Hoodoo

Speaking of crime, a friend of mine inherited some property from an aunt in rural Conway County, Arkansas.  Their aunt's old single wide is still on the old homestead.  It's certainly nothing fancy.  And, the trailer is next door to her cousin who has a well deserved reputation as a crazy bad-ass.  This has not stopped people from kicking in the front door twice and stealing some of the appliances.  

My friend's solution?  They found some magic voodoo signs in a book and drew them on the trailer with red spray paint.  They also wrote, "I do Hoodoo, steal from me and eat live things," beside the glyphs.  No one has touched the trailer since.  

Miniature Disasters - Part II

It was a long night. Two very nice gentlemen from the Pope County Sheriff's Office came out to the Devil Queen. They toured the house, took photos and dusted for prints. Unfortunately, except for the foot print on the front door, there were no prints of any sort. According to the deputies, wood (in general and painted in particular) and door knobs don't hold finger prints very well. After they'd finished their work and left, I jury rigged the door and cleaned up enough to have some place to sleep. It was 2 AM at that point. The bedroom was still a mess, so I passed out on the couch.

Fortunately, I had Tuesday off since it was Veterans' Day. I spent most of the day cleaning up the wreckage.

While cleaning, I found the following items were missing from the Devil Queen:

1) A compound miter saw
2) An electric drill
3) A Skilsaw
3) Two guns (one a very expensive Dan Wesson revolver)
4) A DVD player
5) My digital camera
6) One pair of sterling silver, Edwardian cufflinks
7) A 14 carat gold tie tack with small rubies and emeralds.
8) Around 200 CDs.

Totaled with the damage to the door and the cost to replace it, we were left with a $4,000 insurance claim. Our insurance company, Traveler Insurance, was very pleasant. I'd never filed any sort of insurance claim in my life, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Like most, I'd heard horror stories. Fortunately, I have none to share. The only thing that sucked about the whole insurance experience was the $1,000 deductible. So, even though we got a new door and decent chunk of money, a lot of what was taken has not been replaced. The man-jewelry was all antique and one-of-a-kind so replacing it isn't really possible.

I spent Wednesday faxing and emailing descriptions of all of our stuff to every pawn shop and antique store I could find in our area. Nothing that was taken has shown up to date.

I heard from my in-laws a month or two ago two guys, one 18 and the other 21 or 22, were arrested for burglary in Pope County. If they were in fact the ones who broke into the Devil Queen, they certainly haven't volunteered any information. I can't help but wonder though.

In any case, the whole experienced sucked. Shocking, I know. Scarlet and I both find it ironic that we've been robbed twice at the Devil Queen. In our years together, we've lived in Washington, D.C., Rockville, Maryland, and a slummy area of Savannah, Georgia. I spent most of my life in Little Rock while it was over run with gangs. We've lived other places too. Everyone was so worried when we moved to the big city, but we never had much of a problem anywhere. We move back Scarlet's ancestrial home, and we get robbed twice in two years. It makes you wonder about all that horse shit about how small communities are safer and more family friendly places.

Miniature Disasters - Part I

November 10th last year, I came home late. I'd eaten dinner with my sister and brother-in-law and didn't make it home until just after 10 PM. As I walked to the front of the house, I noticed the ladder that I'd left leaning against the porch posts had fallen over. I thought that it was a little odd, but I figured the wind and storms we'd been having must have blown it over. Then, as I rounded the corner, I saw that the front door was standing wide open. For a moment I thought that the wind had blown the door open too, but the splintered wood and broken doorknob proved me wrong. The door had obviously been kicked-in.

At this point, most people ask me what I did, and when I tell them that I went into the house, some of them are mortified. "What if they'd still been there?" To be honest, I didn't consider it much at the time because I was pretty sure that no one was still there.

We live in the middle of nowhere, so any thief with hopes of taking more than they could easily carry and walk with for a few miles would have to bring a car, truck, or four-wheeler at least. The house was dead silent too. The Devil Queen reverbs with sound like an acoustic guitar. Any significant noise is amplified and projected. When I'm out in the garden, I can easily hear Gideon's footsteps as he runs from one end of the house to the other.

It took a while to figure out what happened, or what we think happened. Our guess is that some time during the day, probably between 10 AM to 3 PM, two young men between the ages of 18-22 drove out to the Devil Queen. They probably live in the area (Atkins, Crow Mountain, or even Russellville) and have friends or know people in our neighborhood. They probably drive by on a semi-regular basis. They know everyone's schedules and knew that not only would we be at work, but that most of our neighbors would be too. The front door is hard to see from the road, so they were sheltered from view once they made it to the porch.

The industrious little bastards that they were, they apparently tried to disassemble the lock with a screw driver and some WD-40 that I'd left on the porch with all the junk for installing the storm windows. I'm not sure what they hoped to accomplish with the WD-40. Aside from making the front door slick, it looks like it just made a mess and pissed them off. They broke the doorknob off, and at this point, they just kicked in the door.

Things get strange at this point. Who ever had the WD-40 was either:

a.) Very nervous and forgot they were spraying WD-40 in all the excitement of breaking and entering,
b.) Was hoping to obscure their fingerprints with the WD-40,
c.) Was a vandalizing jerk in addition to being a thief, or
d.) Some combination of all of the above.

Personally, I believe that it was a combination of b.& c. as did the Pope County Sheriff's Deputies.

In any case, the dick with the WD-40 ran from the front door to the chest of drawers in the foyer, from the chest of drawers to the armoire in the hall, and from the armoire to the master bedroom. They went to the dresser, the two night stands, and the small armoire in the corner. All piece of furniture above and the floor in between were coated in WD-40. This included the mirror on the dresser. Not only did they probably spray off the entire can, but they apparently took it with them since we never found it.

Aside from the front door which was ruined, the master bedroom was the worst. A pillow case had been stripped from the bed and used to haul off the loot. The mattress was slide off to one side, our clothes were all over and with WD-40 on them, the contents of my armoire were thrown all over the room, and everything was a mess in general.

Another odd bit about this robbery was Gideon's room. Someone went into his room and threw the closet door open. The closet only had some old clothes and shoes, so they didn't take anything. Then they ran over to Gideon's night stand which is really a small cabinet. It's about 2 1/2 feet tall and has two hinged doors on the front. They are held closed by a simple, light-weight hooked latch. The doors were thrown open without out opening the latch, and the hook portion was torn out of the wood. What they found inside were four of Gideon's favorite Matchbox cars and a story book which he'd placed there himself Sunday. Apparently, they had a moment of conscious and turned around and left. They didn't have the heart to rob a four year old, which as Scarlet said, "almost made it hard to totally hate them." They didn't take his 13 inch TV, his DVD player, or video game. They left the movies and games too.

The rest of the house was hit or miss. They stole power tools from the junk room at the front of the house. They took the DVD player from the built-in in the living room, but left the record player, the speakers, and the receiver. The dining room was untouched as was the kitchen. The pantry at the very back of the house was torn to pieces, but nothing was taken. The were obviously in a hurry.

Anyhow, it made for a long night. I'll try to finish up Part II and post it tomorrow.

Curse of the Blowfly

I hate flies. Most don't bite and they don't sting, but I still hate them. They are the personification of filth and putrescence, Beelzebub's vile minions. Blowflies are particularly odious since their favorite foods are shit and decomposing bodies. Rotting meat and foodstuff will suffice though.


About four weeks ago, the Devil Queen started filling up with blowflies. In the few years that Devil Queen has defiled our life, she has experienced a number of infestations and invaders: wasps, king snakes, bats, scorpions, mice, more wasps, moths and even more wasps. Sure, an occasional fly has made it in from time to time, but we've never been overrun with them. What makes it even stranger is that the Devil Queen is sealed up better than she ever has been since we've had her.

It started with a couple of blowflies in the laundry room which I promptly killed. The next day there were a few more which I also killed. This pattern continued for a couple of days. After another orgy of fly crushing, I remember thinking, "wow, this has got to be a bad omen."

The day after that, I came home from work to find all the clocks flashing since the power had briefly gone out. For Russellville, Arkansas, this is not an odd occurrence. I've lived all over the US and traveled around the world, but Russellville (Pope County in general) is the only place I've been where the electrical service was intermittent. No thunderstorms, acts of God, or accidents are required. The power will randomly go off for a few seconds and surge back on with no preamble. This happens at least once every couple of weeks, and it has done so for years. Entergy Arkansas, thank you for the rate hikes and the poor service; you have made my dream of living in a third world county a reality.

One of the great things about these outages, is the power surge that follows when the current returns. Light bulbs, appliances, and other electronics have fallen victim over the years.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this. Later that night, I went to wash some clothes for work, and the washer wouldn't power up. You could hit the power button all you wanted, but nothing happened. That is what everyone wants out of a $650, two-year old machine, right? Yes, the warrantee has expired. We checked.

I also checked the breaker box and the outlet. It was definitely the machine.

After that, the blowflies kept coming and things got worse. The bay window room was randomly swarmed by wasps after a few freakishly warm days. Then the house was broken into and we were robbed.

The flies got even worse after this, but I suspect this was because our front door was standing wide open for at least a few hours. Really, I was probably lucky that pack of coyotes or a mound of hibernating rattle snakes hadn't moved in by the time I got home. Even so, I was getting very tired of killing 10, 15, or 20 blowflies every day. What is even weirder is that they didn't go for any of the stuff you'd think they would. I never saw one anywhere near the cat's liter box or the kitchen trash can. They seem to like the windows in the laundry room, the living room, and the bedrooms.

And now, just over two weeks later, I'm still finding the occasional blowfly, one here, one there.

I'm hoping the curse may be lifting though. Sunday, just for the hell of it, I went and hit the power button on the washing machine. It turned on. I was too suspicious to try it out though. I have visions of it shutting down mid-load with a drum full of water and the door lock, which I suspect is 100% electric, jammed shut. Forever.

I asked Jack, our electronics guru, about it. He said that a lot of new appliances have thermal switches which automatically turn the machine off when they get too hot. His theory is the power surge tripped the switch and it hadn't reset by the time I came home. So far, that sounds good to me. I certainly don't have any answers.

Maybe if the blowflies are all gone by the weekend I'll try running a load.

Or maybe not. I'm not feeling lucky.

Claims Adjustor Porn

Here are some of the photos I'm sending to the claims adjustor today. Special thanks to my in-laws for loaning me the camera.

FUBAR

Sorry for the crappy, low-res picture. At this point, my cellphone camera is all I've got. Thank you to everyone for the very kind comments in the previous post. I'll be back to answer some the questions posed there.

The picture doesn't really capture the raw damage of it all: the dead bolt is bent inside its sheath (or whatever you'd call it), the strike plates were blown down the hall, the jamb lost an 18" section or so, the molding was knocked off, the bulls-eye medalion was wrecked, and the doorknob's shaft was broken in half. There is one foot print on the door (there are voodoo spells for footprints and the police have a photo) so it must have been a hell of a kick.

So, I got home late Monday night to find the Devil Queen's front door kicked in and the house robbed.  This has put me in a real bad mood.   More later.  Gotta go visit the sheriff's office with an itemized list of everything missing.

Local Color, Part I

Here is a little glimpse of what goes on in my part of the world. This article ran in the Russellville Courier this week.


Officers apprehend man on horse, found not to be his, either

By Laura Eppes, Reporter



A man accused of stealing a cow and selling it at an auction barn was arrested Friday afternoon by Pope County Sheriff’s Deputies. Lonnie J. Duvall, 44, was ordered held on $20,000 bond and to stay away from all cows, by District Judge Don Bourne, during a bond hearing Monday morning.



According to the report, Duvall allegedly stole a white Charolais cow and sold it at an auction barn in Blackwell for $212. The man at the auction had paperwork for the sale with Duvall’s name on it, according to testimony by Investigator Stephen Pack.



Authorities arrested Duvall, who was on horse after they chased him around Talley Lane and U.S. Highway 64 near Atkins. Pack said it is unknown who the horse belonged to. One woman brought officials a bill of sale, but Pack said another woman has come forward to claim the horse belonged to her.



Duvall is on parole for theft of a tractor and DWI.



According to state law, theft of livestock valued at $200 or more is a Class D felony and punsihable by 0 to 6 years imprisonment and up to $10,000 in fines.