Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Amphibious Assault: Der Tod Comes For "Frog"

(From About.com)

Mad Mark wasn't the only one crazy from drugs in my hometown. Also mad was a man called "Frog," who once implicitly threatened the life of one friend of mine for being insufficiently 'respectful.'

I could see that he meant his veiled threat in earnest, that he would kill without remorse, and that he was crazy enough to follow through. But he had bigger fish to fry ... such as threatening to kill one of the town cops.

It happened on a Saturday evening at the local Dairy Queen, a hangout for high school students and young adults that we thought was cool but that I would now recognize as dreary. Frog drove up in his pickup truck, high on something and drinking, too, followed by a man and woman in a different vehicle but the same condition. The woman, so far gone that she apparently mistook the parking lot for a toilet, squatted right there in front of the Dairy Queen to urinate in public. Her companion laughed hysterically at that, while Frog just sat quietly in his truck.

The proprietors must have called the City Police, for within minutes, one arrived, blue lights flashing. He called Frog over to his car and was going to book him along with the other two but Frog had different ideas. As the two of them were seated in the police car, where the cop was filling out a form on public intoxication, Frog suddenly reached over, pulled the cop's pistol from its holster, and ordered him out of the car. He then pointed the gun at the cop's head, forced him to his knees, and threatened him, saying, "If you ever f**k with me again, I'll blow your f**kin' head off."

With those words echoing in our stunned minds, we watched as Frog climbed into his truck and spun off, heading for the Missouri state line, away from the Salem City Police's jurisdiction.

Frog's mother confiscated the gun and mailed it back to the city police from Missouri, but Frog didn't show up in town again -- and soon stopped showing up anywhere at all, for not long after these events, he lost control of his truck, crashed, and died.

I don't rejoice when people die, but I can't say that I was unhappy to hear that "Der Tod" had taken Frog.

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2 Comments:

At 1:57 PM, Blogger jj mollo said...

There are these people out there. Some of them are not so obvious. Are you sure the accident was accidental? Sometimes somebody just takes care of these problems without making a big fuss about it. Such folks are scary too.

 
At 4:19 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Good question. I don't know the answer. Perhaps somebody forced Frog off the road, but a mutual aquaintanace speculated that Frog might have hit the road's gravel shoulder one too many times (a habit characteristic of his poor driving) and lost control. He had ridden with Frog a lot of times and had often feared for his life at Frog's bad driving.

Jeffery Hodges

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