Home > Royer's Madcap Experiences > Royer’s Madcap Experiences: The Deceit That Will Deprive You of Your Harvest

Royer’s Madcap Experiences: The Deceit That Will Deprive You of Your Harvest

October 24, 2014 Leave a comment Go to comments
By Ric Royer

By Ric Royer

As a younger man, I used to hang about with a guy named Howie.  That was his last name– I never knew his first.  He came from a poor section of Lankville Falls, littered with rusted aluminum trailers and trash-choked creeks.  I recall that Howie’s Pappy had tried to paint the trailer but the effect was a bit like attaching shiny chrome to a barrel of shit.  “You’ll not rise in social status,” I told Howie, as we stared at the freshly-applied silver finish, the rust still obviously apparent underneath.  He put his head down and I put my arm around him and then pushed him ever so gently into a pile of mud.

People who live in trailers often have fireworks.

People who live in trailers often have fireworks.

He sat in that pile of mud for quite awhile.  Then: “I’ll cultivate here.  We’ll have a bounty”.  I laughed and shot off some fireworks.  “You don’t know nothing about land.  You’re trailer.  Be easier if you just admit to it.”  But he demurred and when I next saw him, he had a magnificent farm.

“Cheesus, look at them onions,” I said.  “You doubted me,” he responded.  “But look at those rows of corn.”  Indeed, several of the trailers were now buried deep in the cornfield.  “I’m trying to blot out this park with produce,” he said.  “Lush, growing, flowering produce.”  He looked far off at something unseen and then returned to his hoeing.  I shot off more fireworks but nobody cared anymore.

I went off to college and Howie stayed behind.  I visited him that first summer.  His fields were completely dead.  The mud was back.  It rained incessantly.

“What happened?” I asked as we lazily watched wrestling on a black and white TV.  “Wild Boy” Ric Tipps, my namesake, was fighting.

“It was my deceit,” he said.  He drank some soda out of a Christmas-themed gravy boat.  “I lied to the earth, essentially.”

I considered asking if he had any more fireworks but thought better of it.

“I had the promise of a great harvest,” he added.  “But you were right.  I’m trailer.”

He died in September.  I did not attend the funeral but mailed along some chocolates.  That’s what you do.

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