Ode to a Good Friend.

Today was a rough day. I was all pumped yesterday to go and see my lady, who lives a state away, and meet her family.


What started as a "Oops, I left my lights on again." Turned into "That'll be four-hundred dollars."


Ok, so I don't know yet how much it'll cost me, but I'm preparing for the absolute worst.


My little car, Sonya, has no life left to give right now. Her heart has stopped beating, and her soul is away.


My dear friend, roommate, and landlord Roger (who has appeared in two previous posts) was gracious enough to drive me to a parts store, so I could pick up a new battery; drive me to my car; find out that the battery wasn't the problem; drive me back to the parts store to get my money back; go back to my Sonya, and tow my little bitty car a few miles through Minneapolis to a shop. AND he gave me whiskey.


While driving around for several hours today I had quite a lot of time to lament her passing away, and possibly out of my life for good this time.

My car is currently in a garage awaiting a large Indian man to diagnose her ailment. I fear for her life, and for my wallet.


While I sat near tears most of day, for failed plans and for a dying car, I sat in Roger's truck staring blankly out. We passed a little shop that brought a spark of life back into my heart, if not my dear Sonya's. It was a small barbershop, it did not have the candy cane thingy outside, it did not have a sweet old man rocking in a chair out front, it was not even called a barbershop, it was a "Men's Hair Shoppe", but it still brought me back.


It brought me back to another little shop that DID have a barber pole, and DID have a sweet old man out front, and was named Charlie's Barbershoppe. I just called it the Mouse Trap Barber.


Inside this tiny little building of my past, were a few chairs, a table, and a million bottles of things that only the barber could know the secrets of.


And a door.


This door was at the height of my curisoty, everytime I went there I just stared at it, daring it to give up it's secrets to me.


Once, the barber opened it for a short while and I saw hundreds of claw marks on the other side where something had tried to get out.


Finally, steadying myself as only a five-year-old can, I asked Charlie what was behind the door.


He opened it for me.


It led to a set of old wooden stairs leading down into the darkest basement imaginable.


"What's down there?" I asked, fearing for the answer.


"Alligators." Said Charlie, "For all the naughty children. You're not naughty are you Scott?"


"NEVER!" I cried as I ran to hide behind my laughing father.


I think back now, and realize that the marks on the other side of the door were from a dog that Charlie would occasionally bring into work with him.


And the stairs were creepy 'cause they obviously led to some deep pit of hell.


But all this doesn't explain the name I gave the shop, The Mouse Trap Barber.


That story is not quite as interesting as the alligator one, but worth telling.


In the waiting room, (which was the same room as everything else only seperated by a rug) on one of the tables was this minature outhouse with a coin slot in the roof. When you dropped a coin inside of it, the whole thing would explode apart.


There was a mousetrap as the floor piece, and every other part had springs to maximize the distance flown.


Scared the living shit out of me everytime.


I'm still scared of mousetraps.


Oh also, your quarter would go flying to some unknown part of the room to, I'm sure, be later found and pocketed by Charlie himself.


Mouse Trap Barber.


And that's the story of how my car died...Wait..


Skot/Scott