Eighty Anyone?

Eighty Anyone?

By

Bob Deyerberg

This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this story are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

© 2004 Bob Deyerberg

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/18/04

ISBN: 1-4208-0163-5 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4685-1569-1 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

80 ANYONE?

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In the amazing event that Eighty Anyone? should reach some kind of acclaim or whatever, I would like to say thanks to Jan Louch, who firmly prodded me into finishing the dumb book and gave me the faith that I could write other successful stupid stuff…….

80 ANYONE?

My Name is Joe Binky. My great Grandpa could not spell Binkertinelly, or whatever it was, so he shortened it to Binky. I want to tell you about my friends, how I made it to eighty years old and how I got into heaven.

You will soon notice my creative writing ability. I thank God for this gift. I know a few people who can fart any time they want to. You cannot learn this. You cannot teach this to yourself. It’s a gift. My neighbor, Ed Smooth, can eat spaghetti through his nose. How many people you know can do that? You bet that’s a gift.

I would like to tell you about my wife, Bambi. Before Bambi was born, her folks went to North City to the picture show and they saw some animal named Bambi. So when she was born, that was it from then on. Sometimes folks would ask her what kind of animal it was and Bambi would smile and say, None of your damn business. I don’t think she knew what kind anyway.

Bambi was one of those people who could fart anytime she wanted. She loved to fart whenever you said something you thought was important. She had one habit though that just drove me nuts. She loved buttered soda crackers and would put butter on the back side of the cracker and then turn it upside down with the butter pointing downward, and then eat it! Oh my God, do you know anybody that does that? She really is a cute animal. She is a lot younger than me, but I don’t know how much.

This is a very small town. We have a super store that sells about everything, a gas station, lumber yard, bus station, old court house with a jail and a library, a couple of bars, a few other little beat up places, and that’s it.

Our Mayor came here many years ago, fresh out of ten years in the federal pen for bank robbery. Timothy Seltzer arrived with a lot of money, bought everybody in town a few beers, and in no time he was mayor.

When his nitwit son got out of jail he promptly bought the kid a brand new Studebaker sedan, painted a star on the side, and we instantly had a nitwit sheriff – Sheriff Timothy Seltzer, Jr. He wanted everyone to call him Bromo because of his last name. He thought it sounded tough. Of course there were a few kiss-ass people who called him Bromo, but none of my friends did. We all called him Timmy. He hated that. His Bromo friends could piss out of the bar window, all over the sidewalk and he never said a word, but when I spit a wad of tobacco juice on the sidewalk he promptly arrested me. Of course some of it did splatter his white Studebaker. He tells me there is a law against spitting on the sidewalk, but he could not find any law about pissing out of the bar window onto the sidewalk. The toilet in this bar has been busted for six years. I tried to tell him I had been spitting on this sidewalk my whole life and no one ever said anything before. But he says, By God, I’m going to clean up this town.

I started chewing tobacco when I was eight years old, but didn’t start smoking seriously until I was ten. I believe in good health and I think there are certain things you can do to promote it. My motto has always been Why do it right if you can get away with doing it half-assed? Consequently, I’ve never had a job that requires any thought or responsibility. Thus, no stress, no worry, no ulcer. I recommend a job with federal, state, county, or city. Then after you have fooled them for six months, they can never get rid of you. Be pleasant, smile a lot, and if they give you something to do, mess it up! Not real bad, just a little. After a while, when you look old enough, start putting your hand up behind your ear and say Eh? every time someone speaks to you. You can even wear two hearing aids – the cheap ones that don’t work – to make sure they give you less and less to do. Always put off ‘till tomorrow what you don’t want to do today.

Now you know a few of my tricks for a trouble free and longer life. We will cover nutrition later on.

I must confess, I am very cheap. If there is a way to finagle, borrow or cheat to get something cheaper or free, that’s the way to go. I made my own beer. But I was never stingy with my home brew – that’s why I had so many friends. It tasted like crap, but it was free. Even when I came into my state money later on, I was too old and too set in my ways to become uncheap. So when I got rich, I switched to cheap store beer and didn’t lose any friends.

There are a lot of unseen benefits in being eighty. About 30 or 40 years ago I was down at the super store and grabbed this little cutie cashier by the ass. She hauled off and whacked me so hard it broke my glasses, and one of my hearing aids flew clear across the floor and under the gum counter. I never did find it. Then the manager came over and popped me even harder – so hard it bent my upper plate. I still can’t chew very good. Last week I went into the super store and there was another cutie cashier. I grabbed her by the ass and could see the manager coming out of the corner of my eye. The cutie says, Leave him alone. He don’t know what he’s doing. See what I mean?

Well, you better meet some of my friends. I’ll tell you right now I don’t attract the intellectual type. My friends are not the most educated, but they are my kind of people: down to earth, human, and full of greed, just like the rest of us. Birds of a feather flock together.

We have a very large front and back yard. Along one side there is a kind of creek bed. About a hundred years ago my great grandpa planted blackberries along the creek and now they are more than one hundred feet long and about ten feet high. If you get over on the other side, no one can see you. There is also one great big cottonwood tree that shades most of the back yard. A perfect yard for parties.

A long time back we were going to have a little birthday party for Bambi. We tried to figure out which of the people we know would most likely bring Bambi at least half assed decent birthday present. That was useless, so we invited the ones we thought would make the least mess, and steal the least. We’re used to the fighting, we don’t mind that.

Bambi had bought this burnt out bar-b-que thing at a yard sale for a dollar. It only had two legs so we had to lean it up against the garage to cook on it. For some reason Bambi decided to bake some stuff on it. I was watching it sort of spitting and bubbling and absorbing the grease that was already on the grill. At least this way it had a chance of tasting Ok.

After awhile somebody noticed the garage was on fire. Almost instantly Harry jumped up and peed on it and saved the garage. Thank God we had invited Harry and Emoldia. Harry is one of those lucky guys that has about a five quart bladder.

It took a little while for things to settle down, but pretty soon we were all sitting around listening to George tell how he fell off the submarine and poked his eye out on the periscope. George was in the big war, he says. He was very bitter that no one from the government had sent him any money or pension for his dead eye. He liked to tell everyone that he had given that eye for his country and would lay down the other eye if his country called on him.

George’s wife, a cute little blond named Elona Gale, always comes to the parties. How George found her no one knows. She sits by herself over by the cottonwood tree, working on her little Indian trinkets. She makes stuff out of feathers and bones and wire, and has a little stamp that says Made by Genuine Indians. She stamps a little tag she puts on all this stuff she makes. On Saturday she goes down to the bus station and squats on a little piece of Indian carpet she got out of a Sears catalog, then carefully dons her braided black wig and sells her stuff to tourists. She quickly found out that if she sits there a little more than half naked, she sells twice as much. That’s one nice thing about Elona Gale. She always sits around half naked, even in the winter.

One day I was in town and wandered over to the bus station to see how Elona Gale had set this all up. I had heard that the big bus company didn’t want nobody sittin’ around on the sidewalk selling stuff. But there she was all flopped out in a little corner by a window, where the bus station guy could look out at her anytime or all the time. When he was peeking out the window she knew just how much to bend over in the floppy fake Indian shirt she always wore. George would laugh an’ he told me she was driving the dumb jerk crazy.

I was looking at all the Indian trinket stuff she was laying out on the blanket. Wow, I says, where did you get all this stuff?

She flashed her big smile. Oh hi, Joe. Well, once in a while I go up to the Indian reservation and buy a couple of hundred dollars worth of Indian stuff. I can sell it right here for a heck of a lot more – a really lot more. She flashes that big smile at me again.

Pretty damn smart, I says.

I can talk Indian talk too, you know.

No! I had no idea you could do that. Do some for me.

She grins at me, Ok she says. Me no got change for twenty. Why you not buy Indian bracelet too?

Are you kidding? Is that supposed to be Indian talk?

It works, was her simple answer.

I knew George all the way through school. He came over to my house because he had heard about my God-given gift in writing. Somebody told him I could spell a lot of big words too. This is not true. I know a lot of them, but I can’t spell them, or don’t know much of what they mean.

Anyway, George told me the sad story about the submarine, his eye getting poked out, and not getting no money from the government, so I decided to help him out. I asked if he knew the address of the submarine navy government. He didn’t know, so I said, When you guys came in out of the ocean, where did you park the submarine? What city? George thought a minute. I think I remember now. It was Atlanta. Ok, I say, we’ll do this real official and throw in some big words too. To the Atlanta Commander of the guys who got banged up on the submarine and didn’t get no money.

"Dear Sir:

As I sit here beside this pathetic, down trodden one-eyed warrior, I cannot understand why you guys didn’t give him no money or pension for his dead eye, which he so couragesly gave to his country during the big war."

I read this back to George. He was thrilled to death with all the big words. He particularly like the courages and the warrior words.

You know, George, as I look this over, maybe we ought to write this in the first person.

George scratched his head. Who’s that? he asked.

Well, that’s you. If I use all these big words, and fancy way that I write, they will know that you didn’t write it.

George thought a minute. I don’t care if they know you are helping me write it. We can pretend that I’m not very good at writing letters, and that I’m weak from hunger ‘cause I ain’t got no food ‘cause I ain’t got no money. What’s that disease you get when you are starving?

I thought about that. "Well there