The place with the junk out front

Holy friggin' Hillbilly Heaven!! It is on a day like today that I wish our name wasn't Rube (or Chawbacon, for that matter....). Being associated with the likes of Margaret just makes me squirm.

I answered Margaret's ad on Craigslist for some Flemish Giant rabbits. As it turned out, all of her does (that's rabbitese for 'female') were gone. But, she had some New Zealands that were a month old. New Zealands are the big white ones with pink eyes. (please... no stoner jokes) We have one full grown doe already and decided to take two of Margaret's to add to the family.

We've emailed back and forth a few times and I decided to pack the girls up tonight and head over to pick up a couple of bunnies. She lives around the corner from me - less than 5 minutes up the road.

"The place with the junk out front."

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...... your descriptive warning couldn't have prepared me enough.

It was a slight understatement. She had told me on the phone that they rent 10 acres there. What she failed to tell me was that they had over 9 acres of it filled with rusted metal shells of cars, trucks, RVs, tractors, MUD, and debris. There were piles of crap everywhere. And MUD. I thought we had MUD!!

It is the place that you drive by and say, "Holy shit. Can you IMAGINE living there?? How do people do it??"

Jon Paul should visit THIS place and then come and assess ours again... the asshat would see what "extreme disrepair" really is! and would see that obviously our mud is actually lush and beautiful gardens.

I pulled in. and sat for a moment. I could see a group of 4 men deep in conversation about 30 feet away behind 12 rusted trucks and heaps of garbage. They were an odd mix. Two of them were brown-skinned - Indian, I'm guessing. Two of them were 60-something-year-old hillbillies. I can't even begin to speculate still on what kind of business was being done.

There was another old man wandering closer to my car - he was wearing a filthy dirty gray SUIT. and had clearly not washed his hair in months. I opened my door and stepped out.

J.Rube: Is Margaret around?

Hobo: oh somewhere. MMMMMAAAARRGGGAARREETTT

(and off he hobbles, scratching his disgusted head)

So, I had my camera with me and was instantly torn with wanting to snap pictures of it all for you guys to see and realizing that whatever business was happening back there likely did not ideally desire photographic evidence. I decided smartly against it.

Finally, Margaret approached. I'm putting her age at about 30, but she looked closer to 50. Mostly because I find it hard to believe that teeth rot that bad can possibly happen in 30 short years. There's at least 50 trying and challenging years of life in this young girl.

Margaret: Oh good, you wore your gumboots - definitely the right footwear for this place.

J.Rube: Oh yeah, I know all about mud. Our place looks just like this.

(just trying to make her feel good - I'm empathetic that way)

Margaret: The rabbits are around back here.

J.Rube: I guess I should bring the girls with me then.

(translation: there is no way in hell I'm leaving them in this car out of my view. (Please see earlier post today and disregard my lax attitude toward this issue...))

So, I go about unpacking the Rubes. and setting them down in the mud as I lift them from their seats. As we begin to walk, all 5 of the men begin to come towards us. As they descend upon us, my mind went to some really bad places. I tried to come across as being pretty cool, but I could see how this whole scene could turn ugly really quickly.

(It didn't. Obviously. Here I am.)

They all piled into one old truck and drove off together. weird.

We headed to the back of the shitbox house, between old trailers and rvs (there were chickens and ducks living in the rvs) and just garbage everywhere. There was rusty metal and old cages and cardboard boxes all over the place. Every little animal cage had been slapped together with whatever scraps they had available ( and we know that's an endless supply around here ). Margaret had hens and ducks and roosters, and baby chicks and baby ducks and pheasants and rabbits. She had a pit bull tied to a rope. And a skinny calf in a calving pen eating straw (couldn't even call it hay....)

We went to the rabbits and I began the selection process.

And then a young man came out of the house, carrying a shotgun. And he walked around the yard and then headed out to the front of the house. I've only ever seen a shotgun once before in 1996 at a hunting lodge. I feel like I've been zapped to West Virginia or Tennessee or "somewheres like that".

I want to get my rabbits and get out of there with my children. NOW.

We made it home safely; didn't get shot at, held hostage, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, blackmailed, robbed, or any other of the likely possibilities.

Here are the rabbits. We laid our necks on the line for these two babies on the left, that's for sure.

I'm fairly certain that B.Rube won't be sending me and the girls on any random pick-ups from this point on. (that's good. I prefer it that way....)

Seriously???? Remember these guys that I found under the definition of "rube"???

These guys here are fucking princes in their castle compared to where I was tonight.