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True Stories by Steve Keely
Hobo Memoirs
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DESERT LAW
I try again and again to explain that certain things differ in Sand Valley. Take
sheriffs.
The original sheriff visited my neighbor TJ’s one afternoon six years ago, and I
happened by as he ran the barrel of his .45 pistol up and down the long neck of
Kilroy, the pet turkey. This tall bird has a disarming habit of standing on the
feet of males and staring them in the face. ‘He likes you an’ he’s lonely,’ said
Laura. ‘He’s gonna be soup!’ groused the sheriff. TJ kicked Kilroy who landed
near me and pressed a thigh. I shoved him off, and the rest of us spoke of
cactus blowing in the breeze which is the real reason the sheriff comes out here
to unwind and target practice.
That sheriff was the empathetic kind we like in Sand Valley, but he got high
blood pressure after the neighboring Indian blew off his finger with a .22 rifle
for taking an environmentally unsafe tire used as a tree planter.
His replacement soon flagged me with a shinny star on the 10-mile private
stretch into the Valley. ‘I just like to know who’s here since my processor’s
lost his middle finger,’ he drawled. In truth, I believe he was embarrassed
along with county law when the 67-year old Indian escaped by foot over open
desert from eighty troopers with dogs and choppers. That sheriff was a stickler
whose hefty ulcer no one grieved forced his retirement.
A John Wayne was the next sheriff until another neighbor, Cherokee, grabbed the
barrel of his shotgun and threw him against the patrol car for trespassing. Then
he called on the police radio for backup.
The next sheriff threw a feminine weight, though less so according to oldest gal
in the Valley who reported next time she bothers her with petty matter’s she’ll
‘Rip her balls off. An’ if I can’t find them, I’ll reach till I do.’ I noticed
that badge disappeared last year.
So Sand Valley held a meeting where a constable was elected by a valley quorum
of five. He is a sag chinned ex-biker neighbor who calls the yearly black fly
immigration ‘niggers’. One day this new sheriff brandished a shotgun to block a
convey of U.S. Marines lost along the private road to the adjacent Coco Mt.
Bombing Range. The military responded by machine-gunning his corrugated tin roof
from a helicopter.
I thought once of becoming a sheriff or a Marine, but ended up a hermit writing
stories from underground that no one seems to understand.
For more of Steve "Bo" Keely's writings
Visit the Hobo page on www.greatspeculations.com!