Just a rage of homeless news in the fish wrap the other day. Everyone agrees that Charlotte County has a surfeit of homeless sapiens living among the palms and fronds, under the sun and stars, just like god intended wild hogs to live.
Levitate the word “homeless” and visions dance in one’s noggin of hard-working-but-down-on-their-luck families; of people living in beat up vans with kids somehow making A's and B's in school; with the community pitching in to lend a hand after some such piece of really suck luck up in Michigan. Those images do jerk on the heart strings but hey, I ain’t seen none of that down here among the savages. Nope, around here it's just the party-hardys, the seldom-sobers living in the weeds after the old lady kicked them out for some sexual stupidity or for some dopey drug dum-dum (as in not sharing the crack with the old lady).
Some days I stop for my half-way bike rest at Indian Mound Park in Englewood. Now this is truly a scenic place, a place of small sailboats, squawking sea gulls and overweight lady shellers. The beach here is so scenic, in fact, that Michelle and I chose the lovely lapping waters of Lemon Bay to hitch it up. Back in the “mound” part of the park are some woods where four or five individuals apparently booze by day and hold high carnival by night. Never has there been a trip to the park when I did not see the same feral crew at the far picnic shelter joshin’ and jokin’ the morning away. These largely shirtless, shoeless, shaveless, shiftless gents are not particularly loud or boisterous—I’m sure that’s part of the package with the cops—still, they are obviously feeling no pain.
On the same day that the Brits were fishing up the crooked bones of the hunchback king, Richard III, over in England, Floridians were shaking out their own mystery bones from some old canvass back in the woods. Up at Ocala the other day, someone stumbled upon a homeless home down by the railroad tracks. Since it was determined that the remains were a bit younger than those of Richard III--say about a thousand years younger--it seems that the deceased was merely a modern lone wolf who lived and died like a . . . who lived and died like a . . . who lived and died like a lone wolf, that's what he lived and died like!
Another person, an elderly German lady living in Florida temporarily, had foolishly rented a room in her home to a homeless character over in North Port. Well, as the woman soon discovered, this gent was homeless for a reason. Drunk 24/7, smoking, coming and going at all hours, leaving the lights on, forgetting to lock the doors, pretty damn quick the novelty wore off. When the landlady filed papers to have the wretch removed from the home, the wretch filed his own papers and had the landlady removed from the world. Fifty-four-year-old John Mellquist was arrested for murder the other day over in a nearby hobo jungle.
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Great Gun Control—Up at Newberry, Florida (or maybe down or over at Newberry, I'm too lazy to look), a jilted suitor burst into the home of an ex-girlfriend wildly waving a shotgun. During the brief scuffle, the 21-year-old was disarmed and booted from the single-wide. Before cops could show, however, the maniac, brandishing another firearm, again bust through the door a second time. Since the novelty here too was wearing off, the homeowners decided to exercise some self-presavatory behavior by shooting the nut dead in his tracks.
I know it’s selfish and shameless of me but gotta say: Too bad these folks didn’t just tote the victim to the restroom, fill the tub, then do away with him that way. Alas, Ken Drown, known for nothing else in life, missed an excellent opportunity for lasting immortality by entering the Ironic Names Hall of Fame below, as per:
Ken Drown, Newberry, Florida, (drowned).
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Ironic Names Hall of Fame
Robert Forrester, Englewood, Florida (retired sawmill owner)
Laura Smuggler, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (in lockup; smuggling dope to a dope)
Carol Wisdom, North Port, Florida (unbalanced; murderess; suicide)
James Lusk, Los Angeles, California (sleeze film-maker . . . well, it's close enough)
David P. Upright, Port Charlotte, Florida (obit: 65; kept his fences up, joined all the right clubs; model citizen)
Destiny A. Vagina, Richmond, California (sex changer, born Robert Cantwell)
(one of the above is made-up; only I will know for sure . . . and maybe Michelle)
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