Behind the Scenes

“Dirty little secrets, dirty little lies...we love to cut you down to size, we love dirty laundry.” The Eagles

Who’s satisfied with just the news? We want more…to know the inside scoop, to voyeur into the world of dirty laundry, to visit ground zero after the bomb has exploded. Let’s look behind the scene, starring into the arcane world of the Crime Report, published daily in the local paper.

A man reported the theft of his lawnmower. What low-rent, no-good scalawag type would do this? I was curious and inquired in the neighborhood. It was a strange place where doors were closed, shades drawn and where an occasional eyeball appeared in a dark window. Strangers weren’t welcome here. I spotted a fellow who reeked of bad liquor and asked if he knew anything about the missing lawnmower. “Shore do, man, we all know,” he said, slurring his words. “See that there house?” He pointed to a ramshackle dump on the edge of a drainage ditch, a red rocking chair sitting on the front porch. “Leroy took the engine off that mower and made hisself a motorized rocker. He’ll be rockin’ and drinkin’ pretty soon now.” Case solved.

An extremely odd report stated that someone had stolen the tailgate from a man’s pickup. What low-down scum would do that, I wondered. I needed an answer. It took some doing, but the truth finally came to light. You see, in the country there are few secrets but lots of dirty laundry. Everybody loves to talk, but the trick is to separate fact from fiction. Here’s what I discovered.

It seems Clyde was taking his family down to the Sonic Burger for supper. His mother-in-law was too big to fit in the cab with the rest of ‘em, so he put her in the back in a plastic lawn-chair from Wal-Mart. Along the way he dodged some raccoons crossing the road. The truck careened wildly out of control. Having no tailgate, his mother-in-law was catapulted out onto the asphalt. It was an ugly scene. He couldn’t risk that again, so later that night he swiped the tailgate from Joe Tom’s pickup while he was playing cards down at the AMVETS Lodge.

Check out this bizarre headline, “Man Pulls Hose on Ex-Girlfriend.” The report stated that the man yelled for the woman to come outside her home. She refused. So the man disconnected the battery cables and stole a water hose from the engine. A few days later I found this man and interviewed him. It’s a sad tale of an unrequited love affair.

“Why’d you do this?” I asked. “Well, ’caus she done tricked my ass for the last time,” he said.

“How did she do that?” I asked. “Ya know,” he said, “she kept coming ‘round the body shop and crying that she didn’t have no money and her car was broke. So I fixed it for her for free. She promised to be my girlfriend, and if I’d come over to her house she’d pay me. I said, but you told me you was broke.” He flashed a toothless grin, saying, “She told me there was other ways to pay for things. You know what I mean?” I got the picture.

He justified the act by saying, “So, all I done was to take that hose that was mine anyhow. Shoot, it cost twenty-five dollars and that’s a night’s worth of beer and smokes. You wanna see the hose?” I said, “No. I’ll take your word for it.” What a life I thought, a parallel universe. I left him holding his hose. Right then I concluded that vengeance is a poor substitute for love gone bad. I vowed to never make that mistake!

Then there was a restaurant owner who reported seeing a man take a red rocking chair from his front porch and drive away. So far neither the man nor the rocking chair has been found. However, some of the neighbors at the Tall Pines Subdivision reported that a fellow had just invented a red self-rocker using a lawnmower motor.

It all clicked with me. As I headed there to make a citizen’s arrest, I wondered if there was a reward for both the rocker and the motor. Heck, I might just be off on another career path!

Is there anything going on behind the scenes at your place? We’d all like to know.


Bud Hearn
August 5, 2010