Getting The Boot

I knew a guy once - let’s just call him “Al”.  He was the owner/manager of a recreational business in coastal North Carolina which catered to middle income and well-heeled clientele. Most of his customers were professional people hailing from the middle part of the state around Raleigh and similar places. Al himself was a semi-retired medical professional and self-made man.

He was a unique and clever guy too, a well seasoned late middle-aged guy with quite a few miles behind him. I worked for and with him off and on for several years and liked him a lot because he was a direct guy with very little nonsense about him. He was a great storyteller too, and did I mention that he was clever? Al was the sort of person who thought - and acted - ‘outside the box’ as they say. He also had a great sense of humor, though sometimes in a wry, twisted sort of way.

Al once asked me for ideas about a system to deal with a problem about the handling of a certain type of his customers’ physical property, as in ‘tangible items larger and heavier than a large suitcase’. I’ve always enjoyed a certain reputation as the ‘go-to guy’ if you needed unusual problems solved, and I mean that in the good and legal sense. I had helped Al on other things in the past and it was natural that he should ask me for advice.

I apologize for being deliberately vague here, but it is only to ‘protect the guilty’. Al had a challenging situation involving the terrain and geography of his business location which had resulted in customer complaints. He explained the problem to me, asked me for ideas, and I said I’d think about it and get back with him in few days. 

True to my word, several days later I happened to be in his neighborhood again and having thought about his issue, dropped by to give him my thoughts. I found Al in a rocking chair on the front porch of his office. It was a hot August afternoon and Al was enjoying the slight breeze that came in off the coastal sound. Right here you should understand many businesses in coastal Carolina operate on a more informal basis than, say in Newark, New Jersey, and at a different pace too for that matter. And, that goes double for anything in the recreational business line, or in the hot summer months. 

I took another rocking chair and mentioned I had a notion which might work for him, but he surprised me by cutting me off and saying, “Yeah, I’ve already got it done and it’s working just great too.”

To tell the truth, I was pretty surprised because it was a thorny little problem, and also because not only had he found a solution, he had already built the needed apparatus and already had it up and working too.

“C’mon.” Al said smugly, “I’ll give you a tour.”

We took a short walk to another building on the property and Al proudly showed me his new apparatus and demonstrated how it worked. I was pretty impressed at how clever it was, not to mention that I was a little disappointed to be left out so to speak. But, I just congratulated Al and took my leave. I had other things on my to-do list that day. On my way out the door, however, I ran into one of Al’s customers who I knew slightly. When I say ‘ran into’ I mean it in the literal sense because this guy slammed through the door as I opened it and almost knocked me down.

“Where the goddamned hell is Al?” he demanded as if I was supposed to know, not to mention that I should answer to him. This guy, a dentist from Raleigh, was really hot under the collar about something. I was a little nonplussed, and irritated too, pissed off really, and damned near bluntly braced this rude bastard then and there. But I kept my control, gritted my teeth and just nodded in the direction where I’d left Al. The guy was Al's customer after all. The dentist stomped off in Al’s direction all full of fury.

“Hmm,” I sez to myself. “Maybe I should just hang around for a bit to see what develops. This could get interesting.”

So I stood for a minute in the open doorway. Little did I know just how interesting things were to get either!

I mere seconds I heard that dentist screaming at Al. “You goddamned bastard, blankety-blank this, blankety-blank that” and so on and on. This guy was really unhinged about something. His anger was the kind that gets you to spitting when you shout. I could hear Al too, and he was no limp-wristed wallflower to be intimidated. Al’s voice also increased in both decibels and anger, and I couldn’t blame him either. By golly, it WAS getting interesting!

The dentist had obviously completely lost control as I heard him scream at Al, “Alright you goddamned sunofabitch! I’m gonna get my gun and blow your goddamned head off!”

The dentist stomped past me like an angry bear as he went out the door cursing up a blue streak and giving me, a completely innocent party, a nasty snarl as he pushed by me. But, I had lived in North Carolina long enough to know if someone said, “I’m gonna get my gun and blow your goddamned head off!” you should take them seriously, regardless of sex too. Maybe yes, maybe no, but is it really worth possibly losing your life over? I think not.

So this guy goes stomping off across the parking lot to his car about 100 feet away to get his gun. It turned out later he had a shotgun in his trunk. But I digress. A few feet right behind him is Al, also moving at the same pace. I’m sure this dentist just didn’t realize Al was behind him. The dentist is furiously fumbling in his pocket for his keys as he’s hurrying to his car and I’m thinking, ‘Hey, this guy is dead damned serious!”

Just as the dentist pops the trunk open on his fancy Mercedes, Al used both hands to shove him into the trunk and slam the lid closed on him. It was the funniest damned thing I think I ever saw and the resulting screaming was just as funny too. And it was all done so smoothly. Al just turned and grinned at me like he was letting me in on the joke. I almost fell down with glee and amazement. But Al wasn’t done. No Sir, Al had one more trick up his sleeve. He walked over to a nearby high lift forklift which he then used to lift that Mercedes about ten feet in the air where he left it. Al left that dentist trapped in the air, screaming murderous threats in the trunk of his own black Mercedes in the hot midday August sun of North Carolina, hugging his shotgun for comfort. He left that dentist there until his screams became wails and finally turned into blubbering begging. Al went to his office to get his own gun ‘just in case’ and finally lowered the poor guy down after about half an hour. The pitiful guy was a sopping wet wreck and as meek and mild as a kitten and apologizing profusely to everyone in sight when Al finally let him out. Luckily for the dentist, everything had happened so fast the dentist’s keys were still in the lock of the trunk.

I know Al lost that dentist as a customer of course, but there were never any consequences that I know of. The story got passed around and I think the dentist was simply too ashamed to try anything again.

Fun times!

(This story is absolutely true to the best of my recollection - and this was a memorable event for me. I have been deliberately vague about details for obvious reasons. The setting is Eastern North Carolina in the mid-1980's)