Baldman Bugs: September 2008

With my sons as my inspiration, I have wanted to relearn the Bass. With this new goal, I have determined to buy myself my first electric bass. I want to stay true to my father and buy a "Fender Jazz Bass" but which one?

Clarke recommended that I check out this bass and I love it. It is part of Fender's signature line of Jazz Basses. It is modeled after Fender's classic 1970's Jazz Bass. I am plastering pictures of this Bass all over a jar and will then use the jar as a collection cup for my odd change and present money so that I can save up the required funds ($600 - $800). I am expecting that this project will take some time, maybe 2010 or 2011? Cross my fingers.

Geddy Lee Jazz Bass®
0257702
Mean, mean stride! Our Geddy Lee Jazz Bass guitar is an exact replica of the tonally singular instrument that Rush’s revered bassist/vocalist has riffed away on in front of thousands of devoted fans worldwide and on many a mega-selling album.The bass has an alder body; the one-piece C-shaped maple neck (thin) has a maple fingerboard with black binding and black rectangular position markers. The two vintage Jazz Bass single-coil pickups crackle with life and bristle with the energy; other features include chrome hardware, vintage-style tuning machines and a Badass® Bass II™ bridge.

The Macarthy house sat about two miles off of old highway 11, down an old dirt road which was quickly becoming reclaimed by overhanging trees and ground vegetation. The road past the Macarthy place ended abruptly, about a half a mile further along at the foot of a dilapidated pier, jutting precariously out into Turner Swamp without the benefit of most of its rotting wooden plank boards. Kids from the nearby town, Newberry Springs, had always loved to play hooky from high school down at the swamp. One of the kids, years ago, had shimmied up one of the towering trees which leaned out over the swamp by the pier and had hung a thick, course, knotted rope from one of the longest branches. With that, kids would use the rope, from a running start down the pier, to swing out over the swamp before dropping into the warm greenish brown liquid. Long aged rumors of alligators and snaked only served to heighten the perceived thrill and brought the bored adolescents out for hours on hot summer afternoons. The pier at the end of Macarthy road served as a meeting place, a retreat and a haven for stripping down to next to nothing, drinking, swearing and everything else that parents told them was bad for them at their age.
Until one Sunday afternoon in late August of ’68 when the five kids disappeared. It was late in the day before any of them were missed. The search began in town before the adults, learning from their friends, found that the three girls and two boys had planned to meet at the pier at Turner Swamp, where the planned to eat lunch and mess around. Parents and friends searched around the clock, tearing up old Macarthy road and the surrounding areas. They brought rowboats from town and searched the swamp for any signs of the children. The parents were frantic, pleading with the swamp to give up its secrets. Emotions were high throughout the town. A curfew was placed on anyone under the age of 18.
By Thursday morning, the searchers arrived at the door of old Mr. Macarthy. His house was square with wood plank floors. Built by his grandfather, the house squatted in a corner of a loosely square shaped clearing, cut from the jungle of trees and vines. The sunlight filtered through the canopy of branches overhead to give the area an eerie green and yellowish glow. Macarthy lived alone in the neglected three room shack. He wore a stained long-sleeved red plaid shirt under an old pair of dirty blue overalls. Macarthy had never been friendly to people in the town. Keeping to himself, the rumors flew. From the stories told about him, he became a one-eyed hermit or a warped old fool who kept his dead mother in the living room to even a mass murderer fettering away from the law. It all depended on which story was being told and who was telling it. Macarthy had watched the activity along the road through the trees and from the front window of his shack. He was annoyed by the confusion and the noise. He stared bitterly at the dozens of cars and trucks moving noisily to and from the swamp along his road. But he smiled sadistically when he discovered that they were searching for five kids who had turned up missing from the swamp.
“Serves them right! All them no-good kids traipsing around my woods, my homestead. Swamp finally got um, finally swallowed em up!” He spit out the words with satisfaction.
The searchers were frantic by the time they pounded on Macarthy’s door. Most of the mob was sure that he had had something to do with the kid’s disappearance. And the rest were being quickly convinced.
“We should just hang him up right here and now, the filthy murderer!” One of the parents yelled. The mob rumbled a confirming retort. Macarthy opened the door slowly, eyeing the enraged throng crowding the porch.
“What do ya want?” He croaked.
“You killed my children, you murderer!” One of the parents screamed while pushing himself through the horde.
“Now, Joe, we don’t know that for sure. We just came to talk to him, question him. You know, see if he knows or saw anything.”
“Bull, He killed them. I know it! Hiding out in the woods like a dirty skunk. I just know that he had something to do with it.”
The man called Joe pushed the crowd aside and threw his shoulder into the door. The door flew inward and Macarthy stumbled back, losing his balance and falling to a heap on the floor.
“Ya can't come in here, this here is private property. All ya'll get out now. Macarthy screamed from his fallen position.
“Shut up Macarthy. We're just gonna look around. You don't have a problem with that now, do ya? Said another as he leered down at the crumpled man.
“Now watch'im, We'll look around. Don't let him go nowhere.”
Two large angry men gruffly lifted Macarthy from the floor and sat him down in a dusty rat's nest of a sofa displaying a yellowed floral print. The rest of the mob pushed through the remaining rooms of the house, ripping up floorboards and toppling furniture. Macarthy watched, tight lipped, from the sofa. His face was flush, seething with anger. A yell came from behind the house. The men chosen to stand guard over Macarthy jumped to attention as the crowd of angry searchers came piling back into the front room. Two men led the group, carrying an axe and a girl's blouse, both stained with blood.
“My baby's shirt, you lyin murdered! Joe jumped across the room and was at Macarthy's throat before the rest of the horde could react. He was pulled away and separated from Macarthy but not before Macarthy was sputtering from lack of oxygen. As Macarthy's coughing fit subsided, his eyes seemed to dart back and forth at the throng as if looking for an escape. He was scared now, very scared.
“I just found them clothes down in the woods near the pier. I dint kill no one. I swear it. I done killed myself a varmit that was killin my chickens with that axe and used that there shirt I found to clean up. That's all, I swear, I swear it!
Joe was not convinced. “You killed my babies,” he screamed, fighting to get loose from the arms that held him back. The crowd seemed to agree and began to murmur loudly. The group had soon whipped themselves into a frenzy. The few remaining voices of reason were soon lost and gave in.
“Lets string im up!” Yelled the crowd. “Get rid of this filth.” The mob pressed in around Macarthy as if they all wanted a piece of him. As a group, they jerked him from the sofa and dragged his kicking body out into a front yard of sparse grass and mud. The crowd was shouting, jeering and calling for his head. Macarthy screamed out his innocence over the roar. He bucked, pulled and tried to tear away from the hands that held him in a painful grip, jerking him along the dirt road that led to the pier. He struggled as they tied his hand behind his back. The mob then dragged him to the edge of the water along the pier and turned him to face the swamp. Hanging in the air, formed from the kids swinging rope, was a hangman's noose. It swung slowly in the breeze, waiting for a victim to shared its tightened charms. As he shrunk away from the noose, they wrapped an oily rag across his mouth and began pronouncing his sentence for the murder of five innocent souls. The crowd cheered. Macarthy was picked up, now bound and gagged, and carried out to the end of the pier to meet his fate.
“Any lasts words for the murderer of my babies?” screamed Joe, kicking Macarthy with the toe of his boot into the man's lower back. Macarthy began to mumble and Joe slapped him open palmed across the side of the head.
“My kids didn't get to have no say so neither do you!”
They bodily picked up Macarthy, slipped his head through the loop in the rope and pulled it tight. Macarthy began gagging and sputtering. With one pronounced shove, they pushed Macarthy out and away from the pier and stepped back. Macarthy's weight came down hard against the knot in the noose and his body convulsed. His feet were within inches of the brackish water as his body swung lazily against the taunt rope. His legs began to churn and twitch like a insect stuck with a pin.
The crowd milled around the shore, watching the spectacle and justifying their actions to each other as righteous justice on behalf of the poor missing children. They discussed and had come to a consensus that they should leave Macarthy hanging there for four to five hours when shrill sirens could be heard turning from highway 11 onto Macarthy Road. They turned to each other with guilt and fear.
“We better get out there and meet them policemen before they see this. They will just jump to conclusions without getting our side. They will think that we was wrong!!”
As a group, they shuffled anxiously up the road, leaving Turner swamp and Macarthy's body behind them, anxious to meet the police and to explain. A few minutes later, the crowd returned, walking behind three police cars, their lights flashing. The cars stopped as they approached the pier and one the parents pushed past the vehicles and ran out to the water's edge.
“He's Gone!” The parent cried. “He'd Gone, He'd Gone, He'd Gone!!” His voice dropping from a scream to a whimper. “He'd Gone.” He moaned painfully. The swamp was still and the water smooth like glass. Over the water, an empty noose swung lazily in the breeze.

Baldman Bugs

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Busy two weeks

Monday, September 8, 2008

My Birthday!

Saturday, September 6, 2008

My New Obsession

My picks for week one of the NFL!

Monday, September 1, 2008

Beginnings - "TURNER SWAMP"

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