A recent item in the Off The Record section of this-here publication stated that a certain group of Supervisors approved the disbursement of a big ol' chunk of dough, nearly 100 large, to the Hospitality House in Fort Bragg with neither oversight nor direction. Just handed it on over. This is probably a good idea; probably things have turned completely around in the five years since I worked there and the culture of corruption and theft that pervaded the place has probably been scoured clean by some crusading angel, though I don't recall reading anything about it, and probably the supervisors know exactly what they're doing. Probably.
And probably Donald Trump will soon be elected to the board of La Leche League, and if you crane your neck upwards in the coming weeks you'll probably see flocks of southbound migratory pigs winging their way to their winter feeding grounds in South Florida.
When I began my tenure as night watchman/breakfast cook, the house manager was a heroin addict and former Fort Bragg police officer who was selling dope out of the back apartment while his girlfriend turned tricks. Day-to-day operations were conducted by the assistant manager, who was elevated to the manager position when the board finally got wind of the shenanigans happening out back (months after everyone else in town knew about it). The new manager was a drunk who I guess thought the tweaking night watchman inside wouldn't notice his nighttime forays into the alley to dispose of his empty beer cans, though I was able to leverage the information into "clean" urine tests during my time there.
The nights were long and boring, and XP passwords and file cabinet locks are exactly as effective a deterrent as a polite note requesting that one "please keep out," so I came into possession of a lot more interesting information, like how the director and her husband were stealing with both hands, and how the "mentoring" program of one of the board members seemed to skew rather heavily in favor of attractive young girls with drug-addicted single mothers. I don't know, probably his motives were pure. I enjoyed the job immensely and took it upon myself to expand my role in the house, doing the shopping and taking over all the kitchen operations. I lobbied the board for more money and got it, and they in turn got a highly (if chemically) motivated night man/cook/maintenance man/factotum whose utter disdain for sleep was rarely commented on. I did not steal from the facility, which is not to say that I was not involved in a bit of mischief. The nights were alive with drug transactions and hood-rat assignations, but I did my job and I did it well.
Just down the street from Hospitality House was a sort of hostel operating under the aegis of Mental Health, inside which flourished a meth lab and fencing operation. Those of you who are shocked to hear that Mendocino County was subsidizing the production of meth and the purchase of stolen goods (albeit unwittingly), I'm not sure why you emigrated from Shangri-La, but welcome. Please enjoy our used clothing stores and fine restaurant.
The product coming out of that house was clumsily manufactured by a pair of certified simpletons, one from Lake County and one from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Probably you could find two beings less qualified to be combining toxic, combustible, and corrosive chemicals around open flame, but you'd probably have to leave the species to do it. The garage in which they did their cooking was spotty with burned sections and smoke-damaged throughout. The dope itself was substandard, if cheap, and close by when I was on the clock.
There was a young man called Spinner who would regularly bring bags of ill-gotten boodle over there to trade for meth. Spinner was a cousin of Will Hawk on his mother's side and exhibited all the salient characteristics of that clan, mainly thickheadedness and dogged determination, but on his father's side claimed membership in the most viciously criminal tribe of miscreants in the entire county, a pack of hopelessly inbred Okie transplants who you will excuse me for not expressly naming, as they are well-represented in the penal system. Spinner's genetic predisposition to theft was unfortunately (fortunately?) hampered by a diminished mental capacity (not a rare condition, though in Spinner's case both traits were especially pronounced) and he would regularly bring over obsolete electronic devices, costume jewelry, mysterious appliances and other worthless junk to trade for dope. He acquired a reputation as the worst thief in town, and though Roger and B.J. (the two geniuses cooking the garbage crank) would sometimes take pity on him and toss him a rock or two for his efforts, his visits were viewed mainly as comic relief and generally ended with his being pelted by his own un-swaggy swag on his way out the door.
One very early morning I, having exhausted all opportunities for diversion at Hospitality House, took a stroll down the street to see what was cookin'. I hadn't been there more than a minute when the door burst open to reveal a trench-coated Spinner, standing there in the door frame with a barely contained smirk on his face. The coat was bulging noticeably in a half-dozen spots and, on further inspection, agitating visibly. Scrabbling and squeaking sounds emanated from within the coat and we all sat there waiting to see what Spinner would unveil. He stepped confidently into the room.
"So," he announced. "You guys all think I'm a terrible thief, right?"
A chorus of nods and approbation followed this question.
"You think I couldn't steal my way out of a wet paper sack."
More noises in the way of general agreement.
"Well, whaddaya think of THIS?!" he shouted triumphantly, plunging his hands deep into his coat pockets and excavating a pair of squirming, squealing… giant hamsters? Some kind of large, big-eared rodent, anyway. "Bush babies!" Roger cried. "They're poisonous!"
"No, not bush babies," Spinner said. "Chinchillas!"
He kept reaching into the depths of the coat and pulling out more and setting them on the floor. "They're hella valuable! I looked on the internet and a chinchilla coat costs twenty grand! I got eight of 'em! That should be worth an eight-ball, right?"
The chinchillas, overjoyed to be free of the stifling confines of Spinner's coat, began zipping merrily around the room, knocking over glassware and poking into crevices and closets. Two of them began fighting viciously on the couch, probably over some long-standing grudge brought to a boil by the traumatic kidnapping and suffocating quarters they'd recently been subjected to. I pulled them apart by their scruffs and held them up in the air. "Now, now, boys, is that any way to behave?" I said. They snarled and snapped at me, seemingly pleased to find a common enemy, so I set them back down and they raced off to join their brethren skylarking about the premises.
The eight chinchillas had the appearance of a full rodent squadron complete with chaplain and technical advisers as they frolicked and cavorted. Several of them were engaged in what appeared to be an all-out orgy as the rest cheered them on. When the sexplay concluded, the entire troupe leapt up onto the toolbench that served as the laboratory area. One of them knocked over a bottle of muriatic acid which began melting the Astroturf covering the floor. This frightened the chinchillas and they leapt off the platform en masse like a pack of lemmings.
"Goddamnit, Spinner, these rats are fucking up the whole operation here! Get 'em out of here now and I'll give you a bowl!" B.J. said.
Spinner started chasing them around the room and making little kissy noises. "Here, chinchy chinchy," he said.
"I'll give you $2.50 apiece for 'em," I said, giving him a little added incentive.
"Sold!" Spinner yelled. "Help me round these little buggers up!"
The Great Chinchilla Round-Up of 2010, although ultimately successful, was not without a few casualties. Everybody suffered a few bites and scratches, and several more things got broken, but eventually all the chinchillas were deposited into a large cardboard box. I gave Spinner his twenty clams and took the box o'varmints back to my room at the Hospitality House, where I took them singly out of the box and ceremoniously named them all. "You shall henceforth be known as Herschel," I said. "And you are Maria Elena. You, sir, are El Guapo. Welcome to my home, Pizzicato Pete. I dub thee Sir Pimpsauce, Esquire. You look lovely tonight, Rachel Greene. How's it hangin', Swarly? And, you, little Kevin Sorbo, nice to meet you. Now, nobody get too comfortable because I'm going to find your rightful owner."
I went on Craigslist and posted the following ad in the Lost and Found section: “Found: several exotic rodents. Call to identify.”
Early the next morning I got the call. Sure enough, eight chinchillas had been stolen the night before from a backyard enclosure. I told the lady the (mostly) truth—that I'd come across someone selling them and suspected they were not legitimately acquired, and that I'd paid five bucks apiece for 'em.
She reimbursed me, plus another 10 spot for my trouble, which resulted in an actual profit of thirty bones. Not a bad night's work!
I often wonder if little Kevin and Rachel and Pimpsauce are even now draped over the bony shoulders of some wealthy society matron. Perhaps I should have released them into the wild, but judging from their behavior in the meth lab I doubt they'd have lasted five minutes out there.
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