Booger and Richard

Slightly north of Marion is Hungry Mother State Park.  The park hosts acres of mountain trails, picnic and recreation areas and a small lake.  On the far end of the lake is a boat dock with paddle boats, canoes and a few flat bed john boats.  The lake is so small that no boat motors other than electric trolling motors are allowed and on any given day there can be as many as 100 patrons paddling various boats around the water.

The summer after my senior year of high school I landed a job working at the boat dock.  I was not only excited to work outside all summer and make some money before my first year of college, but also all of the attractive girls from my high school either worked as life guards at the beach or would come out there daily to sunbathe.  Life was good.

My employer was a man named Richard Thomas and he, along with his wife, had run the boat dock for more than 20 years.  Richard was in his late 50’s or early 60’s at the time and was as weathered as a leather belt.  Years of working in the sun had tanned him permanently and his greasy salt and pepper hair was always perfectly parted to the side.  Richard also had the filthieset mouth I had ever heard.  Every other word was a variation of fuck or goddamn and racial slurs were an everyday occurance.  Richard also had a knack for confusing words.  I heard this sentence come out of his mouth more than once.  “That sure is a right pretty labratory dog,” refering of course to a labrador retriever.  Aluminum was Alumium, or if he was going to use something he would news it.  You get the picture.

One particularly sunny day I heard Richard say very matter of factly, “Its gonna rain soon.”  I asked how he knew that since it was in fact sunny.  “Dark clouds are formin’ amongst us,” he proclaimed but I still didn’t get it.  Not until I noticed a group of black men and hispanics walking down the stairs did I put two and two together.  The hispanic men rented a john boat for half an hour and when they brought it back in the boat was soaked on the inside.  They had either splashed water in it or a couple may have decided to take a swim, but regardless the boat had to be brought up on land, cleaned and dried out.  “Goddamned fuckin’ spics got water all in my alumium boat and now I can’t news it,” Richard exclaimed.  He was so mad that his dark tan face turned a shade of red and he wouldn’t let it go for the rest of the day. Richard certainly had a way with words.

Now there was a particularly fat, obnoxious and sloppy guy named Robbie Heath who used to hang around the boat dock all of the time.  Robbie rarely bathed, never brushed his teeth and would wear sandles that exposed his crusty, yellow toenails.  His body and breath smelled like literal shit and he simply did not seem to care.  This landed him the awesome nickname, “Booger.”

Richard hated Booger, but Booger seemed to like Richard.  He would come down to the boat dock daily and joke around with Richard and me which would obviously make Richard mad, but I never minded.  I found Booger at least moderately amusing and he was friendly enough, so his coming around never bothered me.  Richard would openly shit talk Booger behind his back, but never said anything to his face until one day when he had visibly had enough.  “Goddamnit Robbie,” he said with a tone meant to grab the attention of everyone nearby.  Booger looked
at Richard a bit startled.  “When are you ever gonna take a fuckin’ bath?  Ya smell like warm fuckin’ garbage.” Booger was mortified.  He had no idea what to say and even as he began to open his mouth to form some kind of retourt Richard continued.  “And do ya ever plan on brushin’ those fuckin’ teeth?  They look like they’re growin’ hair!”  Booger was so taken back but Richard wouldn’t let him speak.  “Robbie, yer goddamn toenails are so fuckin’ yeller it makes me sick.  Ya ever gonna cut em?”  I watched as Richard lowered his head and walking away he mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “fat fuckin’ bastard.”  I felt terrible for Booger.  He was so embarassed and Richard was also so right.  Booger left that day and never came back down to the boat dock.  Richard Thomas died last year.  I went to his viewing and was surprised to find him looking exactly the same in his coffin as he did more than ten years ago when he was blasting ole Booger and making fun of every non-white person that walked down the stairs.  I’ll miss Richard.

Booger, who was not at the funeral, I am not quite through with yet…