Monday, January 9, 2012

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“I am living proof that members of a dysfunctional family do not all turn out bad.”

Gene Hackman



Speaking of dysfunctional families, I briefly dated a woman that was from the “West Side” here in Greenville. She had two sisters and a brother in addition to her mother. Her father was deceased. The cause of death of her father was interesting. He was a heavy drinker and on the way home one day he chose to take a nap in a nearby ditch. His wife came looking for him since her husband had done this several times before. She found him and was unable to get him awake so she did the honorable thing, she retrieved two gallons of gasoline, poured it on him and lit it off. He died of his burns. She went to jail for just a short period and was released for being crazy as a loon. Her children confirmed this as the correct diagnosis. On another occasion I went with my then girlfriend to her sister's house for an after Thanksgiving dinner. One of her sisters was an “Exotic” dancer at a local strip club and had a kick-ass body as you might suspect. Her stage name was “Chancellor”. We all were sitting around the living room waiting for dinner to be prepared and I was introduced to every body. There was both of her sisters and her brother, all of them were married. There were two extra men there the best I could figure and I asked my girlfriend who they were and she said they were her sister's boyfriends. I asked if it was true that her sisters were married and if so, who was the other two men? She said they were her sister's husbands. We all sat down and had dinner together. I put an end to that relationship as much as I hated too. My girlfriend was a dynamite “down home” cook...and built like her sister.



There was a recent burial with full military honors including a large tombstone. It was for “Lucky”, an American Belgian Malois combat dog about 10 years old. This hero had been on five deployments including Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and even worked for the Secret Service. His most recent handler said that Lucky was responsible for saving thousands of American lives by finding hidden explosives and detecting ambushers long before they arrived on the scene. It was a touching ceremony. Lucky died of cancer.



Last Saturday evening the Spartanburg, SC sheriff's deputies saw good old Bruce Stafford walking across the Detention Center parking lot a little bit unsteadily. They went out and had a chat with Bruce. He reeked of Jim Beam, slurred his words and stood weaving heavily to an unfelt breeze. The cops asked him if he had been drinking and he said “Yeah, and what the (expletive) is wrong with that?” The cops charged him with disorderly conduct and put him in the drunk tank to take a nap. He was released 8 hours later...with the mother of all hangovers. He chose the wrong place and the wrong circumstances to take a hike.



Down in Walterboro, South Carolina man left his house and started up his Cadillac to let it warm up before leaving for work and them went back in the house. From his house he saw a Yukon pull up and someone got out and jumped into the Caddy and took off. The owner had the description called to the cops before is was out of sight. Within five minutes the Caddy and been spotted by the cops and a high speed pursuit ensued. The driver eventually decided he could not escape the cops in the Caddy and chose to break and run away on foot. It was dark and the runner did not see the four foot high barbed wire fence and did an unwitting half-loop over the top. He got up and continued running leaving a trail of blood along the way from the multiple wounds he suffered. The cops brought in a dog and within minutes the runner had surrendered. The trail he left was a a piece of cake for the dog.



This date in history January 10



1776 On this date the Governor of North Carolina, Josiah Martin, speaking from exile aboard the British warship Cruiser anchored near Cape Fear, North Carolina, implores the Loyalists to gather an armed force and fight the Rebels (Patriots). Governor Martin was not elected by the people of North Carolina; he was placed in that position by the British. In his message Governor Martin stated that everyone knew what an honor it was to be a British subject and enjoy the freedom and blessings from the King. Well, the people could not relate to that message because Governor Martin had allowed government employees known as “Regulators” to go throughout the countryside and levy taxes at their discretion and put that money in their pockets. Anyway, the Loyalists were supposed to meet British General William Howe at the waterfront and he was suppose to supply the Loyalists better arms and ammunition plus additional troops. The Loyalists were only able to gather but 1,500 troops and when they arrived at the waterfront, it wasn’t General Howe waiting on them; it was an army of Patriots. The commander of the Loyalists, British General Donald McDonald, knew that he could not engage the heavily armed Patriots with a Loyalist army that was nearly unarmed. But McDonald fell ill and the command of the Loyalists fell to British General Donald McLeod. McLeod did not see a problem with attacking with the army as presently armed and attack they did. The Patriots were prepared and delivered a major ass-kicking. They killed 80 of the Loyalists and captured 880 while suffering only 2 killed. Martin had fled to the umbrella of a British warship after the Patriots burned his house down. After this defeat of the Loyalists, Josiah Martin made two more attempts to gain his power back was both attempts were turned back. He then sailed to Long Island and then to London where he died in 1786.



1901 On this date on a small hill named Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas at 10:30am a deep rumble was heard under the oil drilling derrick. A few seconds later the drill string began backing out of the hole and it was followed by oil gushing out of the well to a height twice as high as the derrick. This “gusher” ran wild for nine days at a rate of an estimated 100,000 barrels per day before it was brought under control. This was the first discovery of a major oil field in United States history. Earlier oil was found in Pennsylvania but not in the quantity of this oil field. Oil is still being extracted from this oil field to this day. Had this oil field and others like it had not been found, it is unlikely the internal combustion engine as we know it today would have ever developed. There is speculation that automobile would have continued to develop but the power would have been steam or electricity.



1987 Connecticut police continue their search for Helle Crafts. She was a Pan Am flight attendant and had been missing since December 1. Everyone thought that her husband Richard had killed Helle and disposed of the body but no body was found. The police had interviewed him several times but Richard claimed that he never left the house on the day of the supposed disappearance. The police crossed checked his credit cards and found that the day after the disappearance; he had bought a new mattress, a chain saw and had rented a wood chipper. A witness came forward and said that he had seen a person using a wood chipper on the banks of the Housatonic River. But the area where the person saw the wood chipper in use was feet deep in snow. The police thawed the snow and began a search for evidence and they sent divers in the river also. The divers found a chain saw in the river. The chain saw had tiny scraps of human tissue in the teeth of the saw and the police sent them off for analysis. It was found that the blood type of the tissue was consistent with that of Helle but that was not enough evidence for a conviction. After the police had gathered all the evidence from the riverbank that they could they had 2,660 hairs, one fingernail, one toenail, a scrap of tissue with two teeth embedded, two tooth caps and three tiny drops of blood. After obtaining a few hairs from Helle’s hair brush at her house and comparing her dental records, it was confirmed that the hairs and tooth caps they found on the riverbank belonged to Helle. This was enough evidence for the police and they arrested Helle’s husband Richard and charged him with murder. Richard first trial ended with a deadlock but at his second trial he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years. This was one of the rare times that a murderer is convicted without a corpse. But with forensics what they are today, getting away with murder ain’t as easy as it used to be.



1941 On this date US President Franklin Roosevelt signed a “lend-lease” with Great Britain. It was called a “lend-lease” but what it really did was promise Great Britain that the US would provide them with the “tools of war”. The United States was not yet involved in WWII. England had been taking a beating from the Germans who had been stockpiling armaments for years and England was severely outgunned. This program was to help even the odds. But it did not matter that much because the United States declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy on December 8 of this year, the day after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. After this, the United States went full bore into the most devastating war in history.



Signs you are on a bad date:



She seems to know a hell of a lot about your shower routine.



Her multiple personalities began arguing after dinner about splitting the check.



You spend an inordinate amount of time lifting her head out of the soup.



After two beers she starts calling you Daddy.



Every place you mention for dinner she says “Nah, there might be cops in there.”



Y’all can substitute he/him for she/her at your discretion.



Eye opener:



No matter how great you become or how much good you do for mankind, the number of people that attend your funeral is determined by the weather



Thought to remember: Too bad that there are more horse’s asses than there are horses.



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.

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