And Then Some...

I worked with Dagney for awhile after Gary’s death, but because of her drinking the tension between Mona and I was palpable. Like I said earlier she was wonderful when she was sober and an absolute bitch when she was drunk.

One of the last things I did for Dagney was to run an auction to sell Gary’s gun collection. There were three of us involved in the sale Greg (Gary’s) son, Gary’s friend who was on the boat when he died, and me. It turned into a total fiasco. Both Greg and Gary’s buddy got “stinkin’ drunk” and were selling great guns well below what they should have sold for and not keeping accurate records on the guns they sold. I convinced them that it would be a lot better if they just went to the bar and I ran the remaining two days and we were able to correct the “paperwork” on the gun sales and sell the remaining guns for what they should sell for. All sales were done by auction so we forced some prices pretty high and made up for the all the major errors of the first day.

It was about this time that my son convinced me that I needed to move closer to the cities and I found a two bedroom apartment in Cambridge for about $100 more than I was paying for a one bedroom apartment in Hinckley. It was owned by a Chinese lady who had properties all over Cambridge. She used to treat me to dinner at least once a month.

Through a friend I met Brian…he was a nineteen year old Ojibwa who had just moved into the area. He had no money and no place to stay and I remembered what that was like after my divorce. He hadn’t been able to find a job and didn’t have a lot of prospects. So I told him he could live with me until he got on his feet.

Now there is no limit on the number of deer that Native Americans can take each year, so Brian took three. I came home from grocery shopping to find him butchering all three deer in the bathtub. There was blood and hair and bones everywhere. I told him if the sheriff saw this we would both be in cells waiting for blood analysis to prove that we weren’t homicidal. He just laughed and asked me to go back to the store and get three or four rolls of freezer paper. He really was good at cutting meat, and he had done steaks, tenderloins, chops, and roasts. We found friends that had chest freezers to store some of the meat and told them they were welcome to whatever they wsnted for their personal use. He ground a lot more up to make venison burgers and sausages…however he wasn’t good at cleaning up after himself. It took me the better part of a week to clean the bathroom well enough to be fit for human habitation.

We lived together for a couple of months until I started finding articles of value missing and started missing money from my wallet. I asked him to leave and this ruined my friendship with the person that had brought us together.

Ben found an apartment that was pretty close in price to what I was paying, and it was within walking distance of his townhouse…I moved back to the CITIES.

Remember, this is the actual truth…give or take a lie or two…

Until next time…