Country Life

Today I bought a chainsaw. For price, power and ease of use, it seemed like a good deal. But I got home and kept staring at the box and thinking, "Wild Thing--who the fuck would buy a Wild Thing chainsaw? And what kind of marketing department comes up with shit like that??"

Like most entry level users, the first thing I'm looking for in a product like this is some kind of assurance that it won't dismember me or anyone in my immediate family. "Wild Thing" is not the most reassuring concept.

Anyway, I bought it. Do the marketeers know me better than I know myself? Were they speaking to the Leatherface deep inside?

We drove home tonight after sundown, our family of five, in two separate cars, from dinner at a friend's house. It's Wednesday evening, so the local Baptist congregation was just letting out, but in spite of the crowd, I noticed a shirtless man walking down the road, and my wife noticed him too. I guess he would be a drifter, by the look of things, and to use the police blotter vernacular. I slowed down for a look, half thinking at first I'd ask if everything was OK. But he glowered. My wife, following five minutes behind, had seen him too, and had the same experience.

But while I had noticed the creep on the road perpendicular to ours, my wife had seen him on our road, so that was a little disconcerting. He would have walked past our gate an hour ago, or else he's come up the gravel road to our unprotected nest.

Weird. I now take solace in the thought that even a psychotic drifter would assume that all the farmhouses in our neck of the woods are inhabited by folks who are packin'. We're not, but he can't know that--can he?

UNLESS HE'S READING MY BLOG!!!!!!