Category Archives: Prompts

500 words or less on a given topic.

October 8, 2012 · 9:57 pm

Gator Baiter

It was a probably a bad idea in the first place for Ned “Buck” Tyler to flip off the impatient biker  trying to get around his shiny Airstream trailer with the “Buckeye Buck” banner on the gravel road leading from Gator Lake in central Florida.

The finger from the Ohio State football junkie went up in answer to the biker’s shaking fist as the speeding motorcycle approached the diver’s side window of Ned’s scarlet and gray Suburban, en route to the OSU-Florida game in Gainesville after an overnight stop to buy booze, sex and some alligator meat. Ned didn’t actually intend to run the biker off the road, but he lost control a bit on the loose gravelGator face with only one hand on the wheel and drifted over enough to push the biker onto the soft shoulder and subsequently off the road and into a swamp water bath.

“Whoa, sorry there, pal,” Tyler uttered, although not sorry enough to stop, or even slow down. “That’s what you get for messin’ with the Buck.”

Buck Tyler always had an inflated image of himself ever since playing sousaphone in the OSU matching band and, more than once, getting to dot the “i” in the band’s script OHIO halftime maneuver. An insufferable Buckeye booster ever since, he bought the Airstream to supply home luxury at every OSU road football game he could get to, pulling into tailgate areas on Friday afternoons and usually staying until they threw him out on Sunday night or Monday morning.

He hit Gainesville right on schedule and made himself at home, cranking up the OSU fight song to play incessantly and setting up Lois, his bodacious Buckeye mannequin cheerleader with the nicest pompoms you ever saw, outside the trailer door. He then started to grill gator steaks, drink heavily and swap barbs with all the Florida fans within shouting distance, promising everyone a sound thrashing on game day.

The Gator baiting went on past midnight, when a drunken Buck finally retired for the night, unaware of the swamp-stinky figure that strolled into the tailgate area looking for the Airstream with the Buckeye Buck banner. Next morning,  when security was called to determine what had happened, funny how nobody had seen or heard anything.

They found the Suburban inoperable from a half-rotten gator snout stuffed into the tailpipe. Lois lay headless, armless and topless, wearing only a pair of men’s UF swim trunks with a cucumber stuffed inside the front, while her head, arms, cheer suit and pompoms smoldered nearby next to a half-can of kerosene.

There was a gaping hole in the back of the trailer, where someone appeared to have cut through with a chain saw, but there was no sign of Buckeye Buck.

“Hmmm,” the security chief muttered as he surveyed the damages. “Fella must’ve gone a little overboard with his partying last night. Gonna have to write him up for that open fire!”

(Note: This was written as a Writers Kickstart prompt containing the following elements: an Airstream trailer with back ripped off, a sousaphone, a rotten alligator snout, a half-can of kerosene and a headless, armless female mannequin in men’s swim trunks.)

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October 4, 2012 · 11:30 am

Taking Five

 “Jeez, I need a drink!”

“There, there, Annie, have some Kool-Aid,” June said cheerfully, as she filled a Dixie cup on the table in the bible school teachers’ break room.

“Jell-O shot would be more like it,” Annie shot back. “Where do these kids come from? Their parents must be zoo animals!”

“I hear you,” said Betty, holding a battery-powered fan near her neck with her eyes closed. “I got one boy who can’t keep his fingers out of his nose — unless they’re in his mouth. And he’s worn the same t-shirt for three days! Still has the grape juice stain from Monday, and here it is Wednesday! Who bathes this kid? Who dresses him?”

“Think you’ve got it bad? I’ve got pee stink,” chimed in Holly between puffs from a Marlboro, which she exhaled through a window. “Someone in my class wet themself, and it’s dried and I’m not sure who the culprit is. But in this heat, it’s like someone put a cat box under the table. Makes my eyes water!”

“Now, now, they’re just children. Everyone just relax and have a cookie,” June cooed.

“Children from hell!” Betty responded, with open eyes. “Snotty, noisy and stinky with the attention span of chickens. And I’ve got a whiner: ‘Everyone’s picking on me. Joey touched me! Trudy made a face!’  Little sniveler, I just want to tell her to shut up!”

“We’re just a free lunch and day care for most of these kids,” Annie added. “The parents don’t give a hoot about Christian education. Never see them in church. Just dump the kids off and don’t look back. Off to work – if they even have a job – or off to the salon, or the beach, or the couch or wherever there’s happy hour.”

“Ladies, please!” said the matronly April Strutt, June’s mother and the bible school coordinator, entering with a rush that threatened to turn all into pillars of salt. “We’re just three days into this, with two more to go, and we can’t lose anyone at this point.

“I’ve been doing this for 27 years, and, believe me, I’ve just about seen it all. Cranky kids. Booger eaters. Pee’ers and snivelers. But you know what? They’re all God’s creations, and we owe it to them to try to bring a little bit of Jesus into their lives. The fact that all of you are here, grumpy or otherwise, testifies to His power to call us to service. Nobody says this is easy, at least no one who’s ever done this before. It takes a truckload of commitment.  But if you trust in God and pray for His assistance, you can reap the rewards of  . . .”

“Oh, please,” Betty interrupted, “don’t feed us that heaven stuff. I’m not in the mood.”

“No,” the older woman said. “I was going to say, mojitos at my place on Friday!”

(Note: This was written as a Writers Kickstart prompt on the topic Group of Five.)

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September 30, 2012 · 9:50 pm

Squeamish Scouts

How many boy scouts does it take to kill a chicken?

Just one if he has anything but sand in his scrotum. Trouble was, my buddy Gale and I both showed a squeamish side at our first Caveman Cookout as members of Troop 50 in the woods of Camp Sevenitch.

We were town boys, 12 or 13 at the time, and we came fully prepared with the limited gear allowed to each two-man team: our sleeping bags and rain ponchos, one shovel, a compass, three matches, our pocket knives and the clothes we wore. Oh, and they gave us each a raw potato to go with our live poultry.

We had no trouble hunting down our hen by following the compass directions given to us. The bird was right where it was supposed to be, tethered to a tree, where there was no escape unless cut free by an imbecilic scout who failed to hold on.

We left our hen tied as we built a fire and fashioned a lean-to from our joined ponchos. Some scouts would wrap their chicken in leaves and cook it by burying it under coals, along with the potatoes. We weren’t into that. We thought roasting on a spit was the way to go, once the chicken was dead.

“You do it,” I said.

“Naw, go ahead,” Gale replied.

Older scouts had told us the best way to kill a chicken was to simply hold the head, spin the bird a couple times and then snap the head off with a quick jerk. But that didn’t fly with us, as jerking  the head off seemed about as civil as biting it off.

“Tell you what,” Gale said after protracted deliberations. “I”ll cut the damn head off if you’ll just hold him.”

“Fine,” I said. “You kill it and I’ll clean it.”

The act should’ve been routine. But when the chicken began flapping and squawking as Gale started to saw through the neck, I lost my nerve, and grip, and the bound bird flopped to the ground, still very much alive.

“Geez, couldn’t you just hold on for a few more seconds,” Gale said.

“No,” I said. “I have this thing about live chickens. It’s all I can do to even touch one.”

The second assault involved the shovel, swinging it ax-like. But the chicken refused to lie still and play Marie Antoinette. The result was a badly beaten, but still breathing bird.

Cutting to the chase, we then used the tethering cord to hang the hen like a horse thief, before Gale finally did what was necessary, using gravity to maintain stretch while sawing though the neck.

Plans to roast her on a spit fell through when we had trouble pulling all the feathers. An attempt to burn off the feathers begat both a bad smell and a blackened bird, which was only partially consumed – with raw potatoes – before all leftovers were cremated.

(Note: This was written as a WritersKickstart prompt on the topic of Roles.)

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September 26, 2012 · 9:14 pm

Fishing with Boo Radley

“Drop the knife, Boo, and grab the net!”

It was our first strike of the day, and it felt like a big one as I reeled away, having cut the troller motor to set us adrift while tending to business.

Boo nearly fell as he barreled from the seat where he’d been cutting bait to the side of our 24-foot Boston whaler, leaning over the cloudy river water with our net.

“Comin’ up now, buddy. Get the net ready. Get it in the water and come up from behind and lift up. There, you’ve got him. Nice job. Now hold the handle up and close it before . . . ”

Robert Duvall made his 1962 screen debut as Arthur “Boo” Radley in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Too late. A wave came up and lifted my salmon right out of the net before Boo could react, allowing the fish to throw the hook and flop free.

“Son of a bitch, Boo. We had him right up to the boat. Right in the net. Son of a bitch.”

Arthur “Boo” Radley looked incredulous. It happened so fast he had no idea what he’d done right or wrong. But his eyes showed hurt, misting up just like the morning air around us at Buoy 10 at the mouth of the Columbia River. He said nothing, which wasn’t a surprise as he’d said very little all morning except an occasional, “OK then!”

A glum and rather oafish man, Boo never said much at home either, since moving from Georgia all the way across the county after his close kin died and relatives in Portland set him up in group care. But I got him to sorta smile once when he overheard me telling the caregiver she had all of the charm of a drill sergeant but only half the looks. That cost me my working privileges at the home, but not my visiting privileges.

“It’s all right, Boo. We’ll get another fish. A bigger one,” I added hastily, trying to take back the guilt that was cast, as I fired up the motor to get the boat back under control in the crowded waterway teaming with fishing boats criss-crossing from every direction.

The second strike hit Boo’s pole, and he leaped up to grab it and set the hook, just as another boat clipped ours while maneuvering to land a fish of its own.

“Look out, idiot,” said an angler from the other boat, reaching over to grasp Boo’s line and cut it with a knife. “Get the fuck out of the way. We got a fish on here!”

Luckily, the fellow was wearing a life jacket, as Boo suddenly threw himself headlong over our railing and theirs, catching the line cutter chest-high and taking both men over the far side and into the water.

The other guy got fished out, but Boo never did surface to answer the charge of being a crazy, wild-eyed bastard.

“Just a quite guy from one of the group homes nearby,” I told the sheriff. “Seemed kinda shy, in fact.”

(Note: This was written as a Writers Kickstart prompt on the topic: Take a favorite literary character and write about them in a new chapter, scene or circumstance. Check this for a character study of Harper Lee’s memorable boogeyman from “To Kill a Mockingbird.”)

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September 21, 2012 · 4:00 am

Poop Patrol

Greyhounds are a competitive breed. And when you have more than one, as I do, the poop in your yard goes up exponentially. I swear, two greys will subconsciously try to outshit each other. And when there are four or five, you’d swear by the evidence in your yard that a camel or two has also passed through.

I’ve had seven greys of my own over the years – each adopted through Greyhound Pets, Inc. — and with more than two dozen greyhound fosters and vacationing dogs added to the

Yin and Yang

mix, I’ve had as many as five greys staying in my house at once. That makes for lots of crap in the yard and plenty of practice with the scooper. I’m a terrible golfer, but my 6-inch putting stroke is deadly.

Another thing about greyhound potty habits, they like to spread it around. My fenced backyard is about 2,700 square feet, which makes poop patrol a veritable Easter egg hunt. The fence line is always well-mined, especially the north fence, as if a Viking horde lurked just  on the other side, awaiting only a non-slip surface to invade.

Frosty mornings are the best time to scoop, because the turds are hard and easy to manipulate. I collect the specimen in empty dog food bags, wrap those in garbage sacks and dispose of them with other household refuse. Still, I’ve fantasized about many potential uses. If you could catch a buzz smoking dog dung, I’d be a rich man. Imagine that greyhound droppings were the missing catalyst in the formula for rapid weight loss. Dealing with high schoolers who park near my home and empty their ashtrays and McDonald’s breakfast bags under their cars, I’m sometimes tempted to litter back by tossing a turd or two on their windshields. I’ve never done that, but if war were declared, I’d be a dog shit superpower.

Speaking of frosty dog piles, they sparked a euphemism where I used to work as a copy editor in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports department.  One day, when desk banter touched on the topic of dog shit, someone used the term “steamer” to describe a turd so fresh you can still see the vapors wafting off. Thereafter, “steamer” became a staple of copy desk jargon, generally describing the ragged work of stringers reporting on high school games,  as in, “Oh my god, he threw a steamer on my plate right at deadline!”

I once proofed a posting by P-I art critic Regina Hackett on her Art to Go blog on the work of Andres Serrano, who had a show at Yvon Lambert in New York featuring 66 large Cibachrome prints of human and animal dung. Now, my dogs are no Serrano, but I swear that over the years I’ve scooped up likenesses of Popeye, Elmer Fudd and Rush Limbaugh.

(Note: This was written as a Writers Kickstart prompt on the topic Something Ugly with a Silver Lining.)

 

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September 19, 2012 · 1:00 pm

Hand-Me-Downs

An old doll holding a crucifix in hazy green light forms a ghost-like image that calls me back to a time before my birth, but strangely familiar in a déjà vu sense. The doll in her long dress and bonnet sits at a desk, perhaps like the ones that filled the old North Dakota school house where my dear Aunt Esther taught in the 1920s and early ‘30s in the village of Fort Ransom, which sprang up when the old army post closed its gates in the 1870s. Esther was my mom’s eldest sister, and her salary paid the grocery bill to help the Highness family meet ends every

This image served as the prompt for Hand-Me-Downs in a Writers Kickstart exercise.

six months or so. Esther never had any children of her own, but she had nine siblings, seven of which during her time as a teacher still lived at home, where my Grandma Emma kept house and my Grandpa Butch did whatever he could to clothe the bunch and put food on the table. Butch never finished school but the old Norwegian was a prolific hunter and fisherman who could read well enough to educate himself in the ways of animal husbandry and serve local farmers as an uncertified country veterinarian, for which he generally received bartered goods in lieu of money because most of the local farmers in those days were as cash-poor as he was. Emma, the eldest daughter from a big Swedish family as large as her own, was an avid worshiper at Stiklestad Lutheran Church and kept her own brood bonded together with unconditional love and a soap-and-water attitude that cleansed hearts as well as bodies, and inspired the work ethic that made Esther a godsend for those lean and dry years on the prairie that made up the Dirty Thirties.  Mom said her family never had a Christmas tree until Esther was finally able to bring one home from the schoolhouse after classes were let out for the holidays. If my mom ever had a doll, it was probably a hand-me-down from Esther or from second big sister Helen, another woman who would never have a child of her own but would later take in nieces and nephews for whole summers at a time and would also care for her bedridden father in the last years of his life. Yes, the crucifix in the doll’s hand says much to me in another sense of hand-me-downs. A handful of love and right-minded spirit held out for all to see and grasp, even in the hardest of times. I cherish the homespun love and faith that my mother inherited and in turn passed down from the black-and-white world that she kept alive in her photo albums – where only good memories survived.

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