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These women are crazy (Unedited and unformatted excerpt from by upcoming book)
Bedford and I made our way to an older neighborhood, it was a perfect night for a walk. A red pickup truck was parked in the middle of the block and a small black guy wearing neon green shorts was busy filling it up with landscaping rock. The pile he had to move was pretty big and while passing by I had to make a useless comment: “I see you have your work cut out for you”. The man rested the shovel against the truck and took a swig of water from a bottle that was sitting on the tailgate. He nodded and replied: “You might say that. I don’t mind hard work and I’m used to it, but this job is getting on my nerves and it’s all because someone couldn’t pay attention to what he was doing”.
I had to ask him: “What happened?” He took another zip of water and started telling his story. “I’m in construction you see, framing, drywalling and that kind of stuff. Today I was working on a place on Mine Road and next-door landscapers were busy planting stuff. There comes this dump rock with a load of landscape rock. Now someone made a mistake and ordered 20 tons instead of 10 tons. So, the driver had to dump half the load and take back the rest. Now I happen to know the driver and I made a deal with him. He would take the rest to our place and dump in the front yard, it was not far out of his way anyway. He called his boss who agreed to let me have it for $75. I gave him the address and there he went. I came home an hour ago and this is what I found”. He kicked the pile with anger it seemed.
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Simon (Memories from my youth)
One of my friends was Simon, the only child of a couple that had lived in our small town for only a few years.
Simon was a little older than me and he got his driver’s license before I did. And he managed to get a car too; a small chocolate brown two-door coupe. He quickly gained reputation as a fast, and often reckless, driver. Not something that went over well with people who saw him speeding on the only major through street we had, as well as in the residential neighborhood.
Then I reached the age where I was for drafted for military service. In those days, that system was still in place and some men came up with the silliest excuses trying to get from under it. I approached it more or less with indifference, it was what it was.
But first I had to report for a physical examination and psychological test. I rode the bus into a nearby town and underwent the almost full day long procedure.
It so happened that Simon was there as well and at the end of the day he offered me a ride home. Although it would be easier and faster than taking the bus, I kindly refused with the excuse that I still had some business to take care of elsewhere in the city.
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Bedford and apple pie (Unedited and unformatted excerpt from by upcoming book)
Halfway the afternoon Bedford started to get restless. I figured that he needed to go to the bathroom or at least get some exercise. I stopped at a big park at the outskirts of town. It was quiet there, the only people I saw were a couple sitting on the grass with a checkered blanket between them.
I opened the passenger door to let Bedford out and he didn’t give me the opportunity to put his leash on. Instead he growled, his ears went straight back, and he took off into the park. Maybe he spotted a cat or a bunny. He ran right over the blanket and straight across the lawn with phenomenal speed.
The women jumped up and screeched. I stopped to make sure she was alright. She pointed a sharp finger at me and yelled: “Look what your dog just did. Look” I didn’t see anything suspicious and let her now with a simple gesture of my hands. That apparently made her furious. She pointed to the blanket and yelled again: “Look, he ran straight through the apple pie.” And sure enough, in what was left of a 12-inch diameter apply pie on an aluminum tray I could see a clear paw print. “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience people, please let me pay for the pie.”
