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This is a story that I wrote for my sister.
She was having some depression issues over some drama with one of my teenage
nieces. I'm sure anyone who has a teenager can relate to that.
Love you too seester!
You need some more cheerin' up??! I can tell you about dear old Joe. :)
We have a donkey!! His name is Joe. I know that he is of the Sicilian
Donkey breed .. and not a mule, a jackass, or miniature burro .. because
I've seen pictures on the net and he has a cross on his shoulders and up
his back just like the ones on this webpage.. with an interesting but
thankfully misleading title.
http://www.slate.com/id/2137259/?nav=tap3>1=7932
Joe is just as sweet as hard candy on a stick when he's behaving and in
the pasture .. gentle enough for children to put flowers in his hair and
giggle at him for as long as they are still in his presence .. and then
shake the flowers out and eat them when the children leave.
... but when he's on the warpath.. he's an animal. ...
Joe's broken free from the back 40 twice since we got him..once was my
fault.. the other was not. The first time I left the gate open because
Eric was following me down the hill and Joe was so far down in the pasture
I couldn't even see him... so I didn't want to shut him out and make him
have to open the gate again. Big mistake. Duke ( 8 year old wolf-chow mix dog )
ran down in the back and was barking at Joe and spooked the poor young feller ( Joe = about 3 yrs old at the time).
Joe bolted out the gate! ( Eric just watched from in front of the Jeep
as I was busily unloading the feed from the back.. he had left the gate
open behind me too .. :-) )
The chase had begun..
apparently Joe is a big fan of the chase-me game. He ran just across the street
and was into the neighbor's garden.. I figured oh COOL I'll just get a bucket
of feed and shake it at him and he'll be all over me! With heavy emphasis on the
"I figured"..
As I was getting ready to jet across the street with the bucket.. with
Joe still standing in the garden.. when I discovered that our poor neighbor
Ms Lottie was inconsiderate enough to have had a mild coronary infarction ...
and a bright red truck with lights a flashin' on its roof came TEARING down
the street in front of me ... looking for the place that had called the
ambulance ( apparently emergency vehicles are not quite as adept at
maneuvering the streets of Amity as they could be.. or they weren't
given adequate details.. 'cause they were running around looking for
like half an hour even after THAT trying to find out who had called.
Don't worry .. the ambulance made it while they were still looking and
Ms Lottie pulled through just fine in the end )
Needless to say.. Joe was not a fan of the flashing lights and roaring
engine.... much less the fast moving big red scary thing..
BOLT again off he goes.. he cut across and into a yard with a chain link
fence.. the little old lady inside and her grandchildren were chasing
him as he loped around and had a good old time ... but he escaped the same way he
came in after a couple of turns through the yard.. and ran another block
down to the "parking lot" for the office of the Amity Standard ... the
local paper.
I would say offices.. but .. it's a little wooden building like a
depression-era storefront.. out in the middle of a large dirt lot across
from Barksdale Lumber to the north.. and Holmes timber pulpwood lot to
the southwest. Joe feigned a turn due west and down the highway toward
Glenwood ... then when nobody could see anymore cut back east into the
woods. He's a clever little beast.
So the trail went cold .. I was afoot.. and out of breath.. and Eric was
... well he was waiting for me to get back to tell him what to do ..
Eric's 12 .. was only 10 at the time
so I walked on back to the house and got the jeep. I took a couple turns up
and down the highway.. figured Joe was lost to us.. and technically at the time
he did not even BELONG to us.. he was originally given to our neighbor
Toby Markham.. who paid a guy $40 to bring him on over in a trailer and turn
him loose in the back 40. Joe is far from domesticated by most definitions.
Toby was gonna be irritated. I knew he was.. Toby doesn't get mad tho.. just irritated.
Anyway Toby and I cruised up and down highway 8 trying to catch a glimpse of him..
no sign of a donkey anywhere. We went back to the house and I gave Toby the $40 that he
had paid to get the donkey there, and we had just settled down to take a break from the
search and call it even. Then ... Toby's uncle Casey ( same age as Toby ) came barrelling
down the street with news that a donkey had been spotted over by the railroad tracks..
and was reportedly now in the downtown square right by Chamber's Bank!
Zoom! Off went the chase.. Eric even piled into the Jeep in hopes of helping out..
Eric was in love with the little beast from the start ... kindred spirits I say ...
hahahaha ....
We didn't catch up with him at the bank .. and were in the process of searching
radiating our from the square when a young man later identified as " Puddin' " ..
came up and asked if we "was the ones lookin' for that donkey?"
When we replied yes, He said jump in the back.. he's right down here!! ..
and Eric jumped in the back of this complete stranger's truck and they sped off
to the rescue of his beloved beast of burden.
We caught our first glimpse of Joe in the spotlight
... about a block down from Puddin's house in the back of his neighbor's field.
( ... fortunately Puddin' did not tote Eric off to a tool shed and disembowel him with a scythe because it wasn't anything to do with Eric taking any kind of precaution against it ... )
We were related a tale of how apparently Puddin' had once owned the donkey..
it was at that point that we discovered his name was Joe. Before that he was just that donkey.
He had only been with us for a few days.
The chase went on... at this point.. everyone was in on the game..
there were at LEAST a dozen young men.. possibly the whole population
of Amity betwen the ages of 18 and 25... running around like chickens
with their heads cut off trying to corner and catch poor Joe..
who really only wanted to play the chase-me game.
Eventually ( about 3 hours after the great escape ) the chase led to a lot
that was penned in on 3 sides with about a 6 foot chain link fence.
Joe was cornered.. nothing to do.. nowhere to run.. boxed in.. and Puddin'
( self proclaimed "team roper ) ... tried to get a rope around him.
Puddin' missed by at least 7 feet from about 10 feet away.. and Toby exclaimed
"team roper my a.. give me that rope man!!" ...
and got a rope on Joe's neck with the first toss.
I was still catching up.. had fallen behind a bit in the chase and as I came upon
the crew.. I saw that we had indeed accomplished
... something ...
I mentioned to Toby and Puddin' that it was nice that they had made so much progress..
but that I would NOT want to be the one holding onto that rope or caught up in it
if Joe were to get out of that corner.
Joe seemed quite ready to convince everyone that the game was done at that point..
behaving surprisingly well the moment the rope was applied!
... BUT ... when they tried to move/lead him out.. he sat down on his hind quarters
in that typical "stubborn as a mule" type pose.. ( which by the way.. a mule has NOTHING
on an uncut male donkey in the way of stubbon streaks ) .
Puddin' was also forced to recall the time he had not been ABLE to let go of the rope
while playin' chase me.. and had been penalized by being drug around the square by the
captured arm suffering several contusions, fractures, and lacerations of MANY of his extremities
aka ... "I got ALL busted up"
So.. the rope was fashioned into a makeshift harness.. and the other end tied to the
bumper of a pickup truck.. and try as he might to resist and get started on another
round of "chase-me".. he was only able to kick, buck, and bray..
as he was towed back to his designated home base behind one of those annoying large
noisy things that scared him off in the first place...
or was that the second place..
Anyway.. he was back at the house.. and he was happy once he got there..
all the way down the street and in the gate kicking and screaming
( apparently that's an important part of the chase-me game )
.. and then boom.. like the lights went out..
( it had been dark for several hours at that point ) ..
he turned back into the calm and collected sweet as hard candy on a stick Joe donkey!
That's Joe for ya.. hope he kept you entertained today
Luvya bunches sis!!
O
Rock am Ring Category: Parties and Nightlife
The advertisement came over the radio in German and reminded me that the Rock am Ring concert in Nurnberg was happening that very weekend. I already had a ticket.. but the very LAST thing I wanted to do was drive there. I'd already determined that the Eurail pass was going to be worthless in the getting there side of the equation ... no way I could make it in time for the concert catching a train after my last shift.
I checked with everybody.. and I do mean everybody before finally turning back to my roomate Dan as an option. It was go time, and I didn't want to miss that concert. So at lunch time I pulled up a chair across from Dan at the dining facility, a place neither of us frequented that often so he knew something was up when he saw me come in searching for him.
I went through the line and worked up a plate, and maneuvered across the room to the table where he was sitting. 'ssup Dan? Not much Otis how about you? Find a ride to the concert yet? Funny you should ask, that was what I was wanting to talk to you about. You must be pretty desperate to find a ride if you're coming to me .. you need a ride both ways or what? No man that's cool all I need really is a ride out. I can make my way home on the train whenever it's all said and done.
He knew what I wanted, he was my roommate and we had already talked about it briefly and he told me to check with him if I needed a ride. Dan didn't drink.. he was a motorcycle fan all the way and he didn't play around with his ability to control his vehicle.. and with good reason.. the autobahn at any speed is more risky on a motorcycle than in a car. The speeds that Dan traveled though, could definitely be described as breakneck.
I hated it but I had to get to that concert, and my normal practice of evading a lot of contact with the soldiers there after hours in favor of mingling with the locals didn't usually leave me a lot of options for sharing rides to get places. Dan was the same way so he understood. Just as both of us understood that chasing around after German women speaking English usually only led one to the brothels or frustration. I never became "Germanized" enough for the thought of paying for it not to be unappealing.
This is not to say that accepting that reflects badly on the Germans, it's just that growing up in a country where prostitution is legal develops and entirely different mindset. So with the aid of a 4 week Basic German language course through the City Colleges of Chicago remote campus, I had learned to speak pretty fluent German within about a month or two after I got there.
At this point I had been there a year and was already speaking english with an accent. So we finished off the workday, rushed through showers and changing .. and man did I ever bundle up this time. I knew it was going to be bone chilling cold.. and since Nurenberg was about 200 miles of autobahn away.. I would be a popsicle by the time I got there if I didnt prepare.
In case you haven't read the previous blog about German Beer, you should know that Dan was a wildman on that Ninja. We took off and as usual, the 5 mile winding trip down the mountain was nothing to be played with, and this was the first extended autobahn trip that I'd made on the back of his bike .... and the last.
We tooled down the AB at speeds ranging between 80 and 130MPH. I made the mistake of trying to loosen my hold on Dan and peek around to see the speedometer once, and in addition to irritating him 'cause I had disturbed the airflow, the wind nearly took my head off as it tried to snap my full face helmet around in its wake.
The ride was about an hour and a half. I was SO glad to get off that bike.. The concert was fantastic! It didn't quite rival the Scorpions homecoming concert in Wurzburg but it was badass. I got SO wasted.. imagine that. The beer was flowing freely and at least once or twice I "accidentally" stumbled around through the crowd with minor pauses at little clusters of people shrouded in smoke from the hashpipes.
The concert played on and the crowd got wilder and wilder.. eventually of course I kinda lost track of just about everything going on around me. At one point I think I ran across some english speaking people who were surprised to find out that I was not only an american but also in the army. One of the last things I remembered after hooking up with this fine german lady named Pietra from Bad Bruckenau ( close to Wildflecken ) is waking up in the area around the outside of the ring passed out near some junkies that were leaned precariously against the wall.
I checked my arms real quick to make sure I hadn't gotten THAT drunk or stoned, and set out in search of the train station. I had a great time, Pietra was a babe .. and we shared a lot more than just her number that night.. we had a GREAT time. I remembered that her brother had come to track her down and she had to leave. We would meet again but I recalled that I had gotten pretty bummed when she had to go and that was what led to the little debaucle that ended me up in the gutter. The rest was just a train ride back which was not very eventful.. slept most of the way and almost missed my stop. Quite the concert though.
German Beer Current mood: mischievous Category: Parties and Nightlife
I like Bush better than Hiney .. Having spent a couple years in Germany, I can assure you that the Heineken they try to pass off as German beer and send over here is NOT on the top of the hit parade over there.
There's a monastery.. near a little town called Wildflecken. It's called the Kloster Kreuzberg and they have been brewing beer since 1731. It's really dangerous beer. I arrived in Germany, and then to Wildflecken on the 4th of July weekend in 1984.
When I got to the barracks ( dorm ) it was like.. Saturday morning early. I got my stuff stashed in a locker and had changed clothes and was gonna go check out the scenery to see what was up. As I was just about to leave the CQ ( guard - desk jockey - after hours phone boy ) tells me that my platoon sergeant had called and that I should wait for my squad leader who was coming to get me and take me to a platoon meeting.
Oh shit.. now I'm stuck with one of these egotistical assholes who thinks I need to work all weekend too. So I waited and suddenly here's this fruitcake in a red white and blue leather outfit comes ZOOMING up outside and slides to a stop in the middle of the street with an endo 360 on a Ninja. Wow.. cool.. must be part of a show.
Nope it was Dan Rodda the aforementioned squad leader and oh so lucky for me (tic) he had a spare helmet.
Oh shit.. I'm gonna die today.
Are you the new guy? Yes my name's SGT Michaud.. but if you're gonna get me on the back of that bike you're definitely gonna have to call me Otis. Mine's SGT Rodda but you can call me Dan in civvies. Hop on we gotta go to the monastery for a meeting. Reluctantly.. I got on. As I suspected .. this was definitely some manner of initiation.
Despite the fact that it was July it was somewhat chilly.. and the breeze at that altitude cuts like a knife anyway. But we cut a pretty steady 80-90 mph on the autobahn for about 20 miles.. and then started to climb a mountain that just as step and long as the 5 mile downhill run we had done before getting on the freeway.
Cobblestone streets were not made for motorcycles.. I don't care what anyone tells you.. it's not a good thing.
Finally we arrived at the top and I fell off the bike and collapsed in a shivering fit. Dan remembered I didn't have leathers on. Oh man.. sorry about that.. should have told you it was gonna be a little brisk. When I finally thawed out it was time to go meet the platoon sergeant - SSG Vincent.
We entered into this enormous hall.. the monastery was like a huge castle almost at the top of the mountain but they had a long hiking trail with decorative sconces scattered along the trail behind and around the castle.. leading up to the actual pinnacle which was a cross ending the depiction of the path to calvary.
SO .. we go into this huge building and there are HUNDREDS of people everywhere. Long wooden tables formed 5 rows and 6 columns .. each of the tables like.. 20 ft long. It was a BIG room is what I'm trying to get across here. I maneuvered around trying to keep up with Dan who obviously wanted to get this chore over with and get on about his business.
He led me to where the whole platoon was seated at one end of a table.. he introduced me to everybody and I sat down. Dan waved to SSG V and went on about his merry way. Thanks for the ride. We sat and I drank like.. 3 of 4 liters of this beer.. the first one was so delicious... it was dark and cool but not cold.. and it went down like koolaid.. it was thick.. almost like syrup.. and man did it ever taste good. I slammed a whole liter stein of it in about a min and they told me I needed to pace myself a little.
I had 4 down in about 10 min and from that point forward.. things got "a little foggy" .. 'cause I had to go find a place to pee... it's beer!! ... anyway. I stood up and things went a little woozy.
I don't remember exactly what happened for the next 72 hours..but I'm told that I had a good time. I woke up Monday morning in my brand new platoon sergeant's living room floor.. using his rotweiler for a pillow. Good thing the dog was friendy
