Author: mark_user

Once, my Aunt Rita and Uncle Jimmy Cucinotta took the family on a vacation. The night before they left, he packed the car, got gas, and made all the arrangements. He told my aunt, You have one job tomorrow. Please go to the the bank and get the money. In those days, there were no credit cards. The next day, he came home from work and they promptly got in their car and left on their long journey.

When they got to Tennessee, he pull over for gas and asked my aunt for some money. She informed him that she forgot to get it. He called his brother-in-law, who drove 600 miles to bail them out. He never said a word to my aunt. Many years later, when he was sick and just before his death, she confronted him and asked why he never yelled at her. It obviously had been on her mind. He said was it really your fault for not doing it … or was it my fault for thinking you would actually do it?.

Strangely, she agreed with him.

When I was about 10 years old, I stayed over my friend Jimmy H’s house. In the middle of the night, his dad woke us up and stated we have to go right now and he could not leave us home alone.

We arrived at a sharp curve on Devil’s Backbone Road. His older brother, the cops, a firetruck, and a few nosy neighbor’s were looking at a car wedged between two trees. The car was suspended about 15 feet off the ground. His dad’s asked his brother HOW AND THE H-LL did it get up there? His reply was “How do I know? When things went south, I jumped in the back seat“.

When I turned 30 and had a few work years under my belt, I realized things were not turning out as planned. My friend John H. and I came up with a novel idea. We would open a pub called Bitters Bar and Grill and let people come in and bitch about the injustice of it all. As you drank, you can then get up, go to the open microphone on stage, and complain about anything you wanted. It would have made millions, except we were too lazy to pursue it.

A former co-worker named Justin was complaining about barely making ends meet. He stated I can’t feed my kids with how little they pay me here! Later, I asked him what he was doing this coming up weekend, he said he was getting a sleeve. A sleeve? What’s that? Oh. A tattoo from your wrist to your shoulder. Well, how much is that? He said only like $3000. Um. I recommended he forgo the tattoo and feed his kids. His reply. “Mark…I simply can’t live without my tat”.

When giving a jump to a 25 year old co-worker named Harlen, I asked him how old his BMW was. He stated it was like 20 years old and had like 300,000 miles on it. I suggested he get a newer more dependable car. He said I can’t afford a new BMW, they start at like $40,000, and I only makes $15/hr.

I suggested a small car like a Suzuki hatchback. His reply was thats a loser poor man’s car. I have a certain reputation to uphold. I’ll give you one guess to the type of car that was giving his BMW a jump.

While in high school, two friends and I came up with a poorly conceived plan to steal a 15 foot tall giant chicken bolted to the roof of a local restaurant. We were going to place it in the school gymnasium as the ultimate senior prank. We waited till dark and somehow managed to get the chicken off the roof and load it into the bed of the truck. We drove approximately 300 feet, hit a pot hole, and watched the chicken bounced out of the back of the truck and land in the middle of a busy intersection. Since, we were too scared that we would get caught, we just drove off.

Who would have guessed 16 year old boys don’t plan things out very well? We never tied it down. Whenever I think back to that night, I give myself a good chuckle. It would have been epic if we had managed to pull it off.