Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Going Home with Klecko

Who would have thought?

That when a guy has worked decades in a field that has required him to punch in for every crepuscular and nocturnal shift available, that the craziest part of his day may be trying to get home?

What goes THUMP-THUMP in the middle of the night?

D.J. the pastry boy trying to get to his house, but then accidently crushing a dude on the freeway, killing him.

Straight up dope guys, this really happened.

DJ lives in a small Hillbilly town 50 minutes north of the Twin Cities.

He'll swear to you that he never saw the guy he ran over, and he wasn't even sure how it happened.

The whole episode happened around 3 a.m. and the area where he was driving wasn't lighted.

Well my boy pulled off the exit ramp and into a parking lot of a Walmart and called the coppers.

Moments later a state trooper found him and said......

"I got some bad news, and some good news. The guy on the freeway is dead, but you didn't kill him. From the looks of things, that guy was hit 7 or 8 times before you ran over him."

Then there was all those years when I worked on West 7th, all the years of late night sexual predators trolling for me when all I wanted to do was smoke a final cig and crawl into bed.

The older I have gotten, the more I have come to understand why my elders used to say....

"Don't go outside after midnight, nothing good can happen. Wait until the sun comes up."

I'm not sure I agree with all of that. I've found that most pervs, addicts and thugs typically close down their shops of chaos around 3:30 a.m., and between that time and sunrise.....

These are the hours where sanity is briefly restored to our world. These are the moments when God whispers the words of encouragement that we will need to embrace, if we are going to survive the following 21 hours.

However, if you are walking towards the bakery and you cross the 35E bridge, once you get towards the bottom of the hill, from time to time you will encounter stray dogs.

Some of those mutts have been vicious.

On the bottom of the hill the neighborhood gets a little dicey, so a lot of peeps will have Rottweiler’s, Shep’s or Pit Bulls in an attempt to secure the safety of their house and family.
But not everybody on the bottom of the hill has taken the time to become responsible stewards of these well meaning canines, and often times those furry bundles would haul a** after yours truly.

Klecko has had to hop countless fences, climb trees and even jump into unlocked cars to avoid getting shredded.

Then there was that big church, not the one directly across the street from the Mildred Pierce Café, but the one farther down the block.

I remember when I pulled the 6 a.m. Sunday morning shift for a year or two, and every Sunday morning I’d walk by that church around 5:30 and there was this big retarded kid standing out in front of the chapels front doors.

This kid was every bit as big as me, and he had a kind spirit, but he kinda scared me because he always stood there alone. Every week, and then he would say……

“I want to wrestle you.”

And then he would stick his Frankenstein arms straight out and chase after me like a zombie.

We engaged in this ritual every Sabbath that took place during the warm months.

I never figured out why he just stood there alone, week after week.

And I really did want to strike up a friendship, but then the guy would drool and chase after me.

I knew getting “caught” would never become an issue but….well any ways, I think I need to switch gears here.

Maybe my most famous “Get Home” story (other than the ones where somebody actually got slugged) took place on one of the rare occasions that I drove to work.

I can’t recall why I had the family car. I almost never did, but none the less, I drove our maroon Renault to the shop.

This car was the biggest piece of crap our family every owned. It was worse than the turquoise Ford Escort with the leaking sky roof.

The Renault, well it didn’t have a parking gear, so every time you turned off the engine, this sled just stayed in neutral.

On the floor of the back seat we had to keep 2by4’s in the event we had to park on an incline.

If so, you’d have to wedge them under the tires so the car wouldn’t roll away.

As you can imagine, this was quite embarrassing, but I was young, had two kids, and my Sue McGleno was in nursing school at the time.

Well anyway….one night I got off at 2 a.m. and I hopped into the Renault, aimed it at my house, and proceeded to slowly chug down West 7th street.

At this early hour, not many vehicles were out, but I had watched enough cop shows to determine some cat had been on my tail for 6 or 7 blocks.

So now I make a quick left onto Randolph Avenue, and yep…..so does the car behind me.

1 block, 3 blocks, 5 blocks, 8 blocks and I’m crossing over the 35E bridge.

Dude is still behind me.

12 blocks, 16 blocks…..now I turn right on Snelling Avenue.

Dude is still behind me.

After this turn onto Snelling, which is a major thoroughfare, I’m gonna hang the first left, so I know there is no chance in he** that this guy is gonna follow me right?

So I’m driving kinda quickly, and I bust a quick left real sharp. My tires actually screeched.

Dude is still behind me.

My house was 1601 James, and that was one of the first houses after the turn.

Now that I know this freak is tailing me, I decided to not park in front of my house.

If the guy was a serial killer, just punch my ticket, but leave my family out of this right?

So Klecko pulls up at house 3 or 4 houses up from where he lives, pulls over and takes the keys out of the ignition.

The stalker pulls up directly, and I mean d-i-r-e-c-t-l-y in front of me and does the same.

As most of you know, if a murderer is going to murder, and you don’t like your odds for survival, the best thing you can do is deny them the satisfaction of watching you squirm.

So within a ½ second of dude turning off his car, I reached into my back seat, grabbed a 2by4,

and popped out of my car like a cork out of a champagne bottle.

The guy in the front seat was the creepiest kind a felon. He was a Roly-poly middle aged man.

Face it, the Roly - poly killer is 10 times creepier than the Buff killer.

The guy’s window was still rolled down, and remember, it’s about 2:28 a.m. now right?

So I grabbed this guy by a tuft of hair, pulled his body towards the window and yelled out in my Klecko Warrior voice while lifting my weapon into the air………

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!”

Then in the splittest of seconds, I saw unbridled fear encompass my stalkers face.

The pudgy nemesis squeaked out in a high pitched, shrilly voice…….

“Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, I am your neighbor…….I am your neighbor!”

Oops, could this guy be telling the truth, or was it just some sick-twisted ploy?

“Pull out your wallet and let me see some ID” I instructed.

He did, and his license pretty much verified his claim.

Oh well….better safe than sorry, but I will admit, I did kinda blush throughout the neighborhood night out picnic the following week.

What were the odds of that huh?
  

4 comments:

  1. In a weird way, you might have made him feel safer about his block. But in a really weird way.

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    1. According to Sue McGleno......not. I think he peed himself, but I was more than freaked myself...LOL

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  2. Wish you lived on my street!

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    1. Fay, what's the saying? Be careful what you ask for? LOL-LOL

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