Life in Augusta, Georgia...No Exaggeration
I do not know how it happened, and I often marvel at my infallible sense of really bad timing. A few days ago I decided to vacuum the glass from the interior of my car (more on this later), and, as it turns out, I happened to choose the very day they decided to release all the freaks from the show. I of course do not know this to be a fact, it could well have merely been that there was a sale on ammunition or on off-brand diapers at the never-too-distant Prole-mart. Whatever the reason, they descended upon me like trash to a trailer.
You know it has happened to you, too. There came a day when you were so thoroughly engaged in some task or other that you did not see the figure rapidly approaching, knuckles dragging, in the periphery of your vision, and were caught unawares by some awkward grinning sack of barely contained insanity. Ordinarily, with only a modicum of effort, such a thing can be avoided; pretending not to notice, glancing off into some unspecified place on the horizon, acting as though you do not speak English, etc.
In one fell swoop my assailant circumvented all of these preventive measures, sneaking up as it were form behind, as I was engaged in gathering up the objects in my back seat. There he stood, looking like a cross between Ernest Borgnine, Willow, and Radar from the television series M.A.S.H., a creature who, a few decades earlier, might very well have auditioned successfully for a part in Deliverance (“Once more with feeling: ‘You shur do have a purty mouth.”).
As he greeted me, he called out for his mother, whom I could not see at the time, and suddenly there flashed before my subconscious mind the picture of leather-faced nightmares, dangling meat hooks, and the withered remains of some fleshless skeleton in a rocking chair. Positioned as I was between my car and this banjo-picking version of Rainman, I could do nothing but stare into that grinning and vacant visage. Even now I tremble to think on it.
As he espied my uniform hanging on the fastener in my backseat, there was suddenly manifest between us that certain bond that can only exist between unwashed, sub-literate conservatives and those members of the military charged with maintaining their freedom to remain so. Satisfied that we shared some automatic and unspoken connection, my new friend set to work emptying the trash bins beside each vacuum cleaner. Left alone with “mother“, who sat in the front seat of her dilapidated, filthy automobile, perhaps incapable of standing due to some genetic disease or other, I contemplated escape.
Without so much as removing the malodorous Doral from her stained and grubby lips, the creature communicated to me, quite offhandedly, some remarkably offensive comment about her disbelief at “our troops being accused of torture” and her sincere desire to have certain sharp pointed objects jabbed into rather unpleasant places on the bodies of the majority (if not all) of the Iraqi male population, insurgent or not. Though her phrasing is lost on me now, I do recall that her language was quite vivid. She then turned to me, cigarette dangling from jaundiced, stubby dwarf-fingers, gaudy cross of gold hanging between great sagging breasts like socks stuffed with tennis balls, and cackled hoarsely, “What do you think about that?”
“Actually ma’am I think that both you and your baroquely grotesque son are likely the primordial throwbacks to some earlier stage in man’s evolutionary development, and it would not surprise me in the least to find the vestigial remains of a overlong coccyx protruding from the base of each of your hunched backsides, though truly I have no wish to see such a spectacle, even if your webbed fingers were able to locate them for the no doubt abundant protuberance of fur.” The words lingered there upon my tongue like overripe dates, sweet and syrupy, and… I swallowed them. Best not to play the rogue with these rustic types on the off chance they might understand even an eighth of what I said, and might have about their persons various firearms, chainsaws, and/or pits full of ravenous, omnivorous swine. The woman had already chosen to procreate, in apparent rebellion against all known natural laws, to say nothing of good taste and common decency. I shuddered to think what other horrors she might have been capable of. I can only assume that, like so many things, the laws of natural selection have not yet made it this far into the “Dirty South” (what an incredibly apt, yet markedly gross understatement that phrase is, by the way), and I attribute this factor to the profusion of such fringe-dwelling, bottom-feeding undesirables.
No, it was painfully apparent that flippancy was not called for in this situation. I instead decided to delve deeper into the woman’s superego, that internal sense of morality imbedded within each of our psyches. I had not probed far when I came to the abrupt conclusion that she was not possessed of such an attribute, or even of the regulating aspects of an ego for that matter. Like so many of her ilk, if I may use so euphemistic a word, here was a creature of pure, unadulterated id. I doubt sincerely that any of the baser appetites had ever failed to tantalize this misshapen mound of flesh, nor any of the more inelegant emotions to content her malevolent inner self (what might be called a “soul” in beings a bit higher up on the food chain- although personally I have little use for the term), though how they could, all of them, bypass entirely what passed for the woman’s conscience is rather beyond my mental faculty. Perhaps grossest of all is the fact that, had she known she was talking to an atheist, she would no doubt have immediately considered herself my better, based wholly on her irrational belief in some supernatural being. It is amazing what passes for self-esteem these days. Get it where you can, I suppose.
The answer came to me in sudden wave of understanding when the beaming troll at her side enthusiastically invited me to some Republican luncheon or other (I do not think he used the word luncheon, I do not think he knew the word luncheon). As if the cross had not been evidence enough, now all of the pieces were beginning to fall into place. At last I was able to placate them enough to carry out an amicable, if rather abrupt, getaway.
Regarding the reason I was vacuuming broken glass from my car in the first place, it seems Augusta is a veritable haven for miscreants in one form or another. On the Saturday night prior, I had decided to join certain of my comrades in a bit of a tipple at a bar downtown. Parking in the parking lot of a local apartment building, as is my habit occupied as it is by one of my close friends, I proceeded into his apartment. Exiting a few moments later, I discovered that a rock had been lobbed through the glass of my passenger side window. I will not bore you further with useless details, but, needless to say, cops were called, papers signed, and we proceeded with our night out on the town.
I had at first thought nothing had been stolen, but upon a more careful inspection the next day I found that the reprobates had indeed taken a pair of my old ratty shorts. In a rare bit of irony, these very shorts were actually destined for Goodwill, and, if the criminals had but bided their time, they could have mugged some kindly old lady and bought them at a pittance. No need to break my window. Even this did not really make me mad, it was only when I discovered that they had chosen to leave my recently purchased and prominently displayed copy of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (buy it! While not quite as good as Blonde on Blonde, it is superb) that I became really perturbed. I could have at least been robbed by thieves with taste.
Looking back, I suppose it was inevitable, what with all those indigents milling about, and those rocks just lying there unused on the ground. I was asking for it, really.
I have since had the window repaired, at a not inconsiderable cost, and can only wonder not only at the mindset which allows for such behavior, but also at the attitude of parents who allow such aberrations to wander the streets; far better to drown them at birth, but what can you expect.
You know it has happened to you, too. There came a day when you were so thoroughly engaged in some task or other that you did not see the figure rapidly approaching, knuckles dragging, in the periphery of your vision, and were caught unawares by some awkward grinning sack of barely contained insanity. Ordinarily, with only a modicum of effort, such a thing can be avoided; pretending not to notice, glancing off into some unspecified place on the horizon, acting as though you do not speak English, etc.
In one fell swoop my assailant circumvented all of these preventive measures, sneaking up as it were form behind, as I was engaged in gathering up the objects in my back seat. There he stood, looking like a cross between Ernest Borgnine, Willow, and Radar from the television series M.A.S.H., a creature who, a few decades earlier, might very well have auditioned successfully for a part in Deliverance (“Once more with feeling: ‘You shur do have a purty mouth.”).
As he greeted me, he called out for his mother, whom I could not see at the time, and suddenly there flashed before my subconscious mind the picture of leather-faced nightmares, dangling meat hooks, and the withered remains of some fleshless skeleton in a rocking chair. Positioned as I was between my car and this banjo-picking version of Rainman, I could do nothing but stare into that grinning and vacant visage. Even now I tremble to think on it.
As he espied my uniform hanging on the fastener in my backseat, there was suddenly manifest between us that certain bond that can only exist between unwashed, sub-literate conservatives and those members of the military charged with maintaining their freedom to remain so. Satisfied that we shared some automatic and unspoken connection, my new friend set to work emptying the trash bins beside each vacuum cleaner. Left alone with “mother“, who sat in the front seat of her dilapidated, filthy automobile, perhaps incapable of standing due to some genetic disease or other, I contemplated escape.
Without so much as removing the malodorous Doral from her stained and grubby lips, the creature communicated to me, quite offhandedly, some remarkably offensive comment about her disbelief at “our troops being accused of torture” and her sincere desire to have certain sharp pointed objects jabbed into rather unpleasant places on the bodies of the majority (if not all) of the Iraqi male population, insurgent or not. Though her phrasing is lost on me now, I do recall that her language was quite vivid. She then turned to me, cigarette dangling from jaundiced, stubby dwarf-fingers, gaudy cross of gold hanging between great sagging breasts like socks stuffed with tennis balls, and cackled hoarsely, “What do you think about that?”
“Actually ma’am I think that both you and your baroquely grotesque son are likely the primordial throwbacks to some earlier stage in man’s evolutionary development, and it would not surprise me in the least to find the vestigial remains of a overlong coccyx protruding from the base of each of your hunched backsides, though truly I have no wish to see such a spectacle, even if your webbed fingers were able to locate them for the no doubt abundant protuberance of fur.” The words lingered there upon my tongue like overripe dates, sweet and syrupy, and… I swallowed them. Best not to play the rogue with these rustic types on the off chance they might understand even an eighth of what I said, and might have about their persons various firearms, chainsaws, and/or pits full of ravenous, omnivorous swine. The woman had already chosen to procreate, in apparent rebellion against all known natural laws, to say nothing of good taste and common decency. I shuddered to think what other horrors she might have been capable of. I can only assume that, like so many things, the laws of natural selection have not yet made it this far into the “Dirty South” (what an incredibly apt, yet markedly gross understatement that phrase is, by the way), and I attribute this factor to the profusion of such fringe-dwelling, bottom-feeding undesirables.
No, it was painfully apparent that flippancy was not called for in this situation. I instead decided to delve deeper into the woman’s superego, that internal sense of morality imbedded within each of our psyches. I had not probed far when I came to the abrupt conclusion that she was not possessed of such an attribute, or even of the regulating aspects of an ego for that matter. Like so many of her ilk, if I may use so euphemistic a word, here was a creature of pure, unadulterated id. I doubt sincerely that any of the baser appetites had ever failed to tantalize this misshapen mound of flesh, nor any of the more inelegant emotions to content her malevolent inner self (what might be called a “soul” in beings a bit higher up on the food chain- although personally I have little use for the term), though how they could, all of them, bypass entirely what passed for the woman’s conscience is rather beyond my mental faculty. Perhaps grossest of all is the fact that, had she known she was talking to an atheist, she would no doubt have immediately considered herself my better, based wholly on her irrational belief in some supernatural being. It is amazing what passes for self-esteem these days. Get it where you can, I suppose.
The answer came to me in sudden wave of understanding when the beaming troll at her side enthusiastically invited me to some Republican luncheon or other (I do not think he used the word luncheon, I do not think he knew the word luncheon). As if the cross had not been evidence enough, now all of the pieces were beginning to fall into place. At last I was able to placate them enough to carry out an amicable, if rather abrupt, getaway.
Regarding the reason I was vacuuming broken glass from my car in the first place, it seems Augusta is a veritable haven for miscreants in one form or another. On the Saturday night prior, I had decided to join certain of my comrades in a bit of a tipple at a bar downtown. Parking in the parking lot of a local apartment building, as is my habit occupied as it is by one of my close friends, I proceeded into his apartment. Exiting a few moments later, I discovered that a rock had been lobbed through the glass of my passenger side window. I will not bore you further with useless details, but, needless to say, cops were called, papers signed, and we proceeded with our night out on the town.
I had at first thought nothing had been stolen, but upon a more careful inspection the next day I found that the reprobates had indeed taken a pair of my old ratty shorts. In a rare bit of irony, these very shorts were actually destined for Goodwill, and, if the criminals had but bided their time, they could have mugged some kindly old lady and bought them at a pittance. No need to break my window. Even this did not really make me mad, it was only when I discovered that they had chosen to leave my recently purchased and prominently displayed copy of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (buy it! While not quite as good as Blonde on Blonde, it is superb) that I became really perturbed. I could have at least been robbed by thieves with taste.
Looking back, I suppose it was inevitable, what with all those indigents milling about, and those rocks just lying there unused on the ground. I was asking for it, really.
I have since had the window repaired, at a not inconsiderable cost, and can only wonder not only at the mindset which allows for such behavior, but also at the attitude of parents who allow such aberrations to wander the streets; far better to drown them at birth, but what can you expect.
posted by Joel Hardin | 10:04 AM
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