B.A.D. (big ass drill)

Couldn't find a manufacturer's date on this beast but I'm told it was probably built in the early fifties. I'm also told it's for sale.

Sleeping Giants

I am working in the "Big City" on a project at a former machine shop which finally gave up the ghost and shut down in '08 at the outbreak of The Great Recession. I walked alone in this silent cathedral and snapped this pic as the late afternoon sun slanted through the dirt-smudged windows, casting light upon the sleeping behemoths of bygone industry. Everything was still just as it was when the last worker vacated the shop and chained the doors shut.

Located just south of Indianapolis’ downtown, with its gleaming high rise office buildings, the soft industrial underbelly is crumbling and empty. It is slowly being replaced by billion dollar sports venues, trendy bars and expensive restaurants.



Not far away, down by the river, is a homeless shanty town, its inhabitants the alcoholic sons of the former workers who lost their jobs in the seventies and eighties, living in tarp-covered pallet skids and sipping wine from discarded lunch sacks, rendering it into staggering gratification and street vomit. Around the fringes the dependent class are caged and policed by government baby-sitters who mend the overpass fences to keep debris from being thrown on the cars passing on the interstate below, as the rats and lemmings rush to their downtown cubicles in a frenzied, stress-fueled madness.

I'm glad to live in the equally artificial, yet bucolic agricultural hinterlands, where at least I can shoot my guns out the back door and no one cares, and pee off the front porch and no one sees.

The Legend of Jerkwater Hollow

A chilly 32 degrees F, but If it ain’t raining or iced over, I’m riding to breakfast on Sunday morning. I left plenty of room for the other degenerates I eat with, but as you can see, the bunch of chicken shits couldn’t man up and ride. I chalk it up to my superior mental toughness, and steely resolve in the face of adversity. (tall windshield, Firstgear^® heated vest and gloves)

But, I was really freaked out on this first Sunday after Halloween. I snapped a picture of my bike on what appeared to be an empty Jerkwater Main Street. However, when I checked my phone, a mysterious, blue apparition showed up in the form of a ‘51 Chevy pickup. Could it be the spectral image of Jerkwater's ghoulish past?

Old folks around here tell the tale of Clem Bodine, who was decapitated in a tragic combine accident during the fall harvest of November, 1951. The story goes that Clem had just bought a brand new Cheverolet pickup that very afternoon. After the blood and bone fragments were cleaned off the thresher and the funeral was over, Clem's grieving widow could never bring herself to sell the truck. It has sat in the old Bodine barn ever since. According to Jerkwater Hollow legend, every November the headless ghost of Clem Bodine climbs into the old truck and cruises the back roads and small towns of Jerkwater County looking for soul food and a place to eat....and his head.


I still managed to choke down a hearty breakfast and several cups of coffee. Takes more than some paranormal shit to kill my appetite.

Paperback Classic

 

Behind every tempestuous life stands a wanton woman.

 

 

Kay might give you a fling, but looking through keyholes is a violation of privacy. You filthy pervert.

Click for------------>>>>>>>More info about a great American author.

Kind of interesting.

King of Beasts?

I took this picture, at great risk, in the Jerkwater Junction Municipal Park and Recreation Center. This park has been the play place for local children for many decades and is equipped with a sad collection of broken-down playground equipment dating back to the fifties . Under the stately oaks and beechnut trees the ground is littered with hypodermic needles, beer cans, broken teeth and disappointment.

Among the rusted jungle jims, monkey bars and other relics stands a plastic, yellow Merry-go-Round Lion which has withstood years of abuse from generations of white trash children and drunken teenagers. He is bolted to a base of paint-worn tread plate, forlorn and decrepit, gazing out across the dismal park with hollow, vacant eyes, a steel rod driven through his skull in a kind of blunt force lobotomy and polished by untold years of grubby fingers and runny noses.

Things worsened for the lion 1984, when a thirteen year old ruffian kicked the poor, inanimate beast’s left flank with the vengeance of pre-pubescent frustration. The blow shattered his thin, outer shell letting his very essence bleed out on to the dusty ground of Small Town Amërïkä, leaving a hollow, soulless vacuum. So here he sits to this day, like some sad figure in a Greek tragedy, his face weary and tortured. A wretched inmate, trapped forever in existential misery.

What’s up with those eyebrows?

The assembled moms watching their children at play were becoming uneasy with the bearded stranger, sitting on a park bench sipping Nyquil cloaked in a brown paper bag, like some malevolent character from a Jethro Tull tune. I figured my time spent contemplating the plight of this regal carnivorous caricature was up. I returned home to ponder my own existence.

Suburban Housewives of the Fifties

Post-war Amërïkä was a time of wide-eyed optimism, crew cuts and large powerful automobiles, designed not by computers, but by men with an eye towards Art Nouveau craftsmanship and quarter mile drag racing. Idyllic scenes like this were commonplace in the ever-expanding suburbs.

Naugahyde and cat litter were exciting new developments as were fabric softener and training wheels.
Vacuum cleaners were still hand actuated and washing machines were powered by large, coal-fired boilers located deep within the dark industrial underbelly, far below the hustle and bustle of city streets.

A man could still buy a cup of coffee and a large pickle for thirty cents. The coffee was imported from Columbia by handsome, well-groomed pack mules and was always freshly ground. And the pickles, O the pickles! They were plump and tasty, fished out of a giant wooden barrel with a pair of stainless steel tongs by the friendly, neighborhood grocer.

Sadly, the once-thought impenetrable armor started to develop chinks, which went largely unnoticed, as venom began leaking out of Amërïkän universities and institutes of higher learning. Mr. Green Jeans and The Lone Ranger began filling the daytime television airways with hypnotic dogma and cardboard.

There were no dysfunctional families in suburbia because moms would routinely gather in well-groomed backyards for a topless coffee klatch where they would exchange recipes and furtive glances. When the coffee ran low and an awkward lull in conversation occurred, they'd tickle each other with dandelions and playfully shove freshly mowed grass clippings down each others panties.