Allsups Sooshi -- To Go!
Everybody’s Gawking at Me — A Hair Pulling Screaming Girl Fight Story
This is Episode 1 of the “Is This the Way to Amarillo?” series. Part 3 came earlier, and Part 2 I haven’t thought up just yet.
Gawker’s Paradise
Image courtesy of PFFK #7
If you go to any small town in the Texas panhandle with only one gas station, it will almost certainly be an Allsup’s. Today’s story takes place at one of those.
Here is what it might have looked like from the outside:
Scene 1
EXT -- EARLY EVENING -- RURAL SMALL TOWN TEXAS
We are looking dead on down Main St. from the North. From a distance, we see small shops lining Main St.
It’s evening before dusk. To the right, we see shimmering translucent crimson skies interrupted by silhouettes of large grain elevators lurking in the distance.
To the front left of center, close up, we see a gas station with red Allsup’s trim on top and a blue yellow and white overhang covering the gas pumps offset from the brick and glass doors of the gas station. The word Allsup’s is lit up.
Behind the gas pumps adjacent to the gas station, we see parking spots for 6 - 8 cars. One of the spots is taken up by an old white pickup truck. A bronze, sedan type car is parked a few spots away. A man is leaning against the driver’s side door, speaking to the woman inside.
We see two boys approach their bicycles, with ice-cream cones in their hands, laughing. One of the boys has a portable Kodak camera he just bought.
The evening is otherwise quiet, with a gentle wind blowing.
Looking down Main St., we see a red Suburban with a gray stripe approaching, picking up speed. We hear engine noise getting louder and higher pitched. The Red Suburban abruptly swerves into the Allsup’s parking lot.
A mad crazy woman is driving. In the passenger’s seat, we see an adorable young blonde-haired blue-eyed little girl.
The Red Suburban brakes sharply and rocks back and forth from the stopped momentum.
An animated gangly woman jump out and lurch towards the bronze sedan, ambling like a drunken Pelican on speed. In an eye blink she is attacking the bronze sedan. The man at the door turns and tries to stop the woman. Before he can, the gangly Pelican woman reaches in the open driver’s side window and begins tearing at the driver’s hair, slapping her, and screaming obscenities. The gangly woman, tears open the door, and tries to pull the driver out.
We hear screaming from both women as the man tries to intercede by pinning the gangly woman’s limbs to her side. She swings back her head in at attempt to reverse head butt the man.
From the far left, a cattle truck pulls off Hwy 15, clanks, and eases into the parking lot. We hear “sooooshi — tck —” as the driver engages the air-brakes.
The two little boys are watching, mouths wide open. The boy with the Kodak takes a few snaps before before the fighting ends.
The other boy says “How bizarre?”
Want to know the rest?
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Listen here to OMC How Bizarre
Oh, well. This is too fun. I’ll give you a bit more before throwing up the Wall of Payment.
In the Beginning, I misunderstood
I was 11. Coming up on the tail end of 7th grade. The weather was warming up, and I was looking forward to summer vacation. Although summers weren’t usually much of a vacation for me, seeing as how I would end up what is politely known as “family farm labor”. Fine by me! I learned some stuff. Plus, even though I didn’t think this way back then, harvest season, tending sprouts out in a corn field, or “helping” my Grandad pack 40 lb bags of feed in the store, or “supervising” the cattle branding, at least got me out of my house and into relatively peaceful and vibrant surroundings.
The alternative of being home with my parents was not so happy. Always noise or contention or criticism (wholly unwarranted I might add) or something. Back then, I thought it was my fault.
I misunderstood.
Anyway, on this particular occasion, coming up on the tail end of 7th grade, when I was 11, more than just the weather was heating up. Indeed, some things had been cooking, were overflowing their baking tins, and were about to explode, big time -- right there in the parking lot of the Allsup’s gas station, which sits on the corner of Main St. and Hwy 15, where pretty much every single person in my small town passed by at least once every day.
The fallout of this explosion would shortly lead us to Amarillo.
So, that what our story today is all about. I witnessed (or was roped into, unwillingly) most of it, and this is how I remember things to the best of my recollection.
How We Got Here
Before telling you the natural progression and the outcome of today’s story, allow me to provide background to how we even got this far.
It was track season. My dad, Fredo, had recently started working out and running at the track down at the school. That made sense to me. I thought he was really into track season. Which, come to think of it, I should have recognized as odd since he had never shown any interest in track, especially mine. He wasn’t particularly athletic. In fact, he was one of the few folks in town who didn’t play some kind of sport in Junior High or High School, or at least try out. And, he would have made a lousy cheerleader.
As I saw Fredo running one afternoon, though, I thought there should be an adult track meet.
He and Hannibal had played on adult tennis and volleyball teams -- or at least so they told me. I don’t remember seeing any tennis rackets. Maybe the odd golf club -- one of which he used to hit me, quite hard, in the leg on Father’s Day, when I was 10. It was just a few months after my Grandad died. I had made a giant Happy Father’s Day sign using letters I individually cut out from poster board. I was so excited. I knew Fredo would love it. I remember sitting on the newly poured concrete patio in the backyard -- Hannibal had that installed a month after my Grandad died -- waiting for Fredo to get home.
His response, it didn’t thrill us . . .
Hannibal somehow hypnotically suggested to Fredo that the sign would make my Grandmother sad and that he should tell me to take it down. I refused, out of principle, so he smashed me with a Golf wedge.
What total jerks?
I went inside and sat down on the plywood cover -- which they recently installed over the indoor pool and, as far as I know, is still there -- and cried.
I ended up with a big welty bruise on my leg, which eventually healed -- at least the physical part.
I wonder why Hannibal had new concrete poured and why she installed a cover over a fully functioning indoor pool? My guess is she was hiding something, definitely in the back yard under the concrete. That’s what psychopaths do, after all. Everybody says so -- even them.
Only Trackers.Com -- For Discreet Track Meet Ups
So for my Track Meets for Grown Ups idea, I was thinking of a role reversal — where the parents are the kids and the kids are the parents. Like Ralph Phillips in “Boyhood Daze”
Boyhood Daze, Warner Bros. (1957)
Us kids could scream at the adults trying to run the quarter mile under 70 seconds. “Hurry up, you slackers. You call that running? Get the lard out!”
I mean many of the adults continue, to this day, to speak of the fastest little runt ever known in Hansford county -- Billy Bob Harris, a/k/a,“the mover from Gruver”. Billy Bob was a famous Dallas man-about-town. He knew everyone, had done favors for most, and had all kinds of pictures on his walls, including some of me. Billy Bob died a few years ago. We’re related. I’ve got some stories and some pictures too. We’ll get there . . . eventually . . . maybe.
Billy Bob ran the 440-yard dash in less than 50 seconds. My parents -- mainly Fredo, but egged on by Hannibal -- would often find the most impressive metric from any person we mutually knew. They would then tell me the metric and expect me to meet it. In everything, from your Great Uncle (who isn’t even 6 ft) can dunk a basketball, to Billy Bob’s stats, to how my paternal side could sing and play instruments, with one having had his own Cowboy music television show.
Needless to say, I would try my hardest and would never come close to any of their stated metrics. When they would come down on me, I would think “which of these metrics have you met or did you set any records of your own? Can you even spell ‘metric’?”
So, you want to talk metrics. How’s this one?
It’s at the very intersection of Main St. and Hwy 15. About 250 meters from our house at the time. The Allsups gas station. Where you can get what is non-affectionately known as a “torpedo burrito”. And, no, I will not explain that one. Also, back then, the general manager would dry his socks alongside the hotdog wieners in the warming oven. Yummy!
And Now for the Rest of the Story
OK, the rest of the story is totally gripping and probably the best most exciting story ever told -- or which will ever be told -- in the whole history of the Universe.
Here it is . . . for paid subscribers, that is . . .
