Thursday and its not Brussels

However the sprouts are good for ya. I eat em and although Im diseased, Im still alive.
The wife buys organic pumpkin granola bars that despite the name are quite tasty. Speaking of food. I dont eat at the Olive Garden much, but the couple times I've eaten there they've brought HUGE salads and breadsticks and lousy (albiet tasty)little portions of main dishes. I mean I know Italians. One of my best friends is an Italian cook and when I eat at his restaurant I come away sooooooooo stufffed that breathing is hard to do. At the Olive Garden I want to say... um... can ya bring a little mo of that linguini??? or I really like stuffed tortillini and I got like 4 the other day as my main dish. I could have eaten an hundred. They were exquisite. But like four? That was a robbery. I dont drink and haven't since 1987, and so no wine. Maybe if yer hammered on Giacobazzi Lambrusco the four torts are plenty. I dont know. But sober, It seemed like a real rip to me. Of course the three of us got out of there right at the fifty dollar mark and for todays restaurants thats pretty good.
Would you like cheese on that? Yeah, grate about a pound on so I feel like Im eatin something ok?
It was 1972 and I was in Moline, Illinois. I'd been in Sacremento, California with a friend from Virginia for about six months and finding gainful employment was a laugh. so I hitched back to Moline and when I got back I went lookin to see who'd put me up till I found work. Rick Humphrey and Vickey his wife had room and I was always welcome. I didnt know the building however. I put my knapsack and guitar in the living room and sat down in a chair and we were smoking some mexican. After about an hour Ronna who had been playin in a crib on the porch started to cry. Vicky said "well, I'd better put her down for her afternoon nap. I popped up with "no let me do it, she so cute..." Ronna was about 20 months old and could stand and stuff but was still wobbley. While we were smokin Vicky told me of the tenuous relationship that they'd had with the Landlord who occupied the basement apartment. There was a lot of stress and Vick was not one to suffer quietly at the hands of who she considered a tyrant. So she'd played some tricks on him for a few nights. The funniest of which was to drop silverware in the cold air return gate late at night and kinda let it bounce around till he took a broom handle and thumped the ceiling. All this was done under the influence of course and giggeling was loud and silly...Still she said "ok its the first door around the corner from the kitchen, (a room that had a doorway from the livingroom and then a hall to the bedrooms.)
I went out on the porch and got her and kissed her belly and made her laugh and walked around the corner from the livingroom and saw the first door on the right. It had an hook and eye keeping it closed. I reached up and clicked it open and pushed the door open and stepped into the darkened room. Well it was a closet, with no floor in it. It was rafters for his ceiling below and sheetrock for his ceiling. There were some storm windows leaning up against the wall near the door and resting on the rafter near the entrance. As my foot went through the sheetrock I spun back toward the entrance way and tossed ronna back out into the carpeted hallway where she landed on the floor in her cotton diapers. my leg however continued downward and my left elbow went through the glass that was stacked by the wall. All this was a real suprise to me.
However it was even a greater suprise to the landlord who was in the bathroom below me taking a dump. AND he had a wooden prosthetic cause he'd lost a leg at Anzio beach in WWII. I noticed this through the huge hole my leg had created between the floor/ceiling joists... And it didnt smell very good either. My elbow was bleeding pretty good from the cuts and the landlord decided to grab my leg and shake it screaming "you did this on purpose! you did this on purpose!" Which of course was not at all the case. Ronna was sitting at about my eye level laughing out loud, and Vicky when she heard the subsequent crash came running and informed me that I'd gone into the wrong room. When she saw her landlord furiously attempting to strap on his prosthetic and heard his cussing SHE broke out in laughter. Of course the landlords wife was home, she came into the bathroom and stripped off one of my expensive Indian sandals (remember the kind with the toe ring?)Then ran to call the cops. Who were there in an amazingly short time given the neighborhood. Vicky couldnt get me up and I was really wedged between the joists.. My elbow hurt like hell and I couldnt get a place where I could kind of push myself up. And in those days, I was really skinny. So, in comes the Silvis Police in riot gear, nightsticks out. When they saw the mess they started laughing... But they had the prescense of mind to pull my ass out of the hole and then they took me to the hospitall to get the glass out of the elbow. They listened to my story and astonishingly believed me. He (the landlord) was still screaming at me as they put me into the squad car.
So, I'd been back ONE DAY and made the Moline Daily dispatch. It sounded from the article that as I stepped into the room that *whisp of smoke* Id disappeared into the landlords bathroom. I know I kicked him in the head several times flailing aroud trying to get back up and for that I was sorry. I mean I'd have hated that to happen to me, situations reversed... They never gave me back my sandal either. That sucked.
Bowe