Stories and Tales
Truth, Lies, and Wild Exaggerations
By Ken Rander
Copyright 2013 Ken Rander
All Rights Reserved
Version 1.0.002
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase another copy for each person with whom you wish to share it. Thank you for honoring the copyright laws and for respecting the author’s hard work.
Warning: This book contains Adult Themes and Explicit Scenes. All characters in this book are over 18.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Empty Shadows
A Lot of Bull
Brother and the BB Gun
Fishing with Dad
Flasher on the Mountain
Saving Mom’s Life
Man in Restaurant
My Son the Construction Engineer
Learning the ABC’s and Counting
Mom Doesn’t go Fishing With Dad Anymore
Watching the Buffalo
Authors Notes
Foreword
This is a random collection of some of my backlog of stories. These are tales that I collected from friends and enemies and modified to make them my own. The grammar and style is “folksy” on purpose. I hope you enjoy these.
Empty Shadows
Empty shadows in a vacant hall
Bookcases empty, standing tall
No people sounds, nothing at all
I walk in silence, feeling very small
Emotions surge, warring in my chest
Where's my family, is this some jest?
Hurt and angry, rip off my tie and vest
And sit numbly, in a silent empty nest
What am I to do, sitting here all alone
In this empty, soulless, vacant home
I sit and stare glumly at the silent phone
With no idea where they might have gone
Closest family, talks daily, they always know
Call and humbly ask, where'd my family go?
But they pretend ignorance, it is all a show
Alone but for the empty shadows, tears flow
A Lot of Bull
When I was young, my parents used to rent houses for our family until they managed to save enough for a down payment on a house of their own. Most of these houses were older homes, out in the country, which means they were built 70-80 years ago, back when indoor plumbing was not that common for a country home. Most of them had a pump outside to pump water up from a well, and an outhouse for the facilities.
My parents rented a house that was bigger than the last one we had had with a much bigger yard, maybe 1.5-2 acres altogether. The pump was located in the front yard about 50 feet in front of the house, and the outhouse was located behind the house, about 400-500 feet from the house in a fenced pasture behind the house. There was a gate to get into the pasture that was fenced off with barbed wire. The outhouse was about 150 feet from the fence. The pasture held cattle and it was a large piece of land. The cattle were tame and never acted as if they noticed us even when we went up to pet them, which we were only supposed to do when accompanied with an adult.
The first 3-4 months everything was fine. We kids stayed outside and played a lot. There were no video games or much TV (Color TV's were very expensive and not that many shows were in color). It was not unusual for the children to be outside all day except for meals.
There was no traffic on the road near us and it was practically unheard of for anyone to hurt a child, nor were there any wild animals on the fenced and cleared land where the house sat. With little danger of us getting hurt, we were not watched as closely as if we were in a less isolated area, or as one would have to do today.
It was one lazy summer day. Dad was at work in town. Mom was doing laundry that was an all day job with the tools she had. My brother was at school while I had not started yet. I would typically play outside and sometimes would lay and read or color under a big oak tree at the back of the lot. Sometimes I would fall asleep and nap beside the dog. Therefore, it was not unusual for me to be off by myself for hours at a time.
On that day, not long after lunch that I felt the need to go to the outhouse.
I went into the pasture and made it about 2/3 of the way to the outhouse when I saw this huge bull charging toward me, snorting and bellowing. I ran to the outhouse and slammed the door with not a moment to spare. The bull came up to the door snorting and pawing the ground and peering at me thru the cracks in the door of the outhouse. He would put one eye up to the crack and peer at me, then turn his head and use the other eye. I was about five or six and he towered over me, looking down at me. From my perspective, his eye seemed huge. For the next 3-4 hours, the bull kept me pinned inside the outhouse.
He would lose interest and trot away, but as soon as he got a good distance away and I'd try to sneak out and over to the gate, he'd come charging at me again, snorting, horns lowered. I would wind up back in the outhouse again with him peering thru the cracks, looking first with one eye, then the other.
My brother got home from school but had to do homework before he could play so he did not notice I was not around. It was not until close to suppertime that the dog came to the house without me, that they noticed I was missing and started looking for me.
After I heard them shouting, and I called back, they found me, but had to get the owner to capture the bull and put him up before they could get me out. It turned out that the bull had been delivered that morning and put in separate area, but he had gotten into that pasture due to a broken latch on a connecting gate. He was not tame and would charge anyone and attempt to gore them. It was sheer luck I had beat him to the outhouse before he got to me or he might have done serious damage.
My dad was furious, and the next day the owner of the house started digging an outhouse on the house property outside the pasture.
Thirty years later, I bought a house out in the country and moved in. The next morning as I was on my way out the front door I came face to face with a bull standing six feet in front of my door. We stood looking at each other for a moment. He was chewing on grass and then he snorted. I made an immediate 180 turn and closed the front door.
Looking out the front window there were several cows in the front yard along with the bull.
Not more than ten minutes later several farmers came up. One started herding the cows and another put a lasso around the bulls neck and started leading him away. I opened the door and we talked. A car had knocked down a fencepost a little down the road during the night and the cows had wandered out. All of them were relatively tame, unlike the bull from years earlier.
That is my story and it is no bull!
Brother and the BB Gun
My brother was six years older than I was.
When we were young, he got a BB gun and used to chase me around outside shooting me in the butt with it. He thought this was hilarious fun.
I almost never got hold of the gun. However, one time I did. He set it down to get a drink of water from the water hose. I grabbed the gun, cocked it and took aim. I did not get to shoot one shot.
It was at that moment that my mother looked out the window
and caught me. I got my BB stung butt beat. My brother got off Scott Free. He always led a charmed life.
To this day when I tell that tale, he laughs out loud.
Fishing with Dad
For many years my dad and I would go on a twice a year fishing trip.
Usually, I would never catch anything when my dad and I went fishing, but he loved to go and it meant a lot to him that I would want to go with him. That was worth a lot more than a fish or two. Dad is getting on in years and walks with a cane now, so we cannot go hiking thru the briars and underbrush like we used too.
Dad still speaks fondly about our last fishing trips, about all the fish we caught, and the fun we had. I remember things from a slightly different perspective...
Last time I went fishing, we got up before daylight and drove out to his "secret" hole on the riverbank. He has dark complexion and the 'sketers don't bother him. I have a very light complexion and the ‘sketers take one look at me and shout to their buddies "lunch! Call all your friends! Let’s drain this walking blood bank!"
We sat down on the riverbank and tossed our hooks out and dad yanks a catfish out almost immediately. He pulls another out within five minutes. I am five feet down the bank and nothing -- except a cloud of 'sketers (kind of like the dust around pigpen in a Charlie Brown cartoon).
About 20 minutes later, dad is up to six catfish while I had caught none. He is feeling sorry for me and suggests he got the best seat and that we swap. I let him cajole me into swapping and within 10 minutes, he pulled out three more catfish from my old spot --- and I am still at zip.
After a while longer, dad puts his rod aside and we sit in silence while I try to catch one so he will not feel so bad.
After a while, we decide to pack up and we keep the four best fish and let the others go. On the way back, we stop off for hotcakes and sausage and I let dad brag about the big fish he caught last time.
He has forgotten I did not catch anything then either -- and I do not remind him.
Despite everything, it has been a memorable father/son/'skater bonding experience.
It provided him with hours of fond memories and that is worth a lot.
It is about spending quality time together... and not passing out from blood loss due to the skaters!
Flasher On The Mountain
When I was very young, my mom worked second shift at a factory.
She would go in at 3:30 and get off around midnight. She carpooled with three other women who lived in the surrounding area. They would meet at the woman’s house that lived closest to the highway on the way to work and carpool from there,
We lived about 20 miles from mom's workplace in town. After a couple of miles of narrow road, it was a 2-lane highway through mostly woods and cornfields all the way to town.
Just before town, they would go over a mountain. Where the road had been blasted out of the mountain, there was a sheer rock face probably 15 feet high, and then the other side of the highway descended into the trees. There were a couple of roads that went up along the side of the rock face, or veered off and descended into the trees. At one point, coming around the mountain, a trail could be used to walk up beside the rock face and get up on the mountain above. There were houses above, looking down upon the road.
It was here that they saw the flasher, standing at the foot of the trail, positioned so that their car lights shined on him just as they rounded the curve. He was dressed in an overcoat that he held open, displaying his wares... The women thought it was funny the first night and laughed it off as another streaker. Streaking was at its height around that time.
The next night, the flasher was there again, and the night after that. The onetime prankster had become the repeat offender and pervert.
Being fans of frontier justice, the women decided to "fix his wagon", so they put their heads together and came up with a plan...
Sure enough, the flasher was there again the next night. They slowed down, pulled off on the side of the road about 20-30 feet from the man, and rolled down the passenger side window.
"We've been seeing you out here several nights and we wanted to let you know you have a fine specimen there!" Obligingly, the man clasped himself and began stroking it, getting it to come fully erect.
"Yes, that’s a really fine specimen. Can you come a little closer so we can get a good look?" Of course, the man strutted closer... his pride and joy pointing to the sky.
When he was about 7-8 feet from the car, the woman on the passenger side who had been speaking, brought out a pistol, pointed it right at his manhood, and pulled the trigger. BANG!
The man jumped when the gun flashed and roared. He stood there for a few seconds in shock. BANG! Went a second shot.
"Dammit you missed him! Shoot him again!" Yelled one of the other women.
The man’s proud shaft went from full to half-mast almost instantly. He turned and bounded up the mountain, coattails flying accompanied by another BANG!
"Dammit, you can't hit anything!" One woman shouted.
"He won't hold still!” BANG! "Dammit he's getting away!" BANG!
By this time, the flasher had reached and topped the cliff and disappeared from sight.
When they got home that night, my mom related what had happened. Inviting the man closer had not been part of the plan and she'd almost pissed her pants, but with the man so close, they could see his expression when the blank gun went off, and had a bird’s eye view of him deflating almost instantly. To hear my mom tell the tale, he is still running to this day.
Saving Mom’s Life
When I was nine, my mother got a job working second shift to help with some bills.
We lived about 25-30 miles from the plant where she worked, so she would carpool with three other women who lived nearby and worked at the same place.
They would drive to the person’s house closest to town and then take turns as to who drove the rest of the way to work. They would start work at 3:30pm and finish up around midnight.
I was running a fever and throwing up one day, and mom decided to stay home and "doctor" me. She called and told the other ladies to go on without her.
The next morning, we found out that a drunk in a truck had rear-ended the carpool car. They were sitting at a red light in town at 1am in the morning. The car they were in was a car that shall remain nameless. That particular model was widely publicized to have a safety issue with its gas tank. A severe blow could rupture the gas tank and it could blow up if there was a spark. When the drunk rear-ended them at about 20 miles/hour, the car blew up and scattered parts over a 50-75 foot area.
The drunk was ok, but the three women in the car were all killed. My mom would have been in that car if I had not been so sick that day.
20 Years later I worked with a man who had worked at the plant making those cars.
We were talking about cars and I mentioned the model with its exploding gas tank.
He told me that was not true. He knew the model well, having worked on them during that time and knew the gas tank was safe.
I told him about how the car had blown up. If I had not been sick, my mother would be dead now. The inquiry had ruled that the cause of the explosion was that the gas tank had ruptured, and it was inadequately protected.
He did not have a lot to say after that.
Man In Restaurant
So one of the things I do most weekends when I pick my son up is I take him to a restaurant and we have dinner together and talk... albeit sometimes very simplistically, but still it's Daddy Son stuff and he loves it.
SO one day a few months ago we were in Ruby Tuesday's and sitting near the salad bar. I had my back to the incoming crowd and he was facing them.
Suddenly his eyes got big, his mouth dropped open, and he said in a loud voice "Wow, Daddy, that man is really fat! He's twice as fat as you!"
I glanced over my shoulder and this person is waddling in and really is a LOT bigger than I am... he was red faced but pretending not to have noticed...
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"Son, it's rude to call people fat," I told him in a quiet voice. "It can hurt people's feelings because they can’t always control their weight and they feel bad about it."
His eyes still big, he thought about this for a second or two and then looked back at the man again ...
"Boy, Daddy that man is twice as wide as you!" He said in exactly the same volume and tone.
"Son!" I said as quietly as I could manage, the man was almost beside me now. "It's rude to say that too."
"But you said fat would hurt someone’s feelings, I didn't use fat! I used wide. Wide is an ok word."
I proceeded to try to explain that any reference to size could be hurtful, and he said he never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. He was just surprised at how big the man was.
Just part of being a parent. I would never give it up!
My son the Construction Engineer
When my son was around 18 months, he amazed me with his ingenuity at construction engineering.
He had an airplane that he decided to fling about attempting to make it fly. He almost knocked down a vase in the living room. I warned him to stop but he continued to fling it about. I took the airplane away and put it up on top of a six-foot tall bookcase beside the couch. We played for a little while longer and I ducked into the bathroom for a moment.
When I came out, junior had taken two of the chairs from his play table and set them on the couch adjacent to the bookcase. I walked around the corner and there he was, climbing up on top of the second chair, wobbling on the soft couch cushion, and reaching for the airplane.
My heart stopped in my mouth. I ran to catch him and screamed for him to stand still. He got the airplane and began climbing down. I caught him just as he started back down. The Rube Goldberg construction began wobbling dangerously.
On one hand, I was proud of him for his problem solving skills. He figured out how to get the plane he wanted so badly. On the other hand, I wanted to beat him (figuratively speaking) for doing something so obviously dangerous.
That is my boy.
Learning the ABC’s and Counting