When I was growing up, my dad had a car/truck dealership. He sold a lot of big trucks to people, including this guy that I came to know. We'll call him Andy, out of convenience.
Andy used his first truck, a huge dump truck with a wench, to pick up dead animals and take them to the "rendering" plant. I don't know if you understand what a "rendering" plant is, but it's basically a meat plant for animals that have been dead too long to use for human consumption. I mean really dead stuff, here. Days dead.
Anyway, I used to ride with Andy as he made his pick ups. Ranchers would call him when they had a dead cow, and Andy would back up to the dead animal, attach a steel wire to a hind leg, and pull it into the bed of the truck.
Well, one day, a very hot July kind of day, I was with Andy and he got a call for a pick up. It must have been 105 outside, and the truck had no air conditioner, but I went with him to this sprawling ranch outside of Hereford, Texas. This was no ordinary pickup, 'cause this animal had been dead for about a week. In the Texas heat. It was bloated, stiff, and very, very dead. Beyond dead.
I usually didn't do much when I was with Andy, and that day was no exception. I got out of the cab, walked to the rear, and watched him attach the wire to the dead cow's rear leg. As I stood there mired in sweat, I watched him pull the lever to activate the wench. Everything was okay until he attempted to drag the dead animal over a cactus plant. There was a moment of hesitation, and the main part of the cow's body came to a halt, but the wench kept moving. Suddenly, the cow's leg, due to decomposition, let go of its body and the steel cable from the wench acted like a rubber band. The separated leg went flying through the air, toward the truck bed, and hit Andy square in the head. Knocked him out.
So there I am, standing in the Texas July heat, sweating like a pig, wondering what to do about it all. I walked over to Andy, sprawled on the ground, and that was when the smell hit me. A very bad smell. At a rendering plant, they take days old dead animals and harvest the meat to use as dog and cat food, for the most part. If you've ever opened a can of dog or cat food, then you have an inkling about days-old dead cow smell. You can smell it, and think to yourself, "There's something that ain't right about this stuff." Standing in 105 degree heat in West Texas, with a dismembered dead cow, you get the same idea. Only fresh. Fresh dead, that is.
Andy was knocked out, I was hot and sweaty, and he was covered in dead cow pieces. He stunk. Bad.
When he woke up, he looked around, dusted himself off, and physically threw the cow's leg into the bed of the trunk. Then he attached the wire to the cow and finished pulling it on board.
We got into the truck to drive away, but he stunk so bad that I couldn't stand it. I got into the cab, and immediately vomited. Out the side window. Andy started laughing, and laughed so hard that he vomited out of the driver's side window. The drive back into town was punctuated with barfing and rampant laughter. There was a dark humor at work, there.
Death is nothing to laugh at, but we managed to pull it off. Not without a lot of vomit.
Andy later moved into vehicle towing, and purchased another truck. From time to time, and regularly on Saturday nights, I would ride with him to perform towing services. He had a police frequency radio on board, so that he could swoop down on wrecks and take advantage of the economic opportunity afforded by wrecked cars.
Most of the time, it was a clean operation. Drunk driver, easy tow. Until one night.
The traffic on the radio was busy, 'cause there was a bad wreck. Drunk driver stuff. We proceeded out the wreck site, and sure enough, it was ugly. Torn steel everywhere. Two pickups and a twisted Corvette. We weren't the first people on the scene, but close. Apparently, this Corvette held three people -- two guys and a blonde. I watched as the ambulance guys carried away the two dead males on stretchers. Strangely, they put a sheet over the dead blonde's body and left her in the mangled car.
We kept waiting, for about an hour, and then I saw the coroner pull up. He had a flashlight, and he focused it on the woman's body briefly, and then walked over to the side of the road, where there was a police jacket sitting in the ditch. I moved closer, and he pulled away the jacket to reveal the severed head from the dead blonde woman. When the coroner reached to bag it, it slipped, and went rolling down the side of the ditch, still grinning. It was a bizarre grin.
The coroner commented, "Hey, I think she bumped her head."
Moments before the accident, she had been sitting up on the back seat, on the trunk, laughing and drinking. In fact, they had almost run over a poor old woman walking across the street.
She had yelled out to the lady, "Step out there and meet Jesus!"
Now I was watching the coroner bag her head.
It was a matter-of-fact operation.
To this day, I can't look at the severed head of a blonde without thinking of that dark night.
Live and learn.
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