Author: mark_user

My Grandpa Riga had dementia and stayed in a nursing home. He had an equally senile room mate. The family of the man came every month and gave him $20 for a little spending money. Every month he was always broke.

This went on for a while until finally they filed a complaint and began to accuse the staff of stealing. An investigation was conducted and it turns out that my grandfather was charging his roomie $20/month rent to stay in his room. The money was found neatly stacked in his bedside drawer. We thought it was amusing. They did not.

My great Uncle Jerry Riga was a pilot in WW2. He was not a very good pilot as he was shot down twice by the Germans. He said flying was fun, you got a lot of girls, and it was not very hard [compared to the infantry – no walking].

Now, getting into the flying corp was the hard part. You see, him and his friend failed their eye exams. Not deterred, they drove to Lexington, Ky and tried to enlist. Again, they failed their eye exams. Next, they were going to drive to Columbus and this time they had a plan. They were going to pick up a crate of carrots to eat along the way to improve their vision. Well…they could not find any carrots.

Instead, they picked up a crate of bananas hoping it was close enough. On the drive to Columbus, they ate all the bananas and promptly got potassium poisoning. It took them two full days to recover.

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”.