have a database that has such information and I told her if she gave me the name of her family, and if they’d passed away in my state, I'd probably be able to find. And I was able to find the small family plot on a farm now owned by another family.
While I had her on the phone, I gave her directions to the farm, and told her that if she had any problems at all to call me and I’d do whatever I could to help her. Well, she said I was “a sweetie,” and then asked if I was married. I told her I wasn’t, and she asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told her I didn’t, and she asked me if I’d like to go up with her and show her where the farm was. I said I would and she picked me up at my office and off we went to Sissonville where her family was buried.
Along the way, we chatted and talked about different things. As we passed a florist shop she said we ought to stop and let her pick up a bouquet for the cemetery. We went in and the lady picked a beautiful arrangement and when she went to pay for it, she found she’d left her purse in the car. Being a gentleman, and a certified sweetie, I paid for the flowers with my credit card, and we were on our way.
We’d just gotten to the outskirts of Charleston and we passed a famous restaurant where the lady said she’d eaten once. Would I mind terribly if we went back and stopped for a piece of apple pie and coffee.
She said she remembered the pie was the best she’d ever eaten, and I said “certainly.” So we turned around and went back to the restaurant, which was very busy since it was supper time, and we waited in a long line for nearly two hours (well, I waited in a long line for nearly two hours; I don’t know where the hell she waited) and finally got a seat in a booth. Then I waited an additional thirty minutes for a waitress, while she waited in the lounge downing six buck margaritas, a lot of six buck margaritas by the size of the bar tab she brought back to the table.
Her piece of apple pie came with a New York strip steak, a baked potato, green beans, and a ninety dollar bottle of wine. Added to my pie and coffee, her bill came to a little over three thousand dollars plus gratuity. And since she’d left her purse again, the dinner went on my credit card along with the flowers.
American Pie
By
Frank Jordan
Then there was gas to put in her car. Couldn’t find her wallet. The Botox injections (she had to look her best when the dead folks saw her). And somewhere near Legg Fork Road, we stopped at a beer joint so she could get “fortified” for the sadness she knew she’d feel when we got to the cemetery. Since this particular beer joint didn’t take American Express, or personal checks, and because she’d forgotten her purse again, I ended up forking out all the available cash I had, around two-hundred bucks, for her beer and the money she lost shooting pool and throwing darts with two red-neck pecker-woods.
By the time we got out of the bar, she was so shit-faced she couldn’t drive her car so I had to drive, which would not have been so bad except I don’t have a driver’s license and I got pulled over by the law for not going fast enough on the damned dirt road to the cemetery. But the cop was nice enough about it.
He had the car impounded at least until the woman sobered up, but agreed to drop us off at the nearest motel. At least they took Master Card and that’s a good thing because she couldn’t find her purse (shit, she couldn’t have found her ass with both hands by that time), and all my other cards were by then maxed out.
I never take advantage of drunken women, so I got two rooms, poured her in hers and went to mine. I’d have taken a cab home except I couldn't find my wallet! I'll bet it got lost with hers, what do you think.
Anyway, I went into my room and lit a cigarette. Before I got it half-way smoked there was a knock on my door. It was the woman. She wanted to know if I was some kind of sissy-man. Why didn't I want to sleep with her? Couldn't I get it up? Well, I slammed the door on her, and she started to scream at the top of her lungs. Pretty soon, the cop that busted me for driving without a license showed up, and this time he wasn't any too nice about dealing with the two of us.
When I was through getting booked for misdemeanour causing a public disturbance, I called my sisters to come bail my ass out of jail. They showed up alright, and bailed out the woman because she couldn't find her purse. Me, they left in here because I needed to learn a lesson about personal responsibility.
Are women difficult to deal with due to some genetic abnormality passed on from the first Earth Mother? I ask myself that question nearly every day and, if I am correct in that guess, my second guess is that I am not the only man in the world (or any other world in which there are women) who ask themselves the same question as do I.
Take what happened to me yesterday for example: I’m having a wonderful conversation with a woman on the phone. She’s called my office to locate a country cemetery where she believes some of her relatives are buried. She’d like to visit there and decorate the graves. I
