April 10, 2008
from the comments
Cindy and I went to see a man lives up in Denton county (Deron, you know who I’m talking about)–he has a big spread up there with many buildings on it that are filled with all the stuff he has spent his life collecting. He was showing me around, showing me all of the moldering taxidermy, cases and cases of arrowheads, rocks and fossils, jars and crocks–and we went into one heavily padlocked shed, where he had hundreds of firearms. Pump shotguns, black powder shotguns, ancient military muskets, a few flintlocks…it was amazing. And it was there that he told me this: “I had to start locking everthing up because somebody started coming out here stealing things. Got some of my air compressors. I saw him and could have shot him. But it messes up your whole week when you shoot a man–you have to go into town and do all that with the grand jury, and the police.” I told him they changed the law recently–something about the “castle law”–and now you don’t have to show that you tried to run away from a threat before you shoot. “Yeah, that’s what the police told me when they got out here. Said go on and take him out. So I’ll just shoot him next time.”
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Here’s another story from our Saturday visit to the country. Joe has a couple of huge dogs–Great Pyrenees–and he told me that one of them had been very sick. She had been in a lot of pain, he said. He did some work for an area vet, and he asked the vet if he’d give him something for his dog to make her feel better. Vet said no, he’d have to see her. Joe said he didn’t want to load her into the truck, that he just wanted something to make her feel better. Vet asked what was wrong, and Joe described it, and vet said it sounded like she needed a hysterectomy. Joe said that sounds expensive, vet said yeah. Joe said forget it. Joe said he went home and mixed up an old home remedy–something involving kerosene and ashes, among other things. Said if the hurt is a snake bite, you put it on the snake bite. So since the hurt was on her insides, he put it in her feed. I said I thought he was gonna say he put it in her cooch. Joe just looked at me. I asked if it made the dog feel better. She’s sitting here, ain’t she, he said.