True Story (4)

So one night, about twelve years ago, this was, I'm out cruising on my motorcycle ('65 Harley Panhead. The guy who sold it to me said it used to belong to Sonny Barger, but I kind of doubt it)... I had just left the bar and was enjoying the cool night air, when I start to get the craving for a taco. Everybody knows tacos are the perfect late night snack. Don't trust anyone who says otherwise. They're probably Al Qaeda.

Anyway, I pull into one of those late night fast food taco places. I'm waiting my place in line, mentally playing out that classic debate: Hard Shell vs. Soft. The car ahead of me finishes his order and pulls through. But before I can pull up to that beautiful glowing menu with the speaker set into the middle, this white Cadillac whips around me. I'm dumbfounded. I like to imagine we live in a civilized society, the kind of place where a nice orderly line is respected, maybe even embraced. Line cutting is bullshit. So I hop off my bike and walk up to the window of the Cadillac to tell the driver so. But instead of entering into a discussion of patience as a virtue, I find myself looking down the barrel of a 9mm handgun.

"Great," I think to myself, "I'm about to die over a taco."

Suddenly there is the roar of an engine and terrible crunch. Now, instead of looking into the window of a Cadillac, I am looking into the window of a pickup truck. The Cadillac skids across the parking lot, up over the curb and into a clump of trees. The two gang bangers climb out of the Cadillac and take a few steps toward the pickup truck, but stop dead in their tracks. The man inside the truck is gigantic, and he is holding the two biggest chrome revolvers I have ever seen. This guy is so big that he has one gun out the driver's side window and the other out the passenger's side window, and he never even had to shift in his seat. The gang-bangers, wisely, decided to get back into their damaged Caddy and took off.

I asked the big man his name, and he told me it was McDougal. I shook his hand and offered to pay for his meal.

It cost me three hundred seventy-two dollars and sixty seven cents.

Fejee Mermaid

For well over 100 years the Fejee Mermaid has been regarded as one of P.T. Barnum's most infamous hoaxes. What has not been revealed, until now, is McDougal's very important role in the saga of the Fejee Mermaid.

Contrary to popular belief, Barnum did not intend on perpetrating a hoax with the Fejee Mermaid from the outset. With, by today's standards, so little of the world explored at that time, new and amazing species were constantly turning up. Barnum was, of course, eager to exploit anything new and unusual. Being somewhat of a charlatan himself, he was naturally skeptical of the truly bizarre items that people were constantly trying to sell to his museum.

Barnum must have initially been highly suspicious of that mysterious merchant who repeatedly sent him letters full of tales of mermaids in the secluded waters of the Pacific isles. However, when the merchant finally arrived with a specimen, a live specimen no less, Barnum was elated and immediately paid the man without even trying to bargain down to a lower price. The "mermaid" was a dreadful creature, more monster than maiden, but Barnum had learned long ago that the grotesque attracted far larger crowds than the beautiful anyway. He immediately set about the seemingly contradictory tasks of hiding the creature away from prying eyes and heavily promoting its arrival at his museum.

When the exhibit finally opened, the crowds lined up to gaze at the upper body of a monkey sewn onto the tail of a fish, quite lifeless. This was a crude hoax, even by Barnum's standards. Nonetheless, it did not seem to hurt ticket sales at all. This was not much consolation to Barnum, who had arrived at his museum to find an empty tank where the exhibit that was supposed to be his greatest triumph once was. Instead, he was forced to cobble together yet another cheap ruse. The legions of suckers out there in the street may not have cared, but Barnum knew that the mermaid was real, and this filled him with rage.

Fiji Mermaids, as the island is now spelled, were incredibly long-lived. However, they were also incredibly slow to reproduce. The islanders hunted them, believing them demons and white men harvested them, hoping for a quick buck, though no other living specimens ever made it back. The last gasp of the Fiji Mermaid seems to have been the heavy bombardment of World War II. In the decades since, no one has sighted a single Fiji Mermaid in the waters of the Pacific islands. However, at least one Fiji Mermaid survives, unknown to modern science. It swims inside a large saltwater aquarium, where McDougal has kept it since the day he stole it from P.T. Barnum. Above its tank, for company, hangs the original Mona Lisa. That one that hangs in the Lourve? Just another hoax...

Patriots

McDougal LOVES American football. And by "loves," I mean he's never actually watched an entire football game. But he loves the concept.

So when he invited me to accompany him to the Rose Bowl, I was (to say the least) equal parts excited, confused, and scared for my life and for those of the Trojans and Longhorns. But I wasn't about to sit back and watch this bit of curiosity on the tele when I could have a ringside seat for what would surely end in sortid debauchery, crimes and misdemeanors, and most likely - cannibalism.

Of course, we never made it to the game.

McDougal said he had to stop and make a small withdrawal, which I knew before he even said anything meant "rob a small rural bank in Farmville, KY."

So there I was in the passenger's seat of McDougal's 1977 El Camino with a 40-pound bag of dogfood in my lap and a sawed off pump action 12 gauge fixed on a uniformed police officer, while McDougal went inside to make his withdrawal. Three states and two hours later, we were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where McDougal believed the Rose Bowl was to be played, with a duffle bag full of small unmarked bills and two exploded dye packs, and a dead hooker in the bed of the cruck.

McDougal was hopped up on pills, incoherent, had eaten the entire bag of Puppy Chow, and shat himself at least three times in transit.

"What now, Dougal?" I asked him -- not really expecting a response.

"Wait for it," McDougal says.

So I do. For three days, I wait. Then McDougal spots a small private jet on the horizon.

"That's our ride," McDougal says.

Minutes later, the craft - an old school learjet Model 23 - landed in a pasture and McDougal says we have to run for it. I'm not sure what the hurry is after sitting in that shit-stinkin' car for three days, but the big man insists, so I follow orders. I was slowed because he forced me to carry the duffle bag and the whore, who it turns out wasn't dead at all - just very tired.

We board the plane and are greeted by a man I recognize as Handsome Jimmy, a disbarred Florida lawyer who flew in Che Guvera's air force in the mid 60s. Handsome Jimmy doesn't speak, as his larynx was ripped out in a bar brawl in Des Moines, Iowa in 1982. He's got a midget sidekick who does all his spoken word communication for him. He calls the midget tattoo (in sign language), but his name's really Fast Mike. I knew Fast Mike from the Army of the Revolution. We fought together in the Battle of the Sexes. He's a good man. Shifty as hell, but a good man at heart.

Nine hours later, we're in Helsinki, Finland. Handsome Jimmy and Fask Mike are dead (bitten to death by sharks somewhere over the Atlantic), and McDougal is in respiratory failure. Thank God the dead whore knew how to land the plane. We were greeted by a fleet of Interpol officers, who resuscitated McDougal and helped us launder the dye stained cash.

McDougal and I just watched the NFC wildcard game on a 52" plasma TV. I told him we were at the Rose Bowl. He doesn't know. Looked like the Panthers were going to pull it out, but I'm not sure because McDougal ate the TV at the beginning of the third quarter.

If he asks, tell McDougal that the Panthers are the champs, and it was a great game. You might tell him that you ate your TV, too.

Slim

Doog Libs!

Since I have not had much time to update this Blog lately I decided I will give all of you the chance to write your own McDougal story. Enjoy!



The (adjective) Adventure of McDougal and The (noun).

I remember this one time, me and McDougal were (verb ending in ing) to (place) in his (conveyance). Now the big man was completely (adjective) out of his mind on (recreational drug), so about (number) miles outside (seedy border town) he crashed that (conveyance) right into a (major geographical feature). I was in pretty (adjective) shape, but McDougal was completely unscathed. He just dusted himself off and set out in search of the nearest (business of ill repute). I (verb, past tense) out of the (adjective) wreckage and limped after him. After (number less than ten) minutes of hiking through the (adjective) terrain we were attacked by a band of (cannibal tribe) warriors. I cowered and (bodily excretion)ed myself in terror, but McDougal (adverb) reached into his (article of clothing) pocket and removed the (weapon of mass destruction) that he always keeps in there. This made short work of the (adverb) armed natives, although McDougal was sorry to see his favorite weapon destroyed in the fray, as it was a gift from (deceased third world dictator), who had been a close personal (noun). We never did make it to (place), instead we spent the next (number bigger than twenty) weeks holed up at the hideout of a local (criminal) getting high on a mix of (prescription medication) and (brand of axel degreaser).

McDougal the Fabric Magician

It all started as a drunken bar game. McDougal and I were sitting at the bar in the Bali-Hi Motor Lodge in Phoenix, Arizona.

I was sipping a mai tai, in line with the spirit of the place. McDougal, of course, was having whiskey. We had already run through our entire usual repertoir of bar games (punching random patrons, insulting the cigarette girl until she cries, pinball) which was usually enough to keep us busy until the cops arrived. However, the police response time was slow in Phoenix that summer, due to a rash of liquor store robberies (McDougal claimed no responsibility, but I'm still not convinced) so we were entertaining ourselves by putting words together to make exciting, but oxymoronic, new products. McDougal had just come up with one that had me howling with rum-soaked laughter, but instead of joining in my merriment, McDougal stood up, suddenly stone sober.

"That is the one that will earn me my fortune," he announced to the entire bar (one cowering bartender, the fourteen patrons who had not yet left because they were knocked unconcious by our beatings, and the cigarette girl - still crying hysterically).

I tugged on McDougal's sleeve, trying to get him to sit back down.

"It's a nonsense product,it would never work," I whispered. "Trust me on this, McDougal. I have a doctorate in chemistry; you're just a longshoreman who flunked out of the fifth grade."

But McDougal was right of course. He's always right. Those three words (two of them hyphenated) made him millions, while I sunk into depression and financial ruin.

Color-safe Bleach.

Goddamn ... I wish I'd thought of that.

Bass Boat

McDougal borrowed my bass boat, took it out and caught the biggest catfish in Oklahoma state history. Got his picture in the paper.

Then my boat was seized in a crystal meth sting operation that McDougal ends up pinning on me. I went to jail for 8 years.

When I get out, McDougal's married my wife, moved into my house, and my kids call him dad. But I couldn't be mad. Little Billy was on the honor roll, my wife had dropped 40 pounds, and I'd never seend McDougal happier.

He gave me $11,000. He said that was for my troubles. I used the money to actually start a meth lab and turned that 11 grand into a small fortune of nearly 270 thousand dollars.

Long live McDougal!