---------------------------------------- Note 20 merchant marine *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/9/79 10:27 pm graper / udperuse / unidel Honest to god, the people working on the computers here are more frightening than ever. Thick horn rimmed glasses, huge seven inch thick piles of computer print outs, arrow shirts and three-color ball point pens. I'm sorry. I'm just prejudiced. Lately, a lot of the people in my stories have been computer programmers. This may offensive to many people. Terry was not a computer programmer. Now that's not offensive, is it? Terry was a person who was a merchant marine in 1952, retired and became a person who watched a lot of television and had a front porch with a rusty Sears portable grill on it. He almost never went outside of his apartment. His mailbox was easily accessible from his front porch, and the mailbox made him self sufficient. It would have his monthly government check in it for about $400, which was a good amount of money in 1973, the year that we are ---------------------------------------- Response 1 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:04 pm graper / udperuse / unidel looking at Terry through. The typical retirement check of a retired merchant marine was about $280 a month, but Terry got $120 more a month because, while working for the merchant marines he had fallen on an anchor and lost his buttocks. In its sorrow, the merchant marines had allowed him to retire at 38 and paid him an extra amount of money for his personal loss. It had also paid for some strange medical devices that he subsequently required. Terry had some hobbies, neither of which was too interesting. One was playing BLAM-O Electric Soccer, a game where you put little soccer figurines on a vibrating metal board and, by the virture of the funny plastic undersides of these figurines, they would "run" around on the field, kicking a little cotton ball back and forth. Actually, it used a special BLAM-O Electric Soccer soccer figurine ball but he had broken the three that had come with the game and refused to go to the hobby store down the street to get a new one. ---------------------------------------- Response 2 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:08 pm graper / udperuse / unidel The other hobby was firing high powered rifles indoors. Eight years later, a married couple would move into the house where Terry lived and would decide to hang a picture on the wall. They would use a metal sensing device bought from the local Radio Shack (an electronics store popular in 1980) to find the stud in the wall. The stud was where a lot of nails were, and was really nice to hang pictures from. They would take the metal sensing device back to the Radio Shack, complaining that it was buzzing all the time when they were trying to find the nails in the hidden wall studs. Actually, it was merely sensing the 20,000 rounds of high powered rifle ammunition that Terry had fired into the wall and was reacting in a predictable way. The Radio Shack dealer would grunt and give them their money back. ---------------------------------------- Response 3 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:09 pm graper / udperuse / unidel Terry was watching the network news, a high-powered rifle in his lap. "The price of hamburger climbed to 89 cents today," the blue and white strobing picture on the television said. "Damn, burger costs more than me!" Terry said, fondling the rifle bolt. He was referring to hamburger costing more per pound than his buttocks were currently getting from the government. This was not true. At $120 a month (ignoring of course that you can only use hamburger once, while Terry had been getting paid for his for years now), Terry's buttocks would have to weigh in the area of 135 pounds to even equal_____ the price of hamburger. Enough of that. A commercial came on and Terry rapidly fired four shots into the fireplace. ". . .Police still have been unable to determine the motive behind the mysterious Linden Hill sniper. . ." the newsfigure said solemnly. ---------------------------------------- Response 4 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:10 pm graper / udperuse / unidel PTCHOW PTCHOW Terry went again, firing into the staircase. If you think that Terry was the Linden Hill Sniper, you're wrong. Honestly, man, I thought you had more respect for my writing. It's a bit old to have a psychotic character being described in the background over a radio or TV or something. There really was no Linden Hill Sniper. A white female high-school student had been driving down route 7 one day when this thing smashed through her windshield that left a round hole and spider-webbed the glass. It wasn't a bullet at all, but a ball point pen from a hapless Traffic News Helicopter reporter falling from 20,000 feet. Consequently, she got all frightened and drove into a big psychedelic painted school bus that had a family of good natured musicians in it named the Partridge Family and a lot of folks got hurt and it got on the news as the first attack of the Linden Hill Sniper. ---------------------------------------- Response 5 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:13 pm graper / udperuse / unidel PTCHOW! went another bullet, zinging through the floor and into the basement. It was getting late, and Terry was getting ready. Oh, excuse me. Terry did___ go out at nights sometimes. The police in the Linden Hill township (where Terry lived) were puzzled as to the whereabouts of the Linden Hill Sniper. "It must be the work of a pro," the chief said to a bunch of tall Linden Hill township detectives. They had found no bullet in the car, no trace of gunpowder, no trace of a bullet path through the car. "It must be the work of a pro," was the explanation. All the detectives nodded their heads up and down. The first suspect they had was, of course, Terry. They had had a lot of complaints about him, always making gunfire sounds in his house. They had always ignored it, though. They had also gotten a lot of other weird com- plaints about him, too. Neighbors said that he stole the ---------------------------------------- Response 6 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:15 pm graper / udperuse / unidel flags off their mailboxes and stuff. "I'm telling you, that Terry Bnork is one weirdo!" a woman in pink plastic haircurlers would say to two investigating officers. She would inevitably be in bedroom slippers, be wearing a baggy bathrobe, wear funny glasses that winged off at the ends and that had fake jewels in the corners and would have a copy of a movie magazine under her arm. "We can't arrest people on the charge of being weirdoes!" the young officer would inevitably say. "Elsewise, we'd have gotten you long ago!" he would think to himself and giggle while filling out the report. "Well, all sorts of funny sounds come out of there! Banging, cracking sounds!" she would say in a creaky, dis- gusting voice. She had clones all up and down the street who would periodically call up the police and complain about Terry all the time. So the police had a good idea who probably had the ---------------------------------------- Response 7 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:17 pm graper / udperuse / unidel guns in Linden Hill Township. Staking out Terry's house that night, two officers looked at all the crap around the house and the rusted out Sear portable outdoor grill on the front porch. "I had no idea that this guy was a pro," one said to the other. "Yeah," the other said. Terry was inside, putting on his black suit. He blacked out his face just like they do in the television commando shows, put on a camoflaged poncho and a helmet with ferns and plants tied to it to make it easier for him to hide in trees or even look like a tree himself. He slung two high powered rifles over his back, a pack of 75 rounds of ammunition and a pair of binoculars. He went up to the mirror in the foyer and looked at himself. "Bonzai," he said, then turned out the lights and left, locking the door. ---------------------------------------- Response 8 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:18 pm graper / udperuse / unidel The two officers staking out Terry's house jumped to attention. "He's just come out of his house," they said into their police radio. "Move in," the radio answered. The two officers got out of the car just as Terry was sneaking out across the front lawn, pausing occassionally to jump into some bushes. The two officers closed in. Aiming their guns at him in a cross-fire fashion they learned in police school. "Alright, G.I. Joe, come on out of there!" The two officers kept standing there. "Come on out, or we shoot." One of the officers moved closer to the bush where Terry was hiding. "He's not in here!" he shouted to the other. ---------------------------------------- Response 9 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:20 pm graper / udperuse / unidel Meanwhile, Terry was running around to the back of his house, the ferns tied to his helmet wiggling back and forth wildly. "Jeeesus Christ!" he whispered, trying to keep all his equipment from clanking too loudly. The officers had returned to the squad car, radioing in that the suspect was loose. Reinforcements would soon be on the way. Terry was frantic now. He ran through the neighbor's back yard, his ammunition kit and rifle getting all tangled up in the next door neighbor's kid's swingset. "Who's that??" the next door neighbor woman screeched out her dirty screen door. Terry got himself quickly untangled from the chain mess just as the ugly neighbor woman flashed her Eveready flashlight on him. "Eeek!" she screamed. Terry was regretting that he was such a well ---------------------------------------- Response 10 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:24 pm graper / udperuse / unidel equipped commando. He was well over the back yard fence and past the Linden Hill Seven Eleven Discount Mart by the time the police reinforcements came. He ripped out the plastic inner liner of the trash can in front of the Seven Eleven and wrapped up all his equipment, went into the store to buy a Zeron Vanilla candy bar then went out onto the highway and got a ride to the Yukon where he was allowed to shoot all he wanted and lived happily ever after. Meanwhile, the police reinforcements had arrived at his house and were wandering around, trying to find Terry. Terry had just finished his Zeron candy bar and a car had pulled over to pick him up that had Canadian liscence plates on it, just 200 yards away from the police investigation. He "got away." Folks from the neighborhood, curious as to what it was like in Terry's house, began peeking in and then boldly walking around inside. All of the ugly women of Terry's street, all shuffling about in different ---------------------------------------- Response 11 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:25 pm graper / udperuse / unidel colored bathrobes, bedroom slippers and plastic hair curlers began sorting through his belongings. "Ooh, look at this!" one female named Myrna said, picking up a dried TV dinner that had been lying under a National Geographic. All the ugly women on the street tittered about in Terry's rooms, feebly kicking dirty underwear around on the floor, pushing rotting orange peels around on the kitchen table. They went from room to room, closet by closet, dissecting the secrets to his life. Then a woman named Norma found a door she could not open at all. "Hey, Edith, I can't get this one open!!" Edith came over, along with Elva and Shirley and a bunch of other women and collectively they began pulling on the doorknob. The policemen came by and, being as curious as the women, helped pull the door open. brrrrRAK! went the ---------------------------------------- Response 12 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:29 pm graper / udperuse / unidel door as it burst open. There inside was an immaculate, red crushed velvet furnished room. The entrance of the ugly women in a room this beautiful was like an oil stain creeping across your mom's best tablecloth. Ugly as they were, they were still struck by the beauty of the place. There was an arsenal of high-powered weapons leaning against the left and right walls, their symmetry perfect and their furniture-like qualities brought out by the splendour of their surroundings. A policeman turned on the Sears Roebuck pseudo chandelier light that hung from the ceiling. On the furthest wall was a plaque with the words, "To the glory of the hunt!" written in gothic letters all around the outside. "A nice den," one officer remarked. "Oh NOO!!!" Ugly Edith screamed, a plastic curler falling from her head, pointing up at the wall. Then, ---------------------------------------- Response 13 of 13 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 7/10/79 12:31 pm graper / udperuse / unidel ugly Gladys and Dolores began screaming too, also pointing up at the wall. Soon, all twenty of the ugly women began blubbering and pointing at the walls. "Oh NOO! My poor Boofie!!" Zelda Hammerwurst cried, pointing up on the wall. The police were baffled, then looked up on the wall. All along the wall, the stuffed heads of about twenty five neighborhood dogs were mounted on plaques with their names written in gold beneath them. Most were poodles. "BOOFIE - 1972" were the words beneath one white poodle's stuffed head. "PRINCE - 1971" was the plate under a German Shepard's head. "Amazing," the police officers said to each other. The Linden Hill Sniper case was never solved.