Faithful Readers,
As today is a celebration of sorts, we look back – as is done at most celebratory times. One year ago today, our intrepid verbalist arrived in Ellensburg to make his home. He left behind Pennsylvania after fifty (‘fifty stinking years’ as he puts it) annums. He enjoys Ellensburg immensely but shudders in disgust when thinking back on his old neighborhood. Shown in the photo above, he had a nice little house there, all hidden in the shrubbery.
The odd thing is, it remained the only house with shrubbery in the neighborhood. When he arrived, no shrubs existed. He planted all of them with the exception of the two unimaginative forsythias on each corner…which did make nice homes for the robins. Now the shrubs have probably all been cut down, thanks to the PA Dutch/nazi german control-issues most inhabitants possess…think Stepford Wives only fat and stupid with poor taste in food.
They hate things that grow. They threw weed killer on his sunflowers. No beauty allowed.
When he built a porch to improve the property, Shiela Septic commented. Shiela and her two Septic parents always had a comment. One reason she could not keep a man for more than two months was largely due to suitors (haha) having to listen to parental wis-dumb through a cloud of smoke. White trash smoke. See, Shiela’s parents visited every day, an odd thing for a woman in her early fifties(they helped her with the down-payment and it thus became their vacation home) and they smoked a lot.
Maybe they are dead now! One can only hope!
Oh! The comment…in her typical daily rage, Shiela went red in the face (she was always red in the face, really) and let forth a pithy insult…”Why don’t you go sit on your porch?” The emphasis placed on the word ‘porch’ spat out in a tone usually reserved for crack houses. The sheer lameness of the insult disappointed him.
Sometimes she would find a man and the parents’ cars would not be seen for a week. Then they would show up and the new boyfriend’s car would disappear, along with the schmuck who saw something in her.
For those unfamiliar with white trash smoke – it is not ommitted solely by caucasians, it is called that because it comes from the cheapo brand of cigarettes that are displayed alongside the lottery machine. White trash love lottery tickets. Mostly anybody with no money loves a lottery ticket. Since we are all caucasians here, white trash is fair game, we reckon!
In his Ellensburg motel room, Hendrick found twenty lottery tickets under the cushion of the kitchenette table, coincidentally.
This sure sign that rooms at the Motel 6 in Ellensburg are never really clean unless guests clean up (yeah, right) after themselves following a stay is an open warning to all. Five months is a long time. The tickets were dated September 1, 2013. Some loser paid $20 to play Room Number 223 twenty times, as if ending up in that room was a good omen. No one lifted the cushion to clean there for five full months before Hendrick entered the room. Remember that, Motel 6-ers!
Yet, somehow, even the Motel 6 was an improvement from the cute little house on Sutters Mill Lane. People were friendly and accepting. The immediate acceptance Hendrick found in the burg amazed him. He likened it to the friendly little towns in upstate New York from whence he came. He loved his property, he just hated the narrow-minded fucks surrounding it. Here we see our hero in Room 223, framed by an example of how he made it a home for seven months.
And here is a shot of the wonderful Washington sky from the motel balcony. The sky could not even be seen in Temple, but for the wires, lights and pollution.
Let it suffice to say he carries no regrets in leaving…all regret stayed in Temple with the Septics and all the other local dutch folk. Dutch people look friendly on the label of a can of corn but they are mean bastards in real life and if Michael Hendrick could pass on one life lesson, that might be it…
Of course no place is perfect and Ellensburg is not without it’s own supply of dumb assholes. Most of them move here from places like Seattle or other urban centers. They bring their ways…the leased cars, the lack of real property of their own, the tribal sports rituals. They don’t get it. Some of them are ex-police who have PTSD and sleep with all the lights on each night spying on neighbors who’s lives they intend to micro-manage once they get settled. The usual white trash stuff…
In Temple, Hendrick sold his home for $20,000 below the market value and made up the difference on Wall Street by trading in chinese stocks. The rest of the houses took a plunge in value and any money the Septics’ put into the little nightmare they call home is lost. By the time the mortgage is paid off, the house will be worth about forty thousand dollars less than it was when purchased.
Tough, huh? That’s one thing that can happen when you piss off the neighbors…they take your money in ways you cannot control…if you have neighbors like Michael Hendrick, that is…
We do not condone his actions but they do amuse us!
This is a free blog…if you find typos, please live with them.
Last Notes From a Tumbleweed Bastard 