So, I'm at this Klan meeting...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was recently talking with a friend and the subject came up of “If they made a movie of your life, what scenes would it have to include?” In that there have been a few IRL events of late on the subject at hand I offer this one.

Back in about 1977 or ‘78 two of my friends and I were going to a Drive-In movie to see a new Richard Pryor movie. We were headed out to the east end of Orlando and on the way we were “getting ready” for the movie with a mix of alcohol and a bit of fine weed.
While en route, and along a very rural part of the road, we saw a sign painted on a sheet of plywood advertising a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan… TONIGHT! I said “Hey, let’s go. It’ll be funny. See what these things are like for real” My friend that is driving, whom we’ll call Arlan, says “Hell Yeah!”. My other buddy that was in the middle, whom we’ll call Carver, says “Are you fuckin’ crazy? We’ll be killed!” You must understand that like most of the people I knew, we all had long hair, mustaches and Arlan had a goatee and I a full beard. We don’t expect to blend very well.
When we arrive at the gate there are three or four guys in the full white robes and everything. Carver has slid down in the seat and is muttering “We’re gonna die… we’re gonna die”. Stopping at the check-point we are approached by a white hood which sticks itself into my passenger window, looks us up and down slowly and says “You boys here for the meeting?”. “Oh, yes sir” say Arlan and I. Carver is oddly quiet. Looking us over again, he says “You boys don’t have any alcohol or guns in here do ya?” “No Sir” we lied. “Well… go on in and enjoy your visit” and signals for the gate to be opened and waves us in. “Oh shit. It’s too late now. We’re gonna die” repeats Carver.
As we enter the cow-pasture-turned-meeting-area I can see the huge cross wrapped in burlap sacks and a semi-trailer with PA speakers and some banners. I also see some men in what looks to be the uniforms of the Sheriff’s Department with shotguns on their hips. I tell Carver “See that? How bad can it be if there’s cops here?”. That’s when I notice one of them had a beard. A Deputy with a beard? On closer inspection I see that the uniform patch is a Klan Security patch. I did not point his out to Carver. He looked bad enough.
After parking the car amid many a pickup and Jeep, Arlan and I got out but Carver was reluctant to emerge. Only when I told him that his sitting alone in the car was likely to attract attention did he join us. There were several quest speakers there but we looked forward to the much discussed Keynote Speaker here from Atlanta. Sorry, I don’t recall the name.
KS took the stage (semi-trailer) and started off with a discussion of all that is wrong with: Blacks (not the term used), Hispanics (same note), Pinko’s, Fags, Jews, and HIPPIES! What with the long hair and bell bottom jeans!”. I’m a little self-conscious at this point but thinking “Geez, these guys hate everybody”. He continues his tirade “Them Coloreds corrupting the youth with the rock and roll music and the slang talk like Groovy, Hey Man and Check It Out “ I’m a little bit more uncomfortable at this point but he’s not done. He goes on to say “You all know what homicide means. It means to kill someone. And do you know what patricide means? It means when someone kills their parents. But what I’m here to talk about is far worse than either of these. I’m here to talk to you about GENECIDE!” Okay, now I’m listening. He continues “Do you know what genocide is? It’s when someone kills you with spoken or written LIES!”. I laughed out loud and said loudly enough for several attendees to hear “No it doesn’t! That’s slander or libel. Geez, you’d think he’d look it up if he’s gonna be a guest speaker!”. Several of those nearby turn and look with obvious disdain and Carver is moving away slowly, looking worse than ever, shaking his head and mumbling something under his breath. It wasn’t until later that it fully registered on me how badly that could have turned out.
I did a dismissive wave of the hand and walked away towards the booths were some “collectibles” were being sold. For reasons of common courtesy I will not detail some of the things I saw on those tables. I only have to wonder were the place is that people go to work to make stuff like this… and people buy it! It is there that I see a sign Enter to Win a Door Prize. It’s a new .30 Cal. M1A1 Carbine! Yeah, a rifle! So I turn and call to Arlan “Hey Man! Come check this out!” Damn! I realized the mistake as soon as it left my lips. Again with the turning heads and disdainful looks.
Well, the crowd was getting a bit restless (I would say ugly but…), the cross-lighting ceremony was drawing near and Carver was pacing back and forth at the car. Arlan and I figured it was time to leave. We didn’t have to ask Carver twice. On the way out and further down the road, we came to the intersection were we first saw the sign. So naturally I say “Let’s steal the sign!” “Oh God, Oh God” says Carver. Arlan slams it into park and we dive out, grab the sign and lay it on the roof of the car. Jumping in, we roll down the windows and hold the plywood sheet, Arlan with his left hand and me with my right. Now for the getaway! Problem is, once you reach about 15-20 MPH the sign wants so lift off. And we are on the expressway! So we pull to the shoulder, take all of our belts off and hook them end to end, lay them across the top near the front and start again. Oh yeah. That’s much better. Now we are up to maybe 40 MPH. Carver is watching intently out the rear window for the pursuit trucks he’s sure are coming. But none appear.
It took us almost an hour to drive the short trip to the house we shared. In the front yard are several friends, among which is Carver’s brother. I’ll never forget his expression when he looked at us, the sign, and back to us.
“So, you all have an interesting evening?”
Yeah, it was interesting.
I invite someone else there to offer up a chapter, or just an evening, from their movie.

2

I don’t think I’ll ever forget October 2004, which started off weird and just got weirder and weirder…

[ol]
[li]My girlfriend dumps me.[/li][li]The Red Sox win the World Series. The Red Sox![/li][li]I get busted for possession of the aforementioned Happy Weed. I was not guilty and the charges were dropped.[/li][li]On Halloween I narrowly escaped two run-ins with the law: one by jumping a fence to escape a party under seige, the other by sweet-talking.[/li][/ol]

3

In 2000, we had worked really hard on elections in Kosovo. All of us who had really busted butts during the election are in the back of the room where they are announcing the results and we’re all starved, we haven’t eaten all day. One of us breaks out this huge bag of gummi bears. We pass it around and it’s just a great moment of comraderie and accomplishment. The woman who will become my wife is one of the group.

In 2003 Iraq, I get stranded on the Iraqi side of the Kuwaiti border. I hire a guy driving a camel truck into Kuwait to drive me to the Raddisson hotel in Kuwait City. I pull up in front of the hotel in a camel truck, covered in dirt and wearing body armor. The bellhop says, “so good to see you again, Mr. Madmonk28.”

Other smaller scenes: Siberian prison flight, grenade attack!, lost in Baghdad after curfew, the crazy girlfriend, the crazy girlfriend II, more crazy girlfriend, parents of crazy girlfriend, traveling across the US with crazy girlfriend selling African art out of a van, finally meeting my wife and soul mate."

Actually, I have to tell one of the parents of crazy girlfriend scenes. Her dad was a scientist. He had this box of puzzles (some puzzles were kind with the twisted bits of metal wire and you have to untangle them, others were golf tees in a board with holes in it, that kind of thing). Since the 60s he had been timing people in the family as they solved the puzzles and keeping records of the results in a notebook. Within 10 minutes of our first meeting, I am sitting at a table solving puzzles while this guy times me with a stopwatch.

4

Evening was falling fast. My mom, my uncle and I had spent all day on various boats, buses, and taxis in an ill-fated attempt to get from Rio Dulce, Guatemala (where my mom was working at an orphanage) to Copan, Honduras. My uncle wanted to see ruins, and mom had already been to Tikal. So it was off to Honduras. But none of us spoke Spanish and we weren’t great at reading maps, so we ended up accidentally going the very, very long way.

The bus some backpackers pointed us to took us to a small town we couldn’t locate on the map, but apparently not far from the border as far as we could tell from our sign language conversations with the locals. After some false starts, we found a taxi that would take us there for 150 quetzals. A ripoff, most likely but we didn’t have much of a choice.

Our taxi (actually, just some guy’s car), for some reason, drives about half an hour to a small cinderblock house in the middle of nowhere. Our driver takes off for about fifteen minutes. I’m a little scared at this point, remembering all of the State Department’s dire advisories on highway robbery and violence in Guatemala. Was this to be my last day?

He comes out of the house with his wife and three kids. I breathe a sigh of relief. We take off for the border.

After a few more minutes, when we are well away from any civilization, he asks us to pay. We pay, and he pulls over, demanding more. It comes out that he wants $150.00 US dollars. It was a shakedown. We didn’t even have that much money. Things got very heated and confusing. Was he really demanding dollars? Were we being robbed? Mom was freaking out. My uncle was trying to negotiate. I open the doors of the stopped van and throw our stuff out.

“Screw this. We can walk to the main road if we have to. This is bullshit.” I try to tell the driver as much.

They driver starts backing down. And then he backs down a bit more. I think what happened was that he actually quoted 150 quetzals each when we got in, which we mistook to mean 150 quetzals for the whole trip. When we didn’t pay up the amount he expected he thought he’d try to get us for more. But between our lack of understanding of Spanish and complete failure to understand the shakedown, he gave up. We gave him 150 quetzals- probably less than the original quote. We shookdown the shakedown. His family was a bit disappointed that this wasn’t payday, but we ended up having some good conversations and the rest of the two hour ride was rather pleasant.

As we drive on, the road get bumpier. The pavement ends. We are on a red dirt track through coffee plantations. Everything gets poorer by the second.

We cross the border just as night falls. Our taxi drops us off and high tails it out of town. We stand in the dusty town square with our bags.

A passer-by informs us that the next bus out of town will be by in the morning. We ask for a hotel and she says there isn’t one. We ask where we can go, and she beckons us to follow.

We walk past various shacks to a Methodist church. There someone lets us in a gate, and takes us back to a large cinderblock building. It has cast iron bars on the door. It looks just like a jail. Our suspicions are confirmed when we get to our room- a large room with six cots and bars on the window. We shrug, set our bags down and head to dinner.

First, we get our Honduras visas from a small cinderblock building. We had to wait while someone went and fetched the local official. We got charged a “fee” of $5.00. That was a much easier to swallow shakedown than the taxi incident.

The only restaurant in town has one table. We ask for a menu and they take us back and show us the bubbling pots of whatever. We point to what we’d like. Meanwhile people are standing a few feet around us, staring. Men with cowboy hats on horses ride by. You’d swear you were in the old west.

When we walk back to our “hotel”, we hear music. Indeed, music is everywhere. People are strollling around in their best clothes. Some people are outside making food. It’s Sunday night, and apparently the churches are all competing for members by playing music and making feasts.

We stand outside of one for a while, listening to the guitar music, when we are invited in. We take a seat. None of us understand a word of the sermon, but it’s clearly a Pentecostal church of some sort. We sit down on the hard pews. The room is small and plain. The kids near me are fascinated, touching my skin and my hair. There is music. There is joyful shouting. There are tears. The preacher does amazing things with his booming voice. It was utterly and completely surreal.

After church let out, mom went to relax. My uncle and I went out to get a milkshake at the restaurant. The night is warm. The stars are out. There are still kids playing tag all over the streets and men riding around on horses. It was a beautiful night.

I woke up the next day horribly sick, and the rest of the trip was mishap after mishap (though going to get crutches at the hospital in Antigua was an interesting experience…) but that crazy town is probably the coolest place I’ve ever been and I’m glad that we ended up there.

5

I think that August and September of 2001 were dramatic enough for a short film. Not in chronological order at all:[ul][li]a family friend’s wife died suddenly (and young)[/li][li]I moved into a new apartment[/li][li]my 16-year friendship with my (then) best friend came to a screeching halt[/li][li]9/11 happened[/li][li]my (now) best friend and his wife went to California to adopt their son on the day he was born, and were delayed coming home because of 9/11[/li][li]I started a new job[/li]I turned 30[/ul]Those 61 days were just crazy.

6

I’ve posted this before but it’s a good story I think. From May 2003.

Last night I went to watch a Madison PD training exercise, bitterly disappointed at the thought that I wouldn’t get to be a hostage. Little did I know!

I got there around 6:15 and hung around where the officer I’d talked to, Sgt Paulsen, told me to wait. After about 20 minutes with no one else showing up, I wandered around a bit and found where the SWAT team was getting set up. Sgt Paulsen came over and introduced himself and asked me to park around the corner and wait for him. A few minutes later he came up but without the stylish orange vest for me that I was expecting. He asked if, instead of watching, I wanted to be in the scenario. Hell yes I wanted to be in the scenario!

After patting me down to be sure I had no live rounds (I didn’t, but the frisking was giving me a suspicious package) he sent me into my BF’s friend’s building and asked me to wait for his call on my cell phone. I settled in with my Patty Hearst autobiography and waited. Suddenly, an explosion! I went to the window and saw some officers crouched behind some vehicles in the nearby lot. Just then my phone rang. It was Sgt Paulsen telling me to get away from the window. If the officers saw me they would have to react to me outside the scenario. I sat back down and waited.

About an hour goes by. I had just read the story of how Patty robbed the Hibernia Bank when my phone rang again. It was a different officer calling. “Hey Otto, are you ready to get shot?” Boy, was I!

She told me to head out the back door of the building after making sure all the doors were unlocked. I would walk toward the street when a shot would fire. I would fall, run back to the building and call 911 (actually a special dummy dispatch number) and tell them I’ve been shot and give them the address.

Heading out the door, I was planning my spectacular fall when the shots rang out. Two shots. My god, they were loud. No need to act the fall; I was so startled I fell flat on my ass! I got up and scrambled back into the building (falling again on my way) and called “911.” “Oh my god, I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot!”

Next I had to stumble out the front door and collapse in the grass across the street and yell for help. As I lay there, officers started calling out questions. “What’s your name?” “What’s your last name?” “When’s your birthday?” (What, they were gonna buy me a gift?) Sgt Paulsen ran up “administratively” (meaning outside the scenario) to say “Your name is Kirby, you own Kirby Vacuum and you’ve been shot in the chest” before scurrying away. After a few more minutes of my calling for help and trying to answer questions, Sgt Paulsen came back up to let me know that an armored truck would be coming to evacuate me. “Should I still be communicating with the officers at this point?” I asked. “No,” he replied, you’re four minutes into bleeding to death, at this point you’d be in and out of consciousness. So just lie there and gurgle."

A few minutes later the armored truck arrived and a half-dozen SWAT members in full riot gear including those long shields piled out. As I lay on the grass gurgling and simulating respiratory
distress they rolled me onto a stretcher and bundled me into the truck. We drove off and they started questioning me about what was going on. Since I hadn’t been given any information on what I should be telling them, I improvised a story about two crazed gunmen busting into my business while I was having an employee meeting. I named my “employees” after my BF, my best friend, her husband and another friend. We drove a few blocks and I was taken out of the truck and a paramedic started working on me. He ran a fluid line and applied a pressure bandage to my “chest wound.” If I’d known there was going to be real tape involved I’d have shaved my chest. By that time I didn’t have a lot of work to do simulating shock, since I was freezing on the ground and shivering with chattering teeth. The paramedic threw a blanket over me then had to leave to take care of another wounded man, this one playing one of the gunmen. This guy was totally into it, calling the cops assholes and fuckers and everything. Next time I want to be a gunman and call some cops some names! The cops were really after me about getting a phone number for inside the building. I’m like, I have no idea.

After a few minutes Sgt Paulsen came over and was talking with the officers who’d questioned me and the paramedic, explaining administratively that I’d have been evacuated by this point and going over procedures. Then he asked about what information I’d given the officers. Turns out everything I’d told them was almost completely contradictory to the scenario he was trying to work. Oops. But he didn’t tell me anything he wanted me to tell the officers questioning me, so I had no way to know. He’s like “I need a few minutes to get this scenario back under control.” Oh dear.

I had left my backpack in the building when I left to get shot, so Sgt Paulsen took me on a tour of the “command center” (a handful of people and some radios) then walked me back to the building to get my stuff. I apologized for giving bad information when questioned and he was all “No, that’s OK, that’s fine. You were shot in the chest. You were delerious. This is just the kind of thing that would happen in real life.” Then he told me a little bit about the other parts of the scenario and how, if the officers asked the “gunman” the right questions they could get the information they needed to move to the next part. They were having trouble “transitioning” from securing the perimeter to negotiating because the officers weren’t asking the right questions. The phone number thing was important to open the negotiations but they needed to ask the “gunman” about whether he and the other “gunman” had cell phones.

After I got my stuff Sgt Paulsen walked me back to my car and thanked me again for helping out. I told him I had a blast and if he ever needed another hostage to give me a call.

7

I’m trying to find the notebook in question here to bolster my memory, but in the meantime…

September 2000, and I’m someplace I have no business being: the great outdoors. More specifically I’m in the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where, with about a dozen other students, I’m hiking around in melting heat and sleeping in the freezing cold. We’re about a week away from beginning college, and this is how someone decided we should make friends.
With freedom to roam and in need of a place to cool off, we hike through miles of brush and bee swarms to find the Baltimore River. Everyone is excited to see the O-Kun-De-Kun waterfall, which is somewhere around here.

After a day of relaxing and dipping, the group decides to take a hike upriver to look for other groups and a better swimming hole. I want to take some pictures and scribble in my marble notebook, so I let everybody else go ahead. Half an hour later, I was ready to find them. I walked as far as I could, but I ran out of room: there was nowhere to stand on the riverbank. Everybody in the group had an idea for how I could get to them. But I didn’t see any choice. To reach them, I had to swim for it. And I couldn’t leave my stuff behind.

I must have been a hell of a sight as I approached them. I was fully dressed, and my right hand was up over my head, Statue of Liberty style, holding my camera, notebook and pen. I swam with just my left hand, paddling like an otter and trying to keep my face and all of my stuff out of the water. When I reached the group, they broke into applause. I kept the notebook, and it’s by far the most weatherbeaten and waterlogged book I ever owned. For some reason, it was that swim in the river that convinced me I was a writer.

8

There was this one time at band camp…
Actually, the part where I totaled the first car I ever owned about 2 weeks after getting it.

9

That’s the human kindness explanation - of course I wasn’t there - but I would think it of equal or greater likelihood that he thought he could use your lack of understanding of Spanish against you: he knew you heard the figure of “150 quetzales”, which was what he originally meant, but realized he might be able to squeeze you for more.

In fact, I’d bet on it - 150 quetzales (~USD$20 for anyone else getting in on this story), is a hell of a lot of money to a Guatemalan for a short ride. (even for a gullible tourist to pay) He would have had to have been incredibly brave to ask for that much from each person right off the cuff.

10

In June of 2002 I met a young met that I became utterly smitten for and began a strange romance. (I use romance here VERY loosely) About a week after we started dating he was in a horrific car accident. He came out with a new metal shinbone and an odd assortment of screws. I nursed him through all of this, and eventually moved into a small apartment with him. Our landlord was a weird ex-meth head that was very spacey and his mother, who was just out and out crazy. We ended up moving my best friend and her boyfriend in with us, and getting kicked out because the old lady said there was a funny smell coming from the house. She had a real bad habit of walking in all the time, without knocking or seeing if we were home. We moved from there to this house out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I mean nowhere. We cleaned it up enough to be livable and there we stayed. By this time I am too wrapped up to go back home. We have no running water and no electricity, and several people living there with us. Eventually we ended up living in a tent on the river down by his parents. We worked at a pool hall, I as a bouncer and barmaid and he as a poll hustler and bouncer. His parole officer did not like all this moving, so we rounded up some money and moved into this really ratty haunted trailer on a well traveled dirt road. We have electricity here, and water, but no phone. He gets a night job in a factory in a nearby city, but quits. He still leaves as if he is going to work though, his taste for very young girls fulfilled while I stayed glued to the couch at home. I stayed on the couch because everywhere else in the house was so haunted I could not stand to be in the rooms. Bathroom trips were seldom and very quick.

At the time I didn’t know about the young girls, or that he wasn’t working. I don’t know where the money was coming from, but I am pretty sure drugs were part of it. I finally worked the nerve up to leave him, and ended up having him arrested. That was in November of 2004. I wish I could say it was all better after that, but I ended up getting strung out on meth and whoring around. I met my now husband at this juncture of my life. I got in on this huge underground drug running/cooking society with him, and we barely skirted jail. He and I cleaned up together and got married. Whew, happened in that time I couldn’t begin to really get it all written down! But that about sums it up.

11

Oh, I’m sure he was trying to shake us down at all steps of the way, no kindness involved. But the fact the fact that he got his family and was in such a great mood- and didn’t fight us too hard when we refused to pay up what he was demanding- leads me to believe we agreed to something rediculous right off the bat. I think he then tried to get US dollars out of us, figuring we were waaaay clueless. That failed along with his try for 150 each because we just didn’t understand what amount he was trying to shake us down for. At some point I think we all realized it was best to continue to remain seeming clueless, and he gave up. Little did he know that my uncle lives in India, where stuff like this happens every five seconds, and it’s going to take a lot more than that to rip us off.

12

Man, some really good stories here. Most I can “see” like a scene in a movie. Others are much to brief and need to be fleshed out a bit (Fetus, Misnomer and Zebra I’m looking at you). These are just enough to whet the appetite. Come on, give.

mrald, before we were together, my wife tells me she also lived in a haunted trailer! That’s funny! I wonder if it was a whole haunted park or isolated units? Oh, and she also had an Ol’ Man like the one you describe. Parallel lives?

Marley23 what is

<bolding mine>

13

A marble notebook.

14

The “Uraguayan Bathroom” incident.

15

Eh, I might tell the Halloween story. It’ll have to wait at least until I get some sleep, maybe a couple days.

16

[QUOTE=

mrald, before we were together, my wife tells me she also lived in a haunted trailer! That’s funny! I wonder if it was a whole haunted park or isolated units? Oh, and she also had an Ol’ Man like the one you describe. Parallel lives?

[/QUOTE]

Maybe, this was just one trailor, not in a park. Did she see a scary guy in the bedroom or a little girl with red hair?

Kudos to her for getting rid of the guy if he was anyhting like the one I had!

17

WTF?

Um the above post was a reply to Nic2004.

18

Yeah, I knew. You should write it out (the scary story) and make it a scene in your movie. As to the ex-Ol’ Man, we refer to him as SOS (Son of Satan) and he was the worst-case caricature in a Lifetime Special on battered and abused women.

fetus We’ll be waiting for the whole story

Gatopescado

Sorry but we are going to need some more details if we are going to include it in the Movie Of Your Life. Sounds very promising though.

Marley23

You find your book yet? Sounds like a fun and picturesque scene for your movie. As a writer can you give us some screenwriting of the events. A “He said” and “She said” kinda thing and have you incorporated this event into the writing it has led to for you? Oh, and thanks for the link. I’ve used and seen these all my life but never knew the name I guess.

Otto That sounds great and a good action scene for your movie. I was working on a similar opportunity once with the local Sheriffs Office wherein I was going to be the “Bad Guy” in a hostage/standoff situation but it never came to fruition I’m sorry to say. It would have made a great scene that ended in “…before being killed in a hail of police fire”.

even sven You were lucky it didn’t turn out to be a bad scene when out in the isolated area. Fortunate you have experience in such things. I would have probably gotten ripped off.

19

No offence mrald, but is there a typo in here somewhere?

20

Chapter? I could write the chapters, but I’ll summarize:

  • Deciding NOT to spend the night at my friend Tony’s after being out too late at a party. Deciding to go home and take the punishment from my dad instead, and finding out in the morning that Tony, his stepfather, his sister and his sister’s friend were all murdered with an axe at 4 in the morning by his stepfather’s visiting friend.

  • Packing 3 pistols, a rifle, a mountain of reefer and camping gear into a friend’s dad’s station wagon one summer, and just driving. Through Missuori, Arkansas, Texas, NM, Arizona, up through Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and home. Saw grizzly bears close up ( eek), Rushmore, and met more characters and nice people than I have since.

  • Having an evening to kill in SF while the Kid was at the Marine ball in Monterrey. Getting seated at the grill counter at someplace on the wharf next to a gay couple, and spending the night eating and bar hopping with them until i gave up and had to drive back to Santa Clara, in the rain. Wherever you are Kate and Melissa, I’ll never forget you, and the night we spent at Hooters. :stuck_out_tongue: