Blue Lights Before Breakfast

"Hang him by the neck with birthday streamers from the pecan tree".

I said that about my Ex in my post about being vindicated after years of accusal.

The next morning, at 6:15 a.m., T-Birds phone went off.

One of our neighbors was calling to tell us that a friend of ours, who lives two houses down the street from us, had hung himself in the front yard from a mimosa tree.

Oh Dear God, NO!    I pulled back the curtain and couldn't see anything but blue lights.

T-Bird grabbed shorts and I grabbed a housecoat and we took off for the door.    My husband shoved me back inside and told me I didn't need to see it.    He was dead serious and I stayed put.

All I could see was blue lights from squad cars, red flashing lights from the ambulance, and people everywhere.    It was still kinda dark so I couldn't make out too much.

When T. came back he said that it was not Zach, it was the man in the next house over.       They had cut him down and were getting ready to load him in the ambulance.   

When I dropped off the mail at the office after lunch the story had morphed into this:

Zach went next door to his neighbor's house, and ACCIDENTALLY (????) hung himself from the mimosa tree in the front yard in the middle of the night.

I tried to put THAT fire out with a few facts.

1.)    Zach ain't got no tree.    He'd have to borrow a neighbor's tree.   

If you find someone on your doorstep with a long rope and they ask if they can borrow a limb, say "NO".

2.)    If Zach hung himself in the neighbor's yard, why wasn't his truck in HIS yard?   His wife never goes outside, and she cannot drive.     Zach goes out of town once a week and stays overnight.    His car was spotted there later that afternoon.

3.)    A semi-reclusive damn-near-sixty yr. old white man probably would not have twenty young Hispanics appear on the scene of his demise at 6:30 in the morning.    From what I could see, they all had on the same kind of work shirt so they must have been co-workers on their way to work before the 7:00 a.m. shift.   They all looked so shocked and sad......stunned.........

The poor soul who left was a supervisor at a local trailer plant.   Zach is a pizza delivery man.   Always has been.

4.)    The emergency vehicles were NOT in Zach's yard.    Kinda stupid to pull the ambulance into your next door neighbor's driveway if you are having your heart attack in YOUR house.

News travels fast in a small town, and it's much faster when it's bad news.   Put some misinformation or downright lies in it and it streaks thru, leaving tongues flappin' in it's wake. 

Such is the way.

I found a thread about it on the Topix website, and there are so many stories about this man, and of course none of them are good.  Lots of speculation, and the only verifiable fact is his first name.   We got that from a retired officer who had been told about it.

Here's another fact, the one nobody is talkin' around:    he left a wife and small children behind, who are going through the most horrible time imaginable, for reasons they may never understand.    Their entire world has just turned upside-down.    The wife cut him down herself.

But THAT wouldn't be as much fun to talk about, would it?

VINDICATED!

Finally, something to give me just a smidgen of Hope.

My name has been cleared, and it only took 33 years.      Justice Is Blind, and she's slow as fog off of shit.

Some time after I moved out on my own my father discovered one of the ornate posts that held up the upstairs porch had been damaged.  

It was a metal post that had a lot of flimsy decorative flowers worked into it, and one of the flowers was bent.

My father got "bent out of shape" over that, and I was accused, tried, and convicted.

I wasn't accused of climbing up the post.

I was accused of having a boyfriend climb up the post.    Guess what for?

First, I was a lot of things, but I was never so stupid as to try a stunt like that ACROSS THE HALL FROM DADDY.    Please, give me a little credit for some smarts.

Not much, just a little.

Secondly, there was another sister that could have had an interested, albeit suicidal, boyfriend.    But it wasn't her fault either.

I know EXACTLY how that happened.    My mother and I had managed to lock ourselves out of Mama's house.

She cannot climb up to the upstairs porch.

I was pregnant and I couldn't do it either.

We fetched my then-husband, and he went up the post---bending the damned metalwork---and we were inside in a flash.

I have told my father the truth repeatedly, but oh-Hell-no, he wasn't gonna have it.

We never did get along well together.    When my mother passed away I got some keepsakes, some nice jewelry, a city lot (complete with a trailer suitable for ANY fishcamp ANYWHERE),............and Daddy.   

For whatever reason, he decided to go over this crock one more time yesterday.    At my grand daughter's birthday party in front of people that I can barely stomach in passing.

I revoked his Senior Citizen Get Away With Bullshit Card on the spot.

"Wait just one damned minute old man!"    

I had to yell it because for some reason his hearing aides don't seem to pick up my voice.    I repeat everything I say to him all the time.    He has zero problem-o hearing the t.v..

I begged my Ex husband, in front of people, to PLEASE tell the old goat why come his damned post was bent.

I could wallow him in the dirt, hang him by the neck with birthday streamers from the pecan tree, drown him in the HUGE water slide that they had rented, or smother him facedown in pink birthday cake, but I was just hoping he'd back me up and tell Daddy the truth.

He did, and as if by magic, $5000.00 worth of hearing aides picked up his every word.

He will have my loyalty until the day he's laid out and candle lit.    He got Daddy off of my back and he has earned it.

Daddy turned to the dude sitting next to him and said:

"Don't you hate it when you've got a good one on somebody and somebody else blows it out of the water?"

Yeah.    I bet that sucks.

Cat Food And Loaf Bread

My son needed two things from the store:   cat food and loaf bread.

So he struck a trot and went to a little convenience store right behind his home.

He grabbed the loaf bread and a can of cat food, paid, and left.     On the walk back home it dawned on him how that must have looked to the store owner.

The store owner has known my son for a few years now; they are kinda-sorta friends.    When we lost power here due to tornados, he called some of his family who own a motel, and got Son and Girlfriend a very cheap rate for a few days until the power was restored. 

When he went back to the store a few days later, he told the man that the cat food and loaf bread worked out very well, and thanked the man.    Said he really liked the "tuna with the cat on the label".

The store owner was speechless.

I was not.

I flipped out when he told me about it, and asked him why in the world would he let that poor man think he was eating cat food sandwiches????

I have a what-in-the-Hell-is-wrong-with-you-boy tone that is pretty darned good, and I have made grown men cringe with it.     I've had lots of practice thanks to this boy.

I stop in there from time to time, they KNOW I am his mother, and it's a piss-poor reflection on ME.

What kind of mother would let her child live on cat food and loaf bread??????   

Other than my mother-in-law?? 

My Boy explained it this way:     "I run out of cat food and bread all the time.    I don't want to drive all the way to the grocery store for two little items.    If he thinks I'm eating cat food with loaf bread, he'll keep those two items in stock."

Brilliant!   A little bit disturbing, but brilliant!

When he borrowed a mixing bowl from me, I nagged until he brought it back.      I opened my front door to see him wearing it like a helmet.    One of my son-in-laws was with him grinnin' like a loon.
Yes, he HAD worn it all the way to my house and I snatched him through the door before my neighbors could see it.

He went with me to the grocery store and we had a decent enough time.    For a trip to the grocery store, that is.
Going back to the truck, he starts swatting at something I cannot see.   I thought it was gnats, The Bane Of The South.

He starts spinnin' around in circles, swatting the air, screaming "MAKE THE BAD BATS STOP!!".

Have you ever had strangers give you that sad look?   The one that says they understand that your grown child has problems.   So much sympathy for the poor soul who is his caretaker.    I could see the pity on their faces.    I can also see the grin on HIS face and that makes it worse.

I can't kick or cuss or hit at him because then twenty old folks are going to call 911 on me for abusing this poor young man.    Yes indeed, the parking lot was FULL of spectators.    It wouldn't have been fun in an empty parking lot---you need an audience for this.

He kept it up all the way to the truck.     And laughed about it all the way home.

If you have small children and think you will be as crazy as an outhouse rat before they finally mature, just hang on.    It gets worse the older they get.