Life of Nobody

[BadBeast]

These stories are so readable, and moreish, that yes, I agree, (not for entirely selfless reasons) you need to get back in writing mode. I'm sure a good publisher will have your hand off for these one day. (If you decide to publish them) I totally understand why you need to protect your work, and I thank you for posting them, but I'll miss these tales greatly when they are gone. 
My good friend from Australia, Eartha, likes your writing very much indeed. (So much, I think she's registered, and may even be lurking right now)

You have a genuine unpretentious flair for telling a tale, and I really hope it can translate into
a commercially successful Book for you. Thanks again.

[Adios]

These stories are so readable, and moreish, that yes, I agree, (not for entirely selfless reasons) you need to get back in writing mode. I'm sure a good publisher will have your hand off for these one day. (If you decide to publish them) I totally understand why you need to protect your work, and I thank you for posting them, but I'll miss these tales greatly when they are gone. 
My good friend from Australia, Eartha, likes your writing very much indeed. (So much, I think she's registered, and may even be lurking right now)

You have a genuine unpretentious flair for telling a tale, and I really hope it can translate into
a commercially successful Book for you. Thanks again.

Thank you. I should be writing this coming week.

[Adios]

I owned a construction company in Kansas. It was after a major hail storm and all of us contractors were busy replacing roofs. A tornado had come very close to town and the wind and hail had ruined every roof in town.

I got to the point where I hated roofing. It was all we did for almost 2 months. This story is about an easy roofing job. A nice easy pitch and not many cuts at all.

I always watched the skies when we were working because it was, after all, Kansas. This particular day it was over 100 degrees. It was a very hot summer.

I saw one little cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky. It was tiny! I ignored it and we kept working. All of a sudden i looked up and screamed at the crew to get off of the roof. I turned around to shoot one more nail in a roof vent.

As I turned to get off of the roof I was knocked flat on the roof by wind. I was trying to catch my breath when God showed up. I couldn't get up because of the wind and then it started raining. I don't mean rain. It was horrendous. I couldn't see, i finally had to get up or I would have drowned.

As I sat up with the wind screaming at an incredible pitch, the rain was torrential. I couldn't see over 10 feet and I was getting beat badly by the impact of the rain drops. Then I noticed some roofing paper coming loose by the edge of the roof.

I managed to crawl to the edge dragging my nail gun and was shooting it back down.
I was loosing. Suddenly Mark, one of the crew actually came back up on the roof and started helping me. We were sitting 6 feet apart and couldn't hear each other scream at each other.

Then as soon as it started it stopped. The silence was incredible. Mark and I were sitting there dazed. All of our senses were shutdown from what we had just gone through.

Eventually we could see and hear again. As we sat on the roof we could see large trees down in the middle of the street. The ringing in our ears gradually subsided and we just looked at each other as we sat there realizing what we had just been through.

Mark and I had been on a roof working as a tornado had come through. Then we got the giggles. We were soaked beyond repair. The rest of the crew came out of the garage where they had hole up while it had been going on. They were wide eyed while looking at us and all we could do was laugh because we were still alive.

Then the home owner, a very kind and quiet spoken elderly lady came out of the house screaming at Mark and I for not hiding. I tried to explain that there was no way I could have gotten off of the roof but she wasn't having it.


She brought us towels and we dried off as well as we could. Then the wobbly knees started and we just had to sit down. I called it a day and we went to the bar.

[Eartha-ly Delights]

I'm loving this vignette thing you've got going on. It's perfectly suited to the Boys Own Annual on Bourbon style of tales you're assembling here.Your talent with an economy of words is enviable


And I also think I'm officially stalking you now.


Sorry.

[Adios]

I'm loving this vignette thing you've got going on. It's perfectly suited to the Boys Own Annual on Bourbon style of tales you're assembling here.Your talent with an economy of words is enviable


And I also think I'm officially stalking you now.


Sorry.

[Juana]

Holy mackerel! Sounds like a wild ride. I was sad to see it go and I'm very glad to see it return!

[Adios]

Holy mackerel! Sounds like a wild ride. I was sad to see it go and I'm very glad to see it return!

Thanks.

[Adios]

It was summer and hot. I was working upstairs at the bar we owned. There were several windows that would not open and I wanted to get a cross breeze to cool the bar down.

I got several opened and was working on the last one. The building was built in the late 1800's so this was the old thin glass.

Finally the window moved and I thought I had it. I was wrong. Again.

As I watched everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The glass shattered. The frame of the window collapsed. A piece of glass about a foot long and perfectly shaped like a dagger fell. It stabbed me in the wrist and stayed there.

I am sure this all happened in seconds but if felt like minutes. I knew the pain would kick in any second and that I had to remove the glass from my wrist before that happened. I grabbed the glass and pulled. It came out very easily.

Followed by regular squirts of blood shooting about 15 feet. I think shock was setting in, as I was fascinated by the blood squirting like that. Then reality came crashing down on me.

I grabbed my wrist as tight as I could, but could not stop the blood. I took off running downstairs to get help. I should have gotten close and yelled for help, but I didn't take time to think things through. My wife was in the kitchen and I went right to her, now just holding my hand over the gush so I didn't contaminate anything.

My wife grabbed my wrist, ran it under cold water and was screaming for someone to call 911. Everyone was frozen in place and not moving.

Then something very strange happened. I quit bleeding. Completely. Not even one more drop.

For a long time we all just stood there and watched, and waited. Nothing happened. We will never know exactly what my wife did to stop the bleeding, but we are glad she did.

More of the unexplained to follow.

[Adios]

My first wife and I were on a road trip, just a day trip. It had been along day and I was getting tired.

We were on an Interstate highway and in those days they had to steel delineator posts, not the plastic ones like now that flop down when you hit them.

I was driving a full size conversion van and reached down to get something off of the floor. My wife yelled and I looked up. There was no way I was going to miss that post.

Oh, I tried. I swerved, but I was too close. This was a new van and very expensive. I knew the post wouldn't hurt us, but I also knew it was going to mess up the van pretty bad.

Once again everything went to slow motion. As we were going to make impact I yelled, NO!

Then things got weird. Real weird. My wife and I both watched as the green post with some rust around the top where it had been pounded in came through the van, and her leg and out the door. Without causing any damage whatsoever. Not even a scratch.

I stopped the van and walked back to the post. It looked identical to what we had both seen come through the van, and was standing perfectly upright. Unharmed.

No damage to the van, no damage to my wife, no damage to the post. I don't know what happened, just that something had happened which was very much out of the ordinary.

[BadBeast]

I watched someone cut half of his finger off, with a circular bench saw once. There was about three or four huge squirts of blood, (10 feet+) then a couple of smaller ones, then it stopped completely, and he passed out. I had to find his half finger in the sawdust, &  pack it between two bags of frozen peas, so it could accompany him to the Hospital. (They sewed it back on, but it was always a bit crooked after that)  


Or maybe you just ran out of blood.

[Adios]

We were living in a town called Ogden, Kansas which is just outside the gates of Ft. Riley. There were sever storms all over the region so we were all glued to our televisions and radios. This was tornado alley, after all.

Then some horrible news came across the air, Chatman, Ks has just been almost decimated by a tornado. Then our sirens started going off. We were in a tornado warning. My wife and I were on our small porch watching the sky when the neighbors across the street came out of their trailer.

The younger one was very pregnant and her and her mother were both terrified. We lived in a house with a small crawl space so we had them come over. We got the crawl space ready and put the animals in it.

A fire truck was driving around telling everybody to take cover because a tornado was going to hit us. As they saw my wife and myself on our porch with beers they laughed over the intercom and said, "Get back in the house you rednecks!" We laughed and waved back, but we stayed on the porch.

By now the television was out, satellite tv, so we were just listening to the radio. Trained storm spotters had just reported a tornado on the ground, estimated one mole wide, and one mile from Ogden and traveling in excess of 40 miles per hour.

Now we went to the crawl space, got in and secured it as well as we could. The tornado was an F5 and bearing right down on us. The town of Ogden wasn't even a mile wide so the destruction was guaranteed to be complete.

Then everything went perfectly quiet and still. The wind which had been shaking the house simply died. The rain and hail stopped. No thunder was to be heard. This was terrifying.

Then on the radio we heard the tornado had jumped right over us and had hit Manhattan, Ks. where it destroyed several homes and businesses. Wide swaths of trees were just ripped out.

We were very lucky.

[Adios]

Those last three will need editing, so I will do this before I write any further.

[Adios]

We were up hunting and a foot of fresh snow had fallen the night before. Steve was in the truck with me and I found a way to the top of a mountain. It was only about 11,000 feet so the snow wasn't too deep to deal with.

The top of this mountain was like a plateau, nice and flat. I was driving slowly and just making a comment about how pretty it was. My remark was cut short by the right side of the truck dropping about 4 feet.

This was old mining country and there were sink holes everywhere and I had found one. We were hanging in our seatbelts, but at least Steve had the passenger door for support. I reached over and pulled him up so he could undo his seatbelt.

Then I rolled my window down all the way and helped him crawl out. I had to stay where I was because there was no way I could have gotten back in position to drive if I moved.

There was a tree stump just in reach of the winch cable so I told Steve to put the cable around the bottom of the stump. Since the stump was rotten he had to hold it as high as he could reach to help it not get pulled down.

While all of this is going on several thoughts were going through my head. How deep was the sinkhole? Was it going to collapse under the weight of the truck? What if we pulled the stump over instead of pulling the truck out? Oh, well, back to business.

I put the truck in gear and started the winch. It was pretty tricky. The stump made a loud cracking noise, and the truck was moving, but slowly. As the front wheels came out of the hole the truck frame looked really twisted.

The stump was still making groaning noises and if it broke then the truck would fall back in the hole. Finally the entire truck was out of the hole. I was sweating and breathing hard. Steve was grinning.

When Steve reached down to remove the winch cable from the stump, it fell over. Then it all got funny.

Steve walked in front of the truck until I was back in our original tracks coming in, then we went back to camp for the day.

Hunting was always fun.

[Adios]

This is one story I am not proud of, but when I stated this book my decision was that I would not spare myself. This is a tale of personal failure and regret.

I was 17 years old and in a bit of trouble with the law. Something, unfortunately, I was accustomed to. My sentence was simple. The judge said I could join the army, or I could go to state school until I turned 18. Without thought I said I would join the army.

So off I went on an army bus from Florida to South Carolina. There were a lot of us, mostly draftees. Vietnam was rocking and the army required cannon fodder.

Some guy with stripes on his uniform was screaming at to bend over and crack a smile. I had no idea what was coming until the finger showed up. Ugh. Then over 100 of us, all naked were marched to get uniforms. It was good to be dressed again, if for no other reason than to protect the rear.

I actually enjoyed basic training. I was at the top of the battallion all the way through. Then we took 'rests' to determine what we could do for the army. Almost every one was sent to infantry. I was sent to Combat Engineering training in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.

For those of you who don't know what a combat engineer is, it is someone who builds roads and bridges until a shot is fired, then you are infantry. Glamorous, isn't it?

I was doing very well in training, I enjoyed it. The forced marches, physical training, all of it was second nature.

About halfway through training we all got a weekend pass. Our first. SO 4 of us went together and we had one helluva good time. Evidently too good. We were in Joplin, Missouri, trouble was I woke up in Florida. I don't know how I got there.

Well I was almost to Clearwater, my cousin Ruby on my stepfathers side lived there. We had been a thing and I was already in big trouble, so what the heck. Well she came with me and we went back to Moore Haven, where our thing had started.

I was not happy, and I don't think she was either. I found our old friend network and got her a place to stay. A couple of days later she was in jail for being a runaway. I went to see her and turned myself in. I knew I had screwed up and was determined to face the hangman.

Well, they put me in jail until the army came. The army put me in leg and wrist irons and put me on a bus. We went to Ft. Benning, Ga. I was put in D cell, maximum security. I was confused, after all, i had only gone AWOL and had turned myself in.

Eventually I was sent back to Ft. Leonard Wood and placed in protective custody. I was even more confused. Then it all got cleared up. Some had robbed my buddies blind. It wasn't me, no idea who it was though. I was sent to Joplin, to a civilian jail for 42 days, awaiting trial. There never was any trial, after this I was sent back to Ft. Leonard Wood.

At my Courts Martial they asked me if I wanted to be in the army. The question caught me off guard, and after thinking it over I looked at them and said I honestly didn't know.

I was discharged under general, but honorable conditions. I wonder what would have happened if I had said yes.

[Epimetheus]

I'm really liking these stories. Props to you, Charley (if that's your real name). You've had quite an experience.