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02 February 2011

I'll Get You, Buck

     One of my favorite memories from 2010 was a Thanksgiving morning brunch at my eldest daughter's home.  There were about eight of us: the food was good, the atmosphere was small and quiet, and the conversation was pleasant.
     After dinner, we stepped out onto the raised wooden front porch of their 1911 home in central Phoenix to enjoy the perfect Fall weather and bright sunshine.  Suddenly we heard a panicky male voice with an east coast accent imploring someone to call the police because he was being attacked.
     The voice belonged to a large, balding man in his 40's.  He was wearing sunglasses with bright white frames, a red polo-type shirt with white pinstripes, and khaki pants held together at the waste by his belt, as the button and zipper had long since broken.  In one hand he carried a rolled-up newspaper and a roll of toilet paper.  In the other he carried a handkerchief with which he kept mopping his sweating forehead, while looking behind him.
     Soon we met the source of the man's angst.  Another man, perhaps a bit younger and definitely a bit dirtier, rode by on a bicycle with those big "ape hanger" type handlebars and sneered, "I'll get you, Buck!" as he cleared his throat and spat in the direction of our hapless new friend in the day-glow sunglasses.
     The man on the bicycle made a quick U-turn after spitting and rode off in the direction from which he came.  The sunglasses man stood bewildered in front of my daughter's home and repeated his request that someone call the cops.  He said he'd been harassed by Bicycle Man for a few years now, that he'd gone to the homeless shelter for the annual Thanksgiving meal and that somehow Bicycle Man was able to spot him out of a crowd of several hundred people and began threatening him.
     My son in law did call the cops, mostly to placate Sunglasses Man, and handed him the phone.  You could tell by his end of the conversation that the police dispatcher was none too excited about sending officers out to investigate the complaint of a "crime" that was now past tense.
     A few weeks later I saw Sunglasses man several miles from my daughter's home in a different part of Phoenix.  
     He wasn't hard to spot.