Pastorio and me

Bob Sloan (Ejucaided Redneck) writes:

When I initially discovered Usenet -- about ten years ago -- misc.writing was one of the first newsgroups I got involved with. Pastorio showed up there a couple years later, and a regular sorta correspondence developed between us. Had nothing to do with writing, or the group: Pastorio'd find some funny or other and would send it to me. Lots of people do that, or intend to do that, but Bob's stuff really was funny.

Or seemed so to me. A few examples are attached. . .

He sent funnies even after I got tired of figuratively beating up sundry fascist-minded assholes, and dropped out of m.w.

Somehow I had the idea Bob lived in Pennsylvania, and it wasn't until after our most recent trip to Williamsburg VA that my wife and I discovered every time we made that frequent jaunt that we were passing within fifty or so miles of Bob's door. In the course of a phone call we decided the next time Julie and I headed east, we'd do a fifty mile
detour so Bob and I could do some serious drinking.

I've never worked too hard at setting face-to-face meetings up, they just sorta develop, and I figured that's how I'd finally get to encounter Pastorio: sooner or later we'd be in the same place at the same time, or nearly the same place, and we'd kill some brain cells and make our livers live hard for a while.

Maybe in the next life. . .

Like most, I heard about Bob's impending demise through a letter from Carol. My wife had some correspondence with him in December --after I had open heart surgery there was a real need to learn to cook differently-- and he hadn't mentioned any health problems of his own.

And this, at the end of Carol's note, astonished me: "Bob sends his best and says he's really glad he knew you. He also wants you to know that he's leaving you his 'pussy rifle', so that will be arriving in the mail sometime in the next couple of months. Use it and raise a glass to him."

The "pussy rifle" -- see photo -- was the subject of some email last fall. Bob sent me the photo that'd be on a brochure for a "big game dinner" where he was to be in charge of the food. He was really pleased with the image, and I thought it was nifty as well. A gun and a big-ass whisk were two tools I'd never seen juxtaposed. . .

But I did ask him what sort of pussy he was, installing a butt pad on a Winchester .30-.30 carbine.

He responded with a claim the bullets on his belt were a special "hot load." Or something like that. . . In any case the exchange went on for a while and I enjoyed it.

I dunno where Bob was born and raised, but he and I shared some "Appalachian values," and one of them is that the passing on of certain things is special. I own a shotgun that's been in my family for a hundred and fourteen years, and when I figured out -- after much thought -- who was gonna own it next -- not my son, but my brother's kid -- Bob and I talked about that a little bit.

That Winchester bequest is real special.

Bob (another one)
Rowan County KY