Monday Morning Stories with Mookie - Episode 4

The Time Mookie Put Weed Killer All Over His Neighbor's Yard

This one is easily one of my all-time favorite and delightfully evil stories.  I'm still proud of this one.

Many years ago while attending community college, my roommate "Russ" (*) and I lived in an apartment complex called the "Funke Apartments."  The name was pronounced like the word "funky"....no joke.  I still remember the lady that was the manager of the place rolling her eyes and going "yeeeeahh its pronounced like "funky."  It was the landlord's real last name I guess.  This was probably the #1 reason we lived there. #2 was that it was pretty cheap.  Anyway...

My year of residence there was eventful, and full of entertainment.  The parties we had were not "blow-outs" or anything like that, but we still had fun.  Sadly, our building had a neighboring house where the resident there was not a friendly gentleman.  Our building had acceptable off-street parking in a lot behind us, or if there was room you could park on the street out front.  It was a two-lane one-way street.  Given the fact we were on the go half the time, we would park in the street sometimes just to save time going places.  Well apparently, "Mr. Jerk-Wad" (*) that lived in the house next to us valued the street space in front of his house.

My roommate and I had similar automobiles at the time.  He had an early 80's 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Brougham that was brownish in color.  I had a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale that was tan/cream in color (Gawd I miss that car.  But that is another story for another episode.).  One day Russ parked his car on the street, and apparently it straddled the lot line of the property more than our jerk-wad neighbor cared for.  The next day Russ went out to his car and found a note under the wiper blade on his front window.  It read verbatim:

"Park in front of your own place you son of bitch."

We were both very surprised at the maliciousness of the note, considering the fact we hadn't done anything wrong really.  A month or so goes by, and I find myself parking in a similar fashion in front of my building/his house one night.  I came out the next morning to head to class, and find this note under my wiper blade (This is the real original note, I don't know why I still have it):

Note, this is the 1st time I've parked here, and he has obviously mistaken my car for my roommate's car.

Well, that does it.  Mr. Jerk-Wad-Note-Maker apparently does not know with whom he is dealing with.  By presenting me with such a hostile sounding note, it goes without saying that I'm going to park RIGHT in front of his G.D. house every chance I get. Its like he's begging me to.  At least to me it did.

So I do.

However, my parking positions do not go unnoticed, and Mr. Jerk-Wad often enacts his own forms of retribution.  I come out various times to find that my car had been spit on (dried loogies on the driver side window), and times when Mr. Jerk-Wad parks his car way close to mine.  One time in particular, he parallel parked in front of me.  But when I came out to get in my car the next morning, I noticed his car's (a piece of shit station wagon with no back window) back bumper was essentially right up against mine.  We are on a downhill incline, so he HAD to have rammed his car into mine backing up and then put it in park.  Because a car is going to roll forward a bit after its in park.  That does it.  Shit just got real.

The next time I try to park in front of my building (and his house) the street is full unfortunately -   except on the other side of the street.  So I park on the opposite side of the street, but still in front of the guy's house.  His bomber of a car is proud and present in front of his shit house.  My then-girlfriend-now wife was with me, and we are both laughing at the situation. I go into "dick" mode and yell out:

"WOW! Look who decided to park in front of their OWN house tonight!"

Here we go.  This fat ass comes busting out of the house as we are walking up to my front steps.  He's yelling something about "manners" and he should "bend me over to teach me some" or something like that.  I yell back "advising" him that I don't appreciate the shit he's been doing to my car, and that apparently he "doesn't know who he's f--king with!" He continues his tirade of swears and whatnot as we head inside.  My then-girlfriend-now wife "Megan (*)" tells me I should call the cops and let them know whats going on in case he does something to my car.  So I do.  I get on the phone and end up talking to this nice lady in the detective's office where she takes my report.  I tell her about the notes, the spitting, and the probable car ramming.  Then I tell her about the confrontation that just happened out front.  I tell her that he threatened to "bend me over."  She asked what that meant.  I said I don't know if he's gay, or if he's planning on spanking me.  Either way I'm not cool with that."  She laughed harder than a cop probably should laugh.  It was funny. But she took down my info in case something else arose.

Thankfully, nothing much ever came out of that whole deal after that.  But that did not ease the voice of revenge in my brain.  I knew I would be moving soon, and wanted to leave my mark.  I talked to a "wise person" about my situation, and we came to the conclusion about what should be done.  He fixed me up with a plastic milk jug with an ample amount of concentrated Round-Up weed killer, or as I came to call it: "The Milk Jug O' Death." 

One night at about 1:30AM in mid July, after drinking several beers under some unknown pretense, I decided that it was time for "Operation Milk Jug."  I crept out the front door of my apartment building, and stood near the property line between my apartment and Mr. Jerk-Wad's front yard.  My "reconnasiance" revealed that there were no apparent witnesses -including Mr. Jerk-Wad - in the perimeter.  I crawled into the front yard of Mr. Jerk-Wad, uncapped the "Milk Jug O' Death, and took a deep breath.  Mookie was "go" for Operation Milk Jug.

• The little pine tree bushes planted nicely out front?  Drenched. 
• The little flower bed? Toast. 
• A majority of a 9 x 13 foot section of grass along his sidewalk?  Yup.  I emptied the jug there.

I giggled my scrawny ass off the rest of the night, and could not wait for nature to take its course.  I moved out less than two weeks later.

Prologue
Three or four months later, I am back in town to visit Megan and I decide drive by the Funkes for old time's sake.  Plus I needed to see if my late night handy work back in July was a success.  I got my answer pretty quickly.  There was little to nothing left in that front yard that was green.  The pine bushes were gone, and most of the yard was dirt. 

Game over Jerk-Wad.  I told you not to f--k with Mookie.


(*) Names have been changed to protect the guilty/innocent.


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