Cast of 'Waring' Signs on for Third Season, Salaries Top $1 Million
Editor's Note: This story begins a month-or-two-long series on the cast of characters that make up the town of Waring. And considering the town only has 52 people, 10 of which might be worth really examining, this shouldn't take long. For our first installment, I have chosen to examine one M.E. Montgomery.
Waring, TX - I once heard someone use the term "onion" to describe an interesting person. You know, the kind of person that has layer after layer, each new layer revealing something more and more interesting about that person. If this is the case, and onion is the word of choice, M.E. Montgomery could easily be the largest onion I've ever met. (That last sentence would be a great sentence to quote out of context just for fun.)
I have written about M.E. Montgomery here before here at The Whimsical World:
(http://worldofwinston.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_worldofwinston_archive.html).
Many of you know him as "The South Side Slayer" because of the time he mercilessly slaughtered my rooster The Colonel. Past assassinations notwithstanding, M.E. has shown me an abundance of hospitality since my arrival in this small town. In fact, he was the second person I met here after Ed Patton.
To sum up M.E. in one blog posting is an impossibility, unless of course blogger.com has a spare server in a closet somewhere that they aren't using. As I wrote before, if "odd/interesting" people are in "left field," M.E. Montgomery is in the parking lot pealing window stickers off other people's cars. First of all, he in an intellectual of the highest sorts. This is not something you would guess right off the bat. It might be the exhorbitant amount of turkeys and chickens running amok around his house or it could be the fact that he has no running water. But he is a smart man. He and I often sit around learning new words together. (He carries a pad of paper and pen and writes down any new words he comes across.)
Ripples of disagreement run through Waring on just how smart M.E. is. Let me put is this way: a Google search of M.E. reveals a published paper he co-authored once upon a time:
"Myer, G. A. and M. E. Montgomery. 1987. Relationships
between leaf age and the food quality of cottonwood
foliage for the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar. Oecologia
72: 527Ð532."
I am not making this stuff up.
You will also find M.E. Montgomerey in one of the 1980's editions of the Guiness Book of World Records for a sandcastle he built with his friend Amazing Walter (who has appeared on Oprah). Of course, if I had more time, I would delve off into an expository examination of the decade he spent as a professional sandcastle-builder. Maybe next time.
As if M.E.'s many past escapades weren't enough fodder for a blog goldmine, he recently undertook the development of a wireless internet company that hinges around a crude parabolic satellite dish sticking up behind the Waring Train Depot that M.E. calls home. Believe it or not, the tower works-- and it works well enough that I used it for a time to publish The Whimsical World. However, the fledgling company has moved into a new phase and left its four month "development phase" behind (i.e. no more free internet. I got a call from some guy from Houston wanting to sign me up for $50 a month.)
The overall idea here is that I am no longer surprised by anything that M.E. Montgomery does. From where I sit across the street, I witness car after car stopping by the old depot to talk to M.E. about God-only- knows-what. He once told me that he has never printed a business card because "I don't need to find people...they find me."
This would be a great point to reiterate that this man does not have running water. But honestly, if you have a wireless internet company in your back yard, who needs running water?! I mean, honestly.
Many people here in Waring do not like the fact that M.E.'s yard has become a junkyard. (Please see "Funny Farm Escapee Remains Holed Up in Compound, Standoff Drags Into Sixth Day") I personally cannot complain. He has helped me on more than one occasion with various things including small-engine repair, goat-proofing my yard, and an exhaustive search for the word "bunting" which I couldn't remember for the life of me. We even once invented a synonym for "synonym" and a word that decribes a book of antonyms, a word that was so long and useless I have since forgotten it.
Adding to the tension, M.E. currently boycotts the General Store because Ed sold him a phone card that had an expiration date. He even went so far as to call the Better Business Bureau to complain and for a time, it was the talk of the town. That boycott is till pending.
Also, M.E. Montgomery was the first person in the recorded history of Waring to actually have the post master request that he not receive mail here. Details are sketchy but it had something to do with a falling out with Post Master Dottie Anders (see the upcoming profile on her.)
Other things you need to know about him (which I do not have time to examine) include:
~He has a plan for bringing about the demise of the entire Democratic Party before the 2008 Presidential Election. He claims it will only take one phone call
~He names his chickens adjectives so that their names are easier to remember
~He once got kicked in the face by a deer
~He once helped construct the bathroom in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
~He claims to be able to track down anything in the world in three phone calls or less
~He is listed in the phone book under “Wheebie” the name of his deceased cat, a masochistic creature who derived pleasure from being whalloped with a fly swatter
Even with a degree in journalism, I find words useless in trying to describe the noble M.E. Montgomery. He is everything I do and don't want to become in the future, if that makes any sense whatsoever. If you are in or near the San Antonio area, I promise it would be a worth a trip out to The Whimsical World Headquarters just meet this man. My address is 5 Front Street so I guess that would make his address...6 Front Street. Maybe. Anyway, I promise you will not be disappointed.
That's the story of my life...
Waring, TX - I once heard someone use the term "onion" to describe an interesting person. You know, the kind of person that has layer after layer, each new layer revealing something more and more interesting about that person. If this is the case, and onion is the word of choice, M.E. Montgomery could easily be the largest onion I've ever met. (That last sentence would be a great sentence to quote out of context just for fun.)
I have written about M.E. Montgomery here before here at The Whimsical World:
(http://worldofwinston.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_worldofwinston_archive.html).
Many of you know him as "The South Side Slayer" because of the time he mercilessly slaughtered my rooster The Colonel. Past assassinations notwithstanding, M.E. has shown me an abundance of hospitality since my arrival in this small town. In fact, he was the second person I met here after Ed Patton.
To sum up M.E. in one blog posting is an impossibility, unless of course blogger.com has a spare server in a closet somewhere that they aren't using. As I wrote before, if "odd/interesting" people are in "left field," M.E. Montgomery is in the parking lot pealing window stickers off other people's cars. First of all, he in an intellectual of the highest sorts. This is not something you would guess right off the bat. It might be the exhorbitant amount of turkeys and chickens running amok around his house or it could be the fact that he has no running water. But he is a smart man. He and I often sit around learning new words together. (He carries a pad of paper and pen and writes down any new words he comes across.)
Ripples of disagreement run through Waring on just how smart M.E. is. Let me put is this way: a Google search of M.E. reveals a published paper he co-authored once upon a time:
"Myer, G. A. and M. E. Montgomery. 1987. Relationships
between leaf age and the food quality of cottonwood
foliage for the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar. Oecologia
72: 527Ð532."
I am not making this stuff up.
You will also find M.E. Montgomerey in one of the 1980's editions of the Guiness Book of World Records for a sandcastle he built with his friend Amazing Walter (who has appeared on Oprah). Of course, if I had more time, I would delve off into an expository examination of the decade he spent as a professional sandcastle-builder. Maybe next time.
As if M.E.'s many past escapades weren't enough fodder for a blog goldmine, he recently undertook the development of a wireless internet company that hinges around a crude parabolic satellite dish sticking up behind the Waring Train Depot that M.E. calls home. Believe it or not, the tower works-- and it works well enough that I used it for a time to publish The Whimsical World. However, the fledgling company has moved into a new phase and left its four month "development phase" behind (i.e. no more free internet. I got a call from some guy from Houston wanting to sign me up for $50 a month.)
The overall idea here is that I am no longer surprised by anything that M.E. Montgomery does. From where I sit across the street, I witness car after car stopping by the old depot to talk to M.E. about God-only- knows-what. He once told me that he has never printed a business card because "I don't need to find people...they find me."
This would be a great point to reiterate that this man does not have running water. But honestly, if you have a wireless internet company in your back yard, who needs running water?! I mean, honestly.
Many people here in Waring do not like the fact that M.E.'s yard has become a junkyard. (Please see "Funny Farm Escapee Remains Holed Up in Compound, Standoff Drags Into Sixth Day") I personally cannot complain. He has helped me on more than one occasion with various things including small-engine repair, goat-proofing my yard, and an exhaustive search for the word "bunting" which I couldn't remember for the life of me. We even once invented a synonym for "synonym" and a word that decribes a book of antonyms, a word that was so long and useless I have since forgotten it.
Adding to the tension, M.E. currently boycotts the General Store because Ed sold him a phone card that had an expiration date. He even went so far as to call the Better Business Bureau to complain and for a time, it was the talk of the town. That boycott is till pending.
Also, M.E. Montgomery was the first person in the recorded history of Waring to actually have the post master request that he not receive mail here. Details are sketchy but it had something to do with a falling out with Post Master Dottie Anders (see the upcoming profile on her.)
Other things you need to know about him (which I do not have time to examine) include:
~He has a plan for bringing about the demise of the entire Democratic Party before the 2008 Presidential Election. He claims it will only take one phone call
~He names his chickens adjectives so that their names are easier to remember
~He once got kicked in the face by a deer
~He once helped construct the bathroom in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
~He claims to be able to track down anything in the world in three phone calls or less
~He is listed in the phone book under “Wheebie” the name of his deceased cat, a masochistic creature who derived pleasure from being whalloped with a fly swatter
Even with a degree in journalism, I find words useless in trying to describe the noble M.E. Montgomery. He is everything I do and don't want to become in the future, if that makes any sense whatsoever. If you are in or near the San Antonio area, I promise it would be a worth a trip out to The Whimsical World Headquarters just meet this man. My address is 5 Front Street so I guess that would make his address...6 Front Street. Maybe. Anyway, I promise you will not be disappointed.
That's the story of my life...
posted by Winston A. Hall at 9:10 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home