Just The Facts 10-6-09

There are a million stories in the city.

Dum-dah-dum…dum-dah-de-dum-de-dum.

"The story you are about to hear is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."

 The Flathead Beacon:

Police Blotter for the week ending 10-6-2009

A sampling of crime briefs from the Kalispell Police and Flathead County Sheriff’s reports…by Heather Jurva (comments by Gladys)

Tuesday 9/29/2009
9:26 a.m. A subject caught in an elevator on 2nd Avenue West called authorities for assistance. The man indicated that he couldn’t be in there for long because he had things to do.
Dude I don’t think you have a whole lot of say so in it.

9:09 p.m. An intoxicated woman attempted unsuccessfully to run out onto the highway near Moonlight Trail. The reporting party held her down until she calmed, and another female friend drove the woman home.
Wanda Sikes does a comedy bit about one drunk following another drunk driving home. All I can think of is Wanda Sikes saying "I'll Follow you home..."

Go here and listen to this:  Wanda Sykes on Drinking

10:18 p.m. A drunk driver passed another car in a no passing zone in Creston.
Was it Wanda and her friend?

Wednesday 9/30/2009

8:13 a.m. Ferndale fire officials became suspicious when they noticed a vehicle with open doors parked at the fire hall. The automobile turned out to be a department training vehicle.
Hey Frank that car looks suspicious.

Yeah Marvin I think we need to call the chief.

What did he say Frank? He said we should recognize it since it’s one of our training vehicles. Oh and he said we are fired.
1:17 p.m. Although he seemed suspicious at the time, an individual at a local church was merely attempting to recover from extreme intoxication.
Maybe he was waiting for the next service.  I mean he was the pastor.

3:53 p.m. A member of a church on Two Mile Drive pulled into the church driveway and refused to leave.
Maybe he was waiting for a miracle or the pastor to sober up.

3:59 p.m. Someone noticed what appeared to be a human foot in a dumpster near an Evergreen supermarket. The remains turned out to be the remnants of a legal bear carcass.
Just exactly what are they putting in their ground round?

10:39 p.m. A black bear knocked over a bird feeder on Whalebone Drive.
Maybe he was looking for his foot.

Thursday 10/1/2009

2:43 p.m. A suspicious person on Sweetgrass Lane turned out to be a vacuum salesman.
Do they still sell vacuums door to door? Does the guy still come in and throw dirt on your floor then vacuum it up?

3:19 p.m. Someone on Haywire Gulch called to report that his wife had locked him out of the house and wouldn’t let him back in. The man decided to spend the night in his motor home.
Once again things are going haywire in Haywire Gulch.
6:26 p.m. A resident of Abbey Road informed authorities that kids continually party and burn fires in the area.
Was it George, Paul, John and Ringo?

3:33 a.m. The sounds of laughter and breaking items could be heard from beneath a local train trestle. The noise turned out to be from several transients under the bridge.

Those damn trolls are at it again.

Friday 10/2/2009

9:22 a.m. Someone was concerned about a family in a blue van that had pulled to the side of Highway 35. Come to find out, the parents had stopped to lecture their children.
I guess you can’t even lecture your kids anymore. I bet it was one of the kids INSIDE the van who called 9-1-1.
3:50 a.m. A gas furnace made funny noises on Asher Avenue in Whitefish.
I guess it had gas.

Going Where You're Looking

My mother used to tell me that I never looked where I was going. She was right. I still don’t. I have been known to trip over my own two feet. I have fallen in holes and ended up with bruises from bumping into furniture that hasn’t moved in 43 years. That is what my story is about today. No not furniture but my clumsiness or inattention.


“Hey Wanda!” I waved and called to my best friend as I stepped out of the car and headed toward Flossie’s new little Japanese import. The gang was all together all of ‘the six’. We met every morning in the parking lot before class to get a run down on the evening before and talk about the day ahead. This was a time before cell phones and texting, tweeting was something that birds did and Facebook was a photo album. Our communications consisted of passing notes in class and chatting over burritos at lunch.

We sat in Flossie’s car for few minutes singing along with Captain and Tennile on the radio. We gathered our homework, fluffed our hair and grabbed our books and headed across the street for class. It was a beautiful spring morning near the end of our sophomore year in high school. The six of us had been friends since seventh grade. We met in P.E. class. We were the outcast. We were not athletic nor were we popular. Not a single one of us could last more than 30 seconds in the bent arm hang. We would huddle together walking through the crowded halls or in the corner of the girl’s dressing room in hopes that the mean girls would either be intimidated by our shear number or not notice us at all.

I stepped off the curb and walked toward the middle of the street. My notebook and school books where suddenly flying through the air in slow motion. I was spinning, spinning, spinning. I felt as if the world was in slow motion and I was weighed down with something very heavy. It wasn’t until I was flat on my back with the tire next to my head did I hear the screams of my best friend. I looked around wondering why she was screaming but all I could see was the underside of a Buick. One minute I’m singing David Allan Coe “You don’t have to call me darling, darling…” and the next I’m in the middle of the street under a Buick station wagon.

I laid there for what seemed like an eternity. I heard people murmuring around me. I wondered if I were dead, or paralyzed. I looked for the bright white light. I searched in vain for my dead loved ones. I waited to hear my dead grandmother soothing me and telling me to walk toward the light. Instead all I saw was a greasy dirty car suspension and I heard feet running towards me. I decided I wasn’t dead and wasn’t going to be. I started scooting my way out from in between the tires. Now remember I was under a 3500 pound vehicle, but it was just like in the cartoons, my body fit perfectly between the tires. I could have lain perfectly still and it would have just passed right on over me. I emerged from the under carriage embarrassed and ashamed. Why was I ashamed? I had just been hit by a station wagon. Would I have felt cool had it been a Ferrari or privileged getting hit by a Mercedes? I repeat I was embarrassed and ashamed. Go figure. Some nutjob hits me and I’m the one embarrassed.

I was shaking my head trying to figure out what had just happened while trying to stand on two skinny shaking legs. A man jumped from the station wagon and ran to help me. He kept saying how sorry he was. He didn’t see me there. What do you mean you didn’t see me? I was right in front of you car in a pair of hip hugger jeans and a bright red fringed suede vest, for crying out loud my hair should have come into view 10 minutes before my body did. Honestly as much as I tried to tame my nappy locks into something that resembled Farah’s follicles all I ever achieved was Rosanne Rosannadanna. How could you miss that hair? I looked around and there were people standing all around. Their mouths were agape, their eyes wide. I heard them murmuring and talking. Oh gee I thought to myself, am I going to get razzed for this.

The man acted concerned. He wanted to call an ambulance, he wanted to rush me to the hospital, and he wanted to run screaming down the street at the sight of my hair. “Are you okay?” he asked with a shaking voice. I stamped my feet and moved my arms and neck, “yeah I think so. I mean I don’t think anything is broken but my head kinda hurts.” He put his hand up as if to check my head but was frightened off by the brillo pad I called hair. “Did I do that?” he cried. I didn’t understand. Did I have a gaping hole in my head? Was my face horribly disfigured? Had my braces popped loose from my teeth and were hanging like a broken zipper? What was he sorry about? “Um, did you do what” I asked. He looked at my hair with pity in his eyes and said “to your hair? Did I do that?” I put my hand to my head and it felt normal. I turned and looked at my best friend and she looked at my hair too and shrugged. “That is MY hair” I said trying to calm him and make him feel better. Again HE hit ME! He was an adult, I was a child. Why was I trying to make HIM feel better? “Can I call my mom?” I whimpered.

The police arrived just about the time I headed toward the schools administration building. The officer grabbed me and made me sit down on the curb. I looked around and saw my fellow classmates and friends starring at me. Then I saw her. She was standing next to the man in the station wagon. She was pointing at me and saying something to station wagon man. She was the head mean girl of our school. She was cheerleader material, she was a track star, she could do to the bent arm hang for 30 minutes and not bat an eye. She could do all of these things and looked like Ali MacGraw, you know that chick that dies in Love Story. Oh come on you know “love means never having to say you’re sorry…” yeah that one. Why would she be talking to Mr. Station Wagon?

Mr. Station Wagon and Ali MacMeangirl come walking towards me. Ali sat on the curb next to me and cried “oh my GAWD! Are you okay? I am so sorry my dad hit you with our station wagon. I never liked that car. I mean could it be any less groovy?” My eyes opened wide, my jaw hit the sidewalk and I gulped air. My mind was trying to process this information. I had been hit by a car. I had been hit by not just any car but a ginormous Buick station wagon. I had been hit by a ginormous Buick station wagon driven by a man who was afraid of my hair. I had been hit by a ginormous Buick station wagon driven by a man who was afraid of my hair and was the father of Ali MacMeangirl who made fun of my gigantic mass of frizzy hair on a daily basis in P.E. class while she was doing the bent arm hang and telling us that love means never having to say your sorry. I guess she didn’t love me because he she sat with her arm around me telling me she was sorry.

I knew one of two things was going to happen. I was either going to now be friends with Ali MacMeangirl because Mr. StationWagon was going to make her befriend me in lieu of being sued. Or, she would be relentless about me not only sucking at the bent arm hang but about my inability to walk across the street without getting hit by a car. Either way was excruciating to think about. My head was really starting to pound and I just wanted to go hide in a hole. The crowd was getting thicker by the minute and I could hear what they were saying. “I think her hair got in his way and he couldn’t see. It descended upon him like a fog.” Then from somewhere else in the crowd I heard “well if she could do the bent arm hang for more than an eighteenth of a second she could have avoided his car” I think that came from Pug Paris our gym teacher. Booming across the crowd I heard it. It was the worst statement of them all “well of course she got hit by a car. She is always going where she is looking and not looking where she is going.” You guessed it. Someone had called my mother, Nurse Meme. She had driven to the school breaking every traffic law in the book. She had parked her 1968 Thunderbird in the middle of the street behind the stationwagon. She had broken through the crowd to remind me once again of my biggest flaw. I went where I was looking instead of looking where I was going.

Gladys has Salty Random Thoughts

Its Friday again which of course means that Mrs. 4444 over at Half Past Kissing Time is up to her Friday Fragments. That is where you go over and link up your fragmented thoughts to her fragmented thoughts and everyone gets to read all of the fragments. It is also the day that Ann over at Ann Again and Again has her Virtual Girls Night Out. Also she is having a give-a-way. She is giving away Harry Connick Jr. Ok not him but his new CD. Go on over to her Review Page and don't enter so I can win.;)



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!UPDATE!  Mrs. 4's named me as the Fragment of the week for something I said last week.  You can read it here Gladys has Hellish Random Thoughts.  Thank you Mrs. 4's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m getting old and forgetful or maybe I have adult attention deficit disorder. I left the house and made the 13 mile trek to town this morning with all intentions of going to the post office to pick up the mail. I went to Squal-mart, Big Lots, Smart and Final and made it to Target. Guess where I didn’t go.

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Have you been shopping for fruit lately? No really have you? Now when I was a kid we had a couple of fruit trees in our yard. We had a peach tree, an apricot tree and a fig tree. My mom would go to the Safeway and bring home exotic fruits like bananas, oranges and sometimes if the season was right strawberries. I went to the grocery and about had an apoplexy trying to figure out what the heck a pluot was.  How about a peacotum, that sounds like a male body part.  Have you ever eaten a chokecherry?  I mean I've eaten cherries so fast that I choked on one but what is a chokecherry?

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Kahuna and I were watching a surfer show. Hey shut up he tolerates The Real Housewives of Atlanta it’s the least I can do. Anyway they were talking about one professional surfer who had to take a year off because it just got too intense from him. WHAT? Isn’t surfing supposed to be one of the mellowest sports out there? Truth is…it’s a shark tank out there.

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Since I mentioned surfing... that makes me think of the beach. Now I’m not a fashionista. I don’t wear the newest, latest and greatest bathing costumes but I have to tell you some people come to the beach dressed very, um…let’s say entertaining.

Leave the peach bike shorts at home, umkay.

Yes those are cowboy boots.  Yes they are on the beach.

Leave the Wonder Bra for Wonder Woman.

Sand, sand, sand, OH MY GAWD WHAT IS THAT?

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Overheard at the beach:

Man to wife: Honey why don’t you look like that young girl in the thong over there.

Wife to Husband: What girl in a thong? I see a guy wrapped in sea weed. Maybe you need to clean your glasses.

Husband to Wife after she cleaned his glasses: Why did you do that? I liked the view from my dirty glasses better.

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This is Steve.  I don't know who Steve was but they had a

memorial service for him at the beach.  I'm not sure but i think

Steve was in the world vase.  Rest in Peace Steve.

Now remember be good to one another.

Thoughts become things so think good ones.

When you Gotta Go...

It is TMI (too much information Thrusday) over at Lilu’s blog.  That is where she encourages people to tell totally revolting and disgusting things about themselves or their family.  No really she tells some of the most, um, how do I say...surprising things about her 20 something self.  Oh did I mention her MOTHER, yes her mother reads her blog? 

Now honestly mine is nowhere near the level of some of her stories.  I don't have a sharting story but still I debated whether or not to tell this story or even link it. I looked deep inside myself and said what the heck?  I mean I have told you guys some pretty wild stories on here and you keep coming back for more.  So without further explanation or excuses, here it is for your reading pleasure.


Once upon a time Gladys worked for a company where she would often have to give safety meetings. She would stand in front of sixty or seventy men as in males and give presentations on construction safety. She would use pictures of accidents either from her fellow employees or those of other construction companies. You have all seen them. She had pictures of tower cranes crashed into buildings, forklifts upside down as well as loads dumped onto personal vehicles and such.

Gladys prided herself on dressing and presenting herself in a professional manner. This was very important back in the old days of the construction industry. Male construction workers didn’t have much use for women in the industry, even if they were office workers. Heaven forbid Gladys show up at the actual jobsite in her pink hard hat and steel toed boots. All production would shut down until she had crawled back into her company issued truck and sped off in the attempt to rid herself of the stink eye curses that were heaped upon her by the male workers.

Gladys had been very young when she had all her internal lady parts removed. When the doctors drove the truck into Gladys’ body and removed her lady parts they had to take some of her internal organs and rearrange them. One such organ was her bladder. It must have been sprained or lazy because the doctor told her he had to put it in a sling. This episode happened about 15 years after they put Gladys’ bladder in a sling, which is not to be confused with the old saying “getting your ass in a sling.”

Gladys arrived at work that morning dressed in her business attire complete with panty hose and heels. She retrieved her artwork and story boards from her closet and admired her collage of recent wrecks. She had her note cards all neatly typed and made sure she had plenty of Shipley Donuts and coffee for the men. She double checked the conference room where she would be holding today’s safety meeting. Now let me take a moment to tell you that Gladys had noticed a frequent urge to visit the little girl’s room in recent days. She noticed that one cup of coffee or thirty minutes was about her limit. She reviewed her notes and timed her presentation so that there could be an intermission of sorts before the last half of her display.

The men filed into the conference room grousing and griping. They positioned themselves around the tables placing spit cups on the left and coffee mugs on the right. They leaned back in their chairs and got comfortable. Many of them could manage to lean their chairs back enough and place their feet up on the table supports so that it was almost a comfortable napping position; but most had to just let their chins rest on their chests and snore into their bellies. Gladys began her presentation and for some reason began drinking deeply from her coffee cup. She would talk for a bit, realize her throat was dry and take another deep drink. She showed the men pictures of upside down loaders and equipment in the drink. THE DRINK? Yes she realized that ninety percent of her pictures featured water. Then she realized in the back of the room the faucet on the little sink was making a drip, drip, drip sound. She looked around at the few faces that were still awake and she watched as they swished their tobacco in their mouths and swilled their coffee. That is when the pressure became abundantly apparent. She shifted from foot to foot. She crossed her legs in a stance of defiance. She fidgeted until she could wait no more. She dropped her note cards, ran past the snoring audience out the door and down the hall. She ran to the ladies room which unfortunately was occupied. She shifted gears and headed to the other hall and found the door to the men’s room wide open. She ran inside, latched the door and turned to see an overflowing toilet and a urinal. She grabbed the waist band of her control top panty hose and heaved with all her might but it was just seconds too late. There was that feeling of warmth and relief which promptly turned cold and horrific. She realized she had waited minutes too late.

Two hours later the men woke to find Gladys had not reappeared. She had left the building.