Post #8 - Alabama Abstracts

In researching the history of this rural backwater where I now live, I often come across little story snippets that I just fall in love with. I have a bunch of these. I may have to trot a few out if I'm to meet my goal of 41 posts by August 7th.


The local equivalent of the poor house was the pauper farm. Back in the 1930s, one of the residents was an old blind black man named Lewis, a former slave. His wife was buried in the pauper cemetery on the property. Lewis would often visit her grave and keep it clean. He would feel his way to the grave, locating it by a broken lamp he'd placed there. Other residents would move the lamp to other graves in order to trick Lewis into keeping those graves clean too.

Post #7 - Books & Bruises

B.J. Boomhauer is a collector. His farm is strewn with packrat treasures as small & common as wheatback pennies and as large as an early 1970s firetruck (that still runs). He and I trade a lot of junk...err...vintage treasures. I guess the distinction depends alot on whether you're the buyer or the seller.

He knows I like books. I don't just enjoy reading books, I like the tangible item itself - sometimes the content is irrelevant. I have lots of books and, like vinyl records, seem to accumulate them without even trying. One day, B.J. called me up and offered a box of books.

What kind of books?

I don't know. They're books. You want 'em?

How many are there?

I don't know. It's a box. It's full. You want 'em?

Of course I'll take them. They're free. Maybe there's something interesting in there. Perhaps even something I could sell. Instead, what I got was a box full of romance novels. Lots and lots of romance novels - Harlequin, Silhouette and the like - some dating back to the mid 1970s. I get a chuckle out of the covers but, as a literary genre, nothing in the box interests me.

Well, one thing was interesting. A big portion of the books were all love stories centered around Arab Sheikhs: Surrender to the Sheikh, Hide-and-Sheikh, One Night with the Sheikh, Sheikh Surrender, Taming the Sheikh... There were dozens of similiar titles. I cannot help but imagine some repressed Baptist Alabama hausfrau getting all hot-n-bothered in the Wal-Mart book aisle, fantasizing about her dusky desert warrior.

Which reminds me...

Remember when I posted that photo of the big bruise on my ass that I got from a dog bite? You may or may not be aware that many people across the globe have a fetish for bruises. It's a fetish I never really gave much thought to. I certainly wasn't thinking about it when I titled the photo "ass_bruise.jpg." So now, if you do a Google image search for ass bruise, my ass bruise is in the top ten results. Put those words in quotation marks and it's the first image returned.

I get up to 50 unique hits a day from people doing image searches for ass bruise. People around the world are looking at my bruised ass. A good percentage of the hits - perhaps a third - come from Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Egypt, Kuwait, U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia. (Eastern Europe comes in second). Apparently bruised asses are popular in that part of the world.

Bet that Dixie hausfrau never read about anything like that in her romance novels.

Post #6 - Tales from Community Service

I guess it's time for me to start catching you up on community service stories. This one dates from early March on what was my eighth of forty days of community service (of which I only have five left).

A lot of people showed up for community service that morning - thirty one. Up until then, at least on days I went, there had never been more than fifteen. The increase was mostly due to the cockfighting bust that netted 148 arrests. (Since March, the number of people showing up for community service has grown. Thirty is no longer unexpected. Sometimes a dozen of them will be women.)

Seven of us in attendance that morning were women. Rather than put all of us to work cleaning the courthouse (the usual duty of women on community service), our supervisor put all but two on road detail - picking up trash on the side of the road.

I was actually pleased to get a break from the tedium of the usual janitorial chores. Fact is, there just isn't enough work at the courthouse to fill the day. Everything is usually done by lunch and then you have to pretend to be busy for the next few hours. As the number of women assigned to the courthouse increases, so do the hours spent pretending to be busy. So it was a relief that I was being sent out on road detail.

In addition to the bright orange vests all community service workers are required to wear, we were each given a bunch of bright orange garbage bags and those grabby things that old people use to get stuff off of high shelves. Six workers set off on foot to the east, me and five others headed west. My crew consisted of five women and one man. Two of the women took one side of the road and the rest of us took the other.

I'd met the guy before on other days I'd come for community service. We both own goats and chickens and have discussed them over smoke breaks. I'd never met the woman before. She was about my age and eight months pregnant with her eighth child. I was surprised they would put a woman so far along in a pregnancy on road detail but it really couldn't have been any worse for her or the baby than the Marlboro Reds she was smoking.

It was a beautiful sunny day and we leisurely strolled along, picking up trash and engaging in conversation. It really wasn't a bad way to spend the morning. Best find of the morning was a brand new dog leash with the price tag still attached. Weirdest find was two ziploc bags full of (presumably) dog shit - about a mile apart from eachother.

A couple hours into our walk we came across a small business. The pregnant woman wanted to go inside and see if they had a soda machine (or "drink box" as she called it). She set down her trash bag and grabby thing, took off her vest and dropped it alongside. While she went looking for a drink, me and the man sat down on a nearby fence for a smoke.

After she came back (no drink box but they did have a bathroom), we all had one more smoke. When we got ready to get back to work, the pregnant lady discovered her vest was gone. Where could it possibly be? We were only sitting maybe 15 feet away from where she'd left it. A glance across the street solved the mystery.

There, in the front yard of a house, was a medium-sized black dog wearing a bright orange vest. The dog had crossed the street, stolen her vest and somehow managed to get its neck through one of the armholes.

Fortunately, that was the same day I day I started carrying my camera to community service.

After a few hours, one of the community service supervisors picked us up in the van and took us back to the courthouse for our lunch break. There's a couple picnic tables across the parking lot that we're allowed to use for breaks.

Just as we were getting ready to head back out, we were told we had to stay at the courthouse. Turns out someone told the judge that women were picking up trash on the side of the road and he sent word down from on high that women should never be picking up trash on the side of the road. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind this but nobody ever questions Judge Hardass.

So all the women from the road crew had to stand around the courthouse for the rest of the day, trying to look busy. And that's how yours truly came to be one of the last women to work road detail in Randolph County.

Post #5 - Tractor-schmactor

While most farmers around here have big tractors and other heavy equipment, a couple people I know are still farmin' it old school. Here's a picture of one of the locals on his way to spray his field with pesticide.

Given a choice between a tractor and these horses, I think I'd go with the horses.

Post #4 - Hawk in a Box

Looks like those buttons won't be going on eBay after all. I mentioned them on my Facebook page and a couple friends expressed interest them. I'd rather they have them than some random internet stranger. Besides, one of them has already agreed to pay me in stinky bleu cheese and good coffee beans.

My last eBay sale was a pleasant surprise. I put ten old Dead Milkmen Newzletters up for sale not knowing if anybody would even want them. They ended up going for almost $25.

So far this year I've only had four chicks hatch and two of them disappeared one afternoon a few weeks ago. The most likely culprits are either a cat or hawk. At first I suspected the former but now I think it may have been the latter.

A couple days after the chicks disappeared, I heard a ruckus coming from Frankencoop. The chickens were worked up about something.

When I entered the coop, I found a very agitated Cooper's hawk throwing itself against a screened-in window, desparate to escape. Some of the chickens had fled to the other room while the rest (including my he-man rooster, Sanchez) were cowering in the closet.

Only Mama Graybie - the fiercest, meaniest, orneryest hen to ever lay an egg at Spenardo del Sur - was challenging the hawk. She was all puffed up and screaming at the top of her lungs, dancing around and gettin' all up in that raptor's grill.

Mama Graybie has a chick this spring and is an incredibly protective mother. You do not fuck with her. She has a sharp spur like a rooster's on one of her legs and she will cut you, bitch.

My little chola chicken

Last year, one of her babies went missing. The next day I noticed one of the cat's had a slit throat. Not a little cut but a big gash that displayed the inner workings of his neck. I assumed it was the work of Mama Graybie - a theory supported by the fact that the cat has not gone near the chicken coop since.

I was surprised the cat survived. The wound never got infected and eventually healed. You can't even see the scar anymore now that his fur has grown back. I gave him the gangster-inspired name John Gatto.

So, there I was - trapped in a small space with a large, agitated hawk. The room used to be my grandmother's bathroom. It is about 8'x8' and still contains the bathtub and toilet. There is a wall between the bathroom and the door leading to the outside - a door the hawk can't see and apparently no longer remembers. I didn't want to leave it alone in the building with my birds so I had to deal with the situation using only what was close at hand.

There's a large cardboard box with a large hole in the side that the chickens use as a nesting box. I put the eggs in a corner and emptied the wood shavings onto the floor. Since the hawk was still at the window, I was able to position the large hole over it and trap it against the screen. I slid the box down to the floor.

I grabbed a sheet of cheap faux-wood panelling I'd taken off the wall a long time ago and was using to block the light in a nesting area. Sliding the panelling between the box and the wall, I then tipped it over so that the now-covered hole was facing the ceiling.

Great. Now what?

The door only opens halfway due to warped floorboards and the box is too big to fit through without breaking it down. The box is also in bad shape and I have no idea how long it can safely hold the hawk.

I ran to the house for three important things: the camera, a loaf of bread and a pair of welding gloves.

When I got back to Frankencoop, the chickens had calmed down. I lured them outside by scattering the bread on the ground. With the flock safely out of the way, I went back inside.

I gingerly lifted a corner of the panelling while blocking the hole with an old broom I keep in the coop (great for knocking down cobwebs). I snapped a few photos and then put on the gloves to protect my hands from its razor-sharp talons.

I quickly realized I would need more than two hands if I was going to just grab the bird and release it outside, welding gloves or not. Instead, I dragged the box around the corner to the half-open door and tipped it over. I removed the panelling and the hawk flew outside.

But we weren't home free yet. Built on the back of the house is a pen covered in chickenwire, no bigger than the bathroom we just left. The hawk still had to make it through the 3'x3' door that it originally came in through. I shut the door to the house so the hawk couldn't get back inside and used the broom to (gently) guide it through the pen door and back to the open sky where it belongs.

I'm outty, y'all!