RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Tuesday, July 8

RETARDAR: The French Winemaker's Assistant

[Actually, this was from like ten months ago and a zine my zine hook-up never remembered to print, so I figured I'd post it up since I wanted to start doing Retardard's on here anyways.]
I have, most of the time, had a strange ability to draw interactions with oddball people in passing, perhaps due to my trustworthy eyes or my naive desire for conversation with people lacking the normal sterilization of personality that 99% of the humans I come in contact with suffer from. Anyways, my retardar, as I've come to affectionately call this ability (or curse) of mine, has been kicking once again, which to me means that I'm making the correct decisions on the direction of my life.
Last week, we had like $45 and I was to spend $30 on groceries at the vegetable store and all, which I did like a rainman on The Price is Right, calculating everything to the quarter dollar. I had thought about blowing the last ten bucks on shit to make hamburgers, but decided against it, going for the responsible long-term fridge-stocking decisions of eggs, butter, that type of stuff. Except the wife is pregnant and craved burgers, that being all the goading I needed to go back to the store to get the necessaries. Usually in this case, I'd go to the Food Lion for the more edible hormone-infested meat products, which is like a 20-minute trip one-way, but that day I decided to go to the IGA in town five minutes away (which is gonna be replaced by one of those Food Lions in the coming months anyways), to buy their half-rancid cow products. Some dude was outside standing by a minivan with jumper cables, looking lost. I asked if he needed a jump and he answered yes in a voice that made me think he might be a gay Mexican. I tried to jump it, but it just clicked, showing his starter was dead. We used broken language to figure out this was his second time his minvan needed jumping that day and I tried to explain it was probably the starter, but he didn't get it. I asked him how far away he lived, he told me 8 kilometers, so I said if he couldn't get someone else to jump it successfully by the time I got done in the store, I'd give him a ride home. No one did, so i did. Turns out he was a French dude working at a local vineyard, really nice guy though I had a hard time understanding him sometimes. But we went to the vineyard, I drove him to the trailer they gave him for free to live in since he was assisting in the making of wines and all. He offered me a bottle and I tried to turn it down, but he insisted. So I took it, which reminds me, it's in the fridge nwo, right next to a big bag of greens I bought at the vegetable store that day. He also asked if I knew where he could get some weed, as he hadn't had weed the whole four months he'd lived in Virginia. But talking to the French dude and being able to help him, it made my day. It made dinner alte, and also the service engine light suddenly flashed on unexplainedly on the way home. But fuck it.

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