Adventures with the Landlord
Today, I assisted our relentlessly amusing landlord haul his old broken clothes dryer out of the house so we could haul in our fairly new, working dryer. I wouldn't say I helped. Watching would be more like it. Despite being a old guy, our landlord is strong and sturdy. He could move a mountain with the correct hand-truck. In a fight, he could kick my ass while standing on one leg. So, I watched, opened doors, and listened to him.
"Right here is where I nearly shot my toes off," he tells me as we move stuff out of the shed to get at my dryer. "I used to have a cot back here. One day I was laying there reading, and I had my rifle on top o' me with the barrel resting on my feet. I must have got pretty excited about what I was reading because I pulled the trigger. Missed my toes, but the quiver of arrows at the end of the cot was shot clean in half. Don't let nobody tell you reading isn't exciting."
We take a few more items from the shed, mostly lawn and garden tools of mine. He takes out a few things that had been in there well before we moved in.
"You know what this is?" He asks, holding up a long rusty metal spike. "It's a bayonet. I had an uncle in World War I. He got injured and brought home all kinds of stuff. I thought we'd lost this. If the Germans has used one of these on him, he wouldn't have come home with it."
Later on, while rearranging the shed to make more room he points out some rolls of toilet paper up on a shelf to my wife.
"You can have that toilet paper, if you want it. It's single ply. You know what that means? You gotta roll off about half of it and fold it 14 times before you can use it."
Finally, we've our dryer out and he's trying to maneuver it out on the hand-truck. He's wobbling and swerving under the weight of it.
"I don't know why I'm wobbling so much," he said to me. "I only had three drinks this morning."
In the end, the dryer was successfully installed and he took the bayonet home.
"Right here is where I nearly shot my toes off," he tells me as we move stuff out of the shed to get at my dryer. "I used to have a cot back here. One day I was laying there reading, and I had my rifle on top o' me with the barrel resting on my feet. I must have got pretty excited about what I was reading because I pulled the trigger. Missed my toes, but the quiver of arrows at the end of the cot was shot clean in half. Don't let nobody tell you reading isn't exciting."
We take a few more items from the shed, mostly lawn and garden tools of mine. He takes out a few things that had been in there well before we moved in.
"You know what this is?" He asks, holding up a long rusty metal spike. "It's a bayonet. I had an uncle in World War I. He got injured and brought home all kinds of stuff. I thought we'd lost this. If the Germans has used one of these on him, he wouldn't have come home with it."
Later on, while rearranging the shed to make more room he points out some rolls of toilet paper up on a shelf to my wife.
"You can have that toilet paper, if you want it. It's single ply. You know what that means? You gotta roll off about half of it and fold it 14 times before you can use it."
Finally, we've our dryer out and he's trying to maneuver it out on the hand-truck. He's wobbling and swerving under the weight of it.
"I don't know why I'm wobbling so much," he said to me. "I only had three drinks this morning."
In the end, the dryer was successfully installed and he took the bayonet home.