Wild Bucks, Honky Tonks And Other Crazy Stories From The American South: Case Knives, The Sawmill and The Supervisior

Case Knives, The Sawmill and The Supervisor

This Is An On-Going Short Story Fiction Series

By Wild Bucks

     Sawmill supervisor Raymond Richards sat at his kitchen table in his brand, spanking new doublewide trailer in the south part of Muhlenberg County, Ky., after a long day at work. He was extremely proud of his new trailer as the all stainless steel kitchen appliances sparkled in the background behind him where he was sitting.

     A young insurance agent name Bill Lester who was fresh out of college from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., and was a very naive and gullible but a friendly fellow who was trying to make his way in the world by selling life insurance and cancer policies as his first job right out of college in 1988.  As Bill sat next to Raymond, Raymond held up his left hand and said to the young sales agent,  "You see this middle finger?

"Yes Sir, I do" Bill answered.

 "I lost half of it in a saw at the sawmill in Greenville," Raymond said.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Sir," Bill said.

 "You don't have to call me Sir," Raymond said.

    Then Raymond pulled out a big clear plastic bag of marijuana out of a desk drawer next to the table and picked out of a large bud of weed with green and purple looking looking hairs sticking out of it.  It smelled heavily of Christmas tree pine needles.  Then Raymond pulled out some rolling papers from his front shirt pocket and began to roll a joint.

"Man, this stuff is sticky.  They call it skunk weed," he said as he began breaking off the bud into tiny pieces onto the paper laying flat on the table.  Then he began to roll it up.  As he stuck the joint in his mouth, he pulled out a Bic lighter, lit the joint and took at big hit with his mouth and lungs.

    All of sudden, a humongous cloud of smoke came billowing out of Raymond's mouth and he began choking and coughing. He face was turning red and he said to Bill, "You want some?"

"Nah, I'm good, Sir" Bill said.

"Come on, it's really good. It's kickass. And don't call me "Sir", remember?" Raymond said.

"No, that's okay. I'm good. Really. And sorry about calling you Sir," Bill said with a little and uneasiness and assertiveness in his voice at the same time.

   Bill had a young wife and baby in a small but fairly decent apartment back in Bowling Green which was about sixty miles southeast of the small-town of Greenville.  Greenville is the county seat for the good folks of Muhlenberg County.  Muhlenberg County was known as the king of coal producers of Western Kentucky back in its day or at one time, one of the largest coal producing Kentucky counties west of the Mississippi River.  And supposedly, there were more millionaires in this county at one time than anywhere else in the United States during the 60's, 70's and 80's.  Also, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Fossil coal burning plant is in Paradise, Ky., in the southeastern part of the county on Ky. 431 highway between Central City to Russellville where one of the largest electric steam shovel in the country was owned and used by Peabody Coal Company. 

    As Raymond continued to smoke the joint of marijuana, he eyes started turning glassy and red.  He reached over to stereo cassette deck player and put on some Pink Floyd's "The Wall" using a big set of  Hi-Fi speakers on the kitchen counter.  Young Bill was quite sure to make of all of this.  He was starting to get a little worried.  He didn't know where Raymond was going with this. Bill had seen some of his fraternity brothers back at college smoke weed at the fraternity house but he never really paid much attention to it because it was not his thing and was really never around it much.

   Then Raymond got up from the table and said, "Here, let me show you something. Follow me." He took Bill to a back hallway where he opened the door to a back bedroom where he had a big black pit bull dog chained to the floor.  The dog was growling and barking while showing his big white teeth.  He was guarding several big pound bags of weed on the bed and there stacks and stacks of Case knife sets everywhere in the room.  Case knives are known to be the Cadillac of pocket knives in the knife world.  But Raymond literally had hundreds and hundreds of Case knives in boxes everywhere in the room.  On the bed, under the bed, on top of the dresser, in the closet, in the bottom of the closet and top of the shelf in the closet.  He had some of the most expensive Case knives sets you'd ever buy.  Even some with diamonds in the bone colored handles. American and Patriotic knife sets, Christmas and Holiday knife sets, Halloween and Thanksgiving knife sets, John Deere knife sets, fishing and hunting life sets and even sawmill knife sets.

     When they got back to the kitchen, Raymond offered Bill a bourbon and coffee.  Bill declined the bourbon but took a cup of coffee with cream and sugar in it. After they started drinking their cups of coffee at the table together, Raymond looked Bill in the eye and said, "I am going to be honest with you.  Even though, I am a supervisor at the sawmill, I am also a drug dealers.  And with my profits, I invest in Case knives as a coverup.  Everybody thinks I'm part-time flea market dealer on the side"

   "I'll tell you what I will do for you.  I'll buy some life insurance from you and one of your cancer policies. But you have to buy a Case knife from me and I'll even give you a discount.  And also, if you tell anyone what I just told you what I really do for a living, I'll have you cut up into pieces at the saw mill!" Raymond told Bill in a dead serious tone of voice.

     So Bill agreed and hurriedly pulled out the paper work and applications to be filled it out. Then he had Raymond to sign them.  Bill picked out a Case knife which acted like he liked. It was a "Texas Jack Toothpick" with a red bone handle and then paid Raymond for it by pulling out some cash out of his wallet after he received a 10% discount.   Then they both stood up from the kitchen table, shook hands and Bill was out the door.  Later on he delivered the polices but decided not to go back inside. Bill just stayed on the front porch.

     32 years later, the Case knife that Bill bought from Raymond still sets in a little stand on his desk in the office at his home.  Bill no longer sells life insurance but works at Ace Hardware as a manger in Bowling Green where they sell Case knives. As for Raymond, Bill read in the Bowling Green Daily News several years ago, that he was murdered at a saw mill in Greenville and cut up into pieces.  Obviously, Police suspect foul play.  But no arrests have been made in the case to this date.

“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.”

     

Wild Bucks, Honky Tonks And Other Crazy Stories From The American South: The Strange Woman On Indianola Street In Bowling Green, Ky.

This Is An On-Going Short Story Fictional Series

By Wild Bucks


    It was February 22, 1988, exactly 30 years-ago today.

    Bob Richards had just moved to Bowling Green about a month before and landed his first job as a life insurance salesman right out of college for a small company from Louisville.  It wasn't exactly his dream job but it was all he could find at the time since the economy wasn't humming liked it used to be in Southcentral Kentucky.  Several factories in the area had closed down during the downturn of the economy in the 80's and had laid off a bunch of employees.  Spring would be arriving soon, so Bob would be stepping up his door to door sales pitches and tactics  But on this particular day, he decided go ahead and go door knocking anyway since the sun was shining and the temperature was unseasonably warm.  He walked down Indianola Street knocking on doors and having them slammed on his face.  However, he approached one house that seemed very strange.  When he walked on the front porch, he could see a large picture of Jesus hanging on the wall through the window. He also saw a sign attached to the wall that said, "No Smoking or Cursing Allowed!"

    Bob decided to go ahead and knock on the door.  When he did, a tall, thin, middle-age woman came to the door with heavy makeup on and dyed red hair.  Her face was not very attractive but Bob could tell that she seemed she have lived a hard life.  Bob introduced himself and asked her if she was interested if any life insurance.  She told him that she was uninsurable because she has had two open heart surgeries.  She invited Bob to come in and he accepted the offer. After a few minutes of discussion at the kitchen table, Bob looked up and pointed to the wall and said, "Are you Catholic?"

   "No son, I'm Pentecostal," she said.

"Oh," Bob said, "I just thought maybe you were Catholic since you had a lot of pictures of Jesus hanging on the wall."

    "No honey, he's just my best friend and he loves me very much," she said.  "I've actually met Jesus before."

   "Really? You mean, you've actually met Jesus? You're kidding, right?" Bob asked.

   "No, I mean it," the woman said.

   "Well, can you tell me where you met him at?" Bob asked curiously.

   The woman told Bob it happened when she was having her first heart attack.  She had told her son to help her get to the bed.  When he did, she passed out and he called 911. She said she felt as if she was out for a long time.  She said that she also felt her spirit leave her body.

  "When my spirit left my body, I went straight to my mansion.  It was a beautiful mansion and I was standing in the middle of it.  It had no furniture.  I was saying, 'It's so beautiful and another a man was there.  But I could not see the man's face. I was telling him, 'This is mine.'  And man kept saying, 'I don't think you are one of us.' And I said, 'I am too and I have lived here before.'"  She said that some other people were in the mansion too and they had black hair, curly hair and blonde hair.  She she their feet were not touching the floor and neither were hers.  She said heard a voice called out to her and said, "There is 'The One' who will know if you're one of us or not."  She said there was a crystal clear walkway circling around the mansion with pink bricks on top of it.  The voice then said that they would check the bricks first. One of the persons inside walks outside of the mansion goes over and picks up a pink brick off the walkway to examine it.  And then the voice says, "This is not enough.  I will take you back to 'The One' who will know if you are one of us or not."

   The woman goes on to tell the story to Bob. "So they walked us behind the mansion together to a little wood shed.  We went inside the shed and on a bale of hay laid Baby Jesus.  The voice then spoke in many languages and in other tongues."  The woman said she was awe of Baby Jesus and that she could see no ends to him.  All sort of sparkles of magnificent, bright colors were dancing around his head and body.  She said all she could see when Baby Jesus rose from the bale of hay was his robe, sandals and long hair.

   "His hair hung over his face and it was white as snow," she said.  The baby laid his hand on her shoulder and said, "Yes, she has lived here before but I will send you back because it is not finished," Baby Jesus said.

  "But I do not want to go back! Please do not send me back!"  she said. "All of sudden, I woke up in a hospital room and I had open heart surgery with a lot stitches in my chest. And I kept telling everyone, I had an out of body experience."

  After a while, Bob thank the woman for sharing her story with him.  He told her it was time for him to leave.  He walked out the front door and walked down Indianola Street to Broadway Avenue where his car was parked.  After he got into car, he decided to drive over the Little Brown Jug and have some beers with cheese and crackers.  He also decided that he would not tell his wife that evening when got home about the crazy story he had heard.  He drank his beer, put a quarter in the jukebox and put on some Hank Williams Jr. and lit a cigarette. For a brief moment, he tried to forget about his encounter with the strange woman on Indianola Street.

“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.”