All Entries Tagged With: "Western"
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Continued from January 18 posting
In our last episode Ma stumbled onto a fool-proof method for keeping her mooching relatives at bay while she is in prison for her sixth DUI. With the help of a cynical prison counselor named Dulles Sharpe she has a plan.
After a week of intense research with applied coaching by Sharpe, Ma was ready to conduct her radical charade. One morning , as she left the prison laundry (shades of James Cagney and Cool Hand Luke in black and white footage here) she bumped into a fellow inmate but instead of acknowledging the accident she flew into a trade about human slavery and losing one’s chains. She was tobacco road eloquent after all the intellectual cramming, and held the attention of a small crowd of prisoners who, granted, had little else to do but listen to her rant, until the guards broke it up.
Ma was escorted back to her cell yelling, “It’s time to end the injustice! It’s time for the redistribution of wealth. It’s time for violent revolution!”
This upset the prison authorities that she repeatedly labeled as racist pigs.
“We cannot tolerate this subversive jargon,” said the warden from his desk. “We will not permit this nihilist from poisoning the minds of our cherished convicts!”
The next day Ma repeated the performance outside in the prison exercise yard. Quoting Marx and Engels she worked the crowd expertly, un-harnessing long-held talent that might have made her a competitive candidate for elected office, a successful preacher or a rousing union organizer. Prisoners and employees listened to her and remarked that she was quite well-read, for an idiot. In moments the guards snapped back to reality, broke it up and hauled Ma to the warden’s office for observation and the application of a little axle grease logic.
The answer, by quorum, seemed clear enough. It was decided that Ma be surgically removed from the general prison population.
It was one thing to have fights in the mess hall or to find the beginning scratches of a escape hole in the floor of a cell. It was another to observe extortion, theft, rape and intimidation – a daily occurrence, but now we had a prisoner who threatened to politicize the entire incarcerated population. One bad apple in a barrel of kinda rehab apples. Maybe she was even one of those communists! It sure sounded like it.
She had been so docile, so stupid but easy to deal with when she first arrived.
Sharpe kept his distance, allowing Ma to explode into tirades about inequality, worker’s utopias and wars perpetrated by the rich. He stayed away when the warden had her transferred out of the general population. They met at the usual times for official counseling but he only tutored her on her next moves. Ma would gain political prisoner status or he would eat his first retirement check.
Meanwhile word of this development had reached Ma’s family who were still scattered around a locked doublewide on the property downtown. Several of her relatives left when they got wind that there might be a bonafide commie in the family. One right-wing cousin lost went ballistic when the rumors of Ma’s links to Joseph Stalin and Che Guevara emerged. They may be low lifes but communism was another whole ball of wax.
Her Uncle Earl and Aunt Polly moved on to annoy an even more distant relative who had apparently come into some money over in Utah. They were slowly distancing themselves from this subversive. Her plan was working.
Most of the other refugees living around Ma’s trailer were beginning to look at other geo-political options. They were concerned about being ostracized although none of them knew them meaning of such a menacing word…illiterate authors of their own destruction.
Still most of the uninvited entourage remained, but they were far less likely to visit Ma in jail now that she was classified a terrorist or even worse…a socialist!
Ma had won round one. Enjoying her easy success in running off the mooch patrol she decided to continue with the disruption, and revved up the burlesque indoctrination of her fellow inmates. Ma had seen enough of this old county jail. She would be spending the rest of her sentence in a federal facility with clean sheets and a view. She had put the object in motion, now she had only to continue the act.
The word quickly got around a shocked Stringtown that Ma was nothing less than a card-carrying Bolshevik, even though the majority of the inhabitants thought Bolshevik was the name of a cherry-flavored vodka that you could buy over in Pinkyville.
A few days after another rousing exercise yard speech two federal agents came to visit Ma in her new digs, separate from the other prisoners.
“You are a disease,” started one of the agents, “A disloyal American. We will forcibly remove you from this institution and squash your attempts to poison the minds of our patriotic American prisoners.
“You will be transferred to Pine Ridge Federal Prison in the next few days. If you choose to continue this political activism there you will be separated from the prison population once again and kept in solitary confinement. You will be inaccessible to your friends, family and society for a very long time. Our advice to you is to shut up and mind your own business. Pine Ridge has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to commies.”
She had won. They all left. In a few days her yard was back to normal. Now that Ma was “inaccessible” there was nothing to take from her. In a touching soliloquy she tried to give her only worldly possession, the trailer, to Sharpe but he had no place to put it or so he said. So she donated it to science…
Just nights after Ma was moved to the federal prison, by heavenly design or hellish coincidence, a large bolt of lightning cracked in the sky lighting up the entire San Juan Range all the way from Ames to Almont. A second bolt provided a direct hit on her dilapidated trailer that night. Of course the place had no lightning rod. Of course she didn’t have insurance. When the fire department arrived they found a black, burned out skeleton with the front door standing wide open.
Nobody had been home at the time of the incident.
ON THE ROAD TO GOOD HEALTH
Dutch Elmo of Irwin breaks trail before dinner
By Doctor Nick “Barnstorm” Moneypenny
SIMPLE AND QUICK HOME EXERCISE FOR MOUNTAIN FOLK
Hello again and welcome to everyone who’s got a leg up on this winter business. Today we will focus on some of the more innovative approaches to basic daily exercise. Many of the devices featured in this article are custom-made for people who reside in our high country. Included will be calisthenics and isometric exercises aimed at firming up physiques that have been beaten up a bit by colder weather and lack of accessibility to summer workout patterns.
Without a doubt my favorite new gizmo is the ICY STAIRMASTER. This conceptual breakthrough allows for the optimum workout, while honing basic survival instincts conducive to mountain living. Produced by Zen Crafters, the Icy Stairmaster works the thighs down to tough-as-nails floss and teaches piqued balance techniques. And it comes with its own water for those of you who find themselves privy disadvantaged.
Rare photo of Jack (of Jack’s Cabin fame) working out those ski legs before making his daily homage to town on glass boards, fighting off carnivorous herd animals along his merry way.
Another effective way to blend daily chores with a regular sweat session is by embracing the Cotton Harris Ankle Weight System. This ultra-edge addition to your wardrobe allows the user to perform a variety of beneficial tasks with a few laps around the block. Other leg improvement devices include the STATIONARY MOUNTAIN BIKE and the FOUR-WHEEL- DRIVE PLATE JUGGLER, radically designed for people who live in small cabins and do not have a proper dining room ensemble. The Stationary Mountain Bike works well when set up with a nice view while the plate juggler is easily stored under the couch, along with accumulated crumbs, creeping dog hair and discarded eating utensils.
And have you seriously considered your presence this summer? There is no excuse for flab with your personal CELLULAR PHONE JOGGING COUNTER. Since the phone is mobile it allows the runner free reign. One can run to the Pacific Northwest one day and Southern Alabama the next without missing any calls. A miniature FAX JOGING COUNTER is on the drawing board and, according to unreliable sources in the tech hype industry, will be hitting the market by spring.
Still yet another great method for combining occupational responsibilities with exercise are SOLOFLEX STEERING WHEEL WEIGHTS, which adapt easily to any driving apparatus, or rpm to wheel ratio. Especially functional during traffic jams and expressions of road rage.
For the winter outdoors enthusiast we can’t help suggesting Syd’s SNOWPLOW TUG-O-WAR TOW BAR STRAP. Although the user will rarely win, the tension creates beneficial stress that will soon be defined by massive muscle growth everywhere but between the ears. Another concept, an indoor one, for the person looking for light repetitions is the incomparable PINE CONE BICEPS CURL TRACKER which is excellent preparation for frisbee, hacky-sack or other non-contact summer sports.
Want to mix your workout with the kinky local scene? Try some weighted wrist straps, popular with creative lovers and crap throwers in training too…and they’re dishwasher safe!
Sally Sabarieux, late of parrot City and Gladstone, shakes her money maker in full Victorian regalia. After cooking for 17, sewing, cleaning, child-rearing, farming, chopping firewood, washing clothes, repairing curtains, building furniture and changing the oil on the family’s henway she damn sure needed a workout, heh?
But keep that chin up and the weight down with UNEMPLOYMENT ISOMETRICS. Exercises that can be done at the spur of the moment, standing in line, sitting on metal chairs, anywhere where there are walls and ceilings.
If we may suggest an anthology which might round these matters up like a sturdy cow pen read Sit-Ups and Shots, the newest offering from whirled clasped libretto gymnast, Racko Gaar Poterpes, Olympic gin runner and former President of Fort Lewis College. To quote Porepes: “We have found that the motivational benefits intrinsic to a simple sit-up, followed by a shot of one’s favorite beverage can be alarming.”
Next time we’ll discuss the advantages of a daily routine interspersing COUNTRYCIZE pop tunes and JACUZZI HYDRO-ROWING MANIPULATORS, crisply revisiting the early strains of the cowboy surfing music rage.
Plot to Assassinate Teocalli Foiled
(Crested Butte) A diabolical plot to rub out populist 13,208-foot Teocalli Mountain has been thwarted by undercover agents here. The agents, operating as is the custom from their warm beds, arrested several Freedonian terrorists and recovered a large cache of single-bolt air rifles and a wheelbarrow full of contraband explosives stashed in a false wall at the Talk of the Town Tavern on Elk Avenue. The bar, long a hotbed of socialization, was not charged in the indictment, although authorities admitted the owner of the janitorial service that discovered the stash looked like an anarchist they once saw on television many years ago.
“We cannot expect people operating a bar that is painted purple to know who has access to exterior wall space,” said a local marshal to federal investigators. “How can I charge them as an accessory to anything! There is no conspiracy here! Now leave me alone or I’ll have your hybrid assault vehicle towed to Wyoming!”
A safe but shaken Teocalli remains in stable, but guarded condition at Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness Clinic and is expected to be released later today.
“It is difficult to imagine anyone so twisted that they would attempt to assassinate a 13,000-foot mountain,” said the marshal. “Usually they go for the 14ers.”
Incidents like this one have a strong precedent in Crested Butte, however, as kidnappers grabbed Snodgrass Mountain at Gunsight Point in 1954 and Rosebud Gulch terrorists attempted to drown Matchless Mountain in Taylor Reservoir some five years later.
Perhaps the most disruptive act of coercion took place in the mid-Seventies when the Amax Mining Company attempted to shanghai the seductive, yet illusive Red Lady. A happy ending ensued as members of the High Country Citizens Alliance swat team stormed the Amax redoubt from their stronghold to the north and freed the Lady. In the face of stiff resistance, not to mention the plummeting price of molybdenum, the mineral pirates retreated to their fortified desks in New York City.
– Princess Irm Peawit
The Poker Game From Hell
The following was whispered to me in perfect pentameter by a large black bear that I met in the alley one winter night behind Duckett’s Market in Ouray. Why the bear chose to share the story is still not clear.
Jimmy John Card and pal, Chip McCann
sat at Callahan’s table, dealing out bum hands.
The green felt was honored, a tenderfoot from France
Who brandished fine cutlery and a gun in his pants.
Through shuffles and side bets throats cleared, poker stares
Drinks all around and in the fourth chair a bear.
That was me…the fourth player disguised in a cloak
though my hairy exterior, suspect when I spoke.
But first human misgivings about cheats and bold liars
were confirmed by my chip stack and their gold dust desires.
It started out friendly as the cards came around
and the chatter subsided as the wagers laid down.
It was Card with three aces and the Frenchman with four
that started the ruckus, accusations and more.
Then a blessed distraction of dance hall girl charm
kept the well armed bartender from sounding alarm.
The Frenchman collected while Card bit his lip
and the lady departed with a drink and a tip.
Let Charley sit in, squawked an anxious McCann
Five’s a crowd said the others, poker faces in hand.
I grabbed the deck quickly, calm invited, cards shuffled
crisply, dealing them out, smoothing feathers just ruffled.
This time it was Card who raised up the bets
at each turn he went higher, it was he and I left.
What ya gonna do, bear? chided Card through his cigar
I’m staying I growled. Let’s see the last card.
I couldn’t believe it—Lady Luck’s hand of fate
with the nine of spades down I had pulled a small straight.
You’re cheatin screamed Card, when he saw all the spades.
I stared back at his pistol and death’s felt masquerade.
Now hold on a minute! checked McCann with a stare
This bear here is honest his spades fair and square.
And Card was placated though the loss was a jolt
and under the table he fingered his Colt.
Again cards were delivered and the bets were laid down
Plastic angels with wishes, nothing showin’ but frowns.
The pot’s right, and healthy, let the winner surmise
all the players were drooling at the sight of the prize.
I’ll raise ten said the Frenchman and have no regrets
Hold your horses said Card, the pot’s not quite yours yet.
Card’s hand was one color all diamonds in fact
The Frenchman held three queens, backed up by two jacks.
When the cards hit the table it was Card that first drew
his silver revolver provoking the coup
and McCann pulled his rifle out from under his seat
and fired close range then made a retreat
The bullets dropped Card who had time to react
and his effort on target hit McCann in the back.
The Frenchman then gazed at Gehenna’s plastic treasure
as a bullet tore through him then one more for good measure.
It ain’t me that shot Frenchy, was the bartender’s finger
that pulled the slick trigger—no reason to linger.
The saloon crowd ducked down so the spittoons confide
while I grabbed up the money and made haste for outside
Swiping the pot was not much of a chore
the tin-horn bartender shaking, while he cleaned up the floor.
Three dead men were the bounty, their souls with Old Scratch
and a black bear with money makes quite a nice catch.
I took every penny and bought drinks for my friends
who couldn’t believe I had come to such ends.
Now my fortunate windfall is down to one stack
and I’m hoping that devil don’t want his money back.
– Melvin Toole
MEXICO BUYS AMTRAK
(Puerto Escondido) The Mexican government has announced the purchase of Amtrak effective May 1. The deal was consummated sometime early this morning when nobody was awake yet. Negotiations have been going on since the weekend regarding the transfer of the railroad.
“The North American Free Trade Agreement has paved the way for this and other acquisitions by our neighbors to the south,” said an Obama Administration spokesperson.
The new owners of Amtrak have promised to fire most employees of the railroad and clean the bathrooms at least once a month. The train attendants are being released due to a pattern of rudeness, and the question of filthy bathrooms is being undressed due to basic interstate health codes.
“I remember when taking the train was a wonderful experience,” said Olivia Heartburne of Helper, Utah. “Now, due in part to a bad attitude displayed by Amtrak employees and absolutely no adherence to timetables, it is barely a step up from the bus.”
Depending on the general reception of its initial programs Mexitrak may invest millions in revamping abandoned railroad lines and laying track in remote regions from Maine to California.
“Someday I will be able to visit my boyfriend Willy all the way over in Colona without so much as hitchin’ up the Clydesdales,” added Heartburne. “Won’t that be something!”
Editor’s Note: The once popular practice of tying innocent maidens to railroad tracks prior to the arrival of the charging freight train has severely diminished around these parts since the Denver-Rio Grande pulled most of its tracks out of the Uncompahgre Valley in 1975. Classical villains and sunny day wretches, often dressed in black, enjoyed this recreational outlet and usually were successful in exhorting funds from worried relatives or favors from frightened fillies. Others did it just for the pure joy of it all. It is this group that we will examine in our next segment of Rocky Mountain Mammaries located somewhere in this paper.
-Uncle Pahgre
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Part II
As our reader may recall: In the January 4 posting Ma MacElliot was thrown in jail after an indictment for her sixth DUI. In addition to the inconvenience of the slammer, Ma is now forced to deal with a troupe of bothersome, deadweights trying to better their haut monde standing by living in her dilapidated trailer and feeding her cats (creatures which she does not quarter there, nor tolerate on the premises). Now the pests have taken to visiting her behind bars further invading her privacy.
The next morning the visits continued. Apparently Thursday was Visitor’s Day too. A tearful, hunched over figure in black emerged from the shadows of the minimum security visiting station. It was Ma’s grandmother. She was crying.
“Oh hello Margaret, what is it this time? Loose a tooth? Break a nail? Accidently drop a faulty nuclear device on Grand Junction?”
“Hello, Ma. I can barely stand to see you like this. I heard what happened and just wanted to visit you. Is there anything you need?”
“Fewer visits would be nice. I have had most of my kin here already asking for favors. What do you want?”
“Want? Oh please my dear. I don’t want anything. I just hoped to….”
“Hoped to feed my cats, water my plants, drive my car around?” said Ma.
“Well, the place is empty for four months and I am tired of the shelter,”
was her frustrated response.
“No, mom. My trailer ain’t much but at least it’s standing. What about the doublewide I gave you in 2006? How about the money that was supposed to pay your electric bill last fall? As long as you like Polish vodka more than American heat I will refrain from investing in your comforts.”
“Well you insolent, unappreciative daughter….just like your father, no respect for the woman who brought you up in this cold world. I must have been insane to come here. You’ll see me no more!”
“Good. I just got rid of my lazy husband and now you all have descended on me. OK, you win…I have $47 in an STP can on the porch shelf. Take it all, unless Merle snatched it on his way out the door. I don’t have anything but that lousy, old trailer house and the clothes on my back. Do you want those too?
A prison guard approached Ma’s cell and told her she would be receiving a call from her son, Blacky, the next day. He wanted to talk about what she would be doing with her trailer for the next four months. He was the worst of all of the MacElliots.
“I thought he was doing time on an honor farm in California,” she muttered back.
She remembered when they had stayed with her, not all at once, but a few at a time, eating her food, drinking her beer, using her toilet paper, sleeping on her furniture. If even one of them had offered to pay me back…or even taken out the trash it would be different.
First cousin Sal moved in for a few days back in 1988 and it was 1989 before I could pry him out of the place. Thanks to my good biker buddies, the Lil’ Sons of Bitches, over in Cortez, he won’t be coming around again.
Then it was an in-law, Little Eva and her seven or eight kids, none of whom are potty trained. I’ve had whiners and wannabees, bullies and bullshitters, muscleheads and moochers, thieves and gladhanders…and all from one family!
“They can’t be after my paltry Social Security check, can they?” she pondered. “Fortunately most of them have yet to figure out where that money comes from and none know quite how to go about cashing something like a check.”
“You gotta work some to get the check when you get older,” Ma tried to explain to Eva. “And you have never worked so chances are you won’t be getting a check.”
Then the second wave hit. Unbeknown to Ma the brood, with legal and extended bloodlines, had stuck around for scene two. The visits increased and length and intensity. Her sister complained about her cousin. Her aunt could not stand her brother-in-law. Her son had flattened his uncle’s nose. There was nothing to eat. They were cutting off the power on Tuesday.
They had yet to cross the threshold to her tin palace but they were camped all around it. They were perched, waiting for her to blink. Waiting for her to cave-in to their demands. She would not.
One thing about sitting around a jail cell all day is that it makes one stubborn. It also gives one a lot of time to think things through. Aunt Cecile has rented a studio apartment in town so as to be close for visits. Uncle Al has hooked up a shower in the barn. Eva had registered her seven or eight monsters in the local school.
“I had my ducks in a row, damn it,” mused Ma.
The next afternoon Ma recounted her family trials with her prison counselor, Samuel Dulles Sharpe, who offered a supportive ear. He was so tired of But I’m innocent hard luck stories told in the bowls of another failed institution. He was so bored. This woman sitting across from him was an imbecile. She saw the world in black and white and he desperately needed diversion. He decided to encourage her, willing to clean up the mess afterwards. Besides, he would be retiring in eight months and he began to see that a stirring of this particular pot would be a fitting farewell to the prison hierarchy.
Sharpe smiled and told her that since she had only violated a state law she was sent to a state lockup and that since she was considered low security risk she had ended up here. He said that she would have committed a more serious offense she would be in the cat bird’s seat, and doing her time in maximum security, much nicer digs than the county jail.
She listened without a word.
“Or if you had really done it up and committed a federal offense, like, say, advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government, you’d be sitting in a bright, new cell. Clean sheets and a view! Watched over by G-men who would monitor you for terrorist leanings and anarchist tendencies.
“You’re stock would skyrocket if you were a federal prisoner,” said Sharpe muffling a smile, who had grown cynical after 30 years in the system. He saw no rehabilitation or much attempt at helping the convicts prepare to reenter society.
He laughed out loud.
This whole façade is just a holding tank where petty criminals make all the right connections so as to learn the tools of the trade and prosper later when they rejoin the real world, he thought.
“Or you could bribe and guard, or plan an escape…or maybe tie a bed sheet out your window,” he whispered to Ma, his puffy, red eyes darting back and forth in silly apprehension of snoops and eavesdroppers.
Further obsessed with her immediate enigma, Ma meekly asked about the food at the federal joint and wondered if her family members could ever find her in one of those bright, new cells.
He laughed again.
After Ma asked enough legal questions to pass the Bar the session came to a close. Ma had learned three things:
First, if she had committed a felony she’d have done more time but maybe in a max security facility that severely limited visits, maybe even solitary confinement if she earned it. Second, if she had violated a federal law she would be going to a shiny federal prison somewhere between Homestead and Nome where they’d never find her. Third: It wasn’t too late to secure a little peace – Advocate the violent overthrow of the US government? That doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
Sharpe, now enjoying his bit of system sabotage, accompanied Ma to the prison library where she consumed everything she could about political subversion, bomb building, militant history, civil disobedience, Lenin, Trotsky, Huxley, Mencken, Orwell, Pearse, Einstein and Darwin. She had never been motivated to read anything but supermarket tabloids and lottery tickets before but now she was on the verge of dismantling her previous existence and embracing a new life as a political extremist! She now had a purpose. It felt good.
To be continued on February 4 posting