I Am What I Am and Then Some

The rent is going up here in The Home for the Aged and Unknowing. This makes it ever more necessary for Ol' Hoss to make his pile. I wonder if there's a market for edible diapers? How about square cones for ice cream? Candles made of ear wax? Tampax Twinkies? Let me know if I hit on something you'd buy.

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Here's some more things about Hoss, the gem of the ocean:

28. When I was a student at Willamette University, a fraternity brother named Jack Larson took me on a flight in his biplane. As a reporter-photographer for the Albany Democrat-Herald two years later, I was sent out to cover the crash of a crop duster in which the pilot was killed. It was Jack. Shit does indeed happen.

29. When I was working in tourist promotion part of my job was to tell our staff photographers what pictures they needed to take for our ads. Traveling on a back road near John Day, a coyote crossed our path. My photographer was a former state cop who still packed a shooter. I said, "Kill the bastard." (Everybody knows coyotes are nothing but trouble.) The photographer said: "What did he ever do to you?" This is why I always vote in favor of coyotes.

30. In Lumber Camp No. 2 outside of Bend, the men-folk would sometimes pitch horseshoes. And sometimes we kids would run back and forth in front of the pitched horseshoes to show our bravery. Uncle Fred threw a shoe tht caught me right below the temple. They don't make kids as goofy as they used to.

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There were six of us who used to drink beer at a place in Salem called Boon's Treasury, which at one time was the Oregon State Treasury. We had one thing in common: we were all gay. No, wait, NONE of us was gay, that's what it was. Just a damn minute. What we had in common was that we all liked to go on float trips down the Rogue River in Southern Oregon.

The leader of the pack was a Vietnam veteran named Mose. He survived the war because he snored so loudly that his Marine buddies would always have him on night patrol. He never slept for 18 months. He always votes against war.

This float trip we were on was a leisurely four days, communing with black bears and nibbling doobie brownies, which were cooked up by an insane guy from Eugene who was an extra in "Animal House."

On the second day of the trip, one of our guys from Boon's, Jerry, fell overboard and drowned while we were trying to get past the worst rapids on the Rogue. Damn. We still had two days to go to get to civilization. So we did what anybody else would have done: "Row the boat and drag Jerry. Row the boat and drag Jerry." This is why I always vote against drowning.

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Hoss wonders:

Is it called "cock fighting" when there are two weenie wavers on the same corner?