Don't you just love Christmas, the beautiful decor

Skateboarding dog

Dog watching TV, sitting like a human couch potato

In a Laundromat:
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT

On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR – THE BELL DOESN’T WORK)

White trash snow people

Ho, Ho, Ho !

Fat snowman

Santa off-duty

“I hope nobody sees me here !”

Splat !

Santa's post office

]]> http://livingbeing.com/zikkety/2010/01/22/funny-photos/feed/ 0 http://livingbeing.com/zikkety/2009/10/12/vampire-village-the-town-that-sucked/ http://livingbeing.com/zikkety/2009/10/12/vampire-village-the-town-that-sucked/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:32:26 +0000 Admin http://livingbeing.com/zikkety/?p=383 Welcome back to Zikkety-zak     Humor, fun, pictures and stories

All content copyright Paul Smyres, all rights reserved.   No duplication ( copy and paste ) please.   You may LINK to this location if you want to share it. 

“A short pencil is better than a long memory.”    Use checklists    save time and money.

Ancient moon ( click to see more moons )

The town that became a vampire

        Many years ago a little town got sliced in half by a busy road.   It was just the poor town’s fate; the state needed a road there so the town got bulldozed.   It was never the same.    The road’s permanent wound scarred the town for more than half a century, never healing because of the endless stream of noisy machines streaming through it 24 / 7, spewing noxious fumes.     Today It’s a dingy town with just a few stores and almost no side streets besides the main road. It’s not pretty, so when you drive through you just try to look straight ahead.

Old ruins - click to go to Halloween page

To make matters worse, the town’s main business for a long time was a huge state institution for the criminally insane. It’s now defunct, but the dank old buildings remain; huge, and ugly, hovering close to the road like brick vultures. On the other side of the road there’s a humongous coal powerplant poking a big stack into the sky. Long ago it spat out black smoke, boiling water to heat the giant buildings where the patients lived.

Only unlucky people got stuck living in that town. They were either too old to move, too poor, too tired, or too challenged in other ways. They accepted their fate and plodded toward the end.    They lived mostly in the grubby mobile home park, some ratty apartments, and a few old ranch homes with trashy yards full of plastic stuff and old appliances.    Some yards had empty dog houses too, because the dogs had run out of town first chance they got.

There’s a train station in that town because the employees of the mental hospital had to come from somewhere else.   They sure knew better than to live there. After work they would catch the next train and get the heck out of town as fast as they could.

The station is right across the street from the institution and nobody likes to use it. When you ride the train you hope nobody gets on there, especially at night. If anybody gets off there, you wonder about them. Nobody likes to park their car at the station either, especially overnight.

The town has a few businesses that sit like suckers on the side of the road.    The more profitable ones sell beer, tobacco, munchies, and lotto tickets.    And coffee, of course, for the car owls who come through and stop to get some smokes and wake-up juice.

Anyway, ever since the mental institution closed not much happened in that town so it started to sulk, because nobody ever stopped there unless they absolutely had to. Business decayed and property values plummeted. Residents got depressed, too, adding to the gloom around the area. They stopped caring for their yards and homes. In fact, the whole village became enveloped by a messy aura, composed of masses of ectoplasm that oozed out of the rotting buildings.

A big for sale sign sits on the land in front of those buildings, been there for a long time. There were rumors a sleazy developer was interested, but it never sold, of course. Everybody knew nobody would buy a condo in that town, even if it was right across the road from the train station.

So the town managers, ( yeah, there were a few people left who could manage anything ) brooded about it. Day and night they watched the cars zoom by their town, actually speeding up to get through it faster. They knew in every single car there was money; money that could help their town and bring in at least enough money to allow for some decent skimming. They had to find a way to drain some of that money into the town treasury.

The train was no help to local business. It still ran through the town but it carried people to and from much better worlds, speeding by noisily, again and again, 22 times a day. Anyone who got off there quickly got in their car and drove away, since right next to the parking lot was the monstrous powerplant, and there was no store even close because of the other hulking buildings.

The townsmen finally determined to make some money on all the traffic, one way or another.   They decided that if nobody was going to stop in their town to spend money they would force them to slow down, really slow, right next to the stinky buildings, and make them look at their ugly town.   So they put really slow speed limit signs up for exactly  one mile right in the middle of the town ( the town is only  2 miles long ) .

       They also put a stop light there near the station, to make sure that at least SOME of the travelers got stuck in town for at least a minute or two.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the driver would start thinking, maybe they needed something at the local all night store, or maybe today would be the lucky lotto day, or they were out of cigarettes.  They figured it would make a difference and help with the tax collections.

     But even that didn’t help business much. After awhile everyone who drove that road learned to always carry snacks and coffee, and have plenty of gas, and not have to pee, when they went through that town. They learned to set their cruise control at exactly 28 miles per hour, just in case it was off a bit, and breathe deeply while they drove.    Less and less money came in and the local business owners started whining.  

       The village was choking to death.    That’s when it got possessed by it’s ghosts and went berserk.  The town scoundrels hired  a couple of oversized policemen to enforce the speed trap, but since they didn’t have much of a budget the ones they got were from the lower end of the scale, in more ways than one.   They weren’t the polite type, either.

      These guys hid their car and radar gun behind an oak tree and started grabbing any driver who had a broken speedometer, was just a little hasty, or suffered any other type of momentary unconsciousness as they drove through town.   After that, the town’s court started getting a lot of customers.   Some became regulars and even some brought their friends to keep them company while waiting to get fined.       

      Most towns have a real building for the town court, but this town has a modular one they got from a foreclosure. They stuck it on a small lot and put a big parking lot next to it for all the victims that have been there over the years.    Inside there’s a big room with a bunch of folding chairs, a very impressive bar holding a large gavel, and a big witness chair .     The big chair gets used alternately by a big policeman ( that’s why the it’s big ),  and whatever size defendant happens to be getting their day in court.     Most of the trials only last a few minutes because the driver makes a deal ( accepts the one the big policeman  offers ), because they’re terrified and want to leave town as soon as possible.    Some of the trials are pretty funny, especially the ones where the drivers tell the judge they were in town visiting relatives so they should be forgiven.   For those people the judge usually makes a deal because he knows they’ll probably be back someday.

Now, on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings the town gets quite lively. Business at the little lotto deli and the gas station perks up considerably.   All kinds of people have ended up in that town’s court and they all have a story that they tell to anyone who will listen.

Before court some of the town’s new visitors buy cigarettes, sandwiches, newspapers, coffee, bagels, and lotto tickets. They also use the ATM a lot, both before and after the court.  And after court they buy beer, aspirin, snacks, and rolling papers on their way home.    Sometimes their cars break down, too, and need to be towed a few blocks to the local repair shop where they get a good going over.  There’s also a lawyer or two in town that do pretty well.   So, the town’s not quite dead, but it’s not very alive either.

The town’s name is Wingdale, probably because of the all the bats who live there.   Some folks call it Wingbat because of the people who live there. 

So, that’s how a weird town came to be known as vampire village, because it’s half dead, and it sucks.

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