My Personal Rogue's Gallery.

Friends, Family and other malcontents.

We all have them, don't we?
Oh, you know who I am talking about.  It might be Uncle Percy, who collects ear wax and makes religious statues out of it.  It could be the neighbor who borrowed your riding mower and sold it on ebay.  Maybe it is Uncle Wally who has a pet duck that he walks on a leash every day.
They are colorful characters in your personal history.  Some of them are fun, a few weirdos, an equal number of crooks and psychos.

I will start with Uncle Leonard, the low talker.
Uncle Lenny is a small guy.  I am a talking "small".  He makes Barney Fife look tall and beefy.  That may be his problem.  He overcompensates.  He can drink like a man that is 7 feet tall.  Lenny is 5' 1".   He drives a huge truck.
When he drinks he acts like he is 7 feet tall.  He gets belligerent.  He picks fights with big people. Fortunately everyone knows about Lenny, and they act accordingly.  Usually they just put their hand on Lenny's head and he swings wildly until he tires.
If the big guy grows weary of Lenny's swinging, he puts his thumb and index finger together and flick him in the chest, very much in the same style that someone would flick an errant booger from their fingers ... and Uncle Leonard would go flying.

Uncle Lenny had a way of exacting his revenge.  He was a low talker. He was also an accomplished mumbler.  You had to lean very close to him, bend down and say "What"? He could say things to people and they would look at each other and ask, "Did he just insult me?"....Nah!!!  This was when he was sober.  When had a few extra samplings from the brown bottles he talked incomprehensible gibberish.

I heard rumors that he was a faux Navaho code talker during the cold war while he was in the army.  His commanding officers would give him a six pack and then they would write up bogus messages for Lenny to transmit verbally.
Apparently there are sixteen nations still trying to decipher the code, including ours.
My Uncle Lenny.

Then there was my former friend, Quisling Von Heussen.  Even back in the late 50's he was strange.  He was Swiss.  He had relatives in Zurich.  He was always saying nice things about Hitler.  He would say things like Hitler was better looking than Churchill.
He said Hitler could run faster than Roosevelt and Eva Braun was better looking than Eleanor Roosevelt.  He also stated that Hitler could dance better than Joe Stalin.  It really aggravated me because I could not disprove his argument.
I did point out that Hitler did make some major social blunders.  Quis didn't really want to talk about that.  He preferred to say how well Hitler trimmed his mustache an how shiny his boots were.
I grew tired of Quis.  That last time I saw him he was handing out brochures for the Tea party.  He had shiny boots and a little Charlie Chaplin mustache.

Then there is my friend Miguel Heraldo.  He liked cars.  I was a very good friend.  He came to me and ask to borrow $1500 so he could get a car.   I had been burned by him before, but it was a small amount. I said I couldn't do it.  His wife said, "I'll make sure he pays it back if you co-sign for him".  I finally caved in and I cosigned.  He made two payments.  The bank started calling ME!  I went to his house and asked him about the payment.  He said he had paid it late, and not to worry about it.  I should have been suspicious when I saw the U-haul truck in the driveway and the boxes in the living room.
He moved to Georgia the next day.  I was left to pay his bill. I learned a lesson.

A few years passed and he found my email address somehow and he wanted to be my buddy.  I never answered his email.  He went to a mutual friend and asked, "What's the matter with Jonathan Hemlock?  I email him and he never answers".
The mutual friend and I had a conversation and I said I would answer Miguel.  I did. I questioned his honesty and integrity.  He answered that nothing like that ever happened.  I was lying, where is my proof?  He remembers nothing of that. He verbally attacked me to my friends.  He said I was a liar.  I wasn't really surprised.  5 years go by.....I moved on.
Now, He wants to be my Facebook friend. Yikes!!!
What a World. This is the Casey Anthony Era.

Then we have my Cousin Lonnie Hemlock, the collector.
Lonnie is a bright guy.  He is good at fixing things.
A few years ago you could drive your own garbage to the landfill and drop it off.
Lonnie's problem with the landfill was that he would bring home more than he would drop off.  He was actually making more space in the landfill for people like me. While most people, referred to it as "the dump",  Lonnie called it "the Mall".

I went to his house one day to do some type of family business.  I climbed over various car parts, bike parts, old air conditioners, carcasses of various vermin and other sundry products and made my way to the front door from the porch.  I knocked on the door.  The door tilted at an angle and fell into the kitchen.
Cousin Lonnie was in the kitchen.  I think it was the kitchen.  Hard to tell.  I couldn't see a sink.  I did see a refrigerator. Three actually.
"Come in! Come in.  Hmmm! I'll have to fix that one of these days. How about a cup of coffee?"
I looked around the room.
"Thanks anyway, Lonnie, I have to be somewhere else in 10 minutes." (Anywhere else! please!!) "I'll just sit on this beanbag chair since all your other chairs have stuff on them."(Beanbag chair in the kitchen?)
"Oh..that isn't a beanbag chair, that's a bag of garbage."
"Oh?" I was impressed.  He actually had some garbage in bags. I got out of there as quick as possible.
Sadly, a couple  of years later the town burned the house to the ground.  Strangely, it is the second one of his houses they had to burn to the ground.  I am sure many little critters died a fiery death.  I believe they invited the national guard and a reserve unit to shoot the rats as they were fleeing the burning building.

Moving on....

I met my friend Agatha on the beach a few weeks ago.  She just won't give up. She had to vent or spew her opinions once again.
She is always talking about "the blacks". Obama, the black, not Obama the president.  The blacks are taking over the country.  They are ruining it. They have insufficient brain matter to run this country. We are doomed.
She listens to such intellectual heavyweights as Rush Limbaugh, Homer Simpson and Glen Beck.
These are her happiest moment in her life. She is in her element when she is criticizing a democrat, a black, a foreigner (Kenyan?).... Obama.. JACKPOT!!!.. bells and whistles, patriotic music.  Flying spittle and excitement.  I think she just had a political orgasm.
Is that possible?

Finally...one day I just looked at her kind of funny and she said, "What?"
"Your one of us, aren't you?"
Agatha was dumbstruck. "Wha..What too hell are you talking about?
"You're...a black, aren't you?...one of us."
"You're not black, fool!! You're as white as me."
"I mentioned before that I am Obama's cousin. We are black Irish. Uh..huh..look at your skin. Is that the skin of a white person?"
Agatha sits in the sun every day.  She has a deep tan.  Is that tan all from the sun?

"Don't deny it.  I will not ax you to dance or dunk a basket or spell incarcerated.  You are a black.  Just like me."
I gestured for her to give me a high five.  She ignored it.
"You're crazy!!!" she snorted as she ran off the beach.
I turned to the little French lady and said, "I think we have resolved this issue."
We did the high five.

I have a lot more weird friends.  They are interesting people. But I don't want you to think all my friends are weird, just most of them.