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The Dredge House Chronicles, Vol 3

Volume Three: Lisa, the Notorious Cereal Thief

Lisa, my sister, likes cereal. I actually used to call her Cereal Killa. No I didn’t. I just made that up. But I should have. Being that she lived right around the corner from me, she would skate up to my house (literally, rollerblades) and visit me in the mornings. However, I knew she wasn’t really there to see me. She was there to eat my Honey Smacks. Can’t say I blame her. That was some good ass cereal. I should place a hyphen there between good and ass. I’m not sure I’m fond of the thought of ‘ass cereal’. I digress.

So she would skate up and eat a couple of bowls of cereal just about every day. And I was finally like, “Why the hell don’t you just buy your own, then you wouldn’t have to skate a quarter mile uphill in your pajamas every day?” And she was like, “Then I wouldn’t get to see you.” Uh huh. At least the quarter mile home was downhill. Well, one day I was feeling particularly generous, so while at the store, I bought two boxes of Honey Smacks. And when she came up the next morning, I gave her one of the boxes. “Here, take this home and you can eat it whenever you want!” So she did take it home. After she had a couple of bowls at my house.

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The Dredge House Chronicles, Vol 2

Volume Two: The Great Mate-Swap of 1994

As I’ve told you, the Dredge House was always full of people. Mostly beautiful people, but sometimes people like you and me. Randoms, we call them. It was ridiculous how many times I would come home and see a living room full of strangers watching my television (13″ with no cable), playing my stereo or my guitar, and drinking beer that was undoubtedly from my fridge. Back then we did indeed have a beer fridge. Ask me how I afforded that on such a humble wage. Well, it came with the house. For rent. This is not to say that I had a normal fridge plus a beer fridge. No, we just had different priorities, and thus, called our primary source of food refrigeration the Beer Fridge. There was simply no room for anything in it other than a few ketchup packets and Beer. The Ones were always cold at the Dredge House.

So I’d walk in the door and everyone would look up and I’d scan their faces, looking for someone familiar. Some of them would smile, and an occasional voice would pipe up, “You must be Space.” To which I would reply, “Well if I must, then so be it.” And having not seen any familiar faces, I’d remark, “Where’s X?” And fill in X with a name of someone who lived there with me. Most of the time this was TJ. Stu was really never there. Not when I got home from work. And most of the time, this remark was met with something like, “Oh he left to go to Fry Street.” Oh. So he left to go to Fry Street and left my house full of strangers.

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The Dredge House Chronicles, Vol 1

Volume One: Weiland, the Racist Dog

My first story is about Weiland, the racist (and possibly homosexual, as Captain made mention to in my last column) pit bull I had when I lived in the Dredge House. When I first moved in, Blake came over one day with Easy E, his 80-pound pit and said he knew a guy who was getting rid of a brindle pit. Was I interested? Well yeah! Who doesn’t want a tough dog?

So we went to collect him. He was chained to a tree in this guy’s front yard and I actually walked up and took his chain off, put a lead on him and walked him back to my truck. The dog immediately took to me. He was beautiful too. I named him Weiland after the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, because they were very relevant in my life at the time.

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Take the Mall by Voice

In my never-ending quest to find and archive things I’ve written, I’ve come across a little gem here about a friend of mine we all know. And rather than posting it with the date I wrote it, I’ll just post it as current and tell you when it happened, because I remember when it happened. But not when I wrote it. This was back in July of 2002. This story is about Katy 80. Sweet little Katy Fanning, who almost never writes here, but always has something to say. Or in this case, to sing. She had just turned fifteen.

I work at a web hosting company, building the web servers. I often go into work at midnight or later and grab my stack of server build sheets and stay until five or so knocking them all out. My boss doesn’t care when I come in or leave, so long as I get them all built by their due date. And I work better at night. This frees up most of my days to do more important things like baseball games, beer drinking and, well, whatever I want. I live in Flower Mound, but work in Las Colinas. My friend Kim and her sister live in Coppell, and we often have lunch together when Katy has decided to skip school or is off for a teacher’s work day. Oh the glorious Teacher’s Work Day. Yes, that should be capitalized. I think she told her big sister she was out for TWDs a lot more often than they really were. On Friday of last week though, we were all off. It was the day after Independence Day, so everyone was off. And most of the world was at the Vista Ridge Mall. Which is, for whatever reason, where we decided we should head for lunch.

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The Dredge House Chronicles, Prelude

I’ve decided to start putting down on blog some of the stories I have from my days at the Dredge House. So I’ll start by telling you what the Dredge House is. Or was, rather.

Just out of high school, I went straight into college. That didn’t work out too well, so my Pop said, “Son, if you’re not going to do it my way, you’ll have to do it your way.” I told him I had no problem with that. “But your way means your house, your car, your job, your money…” Oh. I see. So I had to move out. He gave me a couple of weeks I think. Well during the last couple of days of my stay at the Spacey Senior residence, my buddy TJ got kicked out of his house too. I invited him to stay with me for the final few days in my parents’ house, and we commenced to searching for new living arrangements.

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Let’s recap the weekend.

It was quite a busy one. You probably know by now that I didn’t get a tattoo on Friday, so that won’t be included here. So let’s start with Saturday. I ran out to Shift’s place to catch some college football and a few Cold Ones. The Ones are always Cold at Shift’s place.

Then we walked over to the Blue Note to catch the Tech game, where we sat across the bar from a bunch of losers rooting for Mizzou. Wrong state, assholes. Since I was at the bar already, and Shine lives in the area, I figured I’d call her and get her to join us there for a little football action. So she showed up in her costume (she was on her way to a costume party), which was an autograph book. She was the autograph book. Clever, eh? So I grabbed a marker from the bunch and found the only blank spot left on her shirt by that time, as you can see in this first picture.

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I just got drawn.

Katy 80 rolled into town last night for her old high school homecoming game. I expected to get to see her at the volleyball game, because – as luck would have it – Heather’s girls were playing Katy’s old school. She called me and let me know last minute that she was coming into town – at around two o’clock I got the call, and I was like hey wow, how convenient, swing by the volleyball game and say hi, and maybe you’ll even get to say hi to some old teammates amirite? I wasn’t going to go. But hey, Katy’s gonna be there. So I went.

And I sat in the stands by myself. For like ninety minutes. Well, Callie was with me. Running around, being her usual butterfly self. Because the same vehicle I raved about so proudly last month was the very vehicle she was driving in up from Austin. And that’s just a beating of a drive in a Jeep. So she was late.

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Paris Hilton Eat Your Heart Out

While in Houston, Shift and I were waiting on our friend Khris (I think that’s how she spells it) as she tried on suits in Macy’s. We were in Macy’s too, you see. We were waiting on a woman. And there’s a Sunglass Hut right there inside the Macy’s. So, being bored, we decided we’d shop shades a little bit.

Space HiltonMy eyes almost immediately went to the ridiculously large Paris Hilton shades on the top shelf of the case. They were men’s shades, but just huge. Like something that would have made Eric Estrada proud back in his Chips days. Seriously, they were that big. Well, you know me, I had to try them on. So the lady got them out and I put them on, and magic was made, y’all.

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The Lonely Life of a Battered Dog

My dog Daisy is quite possibly the sweetest dog ever to have lived. I mean besides your dog, okay? For reals. She’s totally sweet and submissive, and – well, I’m out of adjectives. She’s a damn dog. But yeah, she’s sweet!

Sweet DaisyAnyway, we rescued her. And – as you guessed – the previous owner was abusive. Why is that so often the case? She has no visible scarring or anything superficial. It’s all mental. Her psyche is just totalled. Like a subaru left on a train track. We’ve had her for a couple of months now and I’ve not raised my hand to her once. Even though she tries my patience like a Rubik’s Revenge. And it’s not because she’s bad. She’s not. In fact, just the opposite. But she’s got driven into her head so deeply the thought that I’m going to beat her, that she won’t even come to me.

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BMW vs. Jeep Wrangler

I was walking through one of my favorite stores yesterday when I was assaulted (not really, but come on) by a kiosk sales guy. He didn’t sell kiosks. He had a kiosk setup inside my store for his own company. It’s like he pays a lease fee for that floor space for the afternoon or whatever. Anyway, he asks if I’d be interested in hearing about the brand new bmw model – whatever the hell it was. I’m sure it had an X or an L in there somewhere. You know, something fast.

“Sir, are you interested in hearing about the new bee em double you ex el ex seven el ex ex seven el?” he says eloquently.

To which I reply, “No.”

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