Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 1
Dear Jay,
I’m sitting and enjoying a cigar as I settle in for
the night.
I know that a lot of you guys from the Middle East
(you’re from
How’s
I made his acquaintance while I was washing my clothes at your Laundromat next door to your store. While my stuff cycled through the washers and driers, I stood out in the grass in front, spinning my staff.
As I practiced
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“And you was in the Army, wasn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“Well, then, that explains it!”
“What?”
“Why you out here, a white man in a nigger neighborhood, practicing karate weapons like a crazy man. Have you done forgot you medication today, too?”
“No, sir,” I replied. (I had taken my Prozac two hours earlier.)
He rubbed his chin, and his form grew solid. “Well, I was in the Army, too, once… So go ahead and gimme a dollar and I’ll buy some coffee and I’ll give you some edumacation.”
I gave him a dollar, and he returned with a large cup of your best coffee. He has been my philosophy teacher ever since, and he never wants for coffee when I’m around. I’m pleased that you give him smokes. I think the more sensation he gets away from the bottle, the better. He used to get pretty rowdy, staggering into the road and picking fights with drivers in their cars. The cops busted him for drunk and disorderly, and he’s probably on paper for a few months.
He’s always lucid when he sees me, though. I think he thinks we’re brothers because we
both served with the First Cavalry, he in
Every time I reach into the foil packet for one of the Backwoods cigars you gave me, I see your twenty-dollar-bill. It touched me deeply when you gave it to me, and every time I light up I take an extra puff for you, figuring you’d do it for yourself if you weren’t so damned busy working.
It really makes me sad to think that the kids of my old college, kids who have it made, gave twenty dollars after I’d made my appeal for two weeks. When I told you about the fact that there were bereft widows and kids you didn’t say a word. You just came back in a couple of minutes with a pack of cigars – and the twenty inside, with your telephone number written on the margin in case I needed help on the way to Georgia.
What’s the matter with our country, Jay? Why is it that the people who have it the best couldn’t care less what happens to those who have it the worst? It’s all very troubling, my friend.
Thanks for letting my son Andrew sell some of his chopped wood at the store this winter. I think he learned some tae kwon do concepts better with the axe than with his hand, which was the reason I started him on the chore in the first place. He’s a beginner, and the concepts of body hardening haven’t occurred to him yet, nor will I impose them. It takes long training to transmute the striking surfaces of the hands into stone. My chopping surfaces and back fist are softening up a bit as I travel, but the knuckles are as brassy as ever – I’ve been doing my pushups in asphalt lately.
I hope you’re tending to your own self defense. Do you still carry that pepper spray I gave you? I know you like to see me work the cane a bit, and I’d be happy to give you a few pointers if you want one of those. I worry about you sometimes, Jay. The neighborhood is tough, and I guess you know that a couple of years ago some robbers killed the store owner across the street. I think that was why the Korean family bought it cheap, and used the money they saved to put up a bullet-proof cashier cage. I know you like to run a friendly store, and that’s what brings me back. Say hello to Roosevelt and Lakeesha for me, and may business go well. Sincerely yours,
Captain E. May