Friday, June 27, 2008

TAKE AIM, SHOOT STRAIGHT

There's a little "RIFLEMAN" in all of us.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

FISH TALE

I was up til three in the morning, sick as a dog, re-listening to REO Speedwagon's YOU CAN TUNE A PIANO, BUT YOU CAN'T TUNA FISH. What can I say, misery loves company. I found myself staring for long, fuzzy intervals at the LP cover. Incredibly suggestive to say the least, some Bacchanalian remnant of the orgy decade. I became fixated on what Gary Richrath and the gang were doubtlessly thinking when they designed the cover (and jammed out “The Unidentified Flying Tuna Trot”)…namely, ‘what would it be like to fuck a fish in the gills?’

Has anyone ever tried? If so, did they succeed? Half spun on Nyquil, white wine, and the dulcet tones of Kevin Cronin’s pipes, I walked out to the coy pond, primed to partake in what I deemed to be one of life's most elusive pleasures. But one step into the spongy bog mud convinced me that some fantasies are better left in the mind.

It’s not just me. There has been enough interest in this sordid subject to prompt lawmakers in at least fourteen states to specifically outlaw penial-gill contact of any kind. Just 8 months ago in the state of Nebraska, Harold Allen Tubbs was fined $3,200 and sentenced to 3 days in jail and 30 days hard labor for violating section 4832c of the penal code.

In cheap legalese, “Gillatio in flagrante delicto.”

The police alleged that Mr. Tubbs was caught in "a wholly indecent act perpetrated against a largemouth bass” and further supposed that Tubbs had stolen the fish from the seafood counter of the local Super Saver Grocery & Pharmacy where he was then employed. Tubbs claimed he was innocent (who wouldn’t?), that the entire episode was the result of an unfortunate "baiting accident." A receipt found on his person confirmed the fish was his, but that he had, in fact, paid for it. The charge of petty larceny was dropped, and the Public Defender assigned to the case convinced D.A. Melvin Howard, esq. to ditch the further charges of aggravated sodomy and necrophilia -- both felonies under Nebraska state law.

The prosecution had it easy. Tubbs was caught in a public park in Custer County, hell and gone from Lake McConaughy or the Merritt Reservoir. And there was no denying the fish belonged to him. But the truly damning evidence came from the Custer County Sheriff’s Chief Medical Examiner, whose autopsy revealed a human pubic hair lodged in the bass’ operculum. A DNA sample obtained from Tubbs proved the hair belonged to him. Case closed.

The sentence was exceedingly harsh, given that Tubbs was a first time offender and, by all accounts, a tax paying, god fearing member of society. In a state whose very motto decrees “Equality Before the Law,” a cheap ($1.79/lb) thrill cost a man his job and christened him “sex offender,” an albatross that will hang with him long after his probation ends in three-and-a-half years. I imagined him at a restaurant, middle-aged and sweaty-palmed in shirt and tie, cautiously averting his eyes and shuffling his feet as his blind date orders the seafood special.

Small wonder the powers that be didn't understand Tubbs' proclivities. Nebraska is, after all, a landlocked state where people rarely eat fish, let alone fuck them. But for whatever twisted reason, I found in Harold Allen Tubbs a kindred spirit. And since I was headed to the Cornhusker State to witness the annual Byway Beef Raffle, I thought it only fitting that I should look the fish-fucker up.

The phone rang sixteen times before a voice crackled on the other end. “Uh hello.”

“Harold Allen Tubbs?”

“Who’s askin’?”

I tried to put it as gingerly as possible. And when that didn’t work, I lied.

“Well sir, to tell you the God’s honest truth, I’m a reporter from The Boston Examiner, and I’ve been following your case for a good long while. Frankly, sir, I think you got a bum wrap. And I’m writing an two-part investigative piece that’ll hopefully help rectify the situation.”

“What’s done is done.” He said coldly. “Ain’t there bigger fish to fry in Boston?”

I let the comment slide; thoroughly convinced he hadn’t said it in jest.

“I’m in Nebraska now, sir. I’d really appreciate it if you’d sit down with me and talk about it.”

“Reckon you’ll write the story anyway, won’t you?”

“Yes sir, I will.”

“Then I guess, I don’t have much choice in the matter. I’m off Highway 2, ‘bout three miles west of where the O.K. Luther Barn used to be. Come tomorrow afternoon”

Of Highway 2, the late newsman Charlie Kuralt extolled: ‘this road will take you to one of the last unexplored frontiers where vast treasures can be discovered.’” Driving west past Broken Bow, I wondered if Kuralt had lived to cover the Tubbs case, would he have deemed this bizarre man-fish relationship as one such frontier. Were we on the same road?

The county was part of the land wrestled from the Pawnee Nation in 1857. On February 17, 1877, then-Governor Silas Garber officially named the place after George Armstrong Custer, the flaxen-haired patron saint of Indian land grabbing.

A long, uneventful drive in this part of the country gives one ample time to sink in the statistics. The most recent population count puts Custer at 12,026. Farmers mostly. Cornfields and grazing lands stretch as far as the eye cares to see. In 2,576 square miles of land, there’s less that one square mile of water. A fishophile like Tubbs, I thought, couldn’t help but feel out of place here.

I found the Tubbs residence almost by accident, a shanty befitting his newfound status as pariah. The late August sun is punishing, but despite the heat, every door and window was shut tight and the curtains drawn.

I opened the filthy screen and wrapped four times on a scalding, solid metal door. After a few minutes, the door creaked open. Before me stood a tall, solidly built, ruggedly featured late twenty-something with a thick head of brown hair. Not at all like the wild-eyed little ferret I was expecting. This guy looked like he might have been QB of the football team, maybe even prom king in high school. I couldn’t imagine this guy giving a largemouth bass the pole. Something was definitely fishy.

“Tubbs?”

“So that’s what a hot shot big city reporter looks like?”

He gave me the once over, then turned around and walked inside. As I followed him into the muggy furnace he called home, I realized I was woefully unprepared to interview the man. What was it that I expected of him? What did I even want to know? Why was I here? One drunken stupor fueled by the satanic influence of Seventies soft rock, and here I was, in the bowels of Hades with Poseidon himself.

“What do you wanna know?” He asked, taking a seat on a battered old sofa that looked like it came from the Salvation Army by way of my grandmother’s house.

“Who’s your decorator?” I was trying to lighten the mood, and I failed miserably. There are times when a man can really USE a beer. This was one such time.

I continued unabated. “First things first, did you do it?”

“Yep.”

A man of few words. I countered his expert parry with another thrust, “Why?”

“Just wanted to know what it felt like.”

“And what did it feel like?”

He nodded his head slightly, a thin smile on his lips. “Pretty damn goooood.”

The whole scene was too much for me, so I decided it best to end the thing and skedaddle.

“One last question. Had you to do it over again, would have done anything different?”

“I’da grabbed a smallmouth,” he said. “Reckon it woulda been a lot tighter.”

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

PHOTOS FROM THE RANGE

East Meets West
Still on the road, fighting a political hangover brought on by a terrible sickness. Breathing fresh air, seeing some new faces, and trying to make some sense of it all.