thousandcasts
01-30-2003, 01:16 PM
Warning: I tried to keep this story as clean as possible, but based on the subject matter...it was really hard to do! ;)
White Tailed Annie’s New Tattoo*
I made a cast into the rust colored, slow current of the Au Sable River. The large bell sinker made a loud “plop” as it entered the water, sending another plump night crawler to it’s doom. After placing the rod into the makeshift rod holder, I flopped back into my lawn chair and gazed up at all the shining stars. It was a beautiful summer night.
Beef and I were a bit unsettled, of course. Beautiful nights are not the norm when we take to the water. We kept looking up at the stars. Where were the storm clouds? Where was the wind? We kept waiting for a storm front or a fog bank…anything. The madness was almost unbearable!
We were on our annual “Sheephead” expedition in Oscoda, Michigan. It started out years ago as a catfish expedition after we’d read an article in Woods N Water News about the fantastic channel cat fishery at the mouth of the Au Sable. The author was holding up a giant, gray, catfish and we decided to give it a try. All we caught was a bunch of grunting sheephead, but had a blast in the process. It is now a much-anticipated portion of our yearly schedule of events and almost rivals our annual salmon vacation.
Wally and The Squirrel were with us, but they’d ventured into town to grab a bite to eat. Their lawn chairs and fishing poles were sitting on the cement boardwalk that leads to the long pier into the harbor.
The trip started out promising. As we headed north up I-75, the sky was black and churning. Beef, The Squirrel, and I came up earlier in the afternoon. Getting a later start, Wally had to negotiate with his significant other and was granted permission to attend the trip on the condition that he’d refrain from any activities that I suggested. Apparently, his young son had learned some choice words and strangely enough, he learned them right after a trip onto Lake Michigan with Wally and myself. For a week or so, after the trip, Wally Jr. would playfully mention the words in all kinds of settings: Church, Daycare, Grandma’s house, etc. Wally’s wife reasoned that her fine, upstanding, husband would never utter such words and by process of elimination, I was targeted as the bad influence. She’s always viewed me as a bad influence and the “words incident” only added fuel to the fire, hence her reluctance in letting Wally attend this years trip.
As I was saying, the sky was churning black as the three of us traveled up the highway. My Explorer rattled and shook as rain and hail splattered all around. Lightening bolts danced across the sky and the wind was roaring. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Beef and I yawned when a tornado cut across the highway, picking up a motor home from a storage place and dropping it right in our path. I swerved around that, dodged an uprooted oak tree, and continued north toward our destination. Mother Nature, quite frustrated that her little onslaught had failed to bother us, quickly relented and the sky was blue once again.
“Did I miss anything?” The Squirrel asked as he awoke from a short nap.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Beef answered.
Ordinary was the key word on this trip. Beef and I stared at our rod tips, waiting for a hit. The fishing was quite good, but the evident lack of surprise was gnawing at us. Beef had just changed into dry clothes after his little tumble off the pier. He bounced off some large boulders before hitting the water and had a noticeable limp afterwards. Wally managed to lose a rod when a large carp picked up his night crawler and headed toward the lake. The rod flew out of the rod holder and entered the water like a javelin. Somehow, my hook caught the rod as it scraped across the bottom and we were able to retrieve the rod as well as the thieving carp. The Squirrel and I thought it would be cute to feed the seagulls, but there were more of them than we thought. Soon, a massive flock ambushed us and while fleeing the pecking creatures we were forced to take refuge under the Explorer until the angry mob subsided. This trip was getting quite boring since nothing out of the ordinary was happening!
Boredom hovered over us and the tedium was unbearable. Something had to happen, anything. This was, shudder the thought, getting peaceful and relaxing. We were listening to a Tigers game on the radio and I was thinking about taking a little nap when I caught a glimpse of someone staggering down the pier in our direction. As the figure got closer, I could see that it was a fairly petite and attractive female, maybe 25 years old, give or take a little. She was quite intoxicated it appeared. She clutched a bottle of cheap wine in one hand and braced herself on the railing with the other.
“Hey Beef,” I said, “check this out!”
“Way ahead of you!” he answered.
The young lady wearing a small T-shirt and sweat pants, reached the end of the pier, stumbled down the short metal steps, somersaulted across the concrete boardwalk and landed with a loud thump right at my feet.
“Hello,” she said without missing a beat. “My name’s Annie!”
“Well hello, Annie,” I answered, looking down at her sprawled out on the concrete. “Nasty little spill you took there. Are you alright?”
“Couldn’ be better,” she slurred. “I didn’ even shpill my wine!”
Annie sat back up and what followed was the most annoying torture I’ve ever been subjected to! Annie began to babble endlessly about nothing in particular. She heard the game on our radio and babbled about how much she loved the Tigers. Then she rambled about her favorite wine, followed by her choice of magazines. In between large gulps of wine, she explained that her boyfriend, a “six foot six, full blooded Huron Indian, named Ripper” was fishing at the end of the pier. He’d taken up fishing as a form of anger management and wasn’t paying any attention to her, so she decided to go for a little walk. Babble, babble, babble…
I wasn’t about to suffer alone, so I invited Beef into the “conversation”.
“This is my good friend Beef,” I introduced. “Beef, this is Annie.”
Annie stood up and extended her hand toward Beef. In the process, she tripped over the radio and landed face down on the concrete. Beef and I jumped up from our lawn chairs and helped her to her feet.
“Whew,” Annie sighed, “almost shpilled it that time!”
I tried to sneak back to my lawn chair. Beef looked to the heavens and whispered, “Thank you, God” while Annie started her drunken babbling again. After she’d exhausted any and all topics of conversation she mentioned something about her “new tattoo”, that peaked our interest.
“You got a tattoo, huh?” Beef asked. “Let’s see it!”
“You wanna shee it? Really?” Annie questioned.
“Sure,” Beef answered. “Let’s have a look!”
Annie took a big swig of her wine. We expected her to roll up her shirtsleeve and reveal the tattoo. Instead, Annie spun around, bent over and dropped her sweats right down to her ankles. Now there were two full moons shining brightly on this wonderful summer night. One was really white. It could’ve used a little exposure to the sun!
“Would you look at that!” I exclaimed. Beef and I knelt down to get a much closer look. Several tourists walking past, enjoying a nice stroll on the beach, were just as surprised as Beef and I. The site of Annie bent over underneath a streetlight was pretty shocking, to be sure! Annie didn’t wear underwear either…
“Boy, what a design,” Beef pointed out. “Very good. You can see everything can’t ya?”
“Yes, it’s very defined,” I said, observing every aspect of the display, “and the tattoo isn’t that shabby either!”
“Right, the tattoo…” Beef muttered. He looked at the artwork on her pale left “cheek” and studied it as intently as an archeologist going through a pile of fossils. “What is it?”
“Why it’s a rose if I’m not mistaken,” I answered.
“Yep, it’s a rose!” Annie clarified, still bent over. “I designed it myself!”
“And what a lovely rose it is too!” I said. “What’s that? Is that supposed to be a thorn?”
“Uh…that’s a hair!” Beef said. He plucked the little hair and Annie let out a small yelp. She turned back around and pulled her sweats back up. She started babbling again, but Beef and I didn’t here a word of it. After an eternity, Annie said she had to check on Ripper and wished us a good night. We complimented her on the tattoo and went back to fishing.
“That was different!” Beef said as we settled back in our lawn chairs.
“Yes it was,” I said, “but you realize that no one is going to believe this little tale, don’t you?”
Beef nodded. Shortly thereafter Wally and The Squirrel came back from their food run.
“Catch anything while we were gone?” Wally asked.
“Just a catfish,” Beef answered.
“Any size to it?” Wally questioned.
“Nope,” I said. “It was rather petite!”
“Something happened,” The Squirrel said, “Beef’s drooling!”
Beef was trying to relay the sordid details of Annie’s display when I noticed that she was coming back down the pier. Beef and I needed proof of this event. This time, she was coming back empty handed, however. After what was becoming a routine slip and fall off the pier, I helped Annie back up and asked her if she needed something more to drink.
“Oh yesh,” she exclaimed. “Got any wine?”
“Hey Wally? You got that bottle of ‘Ol’ Wallace’ in your car?” I asked.
“Yeah…you want it?” he offered. I nodded my head and he retrieved the bottle from the trunk. “Ol’ Wallace” is Wally’s famous homemade apple cider wine. It packs so much of a punch that it can’t be truly considered just a wine. The alcohol content is such that if the ATF got a hold of it, it would be deemed a controlled substance in no time! Wally never imbibes alcohol yet one of his hobbies is winemaking. Go figure!
“Here you go,” he said as he handed me the bottle. “This ones been aged…should have some bite!”
“Ooh, vintage last year!” I gleefully pointed out. Before I could warn Annie about it, she swiped the bottle from my hand and started chugging it down. She polished off half the bottle and began swaying back and forth.
“My tummies all warm,” she mumbled as her eyes rolled back in her head.
SMACK! There she lay on the concrete. The Squirrel’s mouth dropped open.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
“Wow!” Annie yelled. “That’s got shome kick to it!”
Wally and Beef helped Annie back on her feet.
“Say Annie,” I said sensing an opportunity, “I’ll bet my friends would love to see your tattoo!”
Wally and The Squirrel gave me a confused look and mouthed, “Huh?”
“You think sho?” she whispered.
“Oh yeah!” Beef jumped in. Annie turned around, bent over and down came the sweat pants again. Right down to the ankles as she did before. This time she started stumbling backwards toward Wally.
“Shee it?” she cooed, still stumbling backwards. “Look at it! Ain’t it pretty?”
“Holy moly!” Wally gasped, wiping sweat from his brow and backing away. Annie teetered for a moment and then toppled over into the sand. She was out cold, knees spread far apart, sweat pants still around her ankles. Several tourists wandered by on their moonlight strolls and their eyes jumped right out of the sockets.
“Gorgeous night isn’t it folks?” Wally nervously conversed. “Boy, look at all those stars…don’t look down there, look up there…in the sky! Look in the sky!”
“Nice diversionary tactic,” I said. “What are we gonna do now?”
“First, we gotta get her pants back up!” Wally exclaimed. Another round of people wandered by. “We can’t leave her here like this!”
“Why not?” The Squirrel asked.
“Yes sir, folks…enjoying this fine night are you?” Wally continued. “Nothing like an innocent, uneventful walk on the beach to get the blood pumping! Just keep walking…yes sir. Gorgeous night!”
“I can’t get her pants back up!” I pointed out. “Too much dead weight!”
“Hurry up!” Wally hissed. Annie would mumble occasionally. “Let me lift her up a little bit, that should help take some weight off! Heh heh, folks…not what it looks like! Just look at the light reflect off that water…breath taking huh? Romantic…”
Beef and The Squirrel, meanwhile, were playing rock, paper, scissors to see who was going to claim this “gift from heaven” as The Squirrel called it.
“Ha, paper beats rock! I win!” Beef shouted.
“That’s no fair,” The Squirrel squealed. “You got the last one!”
“Knock it off you two!” Wally scolded in his “fatherly” voice. “Have some decency will ya?”
“He’s right, Beef,” The Squirrel reasoned. “Sharing would be the decent thing to do!”
“Share?” Wally erupted, “Why don’t you try having some morals!”
“I’d thought about having some oral,” Beef said, “but with her being passed out and all, I didn’t think she’d be…”
“He said ‘morals’, Beef!” I grunted through clenched teeth, placing strict emphasis on the letter “m” and quickly derailing his simple yet one tracked mind. “Morals!”
I finally got Annie’s pants back up. She mumbled through her "Ol’ Wallace" induced stupor and continued to lie in the sand. The four of us regained our composure and settled back in our lawn chairs, oblivious to the drunken woman immediately behind us. We were fairly calm when, suddenly, the metal walkway on the pier started shaking. The shaking was getting louder and we noticed a large man plodding towards us. He was a really large man…he looked like the Incredible Hulk, only his hair was longer and he was uglier. It was Ripper and, from the looks of things, his anger management activities were unsuccessful. He came off the pier and noticed his girlfriend lying in the sand.
“Aw, Damn it, Annie!” he roared. “I told ya not to get drunk!”
Ripper gave us an evil look; we innocently shrugged our shoulders as he hoisted Annie over one shoulder. He carried her to his truck, flopped her in the front seat and tore out of the parking lot. I caught a glimpse of his bumper sticker that read “Guns don’t kill people…I kill people!”
“That guy was huge!” The Squirrel stated. “What were you thinking, Beef?”
“You know what’s funny?” I said. “Just imagine how mad he’d be if she woke up and said something about how we liked her tattoo!”
“That’d be hilarious!” Beef laughed. “If we hear war drums, we’d better get out of here!”
Later that evening as we were fishing along and chuckling over the Annie event, Ripper was busy putting his drunken mate to bed. His mood was most foul at her state of inebriation and what she mumbled next sent him over the edge.
“Those guys were nice,” she mumbled. “They really liked my tattoo.”
Many miles away, Wally sat up in his lawn chair.
“Did you hear that?” Wally asked. “It sounded like a roar!”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “How about you guys?”
“Nothing,” Beef answered.
“Maybe I’m just getting tired,” Wally sighed.
Had there been war drums, we might’ve had ample warning. Instead we were completely off guard when Ripper’s pick up truck screeched into the parking lot and jumped the curb heading straight towards us. We did the brave thing and scattered in all directions when he jumped from the truck, picked up a large piece of driftwood, and charged after us. I won’t go into explicit details because there’s nothing that I can add to the graphic accounts that showed up in the local newspaper the next day. They were pretty much dead on although they discreetly left out the part about Beef diving into the back seat of some car where two individuals, male and female, were taking advantage of the evening’s romantic ambiance. It was probably for the best as I’m sure the young woman’s parents would’ve been shocked to read that their daughter was running around the parking lot without her shirt on let alone the details of how she got to that point! Witnesses were able to describe our panic in full detail. There was the usual screaming, the profanity and the endless fleeing and eluding. They recalled the madman chasing each of us all over hell and back, our dive off the end of the pier and the surprise attack as we tried to sneak to shore.
When Ripper swung the driftwood “club” at Beef’s leg and it flew out of his hand due to water, our blood or some other slimy substance, people walking along the beach perfectly quoted my brilliant idea, which for the record, was one of those ideas that’s better left unsaid.
“Why the hell are we running? There’s freakin’ four of us and only one of him!” I screamed. The Squirrel took my observation to heart and launched his meek frame onto Ripper’s back as the mad man was scrambling around for another piece of wood. Beef and I each grabbed a leg and Wally, reserved under most circumstances, stood in front screaming, “You want a piece of me?” while dancing around like Sugar Ray Leonard.
The resulting fracas, brought on by a collective display of foolish bravado, began in the parking lot, continued through the putt putt golf course and crashed into a sophisticated outdoor gala on the patio of the Oscoda Area Yacht Club. Several men in black ties valiantly attempted to break up the lengthy skirmish while other Yacht Club members tried to continue with their ballroom dancing. The band kept playing “It Had To Be You” and the members were, understandably, a little miffed at the whole riot. I think that they were mostly upset that The Squirrel had mistakenly shattered a bottle of Dom Perignon ’65 over Beef’s head as I was trying to drown Ripper, or someone with long hair, in a bowl of their fine Beluga caviar. The broken chairs and tables didn’t seem to upset them as much as the busted bottle of champagne. Beef, thinking that Ripper had assaulted him with the bottle, returned serve and started bludgeoning away with a turkey leg that he’d grabbed from the scattered remains of the buffet table.
“You like that? Huh? You want some more?” Beef yelled. “I’ll give ya some more!”
“Ouch!” Wally screamed. “Who’s hitting me with a damn turkey leg? You want a piece of me? Motherf--!” Oops, I think the bad influence struck again.
Once the dust had settled and the effects of the pepper spray had worn off, we were able to look back on the evening’s festivities with a clear head.
“You gonna call your wife and tell her what happened?” I asked Wally.
“What for…she’ll just blame you,” he answered. “Besides, I think I’ve got enough money to make bail!”
“Me too,” I said.
“Got any idea what a fine for disturbing the peace might run?” Wally asked.
“Oh a hundred,” I guessed, “maybe a hundred fifty…can’t be that much.”
“Do you think they’ll take credit cards?” Wally questioned.
“I think so,” I answered. “I mean, this is a tourist town…why wouldn’t they?”
Wally and I began to laugh. That’s the thing with Wally and I, we can always find the humor in just about anything. We could afford to laugh because unlike Beef and The Squirrel, we weren’t sharing our holding cell with a mad man named Ripper!
“Maybe if the screaming stops, we can get a little shut eye,” I said.
“Uh huh…maybe,” Wally sighed.
“Knock off all that screaming, down there!” I shouted down the hall. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
* an excerpt from:
White Tailed Annie’s New Tattoo*
I made a cast into the rust colored, slow current of the Au Sable River. The large bell sinker made a loud “plop” as it entered the water, sending another plump night crawler to it’s doom. After placing the rod into the makeshift rod holder, I flopped back into my lawn chair and gazed up at all the shining stars. It was a beautiful summer night.
Beef and I were a bit unsettled, of course. Beautiful nights are not the norm when we take to the water. We kept looking up at the stars. Where were the storm clouds? Where was the wind? We kept waiting for a storm front or a fog bank…anything. The madness was almost unbearable!
We were on our annual “Sheephead” expedition in Oscoda, Michigan. It started out years ago as a catfish expedition after we’d read an article in Woods N Water News about the fantastic channel cat fishery at the mouth of the Au Sable. The author was holding up a giant, gray, catfish and we decided to give it a try. All we caught was a bunch of grunting sheephead, but had a blast in the process. It is now a much-anticipated portion of our yearly schedule of events and almost rivals our annual salmon vacation.
Wally and The Squirrel were with us, but they’d ventured into town to grab a bite to eat. Their lawn chairs and fishing poles were sitting on the cement boardwalk that leads to the long pier into the harbor.
The trip started out promising. As we headed north up I-75, the sky was black and churning. Beef, The Squirrel, and I came up earlier in the afternoon. Getting a later start, Wally had to negotiate with his significant other and was granted permission to attend the trip on the condition that he’d refrain from any activities that I suggested. Apparently, his young son had learned some choice words and strangely enough, he learned them right after a trip onto Lake Michigan with Wally and myself. For a week or so, after the trip, Wally Jr. would playfully mention the words in all kinds of settings: Church, Daycare, Grandma’s house, etc. Wally’s wife reasoned that her fine, upstanding, husband would never utter such words and by process of elimination, I was targeted as the bad influence. She’s always viewed me as a bad influence and the “words incident” only added fuel to the fire, hence her reluctance in letting Wally attend this years trip.
As I was saying, the sky was churning black as the three of us traveled up the highway. My Explorer rattled and shook as rain and hail splattered all around. Lightening bolts danced across the sky and the wind was roaring. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Beef and I yawned when a tornado cut across the highway, picking up a motor home from a storage place and dropping it right in our path. I swerved around that, dodged an uprooted oak tree, and continued north toward our destination. Mother Nature, quite frustrated that her little onslaught had failed to bother us, quickly relented and the sky was blue once again.
“Did I miss anything?” The Squirrel asked as he awoke from a short nap.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Beef answered.
Ordinary was the key word on this trip. Beef and I stared at our rod tips, waiting for a hit. The fishing was quite good, but the evident lack of surprise was gnawing at us. Beef had just changed into dry clothes after his little tumble off the pier. He bounced off some large boulders before hitting the water and had a noticeable limp afterwards. Wally managed to lose a rod when a large carp picked up his night crawler and headed toward the lake. The rod flew out of the rod holder and entered the water like a javelin. Somehow, my hook caught the rod as it scraped across the bottom and we were able to retrieve the rod as well as the thieving carp. The Squirrel and I thought it would be cute to feed the seagulls, but there were more of them than we thought. Soon, a massive flock ambushed us and while fleeing the pecking creatures we were forced to take refuge under the Explorer until the angry mob subsided. This trip was getting quite boring since nothing out of the ordinary was happening!
Boredom hovered over us and the tedium was unbearable. Something had to happen, anything. This was, shudder the thought, getting peaceful and relaxing. We were listening to a Tigers game on the radio and I was thinking about taking a little nap when I caught a glimpse of someone staggering down the pier in our direction. As the figure got closer, I could see that it was a fairly petite and attractive female, maybe 25 years old, give or take a little. She was quite intoxicated it appeared. She clutched a bottle of cheap wine in one hand and braced herself on the railing with the other.
“Hey Beef,” I said, “check this out!”
“Way ahead of you!” he answered.
The young lady wearing a small T-shirt and sweat pants, reached the end of the pier, stumbled down the short metal steps, somersaulted across the concrete boardwalk and landed with a loud thump right at my feet.
“Hello,” she said without missing a beat. “My name’s Annie!”
“Well hello, Annie,” I answered, looking down at her sprawled out on the concrete. “Nasty little spill you took there. Are you alright?”
“Couldn’ be better,” she slurred. “I didn’ even shpill my wine!”
Annie sat back up and what followed was the most annoying torture I’ve ever been subjected to! Annie began to babble endlessly about nothing in particular. She heard the game on our radio and babbled about how much she loved the Tigers. Then she rambled about her favorite wine, followed by her choice of magazines. In between large gulps of wine, she explained that her boyfriend, a “six foot six, full blooded Huron Indian, named Ripper” was fishing at the end of the pier. He’d taken up fishing as a form of anger management and wasn’t paying any attention to her, so she decided to go for a little walk. Babble, babble, babble…
I wasn’t about to suffer alone, so I invited Beef into the “conversation”.
“This is my good friend Beef,” I introduced. “Beef, this is Annie.”
Annie stood up and extended her hand toward Beef. In the process, she tripped over the radio and landed face down on the concrete. Beef and I jumped up from our lawn chairs and helped her to her feet.
“Whew,” Annie sighed, “almost shpilled it that time!”
I tried to sneak back to my lawn chair. Beef looked to the heavens and whispered, “Thank you, God” while Annie started her drunken babbling again. After she’d exhausted any and all topics of conversation she mentioned something about her “new tattoo”, that peaked our interest.
“You got a tattoo, huh?” Beef asked. “Let’s see it!”
“You wanna shee it? Really?” Annie questioned.
“Sure,” Beef answered. “Let’s have a look!”
Annie took a big swig of her wine. We expected her to roll up her shirtsleeve and reveal the tattoo. Instead, Annie spun around, bent over and dropped her sweats right down to her ankles. Now there were two full moons shining brightly on this wonderful summer night. One was really white. It could’ve used a little exposure to the sun!
“Would you look at that!” I exclaimed. Beef and I knelt down to get a much closer look. Several tourists walking past, enjoying a nice stroll on the beach, were just as surprised as Beef and I. The site of Annie bent over underneath a streetlight was pretty shocking, to be sure! Annie didn’t wear underwear either…
“Boy, what a design,” Beef pointed out. “Very good. You can see everything can’t ya?”
“Yes, it’s very defined,” I said, observing every aspect of the display, “and the tattoo isn’t that shabby either!”
“Right, the tattoo…” Beef muttered. He looked at the artwork on her pale left “cheek” and studied it as intently as an archeologist going through a pile of fossils. “What is it?”
“Why it’s a rose if I’m not mistaken,” I answered.
“Yep, it’s a rose!” Annie clarified, still bent over. “I designed it myself!”
“And what a lovely rose it is too!” I said. “What’s that? Is that supposed to be a thorn?”
“Uh…that’s a hair!” Beef said. He plucked the little hair and Annie let out a small yelp. She turned back around and pulled her sweats back up. She started babbling again, but Beef and I didn’t here a word of it. After an eternity, Annie said she had to check on Ripper and wished us a good night. We complimented her on the tattoo and went back to fishing.
“That was different!” Beef said as we settled back in our lawn chairs.
“Yes it was,” I said, “but you realize that no one is going to believe this little tale, don’t you?”
Beef nodded. Shortly thereafter Wally and The Squirrel came back from their food run.
“Catch anything while we were gone?” Wally asked.
“Just a catfish,” Beef answered.
“Any size to it?” Wally questioned.
“Nope,” I said. “It was rather petite!”
“Something happened,” The Squirrel said, “Beef’s drooling!”
Beef was trying to relay the sordid details of Annie’s display when I noticed that she was coming back down the pier. Beef and I needed proof of this event. This time, she was coming back empty handed, however. After what was becoming a routine slip and fall off the pier, I helped Annie back up and asked her if she needed something more to drink.
“Oh yesh,” she exclaimed. “Got any wine?”
“Hey Wally? You got that bottle of ‘Ol’ Wallace’ in your car?” I asked.
“Yeah…you want it?” he offered. I nodded my head and he retrieved the bottle from the trunk. “Ol’ Wallace” is Wally’s famous homemade apple cider wine. It packs so much of a punch that it can’t be truly considered just a wine. The alcohol content is such that if the ATF got a hold of it, it would be deemed a controlled substance in no time! Wally never imbibes alcohol yet one of his hobbies is winemaking. Go figure!
“Here you go,” he said as he handed me the bottle. “This ones been aged…should have some bite!”
“Ooh, vintage last year!” I gleefully pointed out. Before I could warn Annie about it, she swiped the bottle from my hand and started chugging it down. She polished off half the bottle and began swaying back and forth.
“My tummies all warm,” she mumbled as her eyes rolled back in her head.
SMACK! There she lay on the concrete. The Squirrel’s mouth dropped open.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
“Wow!” Annie yelled. “That’s got shome kick to it!”
Wally and Beef helped Annie back on her feet.
“Say Annie,” I said sensing an opportunity, “I’ll bet my friends would love to see your tattoo!”
Wally and The Squirrel gave me a confused look and mouthed, “Huh?”
“You think sho?” she whispered.
“Oh yeah!” Beef jumped in. Annie turned around, bent over and down came the sweat pants again. Right down to the ankles as she did before. This time she started stumbling backwards toward Wally.
“Shee it?” she cooed, still stumbling backwards. “Look at it! Ain’t it pretty?”
“Holy moly!” Wally gasped, wiping sweat from his brow and backing away. Annie teetered for a moment and then toppled over into the sand. She was out cold, knees spread far apart, sweat pants still around her ankles. Several tourists wandered by on their moonlight strolls and their eyes jumped right out of the sockets.
“Gorgeous night isn’t it folks?” Wally nervously conversed. “Boy, look at all those stars…don’t look down there, look up there…in the sky! Look in the sky!”
“Nice diversionary tactic,” I said. “What are we gonna do now?”
“First, we gotta get her pants back up!” Wally exclaimed. Another round of people wandered by. “We can’t leave her here like this!”
“Why not?” The Squirrel asked.
“Yes sir, folks…enjoying this fine night are you?” Wally continued. “Nothing like an innocent, uneventful walk on the beach to get the blood pumping! Just keep walking…yes sir. Gorgeous night!”
“I can’t get her pants back up!” I pointed out. “Too much dead weight!”
“Hurry up!” Wally hissed. Annie would mumble occasionally. “Let me lift her up a little bit, that should help take some weight off! Heh heh, folks…not what it looks like! Just look at the light reflect off that water…breath taking huh? Romantic…”
Beef and The Squirrel, meanwhile, were playing rock, paper, scissors to see who was going to claim this “gift from heaven” as The Squirrel called it.
“Ha, paper beats rock! I win!” Beef shouted.
“That’s no fair,” The Squirrel squealed. “You got the last one!”
“Knock it off you two!” Wally scolded in his “fatherly” voice. “Have some decency will ya?”
“He’s right, Beef,” The Squirrel reasoned. “Sharing would be the decent thing to do!”
“Share?” Wally erupted, “Why don’t you try having some morals!”
“I’d thought about having some oral,” Beef said, “but with her being passed out and all, I didn’t think she’d be…”
“He said ‘morals’, Beef!” I grunted through clenched teeth, placing strict emphasis on the letter “m” and quickly derailing his simple yet one tracked mind. “Morals!”
I finally got Annie’s pants back up. She mumbled through her "Ol’ Wallace" induced stupor and continued to lie in the sand. The four of us regained our composure and settled back in our lawn chairs, oblivious to the drunken woman immediately behind us. We were fairly calm when, suddenly, the metal walkway on the pier started shaking. The shaking was getting louder and we noticed a large man plodding towards us. He was a really large man…he looked like the Incredible Hulk, only his hair was longer and he was uglier. It was Ripper and, from the looks of things, his anger management activities were unsuccessful. He came off the pier and noticed his girlfriend lying in the sand.
“Aw, Damn it, Annie!” he roared. “I told ya not to get drunk!”
Ripper gave us an evil look; we innocently shrugged our shoulders as he hoisted Annie over one shoulder. He carried her to his truck, flopped her in the front seat and tore out of the parking lot. I caught a glimpse of his bumper sticker that read “Guns don’t kill people…I kill people!”
“That guy was huge!” The Squirrel stated. “What were you thinking, Beef?”
“You know what’s funny?” I said. “Just imagine how mad he’d be if she woke up and said something about how we liked her tattoo!”
“That’d be hilarious!” Beef laughed. “If we hear war drums, we’d better get out of here!”
Later that evening as we were fishing along and chuckling over the Annie event, Ripper was busy putting his drunken mate to bed. His mood was most foul at her state of inebriation and what she mumbled next sent him over the edge.
“Those guys were nice,” she mumbled. “They really liked my tattoo.”
Many miles away, Wally sat up in his lawn chair.
“Did you hear that?” Wally asked. “It sounded like a roar!”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “How about you guys?”
“Nothing,” Beef answered.
“Maybe I’m just getting tired,” Wally sighed.
Had there been war drums, we might’ve had ample warning. Instead we were completely off guard when Ripper’s pick up truck screeched into the parking lot and jumped the curb heading straight towards us. We did the brave thing and scattered in all directions when he jumped from the truck, picked up a large piece of driftwood, and charged after us. I won’t go into explicit details because there’s nothing that I can add to the graphic accounts that showed up in the local newspaper the next day. They were pretty much dead on although they discreetly left out the part about Beef diving into the back seat of some car where two individuals, male and female, were taking advantage of the evening’s romantic ambiance. It was probably for the best as I’m sure the young woman’s parents would’ve been shocked to read that their daughter was running around the parking lot without her shirt on let alone the details of how she got to that point! Witnesses were able to describe our panic in full detail. There was the usual screaming, the profanity and the endless fleeing and eluding. They recalled the madman chasing each of us all over hell and back, our dive off the end of the pier and the surprise attack as we tried to sneak to shore.
When Ripper swung the driftwood “club” at Beef’s leg and it flew out of his hand due to water, our blood or some other slimy substance, people walking along the beach perfectly quoted my brilliant idea, which for the record, was one of those ideas that’s better left unsaid.
“Why the hell are we running? There’s freakin’ four of us and only one of him!” I screamed. The Squirrel took my observation to heart and launched his meek frame onto Ripper’s back as the mad man was scrambling around for another piece of wood. Beef and I each grabbed a leg and Wally, reserved under most circumstances, stood in front screaming, “You want a piece of me?” while dancing around like Sugar Ray Leonard.
The resulting fracas, brought on by a collective display of foolish bravado, began in the parking lot, continued through the putt putt golf course and crashed into a sophisticated outdoor gala on the patio of the Oscoda Area Yacht Club. Several men in black ties valiantly attempted to break up the lengthy skirmish while other Yacht Club members tried to continue with their ballroom dancing. The band kept playing “It Had To Be You” and the members were, understandably, a little miffed at the whole riot. I think that they were mostly upset that The Squirrel had mistakenly shattered a bottle of Dom Perignon ’65 over Beef’s head as I was trying to drown Ripper, or someone with long hair, in a bowl of their fine Beluga caviar. The broken chairs and tables didn’t seem to upset them as much as the busted bottle of champagne. Beef, thinking that Ripper had assaulted him with the bottle, returned serve and started bludgeoning away with a turkey leg that he’d grabbed from the scattered remains of the buffet table.
“You like that? Huh? You want some more?” Beef yelled. “I’ll give ya some more!”
“Ouch!” Wally screamed. “Who’s hitting me with a damn turkey leg? You want a piece of me? Motherf--!” Oops, I think the bad influence struck again.
Once the dust had settled and the effects of the pepper spray had worn off, we were able to look back on the evening’s festivities with a clear head.
“You gonna call your wife and tell her what happened?” I asked Wally.
“What for…she’ll just blame you,” he answered. “Besides, I think I’ve got enough money to make bail!”
“Me too,” I said.
“Got any idea what a fine for disturbing the peace might run?” Wally asked.
“Oh a hundred,” I guessed, “maybe a hundred fifty…can’t be that much.”
“Do you think they’ll take credit cards?” Wally questioned.
“I think so,” I answered. “I mean, this is a tourist town…why wouldn’t they?”
Wally and I began to laugh. That’s the thing with Wally and I, we can always find the humor in just about anything. We could afford to laugh because unlike Beef and The Squirrel, we weren’t sharing our holding cell with a mad man named Ripper!
“Maybe if the screaming stops, we can get a little shut eye,” I said.
“Uh huh…maybe,” Wally sighed.
“Knock off all that screaming, down there!” I shouted down the hall. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
* an excerpt from: