Driving Death Around

guard
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Heard about this guy Vinnie, who used to work at a funeral home. It was a family operation in Brooklyn. Bay Ridge. Profitable business, the death thing. Anyway, Vinnie worked in the family shop. He was the guy driving around a shiny ‘50s black hearse. It was something right out of Bonnie and Clyde.

Remember all that blood?

One day, Vinnie got pulled over by a stable of cops. Pigs and their damn patriotic sirens, he might have said. Or thought. Long story short, the boys in blue took him down, shoved him into a windowless white van marked SPECIAL HAZARDS. He later stood trial for transporting bricks of coke along the Northeast. Drove them around in his little black hearse.

I heard about another guy, Frank. He used to be an undertaker in small-town Oregon, working with dead folk thirty-two to forty hours a week. It was a lonely job and there was no overtime. Frank got sick of the gig and quit. Now, he plays guitar in a punk band.