Flea Markets and Mud Races

Owning a flea market, I crossed paths with all sorts of...ummm..."Interesting"... people. People I never would've encountered in my everyday life, mainly because I try like hell to avoid the lunatic fringe. Some of these folks I could of done without meeting because they left me twitching and blinking my eyes in disbelief. (Twitching and blinking is what I do when I can't grab a firearm and shoot someone for hurting my brain. Besides that, waving a gun around is bad for buisness. I may be a hillbilly, but "Don't shoot your customers" is a pretty rock solid buisness plan.)

Flea market people are a unique breed. They like to pretend they're flying under the radar and are trying to get away with something, and sometimes you get an inkling of what that "Something" might be. Trust me, you don't want to get them to open up and tell you about their own special bat shit insanity.

I already alluded to a couple of these special people in my thread idea, so here's their story:

Like most people I enjoy music, especially live music. And being a musician, I know one of the hardest things to do is find a place to get your band together and play as loud as you desire without your neighbors calling the police about "Excessive noise" and "Disturbing the peace." Fucking neighbors.

Anyways, part of my buisness plan (Aside from not shooting my customers) was that I'd have live music at my flea market. I put out the word in the music community that they could come and play and have a captive audience.

I was as sly as a fox. I would get free entertainment for my roving hordes of flea marketeers looking for bargains, and the musicians would get to play as loud as they wanted without fear of a the po-po knocking on their door.

Win-Win. Right?

One of the bands that played at my place featured a Garth Brooks wannabe as the singer. These guys went all out to perform at the flea market. That should've told me something right there. Who in the bloody fuck dresses up for a (Free) gig at a flea market?

The singer was actually pretty talented, but just talking with him I could tell he was a wee bit removed from being part of functional reality. "Meh, he's a musician", I told myself. Musicians are always just a bit off center from the normal, it's one of the curses that goes with thinking musically instead of like a normal human being, besides that he cost me nothing, so go for it Garth. He wore an American flag shirt and belted out original songs like a poor man's Merle Haggard. He trotted out his wife and kids to sing, trying his best to put on a show that espoused family values. Despite his efforts, I saw through this charade. And I twitched. There was something not quite right with this dude.

One day he showed up with his hand in a cast and I was intrigued. (Never ask a flea market person how they got an injury. Seriously. The answer will make the nuerons in your brain fire off signals that they are not eveloutionally equipped for and you'll end up twitching and blinking like me.)

During a break I pulled him to the side because curiousity got the better of me and I just had to ask:

Me: "Dude...what happened to your hand?"

Garth: "I punched a horse."

Me: *Blink...Blink...Twitch* (My body involuntary does this shit,) "You punched a horse?"

Garth: "He done pissed me off."

Me: "You punched a FUCKING HORSE?" *Twitch, twitch, blink, blink, blink*

Garth: "I taught him a right lesson."

I had no words. I simply turned  and walked away twitching and blinking like a fucked up robot with a dying battery while my brain tried in vain to process this new information. "He punched a horse? What the FUCK?"  My sense of what is reality wasn't equipped to deal with this shit. I doubt anyone who's a functional member of society has enough room in their brain to process why some sociopath would punch an animal with enough force that it would break their hand.

I never invited him back. Hurt my brain once, shame on you, hurt my brain twice and I'll probably snap. Being a savy buisness owner, I realized that might be a bad thing.

And then there was Kathy...

Kathy was one of my vendors, and like most of my vendors she camped out down at the Flea Market in a motor home over the weekend.

She was actually a very pretty woman. "Stunning" would be the best word to describe her physical appearance, but Kathy held a secret behind the pretty wrapping...she was literally fucking insane. At least she tempered the insanity by being drunk. All. The. Fucking. Time.

It's no secret that I spend a great deal of my waking hours with a blood alcohol level that would get me arrested if I ventured out on a public roadway, but Kathy made me look like an amatuer.

Every weekend morning I would go down to my buisness at 6:30 in the morning and prepare for the day. And every morning there would be bubbly little blonde Kathy waiting to greet me with a huge smile and a big bloody mary. At six fucking thirty in the morning.

By 10 AM she'd give up the pretense of drinking something that might not be full of alcohol and just drink straight vodka. I had to deal with her stupid drunken ass constantly...steering her back to her booth and telling her not to annoy my other customers.

One weekend I had a radio station doing a live remote from my flea market (Did you know you have to pay the frantic announcer on the radio to show up and tell the listening audience what a wonderful place you have? You do, and you have to pay a lot.)

So, the announcer was live and pratling away about how everything was happening down at the flea market and you just had to get down here. He then decided he was going to interview someone.

Oh shit.

He caught my eye and I started blinking and twitching. I shot him a look that said "I will gut you motherfucker." He got the jist of my glare. I have no problem with public speaking, but at 1 in the afternoon after dealing with shit house crazy people all morning I realized it wasn't in my best interest to be interviewed. My mind was frazzled and I'd probably end up babbling away about Elvis stealing my onions or something equally insane. I could be confused for one of those crazy people and heaven forbid that could be bad for buisness.

And then my worst fear that I hadn't even known exsisted at that point in time came to fruition.

He spied Kathy and asked her to talk. Live. On the radio.

"You are so fucked" said my suddenly hurting brain.

"I know", I answered back, probably out loud. ( I know that having conversations with your brain is pretty much frowned upon and is a sign of serious mental illness, but after dealing with idiots constantly I had to have a confidant that wasn't fucking retarded and my brain was a convienant ally.)

Kathy was standing there, actually she was more weaving back and forth like a tree in a high wind, with her glass of vodka and this dumb ass that I'd paid good money to hype my buisness thrust a microphone in her mug and gave her an audience.

I could only stand there in dumbfounded silence as this transpired before my slowly becoming vacant eyes.

75,000 watts of power and heard all over of north Mississippi.

Kathy stared at the microphone for a moment while her alcohol addled brain tried to interput what was happening. I suppose if I were to look at the bright side of the situation, at least she didn't go mouth first all over it like it was a dick being waved in her face.

Then again, that my have been prefrable to what happened.

The first words that escaped her lips were "Hey y'all! I'm on the radio!" She then proceeded to babble, slur, and actually sing into the microphone.

All I could do was stand in the background twitching and wishing I had a gun. If I'd shot her while live on the radio at least folks would've come out to see the crime scene and no jury in the country would've convicted me. Temporary insanity brought about by constant exposure to idiots.

Seriously, in the middle of her drunken diatribe she started hitting on the announcer and then sang "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."

Let me repeat this: 75,000 watts of power and heard all over of north Mississippi.

No jury in the world would find fault in me for shooting her. My only problem was I didn't have a gun and throwing rocks at her would've been constrewed as juvenile at best. All I could do was serve witness to this melt down happening at my expense.

I knew when I built my flea market that I'd be dealing with less then intelligent people. I knew I'd be dealing with folks a few chromosones removed from Darwin's theory and I thought I was prepared for it because I didn't set the bar very high. The flea market people then proceeded to limbo right under my low hanging threshold and leave me twitching and blinking while they continued on oblivious and uncaring about the damage they'd done to my poor brain.

Sadly, I'm apparently a glutton for punishment and I decided that I'd also open a mud racing track. As if dealing with flea market people weren't enough, I came to the brilliant conclusion that I needed testosterone fueled hillbillys with 4 wheel drives added to the chaos.

I'm a fucking idiot and even I realize this when I'm making my poor decisions, but for some reason my brain (My supposed ally) whispers to me and tells me "Go for it dude." (Yep, my brain calls me "Dude." I think it's trying to get even with me for all the punishment I put it through in my younger years. It's a few million cells shy of what a brain should have cell-wise and that's probably why it speaks like a 14 year old California surfer.)

So, I built a mud track on a corner of my flea market and was suddenly up to my eyeballs in not only flea market people, but I now also had hundreds of drunk hillbillies milling around my property . If this hadn't been my land I would've fit right in with the drunks, but it was my duty to try and herd them into something resembling socially accepitable.

I ran around putting out little fires of unaccepted behaviour and uttering phrases like "What the fuck?" and "That's a cat! It shouldn't be on fire. What the HELL is wrong with you?"

Then something caught my eye.

It was a jacked up 70's Chevy 4x4 running amuck across my property while flying two flags from the bed...one was a Confererate flag, the other was black flag with very prominant white lettering  stating "No Niggers." I told my brain "Would you please just have an anurism and kill me now?"  I made a point of asking nicely. My brain just laughed at my predicament and continued to pulse and throb like brains tend to do. Obviousley, I was going to have to deal with this with or without the help of my brain, which sadly is how I end up coping with most of the curveballs life tosses at me,

Fuck me. Does anyone else ever have to deal with shit like this?

I chased this dumb ass down and told him "No. Just no." I was once again out of words to describe my disbelief of outright stupidity. You'd think that after a while I'd have a pat speech down to chastise people with that I could recite from rote, but these fucking idiots kept coming up with new and different ways to surprise me with levels of stupid that just left me flabbergasted.

He started babbling about free speech and how he was just excersising his constitutional rights. My heart started pumping all the spare blood it could into my overworked  and occasionally trechorous brain.

I snapped. I was overworked and I'd had a belly full of fucking idiots that made my brain hurt.

"Look son," I yelled, "Either you take down that flag or I'm going to stick it straight up your ass."

He began flapping his mouth about free speech and the const...I cut him off short of finishing his argument. "Look, this is my property and I'm fucking God in this universe. You and your idiot flags are going to go away. Period."

Would you believe this moron decided his best course of action was to try and argue with me? Apparently he lived in an alternative universe where you can espouse your hateful views all over someone else's property without recourse.

"Don't be a dick" he told me defiently.

"Go away" I retorted. It wasn't a brilliant response, but my brain was pretty much shutting down due to stupidity overload and there were very few firing nuerons left at the moment.

He had some little underage cutie scooted over next to him on the bench seat and she was about to open her fucking mouth (As a guy I know that look in a woman's eyes when she's about to start flapping her lips saying something defiant.You can actually see mushroom clouds in their eyes if you look hard enough.)

"Gate. Go away now." I yelled while pointing at the highway.

By this time little Lolita was leaning across her boyfriend and her mouth was attempting to form something that may or may not have resembled the English language, really fucking loud. My brain had already shut the fuck down and I was now twitching and blinking like I had fresh batteries installed. All I heard was "Bastard...murple, gumple, fuck you, gfrgh, funtle."

I have no idea what she'd actually said, but them were fighting words. I grabbed her befuddled grand wizard Klan wannabe boyfriend's hat off his head and stomped it in the mud. (In all honesty I was actually feeling kind of bad for the guy about this time. I know how many unfortunate incidents a loud mouthed woman has gotten me into and Lolita over there was really loud and pissing me the fuck off.)

His hat stomped into a mud hole, I could see this guy was ready to surrender and just go away like I had politely requested he do in the first place. Lolita, on the other hand was still bellowing away like a banshee with a megaphone. "This is why people beat their children" my suddenly functioning brain whispered to me.

Jethro Jr. and I both knew we wished to be exited from all this unpleasantness, but Lolita wanted to keep hollering and was completely impervious to the fact that the situation had already been resolved....Jethro simply takes his stupid flags and goes away and I won't shoot him. Problem solved.

But Lolita kept yelling like it was her God given right, while poor Jethro started twitching and blinking. Welcome to my world motherfucker.

I would say that I'm a patient man, but that would be an outright lie. I'm not. A 16 year old girl calling me every combination of foul words her fragile mind can string together in a feeble attempt to be clever seriously pisses me off.

As calmly as I could I said to Jethro "I think you best take your bitch and go away."

Oh fuck.

That wasn't what Lolita wished to hear. Apparently her calling me every curse word known to man in languages that hadn't yet been invented was ok, but me calling her a bitch was unacceptable.

Screech! went Lolita.

"Ow" replied my brain.

It was about then that I realized I was a grown man trying to reason with a shrieking fucking idiot, Poor Jethro Jr was already a twitching mass of racist Jello warbling in the breeze while this little girl tried to out yell me even though I wasn't yelling.

I placed a hand on Jethro's shoulder and told him "Son,I think you should go now." Jethro nodded his head and took this sage advice and drove off with his flags drooping behind him with his girlfriend still shrieking like a wounded bear caught in a trap.

Thank God that I was never blessed with a daughter, it's bad enough that I have to put up with other folks shrieking bundles of joy. That girl is probably still yelling in some poor befuddled fool's ear.