Rural Confessions #3: 100 Ways to Leave an Arsonist
Here I am waiting to visit Carl.
(RURAL ALERT: Check out guest blogger Charlene’s new Internet dating comments in Rural Confessions #2!)
Part 1:
Do you have a buddy/jilted lover/sick or gas-filled animal you can’t seem to unload?
This blog is about the people and pets in our lives we just can’t get rid of. And if you are a ruralee, chances are you’ve accumulated a lot of them. My collection tendencies probably started in childhood with a friend of my parents we’ll just call Carl – the founder of my writing “career.”
Carl joked a lot, grew tobacco in his backyard and worked at a rat poison factory for a while. He had a dog named “Sex” so he could joke with people about needing a place for “Sex” when he went traveling. Woof!
The only problem with Carl was his temper. His wives and step children kept leaving him, and well… rumor was that he burned down a bank. Carl’s probably what started my writing “career” because I often wrote letters to him during his stays in jail when I was a child. My parents felt bad for poor Carl, so I was put to work drawing pictures and writing stories for him. I was rewarded by a slip down the jail slide when we went to visit Carl.
I started to get nervous, however, when I got older if it was really safe to be around Carl. He was out of jail, Internet dating and raising geese. He had lopped his finger off in an excavating accident (kept conveniently in the refrigerator to show guests) and was living as a royal ruralee on disability. Gracious host that he was, he wanted us to come for Thanksgiving dinner in northern Wisconsin.
Every night I would stare in terror at the ceiling worried about my impending fate. I figured it was easy to store a body in the pines of the North. Plus I knew there were German Shepherds in Carl’s house and they’d probably lick me relentlessly after sniffing the missing finger stump. This led to an argument with my family. A teenager couldn’t bail on Thanksgiving dinner. And my parents weren’t budging on my attendance. After all, if I didn’t go my mother said “Carl might burn the house down.”
To be continued…..
