Edward J. Pluchar - The Blogsplitter

Referring to an employee who “wasn’t all there,” Danny Cox went on to say…

“He had a wild look about him, you know?  Like a man caught in the outhouse when lightning struck.”

Eugene McKenzie is the former mayor of Rainelle, WV. Talk to almost anyone in that town and you will find that “Geno,” a name spoken with either deliberate informality or ironic affection, or both, is synonymous with “scandal” and “crook.”

The best word to describe Geno, I would argue, is “scoundrel.” Both “scandal” and “crook” are valid, and accurate in their way; yet scoundrel suggests a hint of genuine affection, the sense that one never condones a scoundrel’s actions, yet many find cause to be on casual terms with the scoundrel.

The man walks with a cane, and can be pleasant to talk to. I interviewed him on the night of his primary defeat for re-election, and he expressed very little bitterness (much was expected) and even showed a little deference to the democratic process (none was expected).

But Geno’s cane fits his hand like an old weapon, ready to impart a physical blow or to amplify crankiness, according to his mood. It was not his cane that struck an infamous blow, though his crankiness could certainly be blamed. Leading up to the aforementioned primary election, the three leading candidates for the “People’s Party” met at Town Hall, accompanied by a journalist well-known for her hostility toward Geno, to discuss the convention rules. As the candidates entered an office through a glass door, Geno “accidentally” shut the door on the reporter (I suspect the blow was not only insulting but embarrassing – I think the reporter’s face may have smashed up against the glass door). Instantly he hyper extended every cord and cable of tension in the room, leading the candidates to denounce his actions in the strongest terms. The journalist, for her part, never let anyone forget the way Geno “attacked” her that day.

Pete Adams is the current Recorder and Treasurer for the town of Rainelle. He stands as tall as an average man and is built solid and thick. His booming baritone is temperate under most circumstances, but massive and unyielding in confrontation. The financial and social ills of his town surround him, nipping at him and looking to devour him. Even so, his 65 or 70 years have likely seen greater threats, allowing him to go about his work undaunted. Adams’ slightly unbalanced eyes seem to represent the vulnerability of ethical behavior, his willingness to do the right thing even when it means exposing Rainelle’s shades of ugliness.

Over the last few decades of Rainelle’s history, Geno, Adams, and the current mayor, John Hill, have alternated terms in the mayor’s office. Hill, in fact, officially unseated Geno, but for all practical purposes, Adams runs the town’s administration.

For a while, against expectations, Geno disappeared. Curious citizens and journalists attended the first few meetings of the current administration, anxious for any flare-ups from the outgoing administration. When none appeared, the crowds began to stay at home, until I was the sole journalist and only 2-3 citizens attended each meeting. One of those was Mayor Hill’s wife.

About a year after his defeat, Geno’s name surfaced again at town council meetings. While doing excavation work for a client, he completely revamped a town alleyway, which of course he had no right to do. Geno did not even have a permit for the work he was allowed to do until after he had begun, claiming that he did not know a permit was necessary. Adams found this excuse hard to swallow, since Geno had been mayor more than once. Council decided that Adams should confront Geno and have him correct the situation.

Another instance of the scoundrel Geno stirring up trouble after the fact of his mayorship requires a little bit of context. In a given municipality, at least in this area, there is a general fund, a water fund, and a sewer fund, the three major services provided by a small town. Each fund, then, requires its own account, which ought to be accessed only for the purposes of that service. In other words, the town provides citizens with clean drinking water; citizens pay the water company for this service on a monthly basis. All of the money collected from the citizens goes to the water company fund, and thereafter is used to pay water company employees, maintain and repair water lines, and so on. Thus, the sewage treatment plant cannot use water company funds for their projects – they depend on citizens’ sewer bills to cover their costs.

Geno, it turns out, took $25,000 from the water company and used it to purchase a building for the town’s administration, an expense that should have come out of the general fund. Not only did he essentially steal money from the water company, but he went a step further: He allowed the water company to rent one room from the newly purchased building, at a monthly rate of $450. To put it another way – Not only did he steal his brother’s bike, but he charged his brother $10/ride to borrow it.

Despite Rainelle’s financial troubles, Adams told council that he was embarrassed to ask the water company to keep paying rent on a building they bought, and thought the town ought to repay the money over time.

As Geno’s public sins mounted, the time came for the old scoundrel to appear before the new administration and make his case. Unusually, a police officer was in attendance for this meeting.

Rising out of his seat, Geno set his cane against his chair and made for council’s table.

“I appreciate being put on the agenda,” Geno said modestly. With 7 or 8 citizens behind him, you could almost hear people sniffing the air for a whiff of sarcasm. As Geno presented his three concerns, however, it became ever clearer that there was no sarcasm in his voice whatsoever.

Instead, the man known for expediency and his underhanded iron grip on Rainelle during his terms of office appeared sincere and calm. Adams addressed his first two concerns authoritatively, adding that a fine would be assessed for every day that passed before Geno returned the revamped alleyway to its original condition. Geno seemed to be in the wrong, and was nevertheless cooperative with the council’s wishes. In many ways it felt like the quiet before the storm, or better, the eye of the hurricane. Amid his propensity for verbal thrashing, for out and out destruction of civility, was an almost eerie calm.

Third and finally, Geno raised the matter of mowing the grass at one of his properties. As he tells it, the town notified him on a Thursday that the grass needed to be cut immediately. Geno hired a man on Friday, who cut his lawn the same day; he nevertheless received a fine on Saturday.

“I’m asking you, the council, if you think it’s fair that I was fined $620 when I had my grass cut the next day.” Pausing a moment, Geno continued, “I’ve been having health problems that wouldn’t allow me to get to it sooner.”

A peculiar thought settled in – the old scoundrel’s body is failing. Illness finally taught Geno some manners and, facing his mortality, he also was seeking to be peaceable with his enemies.

Adams explained that the ordinance was on the books, and that the citation essentially gives notice of the fine.

“Well, I just want you to know, I want everyone to know that I paid that $620. I’m not here to complain, just to talk about the facts. I paid that fine,” Geno said, gathering his notes as he turned away.

“For the record, Geno,” Adams interjected, “You didn’t pay that fine.”

“Yes I did,” Geno said firmly.

“You posted bond for the citation,” Adams explained. “That’s not the same thing as paying the fine.”

It seemed as though Adams’ words didn’t fully register, as Geno said again, “I paid the fine,” before walking back to his seat for his cane, then out of the town hall.

Ah, what a scoundrel - just when he appears to be a sympathetic character, Geno tries to put another deception past the powers that be. Or else, the old scoundrel really is fading.

Most readers have probably met our dog Danny, not because my readers are constituted merely by close friends, but because Danny is such an international celebrity.

I often think about the life of Danny because there’s such a disconnect at times between what I’m interested in and what he’s interested in.

I don’t care what that random pile of poop smells like.  Reportedly, he can tell the gender of the dog who excreted it just by scent.

Danny doesn’t care how funny Siko’s post on ShowBiz Pizza Animatronics is.  I can derive amusement from the uncanny synchronization of a sexually charged pop song with jerky mechanical puppets at a children’s restaurant.

Because of this disconnect I make deliberate efforts for both of us to enjoy the other’s company, to take notice of Danny when I’m consumed by things dogs don’t care about.

I may never reconcile the strange distance between our minds, and there remains something to marvel at when friends are gathered and laughing while Danny has barely lifted his head out of boredom.

This also is a two-for-one, and I’m starting to realize that the full experience of person is usually brought out by another with strong and distinct characteristics of his/her own.

Character #1 is Mrs. Wiley, an 81 year-old African-American woman for whom Joe and I are installing new windows. We accomplished some of this work with a volunteer crew from Bethlehem Farm, including a chaperone named Jim. Now, a short blurb about each of these fine persons before the interaction that I found to be so pleasing.

Mrs. Wiley was on our waiting list for the home repair program when her name finally came up a few weeks ago. Joe gave her a call to arrange a visit and the work days. Mrs. Wiley answered the phone suspiciously and, on hearing that we were calling about her windows, staunchly insisted that she didn’t want no windows and never called about getting new windows. Joe eventually talked her down and explained that the windows would be installed free of charge, which is a pretty compelling cause for any homeowner to listen further.

Shortly thereafter we visited Mrs. Wiley, and she was exactly the opposite of our impression of her from the phone call - Friendly and outspoken, she made sure we had been to church last Sunday and let us know that we were “handsome, not her color though.” Her manner and charm made me believe that she could get anyone to go along with her way.

On the other hand, I had met three of Jim’s children and his wife before I finally met him. One of his sons, Mark, has spent a good deal of time at the Farm over the past few years, so I probably knew Mark best leading up to this encounter with Jim.

Mark is an intelligent and earnest young man, and there’s probably not a soul who has met him who could deny it. One common manifestation of these two traits comes out in conversation: I found I could hardly answer a single one of Mark’s questions without having him finish the answer for me. On the positive side, it demonstrates an impressive breadth of thought, a sense of thoroughness. On the negative side, one feels one hasn’t added much to the conversation, sometimes.

Now it would be easy to assign this tendency in Mark to projected vices, such as pride or even arrogance. I think people tend toward their emotional responses - if one is annoyed, one projects an insidious cause. If one is charmed, one projects a benevolent cause. My projection onto Mark became overwhelmingly positive when I met his father.

Jim, to the fine details, conversed just like Mark. Since I knew what to expect, I fully enjoyed our meeting, and even (happily) asked Jim to install a storm door with a couple of the high school volunteers. This is a task I would, as a rule, be sure to supervise, since it’s an expensive item and the many precise steps can be difficult to follow exactly. Knowing Mark, I felt fully confident that I could leave the door to Jim and work on other things.

After pre-reading the directions and reading them again as he worked through the installation, Jim was eager to demonstrate for Mrs. Wiley the many useful features of the door. We asked Mrs. Wiley to come over to see the finished door.

“Oh Lord can you believe that? What a beautiful door! I didn’t ask for all of that.” (”I didn’t ask for all of that” should be read as an expression of bountiful graciousness).

“We just wanted to show you some of the nice things about this new door, Mrs. Wiley,” said Jim, leaning over to raise the glass in the window so that the screen could let air in and out. “You can open this in the Summertime and close it again to keep the cold air out in the Winter.”

“Oh, I can’t believe it!”

“Now, we want you to know that if you open the door all the way, it won’t quite close. But if you open it about 3/4 of the way, it’ll swing completely shut for you,” Jim said while demonstrating the two different open positions. The cause of this, which I didn’t interject at the time, is that the screws on the hinge side were not fully drilled in, which will be corrected later.

“That’s alright, it’s a fine door and I can’t thank you enough,” Mrs. Wiley said, satisfied with the presentation. But Jim had a few more features to demonstrate, and as he bent over to point one out, Mrs. Wiley said in the same stream of speech, “Oh, don’t tell me anymore!”

Now, at this point, “Don’t tell me anymore!” could be interpreted as another expression of graciousness, which might literally mean, “I can’t believe how many useful features this door has and I feel blessed because of it.”

“Down here is a door stop-” Jim said, before being interrupted.

“I said, don’t tell me anymore!” Still sounding gracious, it was clear that Mrs. Wiley now meant the phrase more literally, as in, “I’ve heard enough, and I no longer want to hear about the door.”

“Well, Mrs. Wiley, there’s just one more thing I want to show you, and you don’t even have to remember,” said Jim, bending over to find the metal door stop.

As Jim turned his attention back to the door, Mrs. Wiley turned to me and gave me the most priceless facial expression. It said, “Can you BELIEVE this man is going to keep talking after I told him twice, ‘Don’t tell me anymore!’?”

She respectfully let Jim finish, though it was indeed clear that she wasn’t going to remember what he was saying. Everyone went away satisfied, most especially me.

It is true that life’s treasures can’t be bought and sold.

I’ve meant to share this one for a while, because it’s priceless. In fact, I’ve met a few people in the last few years who are so densely alive, with such concentrated personalities, that I can’t help being charmed by them. Therefore, I will begin an informal series called, “Characters.”

Our first character attended a town council meeting in Rupert, WV sometime in the middle of last year, along with his relatively quiet wife. The man, who we’ll call Jack because I can’t remember his name, came to complain about a neighbor who is also quite a character, so you’re getting a two-for-one special today.

A few of Jack’s lines require little or no context, so I’ll start with those. If you can, imagine a man, probably in his 60’s, well-dressed and with an easy style of talking.

“People in West Virginia are different. They’ll shoot you. You know, under the right circumstances.”

Referring to a councilman, “I like him. He tells it just the hell like it is.”

Now for the longer quotes, which require some context. Essentially, Jack came to complain about a neighbor whose property was in bad shape. The neighbor, apparently, would not make a move to keep his property clean unless he suspected that a town official might be coming by to enforce the ordinances, which Jack declared are “so old, if you bend the pages they’ll crack.”

To explain how this man became his neighbor in the first place, Jack related the following story:

“When that land was for sale, we wanted to buy it. But he (the neighbor) when right up to Townsend (the seller), took him out and got him drunk, bought the property on his Mastercard for $4,500 less than we offered, went down to Lewisburg to his attorney and filed for bankruptcy the next day. Bought that land for $150 (attorney fees). You tell me that’s not a crook.”

Jack goes on about his neighbor, “When animal control comes, that’s the only time he’ll clean up all the dog manure in his yard. I have pictures of him shoveling the manure into 5 gallon buckets, he walks across y’all street (points to the council members), I’ve got pictures of him, with the bucket in the air, dumping the manure right on the train tracks.

“He’d have been dead by now if he lived here 30 years ago.”