Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Hell on wheels


To my old man, wheelchairs didn't bring forth visions of the disabled. They were just more stable platforms to shoot from.

I learned this the hard way.

Mrs. Favog and I hadn't been married but a few years when we became aware of my father's . . . uhhhhhh . . . eccentric views about those confined to chairs with two big wheels in back and a pair of little ones in the front. We were living in Baton Rouge at the time, and we were over to my folks' house for dinner.


IT WAS Labor Day. I know this because I recall that we were watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

I made the mistake of asking whether they'd be making a donation to Jerry's Kids, fighting the good fight against muscular dystrophy.

Hell, no, said the old man.

Why was that?

He then launched into a diatribe about the crippled, wheelchairs and guns. Something about how the Wheelchair People were just itching to gun us all down.

I can picture it now: The cute little Muscular Dystrophy Association ambassador -- probably all of 11 years old -- was pissed as hell about his impending horrible death from a dread disease and, dammit, he was going to take as many people as he could with him.

Unfortunately for us, the wife and I did the rational thing when presented with the specter of Roland the Crippled Wheelchair Gunner. We laughed our asses off. But my old man wasn't joking.

I ought to have figured that he wasn't. The old man almost never joked.

WHAT FOLLOWED was an angry diatribe by the old man -- aimed at his uppity son and his g**damn Yankee wife. Somewhere in there was the memorable phrase, "I might not have book learnin', but I got common sense."

That phrase spoke volumes, actually. It needed to. What followed from the old man was about a month's worth of silence -- and not just on the subject of wheelchairs and guns.

The old man is long dead now, but the whack genius of Psycho Gunners on Wheels lives on in Favogian lore. After all, you just can't get anymore insane than. . . .


Ohhhhhhhhh . . . CRAP:
This shooter had an unconventional mode of transportation.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call about a person who was down in the street near 69th and Maple Streets. Officers found Patrick Amburn, 40, of Glenwood, Iowa, who told them that he had been shot by a man in a wheelchair.

Amburn was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his back. His injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.
THANKS, Omaha World-Herald. I can hear the old man going "HEH HEH HEHHHHHHHHHH!" all the way from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge, La.

The cops had better haul in Jerry Lewis for questioning. He probably knows the assailant.

No comments: