a once-in-awhile girlfriend who was Asian. Her parents were desperate for them to get married, but Kelvin was only after the 'tang. "Yeah," he bragged, " I used to have to tell her, 'Get the hell up and wipe your ass! You're disgusting!' before I'd fuck her. But eventually she learned what I liked."

What a silver tongued devil. And picky too!

He'd made the mistake of bringing her home.
Once.
Momma'd run into her room and slammed the door. Dad had made creepy remarks in front of her, asking Kelvin if it were true that Asian women had sideways gints, and wasn't he afraid of getting the Korean crud?

I mean honest to God. Poor girlfriend. Poor Kelvin, too.
________________________________________

Kelvin was a pervert above all things (I would not be surprised in the least if he was sat up in Rocky Butte right now for criminal trespass-window peeping or B and E rape.) He was also a toady, a sneak, a tattletale and one of the most pliant people I have ever met. If you insisted, he would bend.
That gave me an idea. I'd get him out of my face for good. After the first couple of whine-fests, every time he started in with the bullshit I came back with the 'apartments for rent-Milwaukie' section of the newspaper. After all, the guy had a full-time city job, benefits, savings and a car, right? Everything he owned would fit in the back seat. If I could keep the fire lit under his ass he could be gone before momma had a clue.

Obviously, this was doomed to fail. And it did.

I did the legwork. I fished his fricken paystubs out of the trash and drew him up a fricken budget, on paper, in his face for the love of Pete. I even found an apartment for him to look at. I got him as far as an inspection, too.
He panicked so badly that he practically ran out of the place. All the way home he kept repeating "No, my mother needs me. She just needs me, she just does. I can't do that. I can't DO that, Nations, I just CAN'T." By the time we got back to the house he was babbling. He ran into his room crying and slammed the door.
And only about half of it was faked.
_______________________________________________________

Eldest brother lived in a shed in the back yard. But this was no ordinary shed, make no mistake; he'd built it himself. He had a woodstove, skylights, and a loft in there, a rug on the floor, windows, insulation, cedar shake roof...it was tight. It even had a front porch and some steps, all covered with the most amazing array of potted cacti I have ever seen. Some of these things were HUGE...ten years old and older.
Outdoors. In Oregon.
And unlike every other person in Oregon at the time Eldest Brother was NOT growing dope. Much too pedestrian.
Eldest Brother was growing PEYOTE.
Yes I know this is supposed to be impossible. In blithe disregard of which fact he was doing it, without any special equipment, in plastic bowls. He had the plants in various stages of growth, and he had the field identification books to prove it. And I checked because I didn't believe him.
Fucker was also making what he called 'organic Mescaline'- dried peyolotl cut with lactose.
Good stuff, Maynard.
Really, really, REALLY good stuff.

The guy could have made thousands and thousands of dollars out of that shed just off the Native American religious community, let alone the freaks. He could have moved to Humboldt County and bought a house, and settled into a whole community of fellow wackjobs and mad scientists.
Instead he stuffed it all into his head and ran around claiming that he controlled traffic lights with his mind.
_____________________________________





* Sonnyboy and I had this down to a science. He scooted his bed underneath the window and kept the screen barely resting in the frame. Come the darkness I'd come down the street from the opposite direction, slide through the Meadow's side yard, across the back , over the fence and through the window like the Flying Wallendas. Heeeeey-UP!
Tell you what, by the time I left Milwaukie we'd damn near shoved that house off the back foundation.
Why all the cloak and dagger? Why didn't he just go up to the remodel?
1. Sonnyboy worked days. Like he was going to be able to walk back home? Wigga please.
2. Location, location, location. The remodel sat just off the sidewalk on a main street and it had no windows. The one time like maniacs with no religion and tiny motorcycles,scarlet maccaws, frightened elk thundering down a steel chute on the sash weight fell down into the wall. Nuns burst into flame. The neibors all turned on their lights all the way off the box spring with a mild concussion and a large hole in the plaster by naval battles, with explosions, and pterodactyls booked ass out the back window when we saw blue lights flashing on the walls drove up.
3. Eldest brother ( Luxury-fitted Hispano-Suiza to Sonnyboy's Sopwith Stunt biplane) was liable to pop in . If there was going to be a double feature I wanted to keep things in separate auditoriums.

What? I was 19.

Master of Design Fuschia Monkey: Retreat!

Because YOU ASKED FOR IT!
Actually nobody did but here it is anyway; the floorplan of the Meadows' lair:

_________________________________________

As the summer wore on the Meadows started showing up at the abandoned house for work parties more often. This just harshed the fuck out of my mellow. Gone were the hours when it was just me, a broom and a garbage bag, or me, the lawnmower, and Aunt Audrey's charred bone fragments.

By July I had to show up every single morning down at the house for the daily unrealistic remodelling goal/harangue and then off to the hardware store, Eldest Brother driving, Kelvin asleep in the cargo bed.

Kelvin and his father worked nights. This is why they greeted the dawn with a nutritious glass of orange juice and vodka; early morning was their evening.
Nonetheless, Kelvin was expected to spend his days working on the remodel while daddy slept. That he usually didn't wasn't something I held against him; shit, I didn't want him around. And besides, the creepy little pervert genuinely needed his sleep. Between his night terrors and daddy rousting him out of bed every morning at 6am he wasn't getting much. Sleep deprivation was certainly not making him any more normal, that was for sure.

Eldest Brother didn't have a straight job. I have no idea what he usually did with the greater part of his day. Probably worked on his Interociter. But he'd usually roll in to help about late afternoon. We'd get a couple hours worth of the heavier work done together; some linoleum removed or some old tile chipped off.
Then we'd retire to the back room and put some repetitive strain on the floor joists. Wotta demon!

Mom worked days in a clothing store, but she left for her job before anyone else showed up in the mornings and was home late enough in the evening that I seldom saw her. That she actually held a job just amazes me to this day.
She, of course, never did anything except embody Satan and all his dark legions, and eat other peoples' ramen noodles.
And I mean that literally, y'all. She did not cook. Nor did she clean. No laundry; not even her own. She did not shop. She did not garden. She had no hobbies. She watched no television. She did three things: went to work, came home, and acted disgusting.*
___________________________________________________________

There is one member of this sideshow that I have not mentioned previously, and that's because she was an expert at not being noticed.
We'll call her Mysterion.
Remember in The Munsters TV series, how Marylin was the only normal member of an otherwise bizarre family? How she sort of drifted through the cobwebs and dragon crap completely untouched, not a hair of her neat little flip-do out of place, as though her home context was nothing more than a bluescreen image? That describes Mysterion exactly.
I saw her a total of five times and spoke to her maybe three out of the five.

I do know that her room was at the back of the house. And I knew that the door to her room had 1. a handset lock, 2. a key lock, 3. a keyed turning deadbolt and 4. a security chain. And that Kelvin made it a habit of TRYING THE KNOB EVERY TIME HE WENT DOWN THE HALLWAY.
I shit thee not. I saw it.

But one morning Kelvin came down the hallway from the bathroom grinning.
"Hey, Mysterion left her door open! Nations, you want to see something sickening? Come look!"
Before the words were out of his mouth Dad and Eldest Brother were out of their chairs and headed down the hallway. Oh hell yes, I followed. I figured it had to be pretty good if they thought it was worth seeing.

Mysterion's room was light, feminine, with gauze curtains, lavender walls, a frilly white bedspread. Fluffy white rug on the floor. Ruffled shade on the dancing lady bedside lamp.
I stood in the doorway gazing around at an absolutely typical teenaged girls' room.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Menawhile her brothers and father were busily opening the dresser drawers, looking in the closet, checking under the bed and fingering things like monkeys. Here is a map:


"Come look at this, said Kelvin, indicating the closet. "It's just disgusting. Just disgusting."

Inside were.....clothes.

"Look at all the good stuff she gets", he hissed. "We have to dress in crap! Just crap! She gets everything!"

I thought, "Wait a minute. Your ass works and you're 22, Kelvin. Ever thought about buying your own clothes?"

To be fair, what I didn't know at the time is that his mother bought all his clothes. The one time Kelvin had shown up in things he'd bought for himself she'd thrown a screaming, crying, hysterical fit, made herself sick and made everyone's life a living hell UNTIL HE RETURNED THEM TO THE STORE.**

I noticed some boxes on the top shelf. Boxes for shoes? Boxes for dresses?

No.

Bisquick, Instant Quaker Oats, and Jiffy mixes.
The whole top shelf of her closet was filled with boxed food.

"Oh, that's nothing!" Eldest flipped up the duvet and indicated the space beneath the bed.
The entire space was cutdown flats full of canned food. Campbells soups, Dinty Moore stew, Chef Boy Ar Dee, Armour Devilled Ham, tuna fish.

Mr. Meadows decided it was time to leave. He set about tidying up.
Eldest left with a can of chicken noodle soup in each hand.
Kelvin snagged a box of Hamburger Helper.
"Go ahead, grab something", said eldest.
I declined.
____________________________________________________

I came into the house one afternoon to hit the bathroom, and as I entered the back door I was met with the most extraordinary sound.
Oh no.
Was it the refrigerator motor malfunctioning? No...
Was there something caught in the agitator of the washing machine sloshing around? No.....
After the hibbity bibbity incident I was pretty leery of repetitive moist noises in the Meadow's house, so I advanced cautiously.
Peeked around the corner.
From where I was I could see the crown of Mr. Meadows uniform hat just peeping above the edge of the couch. the noise continued, but now I could hear him too.
He was grunting. Huh Huh Huh Huh. Kind of....under his breath.
I heard a faint jingle.
Aw SHIT.
I had to go past him to use the bathroom, so what the fuck; away I went. What I saw when I got halfway through the living room just stopped me, stopped me absolutely dead in my tracks. Just thinking about it now makes my stomach feel wierd.
They had a Sheltie dog. Named Darla.
Darla was down at the end of the couch.

Licking Mr. Meadows bare feet.
Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap.
He laid there with his eyes closed, grunting in time with each stroke.






Have a nice day.

________________________________________

I'm sorry to say that yes, it does continue. The question is:
IS IT SAFE YET?
....actually no. There's a couple footnotes.

*Here's your first REAL EXAMPLE of what I mean when I describe Mrs. Meadows as a tapeworm segment stuck to Satans ass.
This woman took the nastiest, bowl-filling Doberman dumps it has ever been my misfortune to be in the same state with.
And didn't flush.
On purpose.
Let me repeat that. She was fully aware of what she was, or in this case WAS NOT doing.
On purpose.
To her, this kind of thing represented lighthearted family hijinks. Ha ha! Whoops, I guess I forgot to flush!
But it didn't stop there.

...Shall I continue?

Whoops! I harked up a big ol' yellow wad of snot into the sink and all over the vanity and the mirror! Gosh darn me!

Whoops! Guess I'm having my period!

And....?

Whoops! There must have been a REALLY BIG SNAIL using the toilet last night!

Yes.

FOOTNOTE 2...........
**And here's your second example of the evil which was Sunflower Meadows.
I witnessed this.
It was my fault, too. I was the one who'd convinced Kelvin go shopping for new clothes.
His mother took one look at the bag in his arms, snatched it away, upended it on the sofa and promptly began hyperventilating and freaking. "Is this yours? Are these for you? Don't you love me? I don't understand! I don't understaaaaaaaaaaaaand!" And off she went. Crying, screaming, throwing herself against the walls, into her husbands arms, stomping off to the bedroom, screaming in there, coming back out, crying, stomping off the the bathroom, slamming the door, pretending to throw up, coming back out, pretending to throw up in the kitchen sink... Poor Kelvin kept following her all over the house frantically trying to reassure her that it was all going back to the store but she'd shove him away and scream some more.
Finally Mr. Meadows looked at me with genuine embarrassment in his face, and said " I know you were just trying to be nice. I think you better leave now."

Good plan.

plaid chameleon cucumber party!

......Continued from yesterdays' thrilling tales of yesteryear....

Life in the abandoned house on Harrison Hill was pleasant. Nobody bothered me, I had construction projects to keep me busy and, as I've pointed out previously, there was a marked absence of crying drug addicts.
The house was in a beautiful neighborhood, surrounded with old-fashioned bourbon roses. The minute the dew began to fall in the evening the roses would release clouds of the most incredible fragrance, a fragrance which instantly filled the entire house. Mainly because there were no windows.

In the backyard was an overgrown pillar rosebush about ten feet across at the top. It produced a nondescript blossom, but one which released fragrance so heavily you could literally taste it. You could smell the heavy, luxurious scent even over the cut grass while you mowed the lawn. I took blossoms and put them in next to my bed, and even in the cold of the morning my room smelled of them when I woke up.

Then I'd throw on a jacket and walk down to the sideshow.

On a typical morning I'd open the back door and be met with the sound of Kelvin thrashing and screaming in his sleep. I'd go into the bathroom, check all the surfaces for unpleasant bodily souvenirs, make it quick, then hit the kitchen. Mr. Meadows would be there by then. I'd have to sidle around him like a hypochondriac at a leper rave, since he was one of those guys who liked to 'pretend' to bump into you and turn it into a full-body grind as you went by.

Once everyone was awake we would all pour a screwdriver and Mr.Meadows would start in on his latest grandiose remodelling project for the day, which we ignored. This would lapse into a story about the prostitute he'd been banging the night before, vivid descriptions of how she smelled, how he had to threaten her in order to cop a shower so he wouldn't come home with dried pussy all over his dick, then segue into his speech about raising useless lazy children who never lifted a finger and had to be supervised and blah blah blah. Which we ignored.

I am proud to say that I initiated the trick of sneaking extra booze into his drink so that he'd get too shitfaced to stay awake, and so shut the fuck up and go to bed. It worked beautifully. One day he even stopped midsentance, toppled foreward and fell asleep on the table. Splat. We left him there. Comparing notes on the way to the hardware store we realized that each one of us had been tipping the bottle into his glass, which probably dissolved...just like his liver. One hopes.

We had a credit account at the hardware store. This was one of those fantastic old bare-wood places that smell of hay bedding, malt feed, gasoline and zinc... full of amazing crap that you hardly ever see anymore. Choker hooks, peaveys. Team rigging. Kerosene lamps. I loved that place. Because Elder son was too friendly and Kelvin was too timid, dealing with the staff fell to me. I learned how to order, fill out account information, deal with suppliers and salespeople, all kinds of things. It was great.

We'd go back to the house, unload the days' supplies, and start working. Meaning me and Brother the Eldest worked; Kelvin wandered around and usually ended up hiding in the basement, which is where I had to go fetch him from every evening.
Brother the eldest refused to go into the basement; he claimed it was a lesser gateway to the Underworld. And inasmuch as the Gollumesque Kelvin was usually lurking down there in the dark, flogging his first mate, he had a point.

You think I am kidding.

As we worked, Eldest Brother would ramble on happily for hours about Christ knows what...the Navy, being able to see auras, a book called 'Etidorpha' which he claimed held the true secrets of science.* Carlos Castenada was also a favorite subject. As I reapplied trim, taped off details and glued sheets of panelling he'd fill me in on the god of the San Pedro cactus and Mescaline and peyolotl and teleportation, how to cap up dried cactus pulp...when I got sick of that I'd switch him off on the paint stripper detail and he'd straighten up for an hour or so.

Then he'd come sidling back over and getting in the way, and I'd swap him back, and in no time he'd have his head right back over the can, a wavering figure through the rising chemical fumes, tripping on about the true appearance of God and pranic breathing and how he had developed the ability to fly.

Once again, you are thinking 'Nations, you lie like an eggsuck dog'.
Would that I were.

As I puttered around it was hard not to notice a trail of cleaner swaths on the floor, like a strange, looping design. They didn't seem to follow any logical traffic pattern from room to room, but it was clear that they were trails worn by foot passage. The rest of the floor was a uniform, shiny dull black...crusted thick with filth that came up in flakes, where it came up at all.

As the days passed and the laquer stripper held out, I began finding out more and more about the last resident of the house we were working on.

Apparently Mr. Meadows' sister had been the previous tenant.
As she'd advanced into senility she'd filled the house up to the ceiling with piles of mail and newspapers, boxes of old clothes and magazines tied with string, arranged in a mazelike pattern, something she claimed would foil robbers. She'd also taped entire Sunday editions of the newspaper over her windows until they bulged out into the room.
Her sole companion had been a small dog, who, noting that Mom was rapidly sliding into a condition where she didn't give a hoot in hell anymore, promptly stopped going outside to crap and pee.
At the very end she had lived entirely within the confines of the house, sucking water out of the kitchen tap, eating sugar out of the bag in handfuls and sharing a dish of raw hamburger at the table with her dog.

Eldest Brother also claimed that she'd been in possession of advanced psionic abilities; that once in his boyhood he'd come into the kitchen to find her suspended in midair, pedalling away on a cosmic wheel made of blue light. I don't know what eating raw hamburger had to do with this phenomena, if anything.
__________________________________

Even though there was a perfectly good hole in the floor in the bathroom, whenever one of the guys had to get rid of some beer, being guys, they went outside. Unlike most guys over the age of six, however, this was usually accompanied by lots of smirking and giggles. Visiting the great outdoors was referred to as 'watering an oddie', snork, fnar.
I ignored this. Acting like dill-holes is what they did.
But when other male acquaintances of theirs did the same thing when there and did it nowhere else BUT there, I figured some kind of private joke was going on.
I'd mowed the back yard. It was overgrown, but aside from the human population of the property at any given time there wasn't anything out there that looked like 'an oddie' to me.

One day I was outside, enjoying the weather, mowing, pausing to take the occasional smoke-and-asthma inhalation break. One of the guys looked out the window and shouted at me "Be careful! Don't hit an oddie!"

A few minutes later Eldest Brother came out onto the back stoop, grinned and called "Be careful! don't run over an oddie!" and went to whiz in the roses.

This happened a few more times that day. Even Mr. Meadows made a point of saying it to me that evening while I was pouring gas into the mower. "Didja run into an oddie under the rosebush?"

I gave in and asked Eldest Brother what the 'oddie' bullshit was all about,
fully expecting to hear a story about lawn gnomes that came to life at night and robbed graves or something.

What I heard was something entirely different.

It wasn't 'an oddie'.

What they were all saying was 'Aunt Audrey'.

Don't hit Aunt Audrey.

Under the rose bush.

"You named the rosebush Aunt Audrey?" I asked. Considering the source this was a perfectly reasonable question.

"No no no. Aunt Audrey is under the rose bush," explained Eldest Brother, enunciating.

I waited. In the Meadows-zone, you learned not to take any statements of fact that came out of their mouths at face value, because what was clear and apparent to a Meadows was often the product of Zippy the Pinhead reasoning processes.

Turns out, Aunt Audrey had been cremated.

Her cremains had been scattered under the rosebush.

Where her nephews, their friends, and her brother had been going out of their way to urinate for years.

I went in the bedroom and threw the roses out the window.
___________________________________


Goodness yes, this shit be continued. What'd you think?



*etidorpha (which is 'aphrodite' backwards! oo!) is about faceless underground mushroom people who can prove that water doesn't always seek it's own level and who will explain the process at the drop of a hat, at excruciating length, with diagrams.
no, really.
you're sitting in front of a computer; look it up.