On the Road Again

I was going to the beach. The Hughes' annual beach trip is this week, and I was supposed to go down this afternoon (Friday) and stay until Sunday. The weekend would probably consist of hearing myself get fatter, as the Hughes like to indulge the senses while on holiday. I like to indulge the senses around 6:30 every morning, but that's beside the point. Anyway, turns out, the parking garage I use along with the valet service had a profoundly negative affect on my car. Apparently they left the headlights on and after a couple of hours Jaun Honda breathed her last. (I know Jaun is a male name, but all cars are women--temperamental, cost a lot of money, and can look incredibly sexy yet never put out)

I do have a good story,

I was working in Slapout, Alabama last week. I was on my lunch break smoking a cigarette and reading the paper after my lunch at the local diner. I'm a sucker for diners. Good food, ugly people, and sweet tea with the sugar content to make a diabetic implode. So I'm sitting on this bench out side the local apothecary down the street from Dusty's Diner and Movie rental. Now picture a 23 year old man with killer good looks dressed to the nines in my starched whit shirt and deep blue Talbot tie, reading the Advertiser and smoking a cigarette. I stood out like a boner in church. This old blue pickup pulls up right in front of me and out steps one of the most hideous women I've ever encountered in real life. She wasn't skinny, she was skeletal. Her leathery skin was wrapped tightly around her gaunt face which fronted a peanut sized head topped with long wispy red hair that looked as if it had been fried in motor oil. God couldn't make an uglier creature. She looked the way Simon's breath used to smell. I instantly fell in love. She approached me and I glanced up from my paper.

"Weeeeelllllll Shiiiiiiiiiyyyyyt! Yer bout the best looking Jee-hova's Wittnessed I ever seen! I jist wanna come sit in yore lap and........." Something in Hick I couldn't understand. I took a long pull from the cigarette and told her I'd like to show her some pamphlets but I left them on my bike back at the diner. She thought that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, and slapped herself in the hip to prove it.

The Friday previous, I had bought gas from her at the Petro station. We talked about the rise in tobacco tax, and how much cheaper things are outside of Montgomery. So she remembered me and on her way out made some remark about having a "sweet @ss."

Back at work, hours later, I cashing check after check and sort of in a rush to clear the lobby when I look up and there in front of me is Lesha, her red wispy hair pulled back into a ponytail revealing age lines that made her face look like a road map of Iowa. She began, "I swore you was a Jee-hova's Wittnessed outside. Yer dressed jist like one. You know, if I wudn't in-volved, I'd eatchoo right up. But mah dawter, she's sangle."

"Oh really," I say, "how old is she?" I really don't know why I was entertaining the idea of meeting this woman's daughter, actually I think I was more or less trying to get her to say something I could make a note of later. Then it happened. Follow closely.

"Sheez 21, but she aint here."

"Well where is she?"

"Oh she gone down to that DAVE con-sert. She loves Dave, he11, we all love DAVE......"

"Who's he playing with?"

This is the part where I first noticed something strange about her, besides everything written above.
She looked around, as if checking to see who was listening, leaned way in to where I could smell her putrid vomitous cat-@ss breath. "Willie Nelson." she hissed.

"Oh yeah, I love Willie Nelson, The Highway Man, the Rambler, I listen to him all the time," I gushed. "Probably one of my all time favorites, boy, that would be an awesome concert to go to. Is she a fan of Willie too?

She leans in, and whispered, "Willie's my deddy."

"Fcuk and alas!" I thought.
"Let me see some ID", I instantly retorted. Part of me, a big part of me wanted to believe her. I wanted her to be Willie Nelson's daughter more than anything.

She pulled out her id and as I gazed down on it and read the name 'Lesha Nelson Hardover', she said, "Don't believe me do ya?"
"I don't know, I...."
"Look at me", she said, "You think i want to claim that ugly b@st@rd."
I gazed long and hard into that boney mug. It was him. I swear by the day I was born it was him. The gaunt, skeletal face, those big doe eyes mounted deep into that peanut head, the long wispy red hair that look as though it had been deep fried, it was him without the y chromosome.
"Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain?" I squeaked. And with this statement she tipped the rim of her aviator sunglasses down to reveal eyes bluer than that a Roman bath. "That sunuva b1tch NEVER paid child support."

I cracked up. I laffed so hard that everyone started to stare. Brian, it was her. It was Willie Nelson's b@stard womanchild. And she works at a Petro station in Slapout. Isn't that perfect?

I'll be there at Jubilee tonight, sweating away with all the white trash hicks and hayseeds of the earth. But somewhere, somewhere, there she'll be. Probably drinking a lot more than she should, chain smoking and humpdancing with some guy two generations younger than her. God Bless America.

Can you believe it?

Your humble correspondent to the south,

Andrew Greene