January 15th, 2006

So here is a summary of the most interesting day of my life, but before I get started, I will give you a little background.
Background:My friend Eric and I have been progressively working on drywalling our hallway since Thanksgiving. Our schedules and business travel have conflicted REPEATEDLY. When there haven't been scheduling conflicts, we have run out of materials and further delayed the completion. Now, we agreed we would do the drywall sheets, and Eric's friend from Poland would do the "mudding" and sanding, because he is cheap and good. His name in English is Greg, but is known as Pajak (pronounced Pie-onk) which means Spider in Polish. So anywho, he did the first layer of mud last week and needed to come again this week to sand and apply the second coat of compound. He came over on Saturday and sanded for about an hour, and applied the second coat for another 3-4 hours. Once this is dried, all he needs to do is sand again, and he's done. He said he needed an hour. He wanted to come at 1pm, I preferred 12pm Sunday. So it was set at that.

January 15th:Katie and I wake up feeling horrible. She had a touch of food poisoning from dinner the night before and I felt like I drank a bar dry, and only had 3 beers. The food obviously was the culprit. Noon rolls around and there is no sign of this guy. 12.15 rolls around and I hear a hear a police car chirp and a series of car doors closing and banging. I look out the window and see this guy getting pulled over by the cops right in front of my house. 10 minutes go by and one cop is obviously running a check in the car while the other is keeping an eye on him. Suddenly, the cop emerges from his car, walks right over the Greg's car and opens the door and pulls him out, promptly cuffing him. At this time I am on the phone with Eric screaming about this two bit convict getting rolled in front of my house, and what his story is. Eric is freaking out because he is no where near my house to provide an explanation. They take this guy's shoes off and tear his car apart obviously looking for something. Next thing I know, he is getting heaved in the back of the squad car and hauled off. Now I'm laughing, because I can't believe this just happened. Eric doesn't know what to do. Katie thinks its funny. I call my Mom, she thinks its funny. And we all agree that the day must progress.

AND THEN IT GETS INTERESTING
2.5 hours later, Greg pops up at my door. "F'n peegs man. Hey you want me to finish, or go someplace, because I need hour to finish" I tell him I want this finished and he waves off his ride. I don't know how he initially got pulled over, but he gave his brother's name before they took his license. He failed to mention anything else other than he said he blew a .06 at the station, at 12.30pm! He gets started and all is fine and well. I'm keeping a closer eye on him now and his stack of police papers. All is going well for 45 minutes. Because we have to have the front door open due to the sanding dust, I am seldom in there watching the Indy game. I hear this racket out front and see a flatbed tow truck pull up with a piece of crap car on top. I start to come out on the porch because it looks like this guy is going to dump the car in front of the house. It is not ours so there is NO WAY it is going to be put there. The driver hops out and pulls out the infamous T shaped bar. He hops back in the truck and proceeds to back it under Greg's car. I run up the stairs and hit the ladder and tell him they are towing his car. Since I was on the other side of the drop cloth, I didn't see, but I think he fell off the ladder. He comes running out and took my front steps in two leaps. During this time, he is leaving a vapor trail like a comet of drywall dust behind him. If you remember that scene in Goodfellas where Deniro wraps the phone cord around Morrie's head and Henry Hill spills out a laugh, that’s what I did at this point. Him and this tow truck driver (who was actually a repo man) were arguing in the street and this guy has half his face covered in dust. Every time there was a breeze or he swung his arm to point, he created a cloud like Pigpen from Peanuts. He comes running up the steps and says the "F'n peegs man, try to take my car. I show him papers but…is that your f'n car behind mine?" "Uhhhhhhhhhh yeah?" "Can you move it cuz this guy is towing the car goordiva." I grab my keys and start to back up the car, thinking the tow truck needs to pivot to get his car. All of a sudden he opens his door and yells "I come another time to finish. They try to tow my car" and backs up down the street and peels away, leaving me with the tow truck guy. I promptly call Eric back and start chewing him out about who the hell he left me with. By now I am so torn between confusion, laughter, and confusion and disgust I don't know what to do. I'm supposed to meet Eric and another guy at this dump bar in 20 minutes so we would talk about it then. Meanwhile I am left with 5 minutes left of sanding to go and an incredible mess. Katie is feeling awful, Bettis just fumbles the ball on the goal line, and I'm really needing a beer right now.

So I'm finally cleaned up and on my way to this bar, to watch the game. It is filled with regulars. These regulars are between the ages of 40 and 60, all smokers and all half in the bag, whose past times include darts, pool, bowling, horseshoes, and for the youngens, softball. Everyone there had a Boom Town Lounge sweatshirt on which immediately put my eddie bauer pullover WAY out of place. I didn't dress to pick up chicks, but I wanted to look like I held a job. Many of these people I'm sure planned ahead to wear their Boom Town sweatshirts and made sure they were clean for Sunday. Beers are $10 for a busket of 5, not bad by any means, and worth the trip. I spent the entire game watching the regulars as opposed to the game because people like this I don't come across every day. Imagine a typical Packer bar in upstate Wisconsin, only they are Bear fans and are in the 773 area code. That's how weird it was. Perfect strangers talking to you in the bathroom about how bad Grossman is, referring to him as "That Jew". When I asked who they were talking about exactly, it wasn't as if they felt they were offending anyone, just that I couldn't figure out that the German translation of Big Guy was in fact Grossman, and that he may or may not be semitic. The food they served was pure Chicago Heart Attack: half cooked burgers, polish sassage, and pasta with mayo and garlic salt. The average person went up about 3 times. People were wearing sports gear that you get when you buy a case of diet coke during Jewel specials. By games end, we were the soberest people in there by a mile. The day wound down with a shouting match between two people in Lowe's. In any event, I couldn't make any of this up if I tried.