The Old Grey Man, He Ain't What He Used to Be

December 01, 2005 - 6:13 p.m.

Remember that time, at band camp, when a stupid white hillbilly tool ran over my father, an elderly man, and then left him for dead? Yeah I remember.

He got caught. The thing about spending time in a rural area is…when you don’t live there, and you do some bad business there, every eye has seen you and every mouth is spilling your beans all over the Sherrf’s desk. Yes, Sherrf. On the other hand, if you are a resident of the rural area, you can bludgeon your whole family with a pipe and Uncle Sherrf will give you a 48 hour head start to get to Mexico.

This Dood did not live in this rural area so 57 people stepped forward to describe to the Sherrf the 1989 Honda that hit the old man, slowed down, appeared under the influence, and then sped away into the sunset. And there may have been innocent little girls kidnapped in the back seat too.

The cops questioned the tool and he said that he left the scene to “go home and call 911” because he didn’t have a cell phone. And his home was about 30 minutes away, in a different city, but no matter! He’s pretty sure that the 756 homes he passed on the way to his own home didn’t have cell phones either! Nor telephones, telegraphs, windtalkers, homing pigeons, mourning doves or screech owls!

But what makes him even smarter is that he actually DID call 911, though I don’t know how many minutes or hours later, and he said, “I hit a man.” This is what helped the Sherrf find the Tool in the first place, and if you thought the Sherrf found him after a stupendous display of crime scene investigating with scent dogs and paint chip samples, you’d be wrong.

The Tool doesn’t have car insurance either. That means that no one will be responsible for the medical bills except for the old man who was run over. And they had to cut off all of his clothes, and how can this man go on living without proper spandex cycling gear? What about his neon yellow windbreaker? His family will have to replace these clothes for him this Christmas. That means me.

This whole “no insurance” deal reminds me of some bullshit phenomena that frequently went down in that godforsaken hick town I grew up in.

Having to buy liability car insurance was the biggest downer for a lot of people, I mean, dooood? ‘The Man’ is like, totally out to just steal our money. I manage to get out of paying my old lady some rent, I get food stamps, and I used a fake name for the BMG Music Club, but damn, I’m always getting’ pulled over n shit, and that $500 no insurance fine is like HELL NAW. Down with the WHITE MAN YO. Don’t let Him oppress OUR PEOPLE, man.

And by ‘our people’ he means ‘white people’ because of course ‘he’ is a white red neck.

Amongst the lazy non-working white trash peoples, car insurance came up in every day conversation, because they wanted to just talk in circles, trying to find SOME WAY out of buying it, like if they repeat the law aloud 600 times, then they will become exempt from the law. And they always pronounced the word as IN-surance, like “Dude, my IN-surance expired like last year, in September or something, and like I tried to forge the IN-surance card, but the cop like called it in or something and they said I didn’t have it.”

Then one day some dude got a visit from his 2nd cousin from Arkansas and do you know what? In Arkansas they don’t have any state laws requiring liability insurance! It’s like, Land of the Free! They, like, don’t rule their people like Communists, and you are FREE to CHOOSE not to buy IN-surance!

*light bulb*

1) Let’s move to Arkansas!
2) Wait. Uh. I don’t have a network of loser family members to live off of…and uh. What if I couldn’t get my weed all convenient like I do with Donnie the midget who drives a Cadillac with blocks on the pedals who delivers right to my door?

*40,000 hours of Arkansas discussion later*

3) Let’s buy a car in Arkansas and drive it here!

The word spread like wildfire, trembling from the cracked lips of every stinky hippie, and every bong was raised to the Heavens in praise of the soon-to-be-freedom from IN-surance.

Just as soon as I can save the money to drive down to Arkansas. And save enough to register it there and get plates n shit. But first I gotta pay off that DUI, to get my license back, cuz I got a bench warrant and they like went to my grandma’s house looking for me! But oh DUDE it will be SWEET that day that Officer Pig Fuck pulls me over, all demanding my proof of IN-surance n shit and I’ll be all: I live in ARKANSAS DUDE! And it’s the LAW that I don’t have to have it! And then he won’t believe me, because of his ignorance, and he’ll call it in and find out that I’m right and he’ll be looking REAL stupid, yo. Cops are just IGNORANT, man.

I tell you that these people dreamed of Arkansas like the rest of us dream of the Bahamas in January. They were always scheming, planning, trying to hitch rides together, pool money together to get to ARKANSAS! In my 20+ years I never did hear of a single person who managed to get a vehicle registered in Arkansas.

Here’s what you get when you choose not to buy liability!

A miserable old man, living his own personal hell of being bedridden and forced to sit around and do nothing all the time.

The Tool doesn’t have to pay a dime for this, nor does his fictitious insurance company. The only ones who have to pay for this are my dad’s own insurance company and dad himself.

So Pops was in the hospital for 17 days and I took these pictures on Day 16, long after the injuries reached their putrid peak, the yellow puss, the swelling, the black bruises and dried blood sacs. The first few times I visited him it was too horrifying to even photograph, I was shocked when I saw him and (oops) blurted out, “Oh my god! You look like crap!” Eh. Heh-heh. What I meant was that he looked like Death warmed over; he was gaunt and covered with cuts, frail and sallow. When I went to hug him he felt like an 8 year-old boy. He lost a lot of weight in the hospital and he’s down to 141 pounds, which is *ahem* not all that much more than what I weigh and I’m a good 6 inches shorter.

On the Tool’s behalf, I looked up what car insurance would cost him based on his age, address and vehicle type and it’s about $225 A YEAR because his car ain’t worth SHIT. I know how hard it can be to scrape together $18 a month, or 62 cents a day. You gotta be pretty fucking stupid not to be able to earn, steal or panhandle 62 cents a day. If he’d been able to muster the 62 cents, his insurance company would have paid 100% of these bills, plus a new bike and clothes, and hell, maybe even some pain and suffering. And the Tool still wouldn’t have had to pay JACK. SHIT. Except maybe his rates would go up to say, $350 a year! 95 cents a day!

And if you think the Tool will be punished through tickets or fines…well. I’m sure he will be fined for no insurance, leaving the scene of an accident, and maybe others. But it seems that the very type that does this stupid shit in the first place would not bother to pay a fine and instead spend his life runnin from the law.

Of all those Arkansas-Lovin Twits that I knew, I never heard one of them say that they actually paid the $500 fine. I think they always just managed to live under the radar with no job or permanent residence, and if they ever did get arrested later down the road, they just sat in jail for a couple of days and still never paid shit.

So dad is home now and on crutches, with rods, pins and screws holding his leg together. He developed some nasty type of bedsores and it seems there was tissue and nerve damage on the backs of his heels and his butt from lying down for 2 weeks. He says it’s extremely painful, even to gently brush a finger over these damaged areas, and he’s losing his shit because it hurts to sit and it hurts to stand. I don’t know what he’s going to do with himself.

And by the way, I know you probably think that some of my anecdotes and my “this reminds me of…” stories are fictitious, but honey, hear these two words: BELIEVE IT. God have mercy if all that shit ain’t true, cuz really I could not invent a midget drug dealer, a guy who drove the biggest, longest pimp Cadillac and he sat on a child’s booster seat to drive and had large wooden blocks on the pedals. He also had a giant white man that accompanied him everywhere, as his bodyguard. He delivered drugs to Jamie’s house on 6th Street, and I know there are heads nodding as they read this, because everyone went to Jamie’s on 6th Street.

Cracked hippie lips actually refers to the bong hickey, where a person would develop a round, red chapped rash around his mouth from constantly sucking the glass dick. Much like the kind when little kids constantly lick a big circle around their lips and it gets chapped. Jamie’s brother was known for the bong hickey.

And of course, the Arkansas Dreamers were real, are real, alive and kicking to this day. If I’m not mistaken, I think KC stopped in Arkansas on his way to Phoenix, for some AR license plates.

Thanks to all who sent well wishes to Pops, I appreciate it, as does he. Not that he will ever hear or read of the wishes, but still. The man deserves some gratitude; after all, he is the one who taught me to be better than an Arkansas Dreamer. He taught me to be more like a California Dreamer, like Mama Cass who choked to death on a ham sandwich. It’s true.

Previous - Next

The Latest Babel

The Fast, Days 1-6
January 28, 2007