Year end summary part 1- what I experienced this year, or the closer you get to the drain, the blurrier the view gets.

  I wanted to give my readers an overview and some specifics about my experiences this year, and the c0nclusions I’ve made based on my ongoing experiences of life in the Front Range of Colorado in the United States of America in 2011.

The year started off cold, as it is in Winter in Colorado. My friend Tom had Leandra and her brood of kids living with him in his h0use, and I was hunkered down in my Ranger, holding vigil at the board lot of Warning Lites, my employer. Work in the winter was slow and sporadic, a day of 6 hours here and another day of 8 hours there. Typical for seasonal work and short winter hours and not enough work to go around for the poor flaggers trying to make ends meet and pay the bills and keep the wolf away from the door, or in my case the foxes and coyotes away from the rabbits and trash. My truck was working, if imperfectly, but it still started up and ran to and fro wherever I needed to go. Hours were few, just enough to get gas and food and not much else, but I was alive and things were still working.

  Then one January day, I stayed over at Tom’s and slept in my camper shell as I often do. The next morning, I left to get gas at a 7-11 catty corner from the Sheridan Municipal Building on Federal and Oxford. I tried to motion to an illegal alien to move his vehicle out of what I hoped would be my parking spot, but he declined to move till after I had parked close to the store, but in an inconvenient place to back out of and maneuver around, owing to the small size and misdesign of that particular 7-11’s parking lot. I went inside, did my mornings toilet business, got a coffee, some food for breakfast and lunch both, and then got back inside my pickup to back out from the spot I parked in and get gas at the pumps on the west side of the parking lot.

  As usual, the parking lot was jam packed full with other men and a few women using the bathroom, getting food and gas as I did, and jockeying for position in the parking lot and around the gas pumps. In backing out, I accidentally hit the right front fender of a woman’s car. I could not see her clearly because of the camper shell obstructing my vision and the lack of depth perception in the drivers side rear view mirror. I got out, offered her my insurance information as required by law, and was told she didn’t have insurance, and I managed to pull out the dent in her fender, and the damage was minor, nothing a body hammer, some bondo and sanding and painting the area, wouldn’t make like new. So I did my duty according to law, and then got gas and paid for same inside, then got in my pickup, again jockeyed for position with other drivers in the overcrowded parking lot, and pulled away from the 7-11 and accelerated to cruising speed, but still under the 40 mph posted speed limit.

  Then I noticed a maroon colored police car accelerating to a position right behind me, lights flashing and knew I was being pulled over, but for what I didn’t know. At the first chance, I pulled over, but she sounded her siren and told me, “driver, pull over”, which I finally did. Didn’t pull over soon enough to satisfy her I guess. Something about “defying authority” apparently.

  She was curt and told me I was speeding in a school zone. I had never heard of there being a school zone in that part of Federal Blvd, the school being behind and to the south and west of me, and from my position I had been leaving both schools behind me, never having passed them in the first place. But this was clearly a speed trap, of the kind local municipalities use to raise revenue from hapless motorists who fall under the purview of bureaucrats and their law enforcement revenue collectors. I addressed her once as “hun”, as I am in the habit of doing, but she told me, again in a very curt manner “don’t call me hun !”. Obviously a bull dyke cop chick with a control freak man hating complex, of the type female law enforcers get after a time in law enforcement, if they didn’t have such a complex to begin with.

  I eventually got a ticket for going 38 in a 40 mph zone, and could swear to any judge or grand jury that I honestly didn’t see the flashing light from the school zone light to the right of the northbound lanes of Federal Blvd in that part of the city of Sheridan. The fine was $200.00, which of course the working poor like me can ill afford to pay, but greedy money grubbing cities and municipalities don’t care - all they know is that you violated their rules and regulations, and must be punished by paying tribute to them - proper and legal Lords and Masters that they are. Four points off my drivers license too. Thanks a lot, stubborn inconsiderate illegal alien idiots and Sheridan Police Department goonette.

  This was about January 14 or so, and an inauspicious beginning to the year of our Lord, 2011. But the year was going downhill, and this incident was the first loss of altitude prior to a devastating bottoming out that was to come in less than three months, but I didn’t know it at the time.

  Work came and went, as did days and night’s, workdays and weekends, day by day and meal, sleep time, and driving to and from work, winter turned to spring as it does every year. I visited my storage unit as frequently as a few times a week, and moved things around there, including the last really valuable thing in my life I had, the most valuable collectors item a man could have, and a power tool like no other, my Colt AR-15 Sporter, converted to selective fire in May 1986, when it was still legal to do, and now a selective fire assault rifle, the real thing, a 5.56 mm M-4 A 3 carbine, otherwise known as “My AR.”

  Someone saw me with three of my rifles next to the door of my storage unit, and this man was the boyfriend of the manager of the complex, clipboard in hand, and checking units to see if locks were locked, anything had been tampered or altered, and who knows what else. I tried to lock my unit before he got there, but it was too late, he had seen my AR, .300 Weatherby and Swedish Mauser long rifle, and I couldn’t make him not see what he had seen.

  No one else saw these rifles, and because I had been informed by the management that I was not to be on the complex longer than I absolutely had to be, I did not go there much, maybe once a week at most. So there was plenty of time for someone who had been told these guns were there to get a crowbar, and force the door open wide enough, and pry back on the locking tab thru which the locking bar went thru, the door was opened enough to pull the three rifles in their cases out from the front of the door, and stolen. Someone saw them in there, and I know who the only someone was. So either the manager of the complex is lying about her boyfriend seeing what he saw, or he told someone else about that, and they were the perpetrators of the crime, or he knew who they were, and they were the one’s who stole my firearms, and deprived me of the prime means of self-defense, my best hunting rifle, and took my means of exercising my militia functions, and the single most valuable asset I ever have personally owned.

  This is an offense to me personally, and one of the worst things that could happen to a man. Only incarceration, diagnosis of a terminal disease and the final stages of that horrible eventuality, or murder by whomever for whatever pretext(s) or serious bodily injury that results in a permanent loss of function and mobility would be worse.

　

  After this, the next trouble to start was the ultimate failure of my Ford Ranger pickup to work properly, and it’s ultimate fate, as recycled metal and spare parts scavenged to keep someone else’s Ranger on the road, and someone else’s profit from it, and I now walk or take the bus to work and everywhere else too.

  The clutch of my Ranger started slipping in late January of 2011, and when I shifted into gear, and accelerated, the clutch would not catch, and it took a long time to get the vehicle going, and keep on going when I had to drive the truck uphill and keep from slowing down. It eventually got bad to the point where I could no longer drive it, and I ended up taking it to Tom’s older brother Dale, who offered to fix it for less than a regular shop could, and he would get the money rather than a regular shop, and he could use the money too. So I drove it to Darrel’s house, just off Pierce and Bowles, close to Columbine High School, and where he would do the work at. But it didn’t work out that way.

  Dale worked on the truck when he had a chance, but eventually it was necessary to drive it to Medved in Castle Rock, where he worked at and could get the truck fixed at his sh0p on his own time. Or so it seemed, but that never happened either. Dale told me a motor mount broke and rubbed the engine block against a wiring bundle that ran from the fuse block, and down to the transmission, and tail lights, and other things too. This wiring harness had to be replaced, and he was going to “bone yards”, or places like Pull and save, auto parts yards with truck and car parts for the pulling, do it yourself spare or replacement parts for your car or truck. And he claimed he was working on the pickup, but according to close family members who know him, Dale is known to proclaim “a”, where “b” was actually going on. All talk and not much action to match the words. In any case, the Ranger was out of service, and I had no replacement for it from July to now, the beginning of another year.

  As of January 1, 2011, I still do not have a vehicle, and no firm date when I will have one, whatever it’s make. Supposedly I’ll be getting a Chevy Tahoe, a 2000 or 2002, and this vehicle is supposed to be delivered to me when titles get signed over, “I’s” are dotted and “t’s” crossed, and chicken bones thrown down on the ground, and read by an experienced Voodoo woman while wearing 3-D glasses under the light of a crescent moon. Probably.

More in the next installment of the Year from Hell - 2011.