September 1997: Fried Squid

August 1997: The Bryan White Interview

July 1997: The Watch Your Head Sign

June 1997: The Mystical Dead Donkey

May 1997: The Day I Almost Met Bigfoot

April 1997: Face on Fire - Part 2

March 1997: White Trash Sugar Daddies

February 1997: The Cornbread and Beans Woman

January 1997: Governor Clinton and the Important Guy

December 1996: The Saga of Iberdot

November 1996: The Elephant Sneeze

Return to Pointless Stories

But now what? I bought the stuff and now I have to eat it. Now let tell you something about myself, I will eat anything. If it can be killed, picked, or dug up; I will eat it. If I can chew it up without breaking my teeth, I will eat it. I am not afraid of any food. Taste means nothing. Actually, I don't understand the concept of "taste good" and "taste bad". Different foods just taste differently. Now, I am a very tolerant person and I pretty while accept people for what they are; but, one thing that bugs the fire out of me is someone who refuses to eat something because they don't like the taste, or how it looks, or they have never eaten it before, or there is not a commercial for it on TV, or for whatever reason. Whenever I see people in a restaurant send back food just because it is not just right, all I can think off is the time that I was so hungry and poor that I had to eat cat food. And not that high dollar stuff either. I'm talking about the generic stuff; Always Save brand cat food in the plain yellow bag. And while we're at it, what exactly is chicken digest?

Anyway, all that ranting was just to show that I had no problem with the idea of eating squid. The problem is, how to cook it. Squid ain't exactly a Southern delicacy. It's not exactly fried catfish. I needed to come up with a recipe, quick. The first person I thought of asking was this guy I worked with who married a woman from the Philippines while he was in the Navy. And sure enough, he got me a recipe. He carried on about how great squid was and all that. The recipe was simple: fry it up in butter and garlic. In fact, that sounded too simple. I followed the directions and while I was frying it, I noticed that all the ink was draining out of it along with some snot looking stuff. But that wasn't the main problem. IT STUNK! And I mean really stunk! Normally I can tolerate bad smells. In fact, I'm probably the only guy in the world that thinks skunks smell good. I like to bug Julie by telling her, "I love the smell of skunk in the morning", every time we come across that smell. But man, this was unbearable. I did go ahead and eat the squid. It had no taste. It was like eating plastic cooked in butter. It was not worth the trouble. My problem was; I couldn't get the stink out of my house. I sprayed everything I had in the house and it still didn't make any difference. I finally opened up every window in the house (it was the middle of winter and below freezing) and I loaded up the truck with a weeks load of clothes, called Julie and told her I'm moving in for a week. I'm just glad it didn't rain or snow that week, because that's how long it took before my house was livable again.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about Steve without getting too personal. He is my opposite in every way. He is the outgoing, annoying guy that loves to be the center of attention. And he will be the center of attention, one way or the other. And as Forest Gump says, that's all I got to say about that. I, on the other hand, step into the role of the irritated, repressed, straight guy who doesn't want to be noticed. You know, the Hardy to his Laurel. The Martin to his Lewis. The Abbot to his Costello. But like I said, it's all just a role. One more thing about Steve (and don't tell him I told you this), his life long dream is to make it in the music business, or be a DJ, or be a used car salesman. So I really didn't want to get in the way of him getting in a live radio studio.

So, like I said earlier. I asked him to called in for me too. Of course, he disguised his voice a little bit, but not as when he calls in as his wife. He tries to sound like a woman, but they never quite seem to be convinced. Anyway, he calls in as himself then as me and gets everything taken care of. Then he comes running into the bathroom to tell me that we're going to be on the radio. Great, I'm going to be interviewing Bryan White. Who in the world is Bryan White? Now don't get me wrong. I like country. I like it a lot. In fact, if I'm going to have music playing on the radio, it will probably be Country. That doesn't necessarily make it my all time favorite music; but compared to all the other stuff that's available on the radio where I live, it wins by default. Normally, I just listen to my CD's anyway. Now as far as Bryan White or almost all of the new Country singers, I know who they are or at least I recognize their names as being a Country singer. And, on the other hand, I recognize and am familiar with most of the current Country songs. The problem I have, (as not being a fanatic), is not being able to know who sings which song. I can't put a face on every singer of every song.

Well, this is where Steve comes to the rescue. He goes to AllMusic.com (which I had just told him about just a week or two earlier) and he prints out the info on Bryan White. Okay, I think I recognize some of these songs and on the ride over to the station, I had Steve sing a line from each song just to make sure. On top of that, I had to come up with a couple of generic questions that would work on any singer of any type of music. You know, the questions you have heard a million times before. Of course, Steve came up with a question of how a person with no connections can make it in the music business.

We got there and there was no pizza waiting on us. I had to wait a whole five minutes for that. One of the DJ's came out and gave us a little bit of information on Bryan, such as what he has been doing lately and asked us not to ask him about any wedding plans. Okay, whatever. Actually, Bryan was not there in the studio. He was calling in from Ohio. On top of that, ten people did not show up to ask him questions, only four. So we all go into the studio, which was quite impressive. It was like a small office and everything run by computers. There was no records or CD's anywhere. It was all screens and keyboard and a mouse. One of the DJ's showed us a little bit about the software; how he could add songs to the lineup, search for songs in their database, and the little sound effects that they do. Stuff like that. I did notice it ran on a Windows 3.1 format instead of Windows 95. Oh well.

I was the second person to ask a question, so I had to put my pizza down for a minute and toss my generic question at him. "Who were your three major influences, musically?" He had barely got started answering before I was already across the room back to my plate of pizza. By the way, the answers were, his parents, Steve Warner, and Vince Gill. With answers like that, he really must be young. I'm used to hearing answers like, Hank Williams Sr, Patsy Cline, George Jones; you know, the old timers. But Vince Gill? I guess I am getting old. Then Steve got up there and man was he nervous. His question just rambled on and on. He started out saying stuff like, "I know you're single and I'm married with kids....." I thought, oh great, he's going to proposition the guy. I found out later that Julie was somewhere listen to the interview and had the exact same thought. Steve found got his question asked and answered. Well the interview got rapped up and we were full of pizza and we had to head back to work. We were expecting to be welcomed as mega-stars. But practically no one at work had been listening to the radio and no matter how hard we tried, no one was overly impressed by our brush with fame.

Back in the early 90's, I was working for Darling Store Fixtures and I spent about three months at their plant in Corning, AR. One day I was given a little project of measuring off the floor in a certain department out in the plant. It was mainly a storage area with big warehouse racks and wooden pallets all over the floor. The plan was that I measure off the area so they can figure out if they had room to expand the machine shop into that area. Well, the beams on the racks are about three or four feet apart. The only exception was the first section of racks on the far left. The first row of beams were missing there and the lowest set of beam was about six feet up. For safety sake, a sign was put up. It was made out of sheet metal about 1/16" thick and was bolted to the beam. It had sharp corners and stuck way down below the bottom of the beam. It said, "Watch Your Head". Now if that ain't safe, I don't know what is.

Anyway, I'm measuring the floor, which means I'm walking around all bent over and going backwards and stuff like that. And when it comes time to stand up, guess what happens. Yep, I stand up right into the corner of that sign. YOUCH!!!! I act cool and all, looking around to see if anyone saw me. No one did. I check my head and sure enough, there's a little blood. I think, "Great, now I'm gonna be on the Chuck Hart sign. What we called the "Chuck Hart" sign was another safety program the company had. It was a oversized drawing of a man that was used to post all the injuries and accidents that occurred at work. The guy looked like an average forty year old man with a slight 1970's look about him. He had brown hair, bangs covering his forehead, and his hair covering most, if not all, of his ears. It just so happened that it looked just like a guy that worked in the Paragould plant whose name was Chuck Hart. That's why we all called it the Chuck Hart sign. And like I said, whenever a person got hurt, a big bright star shaped sticker was put on the part of the body that got hurt and said stuff like, John Doe dropped tool box on foot or Joe Blow got hand mashed in machine. Stuff like that, except they used their real names. I guess it encourage people to be safe or else they will look stupid in front of everybody.

Needless to say, I wasn't about to report that. I can see it now, at the very top of the Chuck Hart sign in a bright neon star, "Danny Hill poked hole in head with watch your head sign". So I just act cool and sneak off to the first aid station to treat myself. I walk into the room and all the cabinets are padlocked. I don't believe it! Let's not have emergency medical supplies where we can actually use them when they are needed! Anyway, I just sneak off to the bathroom and treat myself with sink water and toilet paper. This might be how I got that bump on my head. But then again, I might be wrong.
 
 

This really is a pointless story. l probably wouldn't even be telling it if it wasn't for the above picture. And after a couple of months, when this story is archived, the picture is going to be removed. After that, anyone who happens across this story is really going to be lost. The story in and of itself is not very memorable, but it's how the story came to me and how many different times and ways it came to me that really made it stand out in me mind. This is one of those "Old People Stories" that I had hoped to be included on it's own web page, but that page never quite worked out. It has been told to me by man in their mid-sixties to mid-seventies and it goes something like this:

When I was a young man ( in the 1930's I assume), I used to eat fried possum all the time. I'd go hunting for squirrel, rabbit, coon, whatever; and if I came across a possum, well it was just more food for the table. Of course now, possum is about the greasiest animal you could ever fry up. You would start frying it and the frying pan would fill up with grease. You'd empty it out and keep frying and it would fill up again. You'd have to do that at least three times before it was done.

Anyway, one day, I was out in the woods hunting when I came across an old carcass of an old dead mule. When I walked around to the other side of it to get a better look at it, I saw about a dozen possums inside of it, all rolling around and squirming all over each other inside that old dead mule. From that day until now, I have not eaten a single bite of possum.

1. By some strange stroke of luck and wild chance, all these men, who don't know each other, happened across the same possum filled, dead donkey and fifty years later all tell me their story before they die.

2. In the 1930's, donkeys in Northeast Arkansas really had a habit of wandering off into the deep woods to die and it was a common occurrence for hunters to find them.

3. They are lying. I doubt this though. These men are honest people and believe in what they say.

4. Old people's minds and memories are playing tricks on them and are confusing stories they may have heard with the things that really happened in their lives. I'm not eager to jump onto this explanation either. People tend to use this excuse to explain away things they don't understand. I have never "imagined" seeing anything and I know reality when I see it. These old guys were still in their right minds when they told me their stories.

In November of 1979, I went deer hunting with my brother John. I was fifteen years old and had never really been hunting before. We went up to north central Arkansas with some of his in-laws. We were in the hills somewhere around Hardy, I think. Actually I think it was closer to a small town called Strawberry. I didn't drive and wasn't familiar with the area at that time, so I don't know exactly where we were. Anyway, we got there pretty late and the in-laws had already set up camp. We spent the night in a good size tent next to a pretty good size stream. Everybody joked around a lot and then it started raining, so we didn't get a lot of sleep that night. The next morning I woke up in a big puddle of water. The tent leaked and I was in the lowest corner. You know, typical hunting stuff.

That morning, before everybody was to get together and go off to a certain location, John wanted to try a spot about a quarter of a mile away. We walked down a path for a ways and came to a clearing. It was about fifty feet across and was circular in shape. All around this clearing was trees, like a wall. John said that he was going to go out into the woods, circle around, and rustle the deer out into the clearing and I was to shoot it. Sounded simply enough. So off he goes into the woods. After several minutes, I hear the absolute, weirdest animal noise that I had ever heard in my life. It was a very loud, garbled, shrieking type noise and only one thing came to mind - Bigfoot! Maybe it was because one of the guys told a story about seeing Bigfoot once the night before. He didn't really call him Bigfoot, just the monster. And there are occasional stories that you hear from believable people about seeing Bigfoot in Arkansas that don't become national news like the Northwestern stories. So there I was. No known animal that I know of makes noise like this, so it's probably Bigfoot and he's tromping my way and he didn't sound happy.

Well I wasn't terrified, but I was a little uptight. First thing I think of doing is to get exactly in the middle of the clearing so that I will see him coming from whichever direction he comes from. So I'm standing there in the middle looking all around. Then I think, "That's no good"! Then I back up to this huge evergreen tree on the edge of the clearing to have something behind me. Then I imagined him coming right out of that tree and getting me. So I go on like this for a little while; walking around all stiff legged from spot to spot like some nervous Barney Fife, until John comes high stepping out of the woods like some ol' hillbilly grandpa walking on sharp rocks. I said, " What's that?" He said real fast, "I don't know! Let's go!" That was all that was said. We never brought up the subject again that day. In fact, it was years before I even mentioned it to him. When I did, he said he didn't remember it.

Years after this happened, I was watching some show about Bigfoot and they played a supposed tape recording of Bigfoot. When I heard it, it was the exact sound that I heard in the woods that day. The recording was supposedly examined by experts who said it was no known animal. It was supposed to closest to human and gorilla, but it was impossible for either to make that exact sound. I think that there may be a few different recordings out there now. I stumbled across this Bigfoot sound file (78 KB) the other day and it is slightly different from the first one I heard on TV. This sound file has three different types of noises. The first sound is very similar to what I heard in the woods that day. The other two noises, I did not hear. Of course, the recording could be a fraud; who knows? And I want to make two things perfectly clear: 1) I did not see Bigfoot! 2) I did not smell Bigfoot! (a lot of people who say they have seen him, say he stinks to high heaven. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 

Back when I was around nineteen years old, I befriended a ... uhh ..... socially, economically, and mentally disadvantaged couple. That was the nice way of saying it. They were poor white trash and borderline retarded. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I'm just saying it the way it is. He was in his late thirties, a big tall bear of a man, but gentle as a kitten. He was just learning how to read by listening to the bible on tape and following along with his bible. Every time I met him he would tell me how many verses he had learn to read that day and every time, it would be a few more than the last time. So he was making good progress. She was in her mid-twenties. She was big, not tall; just real big. She was also the most cross-eyed person I had ever met in my life. She couldn't read either and had no interest in learning.

Neither one of them could really have a job, so they lived off of government checks (either welfare or social security, I don't know which) and food stamps. They lived in these low income housing apartments which consisted of either three of four rooms and really wasn't all that bad of a place to live. Of course, a government check is not quite enough for an honest family to live off of, so they supplemented their income by collecting aluminum cans. They would spend all day pushing grocery carts around town looking through the ditches and public and business trash cans. Of course, if they found something else that might be useful in the trash, they would go ahead and keep that too. The were all the time showing me clothes or shoes or whatever they had found that someone else had thrown away. Sometimes it was embarrassing, but oh well.

One day, I dropped by and he wanted to show me something he had found. It was one of those small butane camper stoves. You have probably seen these before. They are like a small green metal suitcase about a foot by a foot and a half. You open it up and light a small burner and cook hot dogs and hamburgers on it (I guess). Well, they had found this but didn't know what to do with it, because the instruction were written on the inside of it. And since I was their educated friend, they wanted me to show them how to use it. I didn't know how to use it either, but I figured if I followed the instructions, I should be able to figure it out. My first mistake was in not reading all the instruction first before starting. I would read one line and then do it before going on to the next line. So it went something like this. (Keep in mind, that this happened in the middle of their living room floor at about nine o'clock at night):

Step 1: Turn this knob.

Step 2: Pump this thing up.

Step 3: Turn this valve. "ssssssssss"

Step 4: Hold lit match near burner. At this point, I turn around behind me and get the matches and lighting one, I ease toward the burner. When I get almost to it, the match goes out. "ssssssssss" So I turn around and get another match and do it all over again, not really thinking about how much gas had been let out over that little period of time.

There was a lot of stuff to choose from: canned foods, paper products, bathroom products, you name it - it was there. Just about anything you would want. It's just that we didn't find anything that we really needed or at an extremely good price. The selection was still good though. And to give you an idea of the surroundings, we were in a building that was in the old downtown section of Paragould, Arkansas. It was probably built in the 1920's or 1930's, I suppose. You probably grew up in a similar town where the downtown buildings are all brick and built right against the next building. Then later added on to at the back of the building. Later still, owners would buy the neighboring building and knock out doorways or walls. This is what the wholesale grocer was using as their warehouse. All the rooms were poorly lit and none of the rooms were on the same level. It was also fairly dusty in there.

Now back to that family. Out of all the stuff they had to choose from, all they had was this super size bag of Styrofoam plates (at least two hundred) and a case of Sugar Daddies. Umm ...nutritious. When I saw them, my imagination immediately started working. I could just see them all sitting in their living room down at the trailer park on a Saturday morning watching professional wrestling with their Styrofoam plates on their laps and one or two Sugar Daddies on those plate. Their eyes are glued to the set, so they don't notice that when they pick up the Sugar Daddy that it is stuck to the plate and the whole plate is coming up with it, until they hit themselves in the face with it.

One time, this fat, ... bloated, ... stinking, ... nasty, ... white trash woman was admitted to a hospital. You know the type, the kind of people who never bath. The kind of people that you literally smell fifty feet away and you think you stepped in something. Well, they called in the nurses and the nurses aides to give her a bath because she was just way out of hand. She was probably a health hazard to everybody else. So the nurses and all come in and stripped her down and half way holding their noses and holding down their lunch, started in on her. And their was plenty of her to do. Well, when they lifted up her big ol' breasts, they found .... beans..... and ..... cornbread ....... and ....... all kinds of old food that just fell down into her clothes and stayed their for weeks and months. It was bad. It was real bad! At this point, most of the nurses lost it. They had to take off running out of the room, throwing up where they could.

The End.

On one of those days, they had the really big tour come through. It included Governor Bill Clinton; and as most Arkansans (and as most Americans for that matter) I am not a Clinton fan, not then, not now. It also had Representative Bill Alexander, who was later voted out because of the House banking scandal, of which he was in the top ten worst in the nation. But the visitor that we were really excited about meeting was Sam Walton: owner and founder of Wal-Mart and the richest man in America.

Old Uncle Sam, as we called him, was a real life Jed Clampett. An Arkansas homeboy done good. He pretty well started with nothing and never let his riches go to his head. He stayed with his first wife, lived in the same old house, and drove around in his home town in his beat up, old, red, pickup truck. When he showed up at a store opening, if he wasn't wearing a cheap baby blue polyester Wal-Mart suit, he was probably wearing overalls. He also liked wearing those cheap caps that someone probably gave him. During that stock market crash a few years ago (called Blue Monday or Gray Tuesday or something like that), Sam lost $3 billion in a matter of two days. He said," Oh well, it's all just paper. It was paper before and it's paper now."

The ugly truth behind all this is: that old house of his was pretty nice to begin with and he owned a lot of nice cars other than that old truck. And it's a nightmare being a vendor for Wal-Mart. They want everything free and now!!! And it's a lot worse since Sam died. But still, how often do you get to meet America's richest man?

Anyway, when the big tour came through, I happen to be out in the plant for some reason and I was right right on the main aisle that ran through the factory and I standing next to this six and half foot tall, 250 to 300 pound guy. You know the type; beard, cap, t-shirt holding in the belly the best it can. And just so you don't get the wrong idea, I don't look down on anybody and I'm no better than anybody. I'm just trying to set the scene here. But we were both a little excited about this.

The group was a little spread out and Bill Clinton was up front. He walks up to me and sticks his hand out,"Hi, I'm Bill Clinton. What's your name?" I shake his hand, tell him my name, the whole time, I'm halfway looking over his shoulder. In a little bit, Bill Alexander walks up and sticks his hand out and says,"Hi, I'm Bill Alexander." At least Clinton asked what my name was. Once again, I was doing the over-the-shoulder routine. Where was Sam, anyway?

Then came the big moment. Uncle Sam was being shown down the main aisle by the company president who was laying it on thick. He was introducing Sam to every Tom, Dick, and Mary within handshake distance. "This is Joe Blow, he sweeps the floor. This is Jane Doe, she mindlessly loads parts into this machine." I'm thinking, "Wow! I actually design the stuff that Wal-Mart buys from us! Surely they're going to have to stop and talk with me! Man, I'm in the right place at the right time!" As soon as they get right up to me, the company president turns and points straight down the main aisle saying,"And this is our new $3 million powder paint line, blah, blah, blah ......." and they just walk on by, cheap suit and all. Me and the other guy just look at each other and shake our heads. Our chance to meet someone important and all we got to meet was Bill Clinton.

I never have been the world's greatest speaker. Sometimes I stutter or stammer or mumble and a lot of times I have to repeat myself to be understood. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but you could just imagine me as a little kid. Well, I wasn't raised by the most understanding person and on top of that she also had a hearing problem, which leads us to how this all got started.

I was around five years and in Miss Englehart's Kindergarten ( which we all pronounced: Miss Alcohol ) and one day after being picked up by the parent ( imagine a psychotic cross between Minnie Pearl and Edith Bunker ), we got behind a car which had one of the girls from my class in it. Well this was pretty exciting to me because I didn't know any of those outside of kindergarten. We were waving at each other like a couple of little maniacs and I was hollering, "I know her! She's in my kindergarten". The parent asked what her name was. I answered, " I forgot", which may have sounded like, " I berdot". That's when the screaming and the cackling laughter started: "IBERDOT!? IBERDOT!? HER NAME'S IBERDOT! THAT'S YOUR GIRLFRIEND! HER NAME'S IBERDOT! HAHAHAHA!" After that I just sat down and kept quiet.

Years later, when I'm around twenty five years old, I meet Julie. And like most girlfriends like to do, she sneaks over to meet my family when I'm not around to get all kinds of dirt and whatever else she can use to embarrass me with or hold over my head. Then she comes over to my house to tell me of the interesting meeting with my bother and his family and that she had some good dirt. At that particular moment, I happen to be walking away from her, when I asked her, "Such as.....?". She answers, "......ooooh, Iberdot." That stops me in my tracks and my whole body just clenches. She laughs because she knows she got me.

Here we are years later. I'm almost thirty three now and Julie lets out the big secret over the internet in her chat group and now they don't even know my real name anymore. I'm just the world's one and only Iberdot now. So I might as tell the whole story to the whole world now and get it over with. So, there you have it. Enjoy.

Anyway, Daddy was standing with me there, thinking that I would be impressed (and I was), when someone he knew with a son my age walked up doing the same thing Daddy was. After a while, the two fathers wandered off about 30 feet to our right talking to each other and left us two boys alone gawking at the elephant. We really didn't have much to say each other, he was probably just as bashful as I was. All of a sudden, we heard a loud, muffled "HAROOMPH" and we saw the two dads walking very quickly towards us. We look down and we covered with large quarter to half dollar size dark gray spots like a couple of Dalmatians. The elephant had sneezed on us and we were covered with elephant boogers. They were dusty and wet at the same time. Our dads were trying to clean us with whatever they could find laying around on the ground: leaves, candy bar wrappers, whatever. Nothing really seemed to work, so I remember them saying their good-byes and "I guess we need to be going now"s and we loaded on into the car and headed back home.

This is a different story here altogether, but if I don't tell it now I probably never will. One of the times we were going down one of those gravel roads (south of Highway 63 between Jonesboro and Bay,AR: I could almost take you to the exact spot-I guess I was about six years old this time), Daddy came to a sliding stop and backed the car up a little ways. He told me to get out, he wanted to show me something. We walked around to the back of the car and he pointed down to the ditch. There was a rabbit sitting there just as still as could be. I asked why the rabbit wouldn't run away. He explained to me that the rabbit thought that if he didn't move - we couldn't see him - and he thought he was completely safe. I believed him and I was impressed by how smart my daddy was and how strangely the rabbit thought. Daddy proceeded to take out his pistol and shot the rabbit at point blank range. He picked up the dead rabbit, tossed it into the trunk of the car, we got back into the car and took off down the road.