Tag: near death experience

Shotguns, My Grandfather & The Guy Who Should Have Died

My grandparents lived in a Farmhouse built circa 1883 on a massive 1,100 ache plus property down south in a tiny town know as Podunk. Every summer and every Christmas my family and I would drive down to  visit my grandparents on the farm since my brother and I were off from school. While the town was so tiny (that when it got a second traffic light it was a big goddamn deal let me tell you) there are 2 major trucking companies headquarters located in Podunk that run 18 wheelers all day and all night long transporting everything under the sun. Luckily when the main road in and out of Podunk was to be built they asked my great grandfather about its placement since( like the original 19th century dirt road) it would run through a portion of his property. So instead of having the modern road run directly outside of the Farm house’s front yard gate he decided to have it built this time with a huge curve that brought the road out to a 1/4 of a mile from the main house. Between the farmhouse and the new road is essential a giant grassy field with a semi circle dirt driveway that allows the house to be accessed by 2 separate entries from the outlying road. Now on the outer side of the large curve is a 6 1/2 foot ditch (before you reach the woods) and for the life of me to this very day I have no idea why the town hasn’t put of warning signs for the truckers. See if your driving an 18 wheeler and are going slow you’ll hug the road to safety ,BUT if your driving an 18 wheeler and your going to fast you’ll run off the road and plumet head first into the aforementioned big ass ditch.

One summer while we were visiting my grandparents when late one night we all got one hell of a scare. What set off the insane events of that night started when a trucker driving a rather big tanker truck filled with liquid pesticide was speeding a bit and thusly found himself plunging head long into the ditch of death. The first thing that saved the driver’s life was when he crashed he was thrown from the cab, but this only got him out of the frying pan into the fire. If I recollect correctly the driver’s injuries included (but not limited to) Broken and cracked ribs, internal bleeding, severe lacerations, 2 completely shattered legs, head trauma, fractured right wrist, and massive bruising not to mention he was in shock as well. When the driver gathered his senses and managed to look around at his surroundings (as well as thanking whatever god he prays too for not being instantly and violently killed) he saw the far off light of farmhouse’s front porch lights and knew it was his only hope or he would in fact die on the side of the road. So summoning all his remaining strength the driver slowly (and I imagine quite painfully) pulled himself using just his arms and dragged himself the 1/4 mile across the grassy field and across to the front yard. I don’t know if the driver couldn’t get up the stairs to the front porch, but he again dragged himself around the side of the farmhouse to what is referred to as the middle porch. Its called the middle porch for one simple reason which is back in 1883 fire was a huge concern especially if you lived in a small rural town. Thusly to combat the threat of fire the architects of the day designed houses so you’d have the  house with a middle porch in-between the main house and the kitchen as well as dinning room. This way if your kitchen (which was the biggest threat of fire) did catch fire the middle porch provided a buffer in-between.

Once the driver reached the middle porch he preceded to punch his way through the screen of the exterior door leading off the middle porch to the surrounding yard. The driver opened the door and then pulled himself up onto the porch. From there he once again dragged himself in excruciating agony to the door to the main house and pounded on the door like his life depended on it which it did. The driver was screaming bloody murder things like”There’s been an accident! HELP! HELP ME PLEASE! Oh God, PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR I don’t want to die out here…” obviously to get the attention and aid of the homeowner (who for all he knew wan’t even home).

Now as one might imagine being that it was around 2 a.m. in the morning, virtually pitch black outside (no streetlights or urban sprawl makes night even darker), and we were located in such a rural area outside of a tiny town that we were basically on our own (the average police response time to the property is around 40 minutes or more.) There are 2 bedrooms at the back of the house on the 1st floor across from one another my brother and I slept in one and my parents slept in the other. I remember opening our bedroom door just a minute crack as to allow a singular eye to peer out into the hallway. I saw my father too had cracked open my parents bedroom door and glanced over at me to give me the universal “STAY THERE” hand gesture. All of us were freaked the hell out and had no idea what to do because like I said if there was a crash alright, but it could be some sick son of a bitch trying to gain access to the house and all that terrible shit. A minute or two of being frozen in place by paralyzing fear I heard the familiar sound of the wood stairs creaking as someone came down them and immediately looked to see what was going on there to see my grandparents. My grandfather being 6’3″ with a poker face made of stone and a shotgun in each hand was leading the way down the stairs.  My petite 5 foot nothing grandmother was literally right behind him and looked flustered as hell. My grandfather walked to the door not saying a word, unlocked it and forcefully swung it open. The driver collapsed backwards as the door flung open to see my grandfather standing there in his pajamas silently pointing a wicked looking pair of shotguns at him. At this point it was obvious there had in fact been a horrendous crash and there wasn’t some deranged rapist serial killer, and my parents and grandmother went into crisis damage control. My grandmother called 911, my father asked the man what happened and my mom frantically gathered first aid items. Meanwhile my grandfather continued to stand in the door way completely quite still aiming both gun barrels at the injured driver. After assessing the initial situation my grandmother suggested we move the injured driver off the porch and into the house’s main hallway, and it was then my grandfather spoke for the first and only time during the whole ordeal. What my grandfather said I will remember to the day I die and its only one singular sentence                         “Don’t bleed on my carpet.”

Note to Reader: The driver was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital for emergency medical treatment. My father called the hospital the next day and was informed the driver was alive, stable and would completely recover from all of his various injuries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Car Fires & Pay Phones

For a formital time in my past (starting when I was 91) I spent traveling primarily back and forth from The North to The South every year or so. I embraced my tortoise paced transient life style as I’d spend a year up to say 18 months up North until I got bored or more likely was in some sort of trouble who’s consequences were on the horizon. At that point I’d head down South and start the whole process over again (and again and yet once again) in an endless self destructive cycle.

It was during one of my times I spent in The Swamp I was reunited with a couple of friends who had returned to The South many moons before me. I found out my 2 friends Armenian and his long term girlfriend Eon where living with Armenian’s parent’s (Mr. & Mrs. Fuckedin- Thehead) house about 3 hours from where I was living at the time. I had been living down in The South approximately 6 months in a smaller than small town known as The Rat’s Ass. Armenian’s parent’s house was located in a smaller micro town called Zero for the past couple of years. I managed to get a copy of their phone number, went to the closest pay phone (yes kiddies this was in the lost time before smart/cell phones.) and gave them a call. We bullshitted for a few minutes and then decided we should meet up and to do so I should shut up shop and drive to Zero where I could also crash on the couch at Armenian’s parent’s place indefinitely.

Right after I arrived in the tiny town of Rat’s Ass I bought a used car from this shady little amateur risky dink fly by night “car dealerships” you know the kind. It was one of those places with a motley crew of  used cars crammed close to one another like Sardines on some small patch of dirt on the outskirts of town.  Of course as par of the course I had to haggle with this slimy schister of a sales man until we struck a deal on a car that fit my needs. So making the drive over to Zero would be easy as I had my own transportation and no real reason to stay in Rat’s Ass since I had a shit retail job (and I was stealing merchandise from my employer as well for quite awhile) ,and I lived with 3 random room mates in a glorified flop house. Once I talked to Armenian I went directly home, grabbed my shit, told my room mates I was leaving so fuck them and drove off into the dead of night never to be seen again.

I arrived at Armenian’s house around 1 am and met his parents for the first time. His father Yon was a life long alcoholic fuck up with a extensive rap sheet and a hardcore drug problem. While Armenian was growing up (when his dad wasn’t in jail or on a bender) made the monumental mistake to try and be his son’s friend instead of father. Armenian’s mother Yeg also had an seriously extreme on and off again passionate love affair with hardcore street drugs though she was fully functional (Armenian’s dad at this point was BARELY functional). A few weeks of smoking weed, drinking beer and doing fuck all we all agreed it was time to get the hell out of Armenian’s parent’s place and get our own. We started by looking at spots in neighboring town’s as Zero well, Zero lived up to its name and had absolutely nothing to offer. We were still crashing at Armenian’s parent’s pad at night while we spent our days looking at different housing options.

It was a picturesque Wednesday as the 3 of us loaded up in my car and headed out to continue the reality hunt and headed out of town. We hadn’t even hit the town limit when simultaneously Armenian and I notice slight whisps of smoke trickling out from the perimeter of the car hood. Figuring the car was simply overheating we pulled into a local restaurant’s parking lot right away, and I proceeded to park my car way in the back of the restaurant’s parking lot that was entirely empty. Armenian and I jumped out of my car as soon as we parked and went to pop the hood to locate the car’s issue at hand. As soon as we popped the hood of my car it was horribly obvious my car wasn’t overheating ,BUT ironically was on fire as indicated by the foul flames that leapt out at us when we popped the hood. Again we must remember this was the time before technology (and its enormously fast evolution in society) so we didn’t have a cell/smart phone we could use right then and there to call 911. As people did at this time in history we ran over to the restaurant to ask to use their phone (or their pay phone if that be the case)

I feel its important to clue you the reader in on a few facts of this situation other than my cars being engulfed in flame. I will be using a list once again to help keep things moving along.

  1. Zero is a Podunk little town YET this one restaurant was the designated “Fancy Restaurant” around the town. In all honesty the restaurant was equivalent to a run of the mill Olive Garden (No disrespect to Olive Garden intended)
  2. The population of Zero were low to lower income blue collar workers mixed with drug dealers and addicts alike. This most likely accounted for almost the entire parking lot of theirs to be vacantly devoid of cars and customers.
  3. The 3 of us didn’t resemble anything like any sort of dress code nor fancy attire in any way what so ever. Eon was the best dressed of us all in a hippy dippy sundress, a white t-shirt with some cartoon scrawled on it and barefoot. Armenian looked the most out of place of us all. Armenian was around 6’3″, wore entirely black clothes, had skin so white you could see right through it if he held his hand up to the light, long fucking fire red hair (with goatee to match mind you) ,and generally looked like he might lunge at you at any second. I wasn’t much better off than Armenian truthfully. I was insanely under weight at a buck 125 ( I looked like a concentration camp victim my mother told me), shaved head, and was wearing a Slaytanic t-shirt with worn out blue jeans and a beat up pair of combat boots.

So as you or one might imagine when the 3 of us stumbled into the restaurant out of breath and a bit sweaty we turned heads like we had 2 heads to say the least. Once we entered the front door we were in a entrance way that resembled a short hallway that led up to the Hostess’s desk. We strode up to the desk and politely as well as quietly requested to use their phone. We were immediately and emphatically (not to mention as snidely as a stuck up wannabe fancy fuck could be) NO. We were then told we could however use the restaurant’s pay phone if we needed to make a phone call. Now the thing about their pay phone was it was located on the far wall right at the entrance to their main dining room where there handful of pretentious twats were sitting eating their over priced fake ass fine dinning lunches. At this point I was pissed off like a son of a bitch, here my car is burning and these restaurant rejects are giving me a unwarranted snotty ass attitude so this is what I did next to settle this unseen score. I walked over to their pay phone as fast as my feet could take me and then proceeded to dial 911. Once the 911 operator picked up and asked what was the problem I was calling about I virtually yelled as loud as possible directly into the main dining room of the restaurant “MY FUCKING CAR IS ON FIRE! ITS BEEN BURNING AWHILE AND I THINK ITS LIKELY TO FUCKING EXPLODE ANY FUCKING SECOND NOW!!!!” It was right then every piece of pompous shit eating lunch jumped out of their seat and vacated the restaurant running like their asses were on fire too in an attempt to move or save their cars for the obvious reasons. Now I must remind you I was parked all the way in the back of the lot nowhere near anyones car in the least.

The fire department was dispatched and arrived in record time, but at this point all the could do was extinguish the flames as my car was absolutely totaled at this point after burning for 10-15 minutes strait.  The prissy patrons of the restaurant all got in their cars and bailed, I never saw a single one go back in to pay or anything (I assume they all were going to use my car fire as a reason they shouldn’t have to pay their bill’s as it was a great inconvenience TO THEM) Anyway we called an acquaintance in town to come pick us up and give us a lift out of their. Our ride came over fast as fast can be ,and we loaded up and left leaving the burnt out wreck that was my car in the restaurants parking lot like a giant still smoldering piece of coal.

 

 

 

 

I Survived the Smutville Summer of Slaughter 1976

  It was a favorable fall evening in the midst of July as we slowly assembled our motley crew of usual small town misfits behind the Piggly Wiggly. I as always arrived first as patience is a virtue I was born without followed by Clitoria and her white trash future meth cooking boyfriend aptly named Tweaky. The three of us stood around loitering like a son of a bitch and chain smoking Cowboy Killers until finally Ziggy Zag (the one and only marijuana peddler in the entire county of Pornotovia) who operated on some bizarrely slow internal clock ,but you couldn’t get too pissed off at him as he was the only small town connection. The final stragglers Tool, Tits McGee, MC Satan and Ms. Muff wondered in 45 minutes later citing their lateness on a glitch in obtaining the evenings alcohol (as we were all underage high school seniors at the time.)

  There 2 elementary issues when your drinking underage first being how to obtain the alcohol and secondly a place to consume the said alcohol. We had already solved issue one by bribing Scumbag Billy the local small town  22 year old delinquent. Scumbag Billy graduated from the local high school (on the 6 year plan mind you) stayed in town taking a shit job as a mechanic down at Jiffy Lube of route 1171 ,and lived in a hellhole of a mobile home. Scumbag Billy “Inherited” the property when his parents vacated the premises 3 years back to avoid being arrested for bootlegging. We had this pre party at the Pig to devise a drinking place free from the prying eyes of neighbors and the ever bored ever present police. Some cliches are cliches because they’re real and just one such saying is “News travels quickly through a small town” which is absolutely and fundamentally correct. Just a few hours earlier Ziggy Zag had overheard a conversation at the local convenience store between 2 guys who worked in construction. What the 2 construction works were talking about was next weeks project that was due to start the following Monday ,but before they could build a damn thing the previous structure and to be demolished. Apparently this monopoly like cookie cutter mass produced single story business building (at the ass end of an industrial complex) had gone bankrupt, and as a result the office was cleared out and locked up a couple of days ago. It was a unanimous vote by all that tonight we’d party at the newly abandoned office building because 1. No Neighbors, 2. All the workers else where in the complex went home no later than 6 p.m. and 3. It was such a new spot that the cops hadn’t heard of it yet and added it to their nightly rounds about town.

With decision in hand we piled like circus clowns into MC Satan’s 1968 Ford station wagon which was an anomaly unto itself. MC Satan’s Station Wagon was beyond a beater and more towards rattling death trap as the speedometer was completely broken, the floor boards on the passengers side had rusted all the way through so one could see the road while driving, the gas gauge was shaky at best, the dashboard lights would flicker on then off ,and the radiator gauge was stuck in the over heating position permanently. Thankfully the drinking location was located approximately 8-10 minutes from the Pig.

When we arrived we were all delighted to find the bankrupt business building as perfect and promising as we had hoped in our heads. The parking lot behind the building was small enough to avoid having a shit ton of other people there calling attention to themselves. The lot was also dimly lit allowing us to see what was happening but also allowing us not to be seen if the cops showed up and we had to hide right quick. Lastly there were thick woods around the entire perimeter which was damn near perfect if hiding wasn’t enough and we had to make a run for it. It didn’t take long to set up camp and within mere minutes there was smoking,toking,drinking and fucking abounding under the star ridden sky. The hedonistic partying went on barreling into the late hours of the night until Tweaky heard something and the night evolved into a nightmare.

We all had reconvened for a toking circle that consisted of us standing in a circle each with a joint, blunt,bowl or bong and simultaneously lighting up. Then we just passed to the left until all of said marijuana had been smoked and then proceeded to plan where we would be acquiring late our night dining needs. Now a vote had to be taken as oddly for a small town there where several diners and a token Denny’s by the Mall competing for our munchie money. All of sudden as Ms.Muff and Tool were vehemently going at it over The Waterford diner versus The Greasy Spoon as to who had better what when Tweaky stood up quickly ,and started looking around like a cracked out Mearcat scanning around in a complete 360 degrees. The first thing we tried to figure out was if Tweaky was bugging out because he was too intoxicated, but so were we so we were unable to decide. There then was a moment of collective intense anxiety as we wondered then if in fact the cops had found us out which turned out not to be the case. Since we didn’t know if Tweaky’s behavior was do to drugs and drink as well as feeling relieved we didn’t have to haul ass through the woods to escape from the cops, then what the hell was going on?  Upon asking Tweaky as to what the origin of his behavior was we were answered with a question that being had we heard something out of the ordinary a moment ago. None of us recollected hearing shit but each other when Tweaky snapped to attention and again demanded to know if we had heard the mysterious noise that time to which the answer was again no. Tweaky now having gotten himself completely twisted over the alleged unknown noise that we decided to all quite down right quick and give it a listen. Well to the surprise of us all there in fact was a very strange noise coming from the woods off to our left. Immediately we went from disbelieving Tweaky to feverishly trying to define the origin of this curious unidentified noise. With out blinking MC Satan stated the noise was that of flesh eating deer. Instantly Tits McGee criticized the hypothesis as not being possible because deer are herbivores so meat was not on their specific dietary menu. MC Satan respond by saying there was a scientifically viable biological reason behind the newly discovered flesh eating deer phenomenon. As we were already aware there was a more than healthy local deer population, but what we didn’t know MC Satan informed us was that a mutated strain of the rabies virus had reached America from a North Western South East region of Africa. Now this mutant strand had also mutant side effects upon the late stage behavior of its victims. While the known original strain of rabies instills a irrational terror like fear of water in its victims, the mutant strain seemed to instill a homicidally high prey drive in normal herbivores turning pretty prey animals into putrid predators. Before anyone had a split second to call bullshit the woods erupted into a flurry of activity, the bushes started rustling, tree limbs shaking and sticks breaking accompanied by a deafening crescendo of the unknown noise. It was instantly obvious that whatever was happening in the woods was massive and more then likely something non of us wanted to fuck with. We franticly started gathering up our shit as fast as we possibly could desperate to get the fuck out of there, but we never stood a chance in hell of that. The deer exploded from the woods in force, there were so many of the damnable beasts that at first they looked like one single entity a giant blurry brown mass stampeding toward us like a living tsunami of slaughter. Our fight or flight instinct kicked in and the adrenaline flowed like the nile as we ran for our piddly little lives. Ms. Muff being a 2 beer queer light weight didn’t make it a fucking foot before the deer where raining down upon her like a pack of land based piranha. The piercing sound of Muff’s screaming bloody gore as the sick wet sounds of ripping flesh, mutilating muscles, tearing tendons filled our fleeing ears. Tool turned out to be the true pussy of the pack as he froze in utter fear watching Ms. Muff being turned into an human order of shredded beef until there was nothing left of her but bare bloody bones. A massive buck charges full force from the woods straight at Tool dead on. The deer plowed into Tool with a meaty smack its huge antlers impailing Tool tossing him high into the air with his intestines trailing behind him like the tail of a fucked up kite. Poor Tits McGee was only capable of sprinting short distances before her massive pendulous breasts swung so out of whack she became top heavy and off kilter causing her to fall flat on her funny face. Once Tits went down she just disappeared, absorbed into the murderous mass of the deers of death leaving nothing of Tits but a blood stain on the assault. Clitoria stumbled over her beloved bong and when she did a deadly doe rammed its entire head up Clitoria’s ass and ate her alive from the inside out making it look like she violently imploded. Now if you’ve ever heard someone say its damn near impossible to catch a crackhead well that ain’t shit compared to Tweaky fueled by cheap moonshine and decent quality biker crank. Tweaky needless to say was way the hell ahead of the group that was until  the combination of the intoxicants and sky high adrenaline level overloaded Tweaky’s system causing him to loudly and quite violently shit himself to death instantly on the spot. With Tweaky laying face down in a bloody pool of his own feces with a prolapsed asshole Ziggy Zag and I decided to run like hell for MC Satan’s crappy car, but Satan living up to his name had apparently already reached the car and drove off like a bat out of hell. Upon finding ourselves fucked over by Satan Ziggy and I decided running toward the water sewage plant at the end of the road was our best plan b. We gave it our all and managed to make it to the water sewage plant with the deer literally nipping at our asses, but Ziggy was so terrified at that point he didn’t stop running before accidentally falling head over heals into the sewage plants water re purification open air holding tank (a massive circular tank used in the reclaimed water process of turning sludge and shit into Agricultural grade reusable water)

Once I managed to climb over the sewage plants 15 foot chain link perimeter fence and clear the barbwire I promptly turned around to see where the fuck this horrible horde of mutant rabies infected deer was currently at and couldn’t believe my eyes. The deer of damnation had turned on each other and were devouring one another in a feeding frenzy of blood lust. Apparently I was spared a horrendously horrible demise due to the fact the herd of infected deer were in the final stages directly prior to death causing the cannibalistic carnage I witnessed that ultimately saved my life.