Category: Well I thought it was funny!
Hospitals can be the source of some seriously high drama. Sometimes it
comes from unexpected quarters. Unsplash photo. Photographer: JC Gellidon
I am a man greatly blessed. I have seen the world, served my country and saved a few lives. I get to write for gun magazines and claim it’s work. Friends describe me as the luckiest man alive. I cannot dispute that appellation. However, one “lucky” episode stands above all others. As hard as it is to believe, yours truly did actually get an order of fries and a hamburger from a McDonald’s restaurant while they were still only serving breakfast.
This tale begins in the ICU with a hulking female drug addict who had recently overdosed. She came out of her drug-addled stupor enraged, belligerent and ready to rock. Before anyone could intervene, she tore out her IV lines and perched on the side of the bed — snarling. The ICU staff called both the cops and the on-call psychiatrist.
I was but a lowly medical student on the first day of my psych rotation. We arrived in the ICU to find pure, unfiltered bedlam.
Appreciate the scene. This was not one of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders — this woman was absolutely huge and utterly out of her mind. The two cops were impressive physical specimens in their own rights. This was shaping up to become World War III in microcosm.
The psych resident uttered a few well-placed words, declared victory and retired to write in the chart. That left the enormous, drug-addicted crazy woman, two surly cops, a dozen or so highly-trained ICU staff watching from a healthy distance and yours truly. Everybody inexplicably stared at me.
“So, pretty crummy day, huh?” I inquired amicably.
The woman glared at me, gestured to the two cops, and said flatly, “First I’m going to kill them, then I’m going to kill you, and then I’m leaving.” The verbiage has been sanitized out of deference to sensitive readers.
Drawing on my vast well of psychiatric experience I responded, “You look miserable. How about something to eat?”
At that the woman’s visage grew quizzical.
“You know, I am hungry. What you got?” she asked.
I looked around and saw no food handy.
“Well,” I said, “There’s a McDonald’s in the hospital. Let’s make a deal. You tell me what you’d like, and I’ll go get it. In return you promise me you’ll stay here and not attack those two nice police officers before I return. What do you think?”
She mulled it over for a moment and agreed. We actually shook on it.
Unsplash Photo. Photographer: Shahbaz Ali Ye
The McDonald’s in this massive hospital was located right next to the cardiac cath lab. I found this oddly amusing. I declared a medical emergency and pushed my way to the front of the line. The sullen uniformed teenager looked perturbed, as did the other patrons, but this was a hospital. Weird stuff happened there.
I explained that I needed a Big Mac, a large order of fries and a Coke. Like an automaton she explained it was ten after ten in the morning. They wouldn’t be serving from the lunch menu for another twenty minutes. I needed to pick something more breakfast-ish.
The crazy chick in the ICU had been very specific. I elaborated it was an emergency. There was somebody in the ICU who was going to die if I didn’t get a Big Mac, a large order of fries and a Coke. The teenager’s eyes grew wide, and she summoned her manager. I repeated my request and said I didn’t have time to explain.
The manager sprang into action.
Unsplash Photo. Photographer: Aliazukrina Wqyan
“Drop me some fries!” he shouted. “Grill me a Big Mac! Get this man a Coke!” I tore off mere moments later with exactly what I needed. In case you’re wondering — emergency or not — I did have to pay for it.
The drug addicted woman was right where I left her and indeed grateful for the food. I kept her company while she ate. Once sated she thanked me and explained yet again the order in which she was going to murder everybody. However, the ICU staff had made good use of the intervening time.
A nurse had drawn up about half a quart of Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic medication. He slipped up behind her and jabbed her in the butt through her hospital gown. After the expected bit of unfettered chaos she calmed right down and ultimately got the help she needed.
Saving lives is one thing. Most anybody can do that. However, yours truly did actually once get a Big Mac out of McDonalds at 1010 in the morning. It’s arguably my most amazing accomplishment.
“I’m just proud out be out here with all you warfighters”
Whatever he says, it’s in a southern accent
FORT IRWIN, Calif. – Standing before a group of Army senior leaders, Brigadier General (Chaplain) William Green Jr. invoked the wrath of God on an assembled group of rusty tanks and assorted targets during a demonstration of the Army’s newest spiritual weapon, the ‘smite ray.’
“Let us pray,” Green said as the senior leaders bowed their heads in unison.“Dear Heavenly Father, loving and gracious host of hosts. We ask that You bless those gathered here in Your name today — that You protect them from harm, You guide their decisions, and that You smite that heathen equipment at grid number November Victor two, eight, zero, seven, niner, zero, two, fife, one, seven by Your holy power. Amen.”
After he spoke, a great tearing sound echoed through the mountains as a beam of light penetrated the sky and onto the desired target area.
“Jesus Chri— , I mean gee golly,” acting Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, said nervously after the Chief of Chaplains gave him the side eye. As debris began to fall around, but not on, the onlookers, George considered the implications. “This, um, capability will put the Army back in the Pacific fight!”
George was referring to the largely naval role in contesting Chinese influence in the region. For its part, the Army has been seeking to enhance its role through developing anti-ship missiles, contested logistics capabilities, and a new Chicken Pad Thai MRE.
After the demonstration, Brigadier General Green was asked how the Chaplain Corps came about acquiring the so-called smite ray.
“Well, with constrained budgets and a focus on lethality and readiness, our beloved branch was facing some tough cuts,” Green admitted. “We were able to beat out those godless psychologists and psychiatrists in taking care of our soldiers’ mental health on the readiness front, but as you could imagine, we still lacked capability in the lethality space.”
“So I, um, prayed,” he continued with a weird smile.
At press time, a group of Chaplain’s Assistants was seen carefully loading a large wooden box marked ‘Top Secret, Army Intel 9906753 Do Not Open!’ into the back of an LMTV.
Whiskey Fueled Tirade is a retired Army guy, distilled spirit consumer, and throw-away COA composter. If you have a favorite whiskey, recommend it to him on X/Twitter @FueledTirade.
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called yet another news conference to announce she was now suspending the First Amendment to silence the heavy criticism she has received for suspending the Second Amendment.
“I am officially declaring that people criticizing me for stripping constitutional rights is a public health emergency,” she said when making the controversial announcement. “Due to the terrifying response to my second amendment decision, I am feeling really bad about myself and now have no choice but to suspend the First Amendment as well. So…you know…be quiet. QUIET!”
The assembled members of the media, now having the freedom of the press suspended, remained awkwardly silent for the duration of the press conference. “I’ll now open up the floor to anyone who has questions,” the governor said. “Oh, that’s right — I took away your right to speak! Haha! Whatcha gonna do now, huh? That’s right — nothing! Take that, losers!”
Constitutional scholars quickly expressed doubt over Governor Lujan Grisham’s authority to suspend entire sections of the U.S. Constitution. “Yeah, she can’t do that,” said Professor Blake Rumsey. “She’s just the governor of a state. And, let’s be real here, New Mexico is barely even a real state.”
At publishing time, Governor Lujan Grisham was last seen poring over a copy of the Constitution behind closed doors, salivating as she searched for more basic American rights she could strip away from people.
Categories
New Mexico
A timeless old Southern folk song has a verse I’ve always liked because it applies to all of us who shoot.
The song is Oh, Monah, and it’s one of those toe-tappers that must have 1,000 verses. My favorite goes:
An old colored preacher was sittin’ on a log.
Had his finger on the trigger and his eye on a hog.
Well, the gun went boom! and the hog went zip!
And the preacher grabbed him with all his grip.
While none of my great misses have necessitated rasslin’ with a hog, some dandies have occurred to me.
One that was particularly humiliating goes back to the early ’50s. That was a rather Puritanical time when they blacked out the lower part of the TV screen while Elvis did his numbers, and when in the “dry” Texas county where I was a deputy sheriff, partaking of malt or spirituous beverages (by anyone but yourself, of course) was looked upon as so base an act as to hint of tar and feathers.
It was against the law to possess or transport alcohol for purposes of sale, and it was illegal to sell it. The nearest legal source of the sauce was Amarillo, 50 miles away, making for a thriving bootlegging traffic and a rather miserable job for me.
It seemed there was at least one bootlegger for every three or four residents of my county. All my waking (and most of my sleeping) hours were devoted to catching them with their cars loaded with hooch, serving search warrants, ripping up shanty floors, and dreaming up all kinds of Machiavellian traps to stop the noxious flow. This would cause all of the ladies to demand that their husbands vote for my boss, thus ensuring my job for a while longer.
One of the less euphoric facets of the job was to be present at a big Saturday night dance each week. Somehow, in spite of my vigilance, bootleggers would saturate the affairs, which were attended regu-larly by at least 500 happy (and getting happier) migrant laborers from up to 150 miles away. The festivities usually continued until about daylight, when most of the guests were passed out, rolled, stabbed, shot, or resting peacefully in the county jail or hospital.
Merriment and gaiety prevailed.
One Sunday sunrise found me leaving the hospital emergency room, bloody from holding down a drunk while the doctor sewed up a knife wound in his arm, the left side of my head throbbing from contact with a rock, my left knuckles swollen, and my new boots scuffed. I wasn’t in my usual jovial mood as I drove down a beer-can-strewn lane near the site of the celebration.
There, at the side of the road leaning against a fencepost, sat a man, pretty near sober, minding his own business. As I passed, he lifted a brown, quart bottle of beer to his lips and drank deeply. I slammed on the brakes and questioned him, thinking he might be a wetback.
He foiled me there, showing me a permit and telling me in soft Spanish that he was a bracero, a legally entered citizen of Mexico, contracted for a short time to work in the fields of Texas. I asked where he had obtained the beer. He named one of my craftiest bootleggers.
I’m afraid I committed a little police brutality at that point. I yanked the nearly full quart from his hand, and by the neck, threw the big bottle almost straight up. I was shooting a lot then and thought I was good.
The weight of the liquid in the bottle made it turn right side up, just as it reached its apex. I yanked my Smith .357 and fired. I was amazed when I missed my first, single-action shot and let a couple go double action as the quart came down. Clean misses.
The Mexican hadn’t moved from his sitting position and remained perfectly relaxed as the bottle thudded to the ground, right side up, within reach of his right hand.
Not a drop of beer had spilled.
Knowing how important it is not to lose face in these situations, I jammed my magnum back into its holster and scowled at my hapless victim. In stern Spanish I ordered, “Let that be a lesson to you!”
As I drove away, I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the bracero shrug his shoulders as he reached for another drink. “Ay, these crazy gringos!”
There’s a great deal of good advice passed along these days in NRA literature, hunters’ safety courses, and the like, about how you should never shoot at a bird on a power or communications line. It’s excellent advice and should be adhered to strictly, but I’d never heard of it when I was about 10, and it never occurred to me that a .22 bullet could cut one of those vital threads.
So, I was laying under a railroad trestle one afternoon some 40 years ago, along with a cousin who was armed with a single-barreled .410. My gun was a trusted .22 Remington pump, loaded with .22 Shorts. A bird landed on one of the railroad telegraph wires that parallel our cubbyhole, and I took the shot, hitting just a hair low.
The wire separated, with each segment whipping toward its pole. Cousin and I hurriedly departed the premises, stored our guns, and played softball for a week, waiting for the railroad detectives to come and beat the truth out of us. In that week, there occurred no head-on train collisions between Hereford, Texas, and Clovis, New Mexico, no “bulls” knocked on our doors, and neither of us has since fired at a target on a communications or power line.
Every grown man has to have a hideout, a place to escape momentarily from his woes, to sit and whittle with his peers–men who speak his language. This is the reason for the existence of private clubs, pool halls, and masculine off-limit “studies” in the abodes of the affluent.
At one pleasant period of my life, my hole-in-the-wall was a slaughter plant operated by V.C. Hopson. We have been understanding of one another since age six. I was employed as a cop, as usual, and on slow evenings, I would check out on my radio, leaving V.C.’s business phone number with the police dispatcher.
It was conveniently located far enough from town that we could shoot at will, and money changed hands in many impromptu pistol matches. The Hopson Meat Co. was one of those pleasant spots where, after chores were done, you could sit in a chair on the loading dock and plink at tin cans in the evening breeze.
Far more brutal methods were used, which might surprise the antigunners, but V.C. was disposed to ease an animal through a chute, into a dead end, then dispatch him humanely and instantaneously with one shot to the brain with a Smith & Wesson K-22. On normal-sized cattle or hogs, this was accomplished in a very quick, painless way.
As I sat in the small room, one idle evening, V.C. moved a Brahma bull from outside into the chute. He was what is known as a “hamburger bull,” a large animal comprised almost entirely of tough, lean beef. This beef is mixed with beef suet and run through the grinder three times to ensure tenderness, then formed into mechanically shaped patties that are the basis of the TV-touted sandwiches that sell by the millions to Americans.
After completely reducing the oak chute to splinters, he charged me. I dodged. Circling the room rapidly, he looked for a way out. Circling the room rapidly, I looked for a way out, but the bull stayed between me and the only door, and the dirty, narrow window was nailed down.
The bull’s big hindquarters slapped me against the wall, knocking me off balance. He turned to face me.
A little wobbly legged and figuring I was about to be turned into a hamburger patty myself, I drug out my Smith .44 Special and snapped a shot at the bull’s head. I was a little off, hitting near the base of the right horn. The big slug addled him a little–enough to make him turn slightly and notice the light coming through the window.
He stuck his big nose through the glass, sort of shook his head, and jumped from the building to the ground several feet below, taking the whole window frame with him. It wasn’t until I looked outside that I realized V.C. had been “helping” me by standing outside the window, waving his hat and hollering, trying to keep the bull inside with me. V.C. was sort of resting on his back, and three or four hoof marks ran up his torso and continued on into a field. We finally had to drop the unfriendly behemoth with V.C.’s Mauser .30-06.