fromanyalley

If you Google the word ‘television’ you may discover, to your shock and horror, that there was a time when the TV was a tiny little tube filled with cathode rays in a huge, real wood cabinet. During this Golden Age of Television Crime Drama an unseen, stentorian announcer would proclaim something along the lines of “There are one million people in the city, and one million stories. This is one of them.” (Pause for maximum effect.) “The Naked City.”

The speaker was tiny, round, and had several hundred holes in it. A normal person, without super-human powers, would have to sit within inches of the massive communication engine in order to understand what was being said, thus giving many neurotic mothers the right to yell at many soon to be neurotic children to get AWAY from that THING, you’ll go BLIND. The children could see, but were deaf to their mother’s incessant, psycho-neurosis induced nattering. This was before that god-send Valium was widely introduced to house-wives all across America. Mother’s little helpers, as they were lovingly known.

In this little corner of this little state, right outside that window, no, the other window that’s a mirror, there are not one million people. Cattle of all kinds, breeds and descriptions added to pigs and chickens and god knows dogs, cats, frogs, and gophers, then we’re talking over a million. People, not so many. Which means there is no Naked City in black and white, panning shots of the awe-inspiring skyscrapers down to the countless legs walking their way through hump-backed automobile traffic. As a matter of fact, there are no cities, naked or otherwise. That does not mean we don’t know a thing or two about crime, however.

The most crime, not counting hunting without a license, living drunk, operating a motor-vehicle which violates every EPA emission code known to man, that truly happens here is the creation and operation of meth labs. We have those. We have many of them. The easiest way to determine who is in the private pharmaceutical business is to look at the person. If he/she is above 4′11″ tall, but weighs less than 98 pounds and the tooth to tattoo ratio is heavy on the tattoo side, then you can bet your bottom dollar that a self-taught chemist is near at hand. If he, or she, also smells just like the inside of the old janitor’s closet in St. Agnes Academy, circa 1958, you are downwind of a local tweeker. The best and most decisive way to know if you are close to the proud owner of a rural start-up pharmaceutical company is to pick him/her up (which should be fairly effortless) and throw him/her into no less that eight feet of water. If they instantly drown, you will know that meth has eaten a hole in the nasal septum and there is no such thing as holding your breath with a quarter size opening in the nasal cartilage. If he/she somehow survives that test, and comes up out of the water firing off two 9mm semi-automatics in your general direction, you may take it that he/she is, indeed, the king or queen of crystal meth. As long as the king of crystal doesn’t shoot an innocent game warden just out checking for poachers, or fires up a blunt thereby making his house into a working relica of a Tomahawk cruise missle and blowing up up his lab, the guy’s lab across the road, and an underground lab run by the DEA to be used as bait in several as-of-yet unexecuted sting operations, the tweek master will be left alone to choke to death on the toxic fumes of his chemical abominations.

We also have the nice guy farmer whose main cash-crop is extraordinarily primo ganja with an unbelievably high THC content. The nice-guy farmer, who also preaches the gospel among the faithful, i.e., his family and three other people, all who work for him, can be assured that the local deputies will not bother him as long as he has a Life-time Member NRA decal on the bumper of his Ram, a crucifix nailed to the front door of his house, and an American flag flapping and snapping proudly in the breeze from a twenty foot flag-pole he himself fabricated in the shop out back of the main house.

Due to the very low crime statistics, and the fact that every man woman and child (over the age of five years) carries at least one, if not two firearms on his or her person at all times, and is soundly castigated if he or she should somehow fail to do so, we do not lock our doors or windows, that will always be a MIRROR, and leave our vehicles not only unlocked, but also running. The fact that there is an Easy-Rider rifle rack in the back window filled with shotguns, a quick-reach rack on the ceiling holding an AK-47 and a .243 with scope, and two holstered Desert Eagles under the seat does not stop us from pulling up to the Daylite Donuts (Mmm-M!), jumping out, leaving the doors and windows open and the weapons loaded if not cocked, and meandering into the store for some coffee, doughnuts (Mmmm-M!) and to read the Daily Republican (”None of the News We Are Bribed Not to Print”). After an hour or so, we wander out, trailing doughnut crumbs and farting loudly to inform our friends that we are happily full, and to get a laugh. “Damn! I think Travis SHIT himself!” Yar-yar-YAR-yar.

Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that this is Hicksville, USA. Within the last week there has been a wave of crime crashing over the citizens, no matter how few, or drunk, or high, or tweeked they may be of this little corner of this little state. The crimes have been heinous and nerve-wracking, and may have involved the actual sale of one of the victims as a sex slave.

Due to the perverse and egregious nature of these crimes, we will consider them in a a subsequent blog which will pierce the veil of rural America and strip bare the lewd and tawdry secrets of this little corner of this little state which exists outside that window. That’s A MIRROR. The window is a bit to your right. Your RIGHT. Your….

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