Hmongs-Serial Killers & West 7th Street

Last night Klecko was wiped out from sleep deprivation. he doesn't like to pull this card all that often, but yes....he hit the NyQuil Bottle and he hit it hard. At the point when the fairy's started to dance across his Temporal Lobe a commercial on AMC aired to announce that they were going to debut a movie on the Zodiac Killer.

So Klecko is drifting, but has the ability to post one last message on his Facebook page (via his Droid) making mention of the long lost serial killer who never was caught, and how it tripped him out.

When one wakes up off a a NyQuil jag, it never hurts to take a mental inventory, so this morning as I peeled back layers of mental fog, i remembered my post from last night, laughed, and went to see if it was received well by the KleckoNation.

Dear God in Dallas, I had people replying with French verse from Talking Heads songs, people fighting over which serial killer was better.....think about that. Like one serial killer is "BETTER" than the other?

One woman who comes from Australia boasted of living next to a couple who brought in young women, loved them....and then, well yeah, killed them!

Dude, sometimes it's dangerous to start a Facebook rant prior to passing out. While you are asleep, the entire world tugs on that thread.LOL

So when I think of serial killers, I think back to Jeffrey Dahmer. I was working at Custom Bakery at the time on West 7th Street. Each day when I strolled into work, his exploits were always a topic of discussion.

This era predates the Hispanic take over of the Twin Cities commercial baking industry, back then, most of our bakers were Hmong.If you are unfamiliar with their culture, go on Google because I am sure I would misrepresent them by not explaining them with the level of fervor that they deserve.

The Hmongs splashed hard in the Twin Cities, I think the deal was that they got to live here tax free for 8 years and the hope was that they would work hard and become a lucrative cog in our cities money making machine. They did and have.

Many of these folks used the Hospitality Industry as nothing more than a cultural pit stop. Most of the Hmong's I worked with were very entrepreneurial, and ended up becoming small business owners.

Hers just a few of the things that make me smile when I remember working with the Hmong people. Chai Toa, he told me that the Hmong boys didn't cut their hair because if they went 100 years w/o a haircut....they would gain super powers and topple China.

Now I've got nothing against China, its the homeland of Jackie Chan, but how bad a** is it to have century long hair goals and then want to mix it up with one of the worlds leading super powers?

Also if you ever had an ailment, all you had to do was talk to Mai Vang.....

"Hey Mai Vang, I have a headache!" or "Hey Mai Vang, I have gout, herpes, cancer"...it just did not matter LOL, that woman kept a bag in the trunk of her Fiat that had pills and powders for anything that had the ability to bring a person back to physical harmony.

The Hmong community has a strong-strong connection to their departed ancestors. They don't just recognize them, but they communicate with them as well, but for the most parts....spirits freak them out.

Behind the bakery we had a cluster of pine trees that were so tall that they'd reach low level clouds, and at the foot of this mini forest rested the companies big green trash dumpster.

The packing crew would have the building to themselves after the closing oven guy would take off. when that occurred....music from their homeland blasted throughout the shop and 1/2 the packers would finish servicing accounts, while the other 1/2 did bulk cleaning. they would gather bags of singed baking parchments, bread crumb remnants that surrounded the bread slicers, stuff like that.

The Hmong crew I worked with were organized and meticulous. You could bank on it that one of them would start hauling trash out within a 1/2 hour of my departure.

With that knowledge, I would go out and lay down under the low laying pine tree branches and smoke cigarettes until the first packer brought out a hefty bag of junk.

"Booooooo - Whooooaaaaa" I would moan in a low guttural wailing, and those poor guys would simply drop that bag in run in to report ghost sightings to their colleagues.

After awhile the packers just stopped bringing the trash to the dumpster, instead they left the bags lines up in a hallway at the back of the building and the early morning cleaner had to do their dirty work.

So this all took place during the Dahmer era. Sure, I know....Jeffery was targeting victims in the Milwaukee era, but let's face it, Saint Paul would have been a short road trip for a guy who wanted to increase his mayhem radius, and Saint Paul is closer to him than Mpls.

I'd think about stuff like that, as would you if you had to walk 5 miles home at 3 a.m. each morning.

One night I got off and snow was falling heavy. As I strolled out of the bakery, it was kinda like plunging into a snow globe. The first leg of my journey was a clip just under a mile on West 7th.

West 7th is one of the streets that reminds of of Vegas because peeps are always traveling it no matter what day of the week, hour of the day, or season of the year it was.

But on this particular night.....there was no traffic, none - zero.

The moon wasn't out either, and the sky was unusually black, and the snow kept falling, and falling, and falling. The flakes were as big as apples. part of me felt liberated, like I was a vampire that owned the night....but the other 1/2 remembered watching National Geographic as a kid.

When you watch National Geographic growing up, you learn 3 things......

#1 - there is nothing sexier in the world than a woman who lives with monkeys

#2 - those Jane Russell "Cross your Heart bra's" needed to be implemented by Pygmy chicks

#3 - when there is silence in the jungle, you make book that s*** is about to hit the fan

There was no noise, no movement, nothing but flickering street lamps on West 7th, and the light it radiated was creepy because it was getting eclipsed by the mega flakes of snow.

So sure enough....enter stage left, a creepy sedan starts trolling in the same direction as Klecko, but on the other side of the street. Snow is breaking away from the tires, like wakes from a speed boat that you are water skiing behind.

The car is now at cruising speed. The driver is matching his accelerator foot to my walking speed.....it's official. Klecko is Creeped out.

So now the drivers window lowers halfway and i see a thin haired man, he's big, has broad shoulders and an overall meaty face. The freakazoid asks me.....

"Would you like a ride?"

I look ahead, not a single car, I don't want to look behind me because the guy will know that I am afraid, but I open my ears up, and set the tone to "bat sensory", but I don't hear anybody from behind who might aid me in staying alive.

"No guy....I'm safe." I say in a make believe voice of confidence.

So as I keep moving, dude keeps trolling. His window is down and the hunter is watching me. I would have run, but I was walking through a Super America parking lot. There was no bunny sanctuary hiding hole.

"C'mon, get in my car. I'll take you wherever you wanna go!"

So now Klecko's heart is racing, he's been hit on dudes many times, but there is a difference between a gay man asking out hetero guy, and Homo-Prevo looking to disembowel the village baker and serve him at his own personal feast, what was I to do?

w/o hesitation, I turned and walked towards the guys car. I was careful not to move to fast, that would come across as an attack, and for all I knew....Daddio might of had an Uzi in addition to his meat hooks and mail order surgical tools.

So when I'm 8ish feet from dudes ride he stops. he has a creepy-demonic grin on his face. I remember thinking how I had never-ever witnessed a car stop dead in it's tracks on West 7th.

I don't even think I thought about it, i just smiled like a lark and said

"Well, if you could take........."

Then with ninja quick hands, I grabbed dude by his thinning hair and started bouncing his head across the dashboard and back towards the opened drivers side window like a greasy pinball. The window kinda spider web cracked.

I was completely tweaked.

Have you ever seen one of those Joe Pesci movies when he hits people and keeps going until De Niro drags him off (I think he's recycled that concept 1/2 dozen times LOL)?

That's exactly what happened, but my stalker buried his foot into the gas pedal and his sled swerved down the street. For the next 4 miles of my journey it was as if I was hopped up on meds. Its weird how one second a person can live in fear, but once their (what shall i call it) their reptilian response kicks in, they race towards the roar. At this point, I was hoping the guy would come back.

Serial killers are weird, and I know I am too.

I think Klecko needs to stay of the NyQuil for a spell, just saying.