The Sweathog, His Bed, and the Turkey Guts • r****o@s******.*****t.org 22/06/1993 03:03:25 UTC Charles Sweathog, His Bed, and the Turkey Guts My undergraduate school, being a Christian college and all, highly frowned upon the traditional types of college fun, so there were no all night parties with drunken folks, no nekkid women running about, and never any women guests in the guys dorms. The College was situated in Abilene, Texas, not known as a mecca of fun-- rightly so. Consequently life was a bit dull, so we made up for it by a spate of dorm pranks. Some of them were funny, some of them were mean, and the best of them were funny, mean, and dangerous. This is but one of the tales, and one of the few that didn't involve tresspassing, destruction of property or explosives. Those I will post at anoher time. Of course, this never happened, uhm hum. I would never do something so black-hearted as this, nope, not me- it's just a folklore tale... ayup There lived in Edwards hall, a giant of a man, a huge hulking beast-like figure, I swear he was at least 6'7. He was built like a door, or perhaps a mobile wall. Big, solid, and strong. Not some one to be trifled with. We called him Sweathog, although his name was Charles. (this was in 1975, I don't know if that was before the TV sweathogs--- believe me they did no jusctice to the name). Charles was working his way through school. And working. He attended class all day, worked in a truck-loading place until 11 pm and then worked as a bouncer/bodyguard in a private pub. At this time Abilene was a dry county, no bars; no liquor stores, no 7-11 beer slurpies. Except if you were a serious drinker--- then you could go out and buy your own booze over the county line, hustle it back into town, and take it to a private club, where you would pay someone to open your bottle and serve your booze to you. An odd system, but Abilene was an odd town. Since you had to drive out of the county to buy any booze, people tended to buy a lot of it, and get a late start to their serious drinking, even on a weeknight. Folks would bootleg large amounts of booze to the clubs, and then drink it all. By 11 pm they were very drunk, and thats when Sweathog, as we affectionatly called Charles, would go to work. The clubs would get rowdy, and though there was no real closing time, the bartenders would try to close up if there were only a few folks around after 3 or 4 am. Enter Sweathog. He would have to get these drunken reprobate rednecks into their trucks and out of the club. Not a pretty job, and not one for someone who couldn't fight, since the one thing a drunken reprobate redneck hates more than anything, is to be dragged fromn his stool, just when he was getting drunk enough for the remaining old booze hound ladies to start to look good. So they would fight with Sweathog, and he would fight back, and then after soundly whupping their butts, he would pour the last drunk into his truck. After this, Charles would head for the dorms. Most often this was about 4 or 5 am. And then Charles would try to sleep the two or so hours before getting up and going to class. He did this day after day, week after week, with the help of his friends, Mr. Coffee and Ben Zadrine. By the end of the week, Charles would be pretty fried, and really be looking forward to catching some uninterupted Z's. Some how, Sweathog did not do have to do the full bar duty on Saturday nights, Though, I always thought that would be the night he was needed most. Maybe they closed early, since all the drunken rednecks would have needed to get up early for church. Maybe that was the reason, or maybe, since the serious drinking got started earlier on Saturdays, since they didnt have to wait until after work. The booze would kick in early enough for the barflys to start to look good while the night was till young, so that they were all out of there by 2 am. Who Knows? But for whatever reason, every Saturday night Charles came home at about 2:30, hunting for bed. Now, we, his good firends, feared him, when he was tired. He was really not in a good mood after getting only about a dozen hours sleep spread over 6 days. And therefore, he was prime material for pranking. We tried locking his door, so that he couldn't get to his much desired bed, but that didn't work; he just kicked the door in, breaking the door itself to splinters. (and these were solid wooden doors! later we had to steal one from a laundry closet, and swap door knobs so Charles would not have to pay for the wrecked door... the dorm feds could never figure out how the janitors closet door, which opened out, had been kicked in...) We also tried stealing charles bed. This didnt faze him a bit, he went into Billy's room and passed out on Billy's bed, and was immobile as a stone for the next 12 hours. We needed something big, a grand finale, since the semester was about to end and rumor had it that Charles was not returing after the summer break. (He never did, by the way... perhaps that was for the best) About a mile and a half from the campus was a slaughter house, for a nationally known meat packing plant. I won't give the name, but it was synonymous with "fast", which for some reason was appropriate if you ate their hotdogs. Especially, the new sensation of that year, the turky hot dog. There were a lot of turkeys moving through Abilene that year, so turkey guts were at a very good price. Yes, turkey guts; intestines, bladders, stomachs, wattles, and other slimey wet offal they could not grind up to put in the franks. You could get a white plastic five gallon bucket of hot steaming turkey guts, fresh from the abbatoire, for about $2, and a dollar deposit for the bucket. We spread a white shower curtain over the Sweathog's bed, making damn sure that the bed and bed sheets were very well protected. And then we spread a liberal helping of turkey entrails over top it all. Neat. And then we hid in Billy's room, barricaded in, with desks and chairs and all of us, including me, against the door (I am no small fellow, somwewhere between a 1/5 and 1/4 ton US) The whole gang sitting on top it all, waiting for our doom. Waiting for the explosion of Charles, the yelling and pounding, and the pledges of horrid death to us all at the next oppurtunity. Sweathog knew how to strike dread into your heart when he pledged vengance, and though he had never killed us in the past, we had thought, looking over the glistening mass of gobbler guts and gore, that perhaps this time, he would make an exception. We half expected him to truly rend us limb from limb, or at least hurt us very much. Still there was nothing to do now, it was too late, so we waited. We heard Charles' motorcycle pull up, and old Indian bike, with a distinctive rattling thrum. An eternity later Charles was at his door. We heard the door open. We cringed. No reaction, no sound. No yelling, no pounding, no threats. Silence. Eerie silence. Our hearts in our throats, and the silent hiss of the air conditioning. This went on for about three interminable eternitys, and then we decided to open the door. When we got into the hall, we heard it. Laughing. Weird high pitched, nearly subaudible laughter. Mixed with mumbling, and sobbing. Gasp! We had broken his mind! We had gone too far! Oh shit! What had we done! Charles was standing there in his room, looking at the slop covered bed, and laughing. Big tears welling in his eyes, and running down his face. "... you guys, hhheee hhehehe, You guys, guts,, ahahheeh in bed, hehe, you guys, guts, and I wanna sleep..." Over and over; while sobbing, great gouts of tears rolling down his face. Quick as we could, we stripped the guts off his bed, flushed them down the toilet, and straightened up his bed. We plumped the pillows, took off his shoes, his pants and shirt, and got him into bed. All this time; Sobbing and giggling; "...guts... guts on the bed, thas' funny... heheh you guys...too much... hehehhe...I wanna sleep...hehehe" We were majorly creeped out, and we turned out the light; said "good night, Charles" and he finally said "good night" and sobbed off to sleep. We were about as scared as we could have been. None of us slept that night. We met for breakfast the next day. It was a silent, no fun meal, the eggs were more tasteless than ever, which was hard to beleive, but we did not care. We munched our rubber toast, drank bitter coffee, and went back to check on Charles. Sleeping like a baby, a dead baby. Out like a, well, like nothing I had ever seen, I mean coma-sleep. We met at about 9 pm again for dinner, since ACU had no Sunday night food service, we would all go out to eat together. Charles had been asleep nearly 18 hours, we went to his room. He was just getting up. He was normal! (for Sweathog, that is) We had not broken his mind! We were not guilty! Huge weights clanged to the floor as we all breathed a sigh of collective relief. Charles was in a good mood, and was laughing it up; what a great bunch a guys we were. He remembered us fixing his bed, when he was so tired, though he did not remember what was wrong with it, or how it had gotten wrong. We did not remind him. He said something about having a weird dream, and none of us pressed the issue. We all went out to dinner, and though the conversation was a bit stilted, we had a good time. After a while things got back to normal, but we never played another prank on Charles. This is a true story-- but it never happened-- I plead the fifth! No Charles, wherever you are, there is no need to exact revenge. It was all a dream. You do like turkeys... And by the way, I still have the white plastic bucket, I never did claim the $1 deposit. r****o@s******.*****t.org • r****o@s******.*****t.org 22/06/1993 03:07:23 UTC sorry about the double spacing, I had the word processor set wrong ooops! Now, just how does it go again? add cr before lf, or add lf after cr? sheesh! ;) • s******s@s******.*****t.org 23/06/1993 22:34:50 UTC YEAH! And I see that the (ahem) story was cross-posted. Now it will live forever! (How about the complete "Tales of the Jacobs Ladder" cycle, Uncle Rob?) SEJ P.S. This may have to be REposted after src4src gets its news thingie fixed, to ensure proper distribution.