once, many years back on a farm i own, myself and an excellent friend, jeff, got ourselves rather snockered on tequila (i can hear the groans and lamentations now!) we climbed a good 60 foot tree, parked our inbibing butts in the highest branches we could find and shared drunken plans for world domination and other hangups. about midnight, the conversation swung around to moonshine. i remembered that six months previousl i had seen a neighbor on an adjacent property building a shed over a stream in a very remote, inaccessible part of the woods. i always figured that the neighbor was building a moonshine still. the time was now to check it out. so – somehow! we made it down from the tree (it is my unscientific opinion, that what drunks give up in visual acuity and reaction time they make up in pain desensitivity, general plasticity and flexibility…it all works out).
we marched back up to the house, where my ex and jeff’s wife dana were talking and drinking genteel amounts of wine. while jeff talked to the ladies i grabbed a pair of assault rifles and 9mm’s from the bedroom. the girl’s eyes widened, then narrowed to hard pissed off slits:
‘what do you think you are doing?!’
‘raiding a still, be back in a couple hours…’ i handed jeff a rifle and pistol and we marched out the house, stone faced and serious, as if raiding a still at midnight was a perfectly normal male marital chore. when we were on the back deck, i said – ‘dont look back, dont say a word, they have powers…they will stop us…keep walking.’
now the still on any other night would have been quick to find for me. down the main road, cut along the tree line at the large pasture, down to the stream, up the stream, to the 2nd fork, 300 yards up to the shed. simple. but in our stupor, we considered ourselves some doc savage A-team strike force, ready for muhejadeen hillbillies guarding their tresures with attack dogs, tripwired claymores, and a formidable white trash militia arsenal. so we took the long road to catch them off guard…
we slunk through tall grass, bellied around large upturned oaks, ninja’d our way down the stream, halted, listened, snuck up closer to the shack, halted, listened, snuck…it was raining steady, there was a good wind, and the moon was hidden by the cloud cover. as we rounded the creek to the shack clearing, jeff and i seperated to opposite sides for flanking cover. haha.
the shack clearing was empty. no machinery, no hillbilles. our brain-cells were too busy bailing out the flood of tequila to explain to us that this was a snipe hunt, so we were operating completely from the primordial brain stem, which only knows fight, flight, and fuck. no people meant ambush. so we hunkered down about 50 yards from the shed and waited for the phantom other side to make noise and give up their positions. for 20 minutes jeff and i waved elaborate non-sensical made up SWAT/gang sign silent ops hand signals at each other that probably made life and death sense at that moment.
heard a rustle ! fist
twirled hand, pointed over towards the sound
walking fingers to signal a possible target on the move
fingers pointed to the eyes then waved off, cant see them
jeff pointed at the sound direction for me to slink over and investigate, i waved that crap off
he pointed emphatically again, i waved off again
he pointed again, i flipped him the bad bird, screw that
we laughed in sign, dont ask…
slowly i moved towards the shed, not quite convinced that the ambush was a lark, perhaps they were in the shed and were waiting, guns drawn. 10 feet from the shed. jeff set up across from me behind a stump, we had the shed in a great V crossfire. we waited a few minutes. nothing. nothing at all. these guys were good! i picked up a soda can, gestured to jeff to get ready. I made that radio squelch sound all kids figure out; ‘SSCCHHHKKKK’. ‘alpha team ready. throwing in a flashbang grenade.’ i said loudy like a SWAT tactical radio channel. i was going to spook em out. now at this point all reality is beyond us. what were we going to do if there was somebody in there? firefight my neighbors? haha. totally out of control. but when you are so well twisted to begin with and then snapped in half on hard alcohol, well…fiendery and mayhem will happen. so i threw the soda can in the open door of the shack. nothing. not a damn thing. we move to the shed and peer in…still nothing. empty except for some open bags of dog food and a couple leashes. this wasnt a moonshine whiskey still, it was a secret pen for pit bulls. haha. we laughed at it for a second and slapped each others back, trying to figure out which of us was more insane.
then we stopped and our faces went slack…where were the dogs? oh shit! lets get out of here! we flew out of the shack, jumped in the stream and tore off. about a quarter mile away we stopped and listened – nothing. phew ! jeff asked me what was the fastest way back to the house. well, the fastest route was back past the shack – which was out – so we were going to go cross-country. bad bad idea.
we made it home about an hour later after trudging through 200 yards of dense briar. we were completely scarred and torn up, but entirely too drunk to even care. we marched back up to the house like returning titan warriors where the girls were still chatting. they stopped, looked at us, shook their heads in that powerfully humiliating, dismissive way of women, and went back to talking.
so ended the operation…(at least thats all i can competently remember)
