DOWN BY THE RIVER

Laughlin, Bullhead City, Havasu and Parker, the Colorado River, Vidal Junction, Needles; people hiding out, getting by, laying low. So was I.

Listening to the Radio; Top Three Stories from Laughlin/Bullhead City/Parker July 7-9;

3- The ‘adopted’ son shoots and kills his adopted parents in the trailer, then wanders a hundred yards outside the metal box and puts a bullet in his brain. The Coroner’s probably trying to figure out a way to just leave all the bodies where they are and give the buzzards the day off. Don’t think he shot the dog, though.

2- DJ in Bullhead City calls up his buddy, the Friday jock, to play the new promo just cut for the Friday guy’s special show, ‘Southern Fried Firearms’, your basic radio gun show. Highlight of the call was the open, when the guy answers the phone and the live jock asks the gun-show guy if he’s shooting his guns this afternoon. The guy says no, he’s watching Battle Star Galactica. “It’s a really good one!”

1-Two Las Vegas guys arrested in a Bullhead City motel room with guns, $27K in cash and computer software used to make forged checks.

The stories that make small town news so rewarding!

Laughlin, Tuesday night; At the Crab Shack I'm drinking beers with Benny, and he wants to just go back to Boron, and take back his trailer, with his girlfriend of twenty five years who he never bothered to marry and who gave him three nice girls. He was glad to talk to me, he said, because it cooled him off, took his mind off maybe going back there to his trailer and killing the guy who’d moved in with his girl friend. Kill him, he said, with his bare hands. He’d just been in jail for domestic violence, a little three day stint of a ninety day sentence, but he said he didn’t hurt nobody. Maybe the girlfriend just said enough, and kicked his ass out?

He was on his way to Kansas, he said, to get a job, get away from it all but that fell through so he ended up in Laughlin. His dad gave him a thousand dollars to help him out. He hadn’t talked to his dad for two years, they’d had a falling out. But his dad came through with a grand.

Brian ordered another Absolut with cranberry juice and a beer for me, told the girl to put it on his tab.

Andrea, with beautiful breasts and a t-shirt that said “Diamonds are Forever but You’ll Always Remember Crabs; The Crab Shack” shucked boxes of Mexican oysters like she meant it, cracking the crank with slender arms and stealing glances at me.

"I’m going over and get one of those t-bone steaks," Benny says. "Hear it’s the bomb. I’ll be out at the pool later on if you want to come on out."