Meet the Whos

They call this area of Palookaville "Whoville," after the Who family. Who is actually an Irish name in reality, but due to me changing the name to half ass keep us safe while living in Whoville, you can't tell that it's Irish. The Who's are your typical southern clannish type who are descended from the Scotch/Irish Appalachian folk. Palookaville is farm country in the upstate of South Carolina. This area of Palookaville is surrounded by Who folk. Across the street from our house is Bart-Who road, there's another road near here called Who road. Next to our house is a large farm house with the head Who in charge, King Who, of the Who clan, and across the street from his house is the Who bar and grill also owned by King Who. Next to the bar is a piece of shit blue single wide trailer with windows that are shitty brown opaque with cigarette smoke, and a lesbian Who named Karen Who and her lobotomized lover of the last 20 years, who I've nicknamed Admiral Dumpy, living inside. Admiral Dumpy is in her late forties and looks like a dumpling on legs. She thinks she's the bee's knees, has an I.Q. of negative something, and the only thing she can work correctly is her mouth (and by that I mean she knows how to produce sound with it).

There is a large lesbian population in Palookaville and there's even a nudist colony somewhere around here that nobody talks about but everybody knows about. Behind the trailer is an old farm house with the matriarch of Whoville who my wife and I have nicknamed Mad Madam Mine which is a play on Mad Madam Mime from Disney's "The Sword and the Stone," and the seagulls in Finding Nemo that repeat "mine" over and over again. You'll come to understand all of these nicknames for the Who clan as this humble story unfolds. There are a lot of Who's in Whoville, but all the Who's that are important for this-a-here story have already been mentioned. I have a hard enough time myself keeping up with all of the Who's whom Aunt Bee prattles on about from time to time. There's one thing that all Who's have in common and that's money. They don't do shit for each other unless they are getting paid. Descent families typically will help each other out for free because they love each other, and they're family, but not the Who's. Here's a good example.

Mad Madam Mine is John Who's sister and she's in her late 60's (John Who was the Who that was married to Aunt Bee). Now John Who died a very slow death at the hands of Parkinson's Disease. His mind stayed nice and coherent while his body slowly atrophied and rotted. Parkinson started his work on John Who the year after the two love birds got married. For the record, I met John Who a couple of times before he died. He definitely broke the Who mold because he was an upright, caring, and descent man. Towards the end of John's life, when he could do nothing for himself, Aunt Bee took care of him. She fought to keep him out of a nursing home and managed to succeed for the duration of his life. Now while he was laid up in a hospital bed in their living room unable to move more than a finger, and only slightly at that, his family was fast at work taking advantage of every ounce of wealth and kindness they could.

While his son, Tater Who, was busy signing John up for credit cards and maxing them out to the tune of 10 grand, Mad Madam Mine was busy nickle and diming Aunt Bee. Aunt Bee would have to rely on Mad Madam Mine to sit with John while she did things like go to the bank and grocery store.  Mad Madam Mine would come and sit with John for a small fee. Aunt Bee would have to buy her toilet paper, paper towels, and other household items as payment for Mad Madam Mine to sit with her dying brother. Otherwise she would be too busy to help. Of course, while this was going on, Admiral Dumpy was charging Aunt Bee fifty dollars a pop to ride a riding lawn mower over her two acres (it's actually 1.6 acres with two two car garages and the three bedroom ranch modular house making it just over an acre of actual grass that had to be mowed). She would also charge 50 dollars per room to steam clean, which was a chore Aunt Bee felt was necessary to have done due to Admiral Dumpy's insistence.

In fact Admiral Dumpy was Aunt Bee's go to woMan to have anything done around the house. Admiral Dumpy (who I occasionally will refer to as "Chicken Liver" when the mood strikes me) is the type of lesbian who thinks she can do anything a man can do and better. Her dying wish in life is to grow a pair of balls. Karen Who, Chicken liver's lover, is Mad Madam Mine Who's daughter...one of two actually. There's another Who daughter of the mad madam's whom lives with her and supposedly works as a hospice nurse. She's a mysterious Who because you never see her, but she's supposedly there. Now, I don't have a problem with gays or lesbians, to each his or her own. I care not how you like to maintenance your genitalia so long as it's consensual and with an adult (hell, you can be a chicken fucker if that's what get's you off...I just don't want to hear about it). However I do have a problem with lesbians who have a problem with me just because I have a Johnson and natural body/facial hair. That's Admiral Dumpy the chicken liver extraordinaire. To put it shortly, she's a dumb ass who doesn't know shit about shit, except that it stinks, and this explains why when I moved here my toilet wouldn't stop flushing once the toilet was activated. Aunt Bee explained to me that she paid Admiral Dumpy fifty dollars to fix it about a year ago. She said that she heard Dumpy cussing and then she came out of the bathroom and left the house without saying anything else to Aunt Bee about it. Admiral Dumpy the putrid chicken liver extraordinaire is unfortunately a main character in this story...unfortunately.

We moved to the Whoville section of Palookaville on February 18th of 2012. Our POD was delivered about two hours before we arrived. Before I even had a chance to crack open the POD and start unloading it, the Matriarch of Whoville, Mad Madam Mine, just happened to stop in for a visit. I had no fucking idea what I had gotten myself into, or anything about the Who's for that matter. I just treated her like I treat everybody else, with respect and with the benefit of the doubt about possessing a sense of decency. To a Who, decency is only something to be used if it will gain them booty, or plunder, or cash, or a hand up (or perhaps a hand job...I'm not sure on that, but they seem to be the type that would work for sexual favors if it was the only option). So when the Mad Madam asked me if I wanted to ride to the trash dump with her, I figured she just wanted to get to know who was moving in with her "friend" of 19 years. What I didn't know was that she was on a reconnaissance mission to figure out how exactly she needed to handle me.

The trash dump is four miles from our house. On the way to the dump she did her best to extract as much information from me as possible with regards to what I was doing there. What was my plans, when did I plan on going back to work, was I going to go back into EMS? Now that I reflect on it I understand that she was just trying to figure out if I had any money, and how I was planning on getting money, because when it comes down to it, money is all a Who cares about. I told her the truth. I told her that I didn't plan on working for anybody. I told her that I planned on homesteading and that this would include goats and chickens. I told her about permaculture and how I was going to be training in permaculture in Asheville NC in the spring. I said that my plans for money was going to be eventually selling value added food products from my homestead on the side of the road. You see, what she was doing was trying to figure out if I was competition for Aunt Bee's money or not (which really isn't a lot, but since the house is paid for and she gets government checks in the mail, there has traditionally been plenty to go around). She didn't offer any information about anything. Of course she also wanted to know if I was Baptist, and did I plan on going to church, "and I'd like to invite you to my church this Sunday," which is code for "I'd like to invite you to give my cult leader as much of your money as you can stand so that he can pay his mortgage on his ridiculous McMansion."

At some point Aunt Bee leaked the information to the Mad Matriarch that Wendy and I sold stuff online. Within a week of our being here we had all manner of Who's calling us asking if we wanted to buy their junk from them. We played nice, but they were trying to sell us all manner of dumb shit. They also got wind that Wendy is a photographer and were trying to sell her stupid shit they thought related to photography. Every other day my wife was fielding a Who call that related to them trying to sell us something. It was ridiculous.

Meanwhile Wendy, Ayden Zen (my two year old son...who was 20 months old at the time) and I, were all trying to figure out how to live with Aunt Bee. She gave us the master bedroom but told us that we had to use the matching furniture that belonged to her. She had a lot of idiosyncrasies like that that we had to learn about. She didn't want any shelves on the walls, and she didn't want to break any of her furniture sets up, and didn't want any of the pictures in the living room or den moved. I understood her reservations with changing anything. I quickly learned that the only reason she didn't care about the kitchen was because she didn't use it for anything. When we moved in there was a pack of saltine crackers and a few cokes in the refrigerator and that was it. She ate a packet of flavored oatmeal in the morning and a can of campbells soup in the evening. She used the microwave for both (which I promptly banished from the house). The walk in pantry had nothing food related in it, just some cleaning supplies. In fact the only room in the house that she ever used was the living room. She spent all of her time sitting in her recliner, covered with a blanket, rocking. Every once in a while she would walk across the street to the Mad Madam's house to pay tribute to the Matriarch of Whoville. I've learned that in order for the Who's to abide your presence, somebody must be paying tribute on your behalf. The Who's are a rotten lot.

Luckily Aunt Bee had nothing in the two car garage that was right next to the house except for her 2006 paid for Chrysler 300 with only 10,000 miles on it. This is where we unloaded our POD, and this was also to represent my sanity for the next several months. Basically she didn't care what I did to the garage so long as she could park her car in it. If it hadn't of been for this recluse, I don't think I would have made it thus far. The other two car garage was full of some obscure cousin's sisters grandchild's Who's shit. The obscure Who was supposed to be picking their crap up within the month and I was to have another two car garage at my disposal. This second garage was where we planned on setting up the "Stone at Fox Haven," which has since been titled the "Gypsy House." The first couple of months I spent about 70% of my time in that top garage drinking beer, smoking weed and cigarettes, and just generally having a good time being resigned from the Matrix and having no job.

I turned that garage into a man cave that was from my wildest dreams. It even had our couch and my recliner in it since there was no place for them in the house yet. Basically I had my own apartment where all of my tools had their own place. It was February, what else was I going to do? I had a live in baby sitter and we had plenty of money in the bank from the rednecks at "Just Junkin'" with only a requirement of 600 a month to make ends meet. It was party time (much deserved after 8 years of EMS if I must say so myself). I got my work space situated and spent a lot of time planning for the spring. The onslaught of the vultures was about to kick off in earnest. Of course I was blissfully unaware of the vulture carnage Aunt Bee had been living with for the last 18 years. John Who had been one year past, and the vultures had been busily fighting amongst each other for their Aunt Bee's money pecking order. John Who was able to keep them at a safe distance while he was alive. It wasn't just the Who's siphoning her money either. There was also a leech of a brother with his pulse on her bank account. He would represent the most intense affront to my happiness I have ever experienced.