Neff Zone Column

Print Edition: Saturday, June 18, 2005

YOU CAN’T MAKE UP THIS STUFF, VOLUME 3

Well, kidlings, it’s time again for another installment of "You Can’t Make Up This Stuff." As you may recall, the exercise is based on a belief of Big Rob, my brother, who claims that some things in real life are so bizarre that no one would believe them if they were presented as fiction.

We begin today with the story of a man who embezzled $120,000 from the city of Mt. Clemens, Michigan. Now, Vincent Howard was no ordinary thief; he proved perseverance pays off. It took him 23 years to steal the dough because he did it 25-cents at a time! Working for the city as a parking meter attendant, he amassed his fortune one quarter by quarter. When he was finally caught and arrested, they found $2000 in coins in his home. I wonder if co-workers finally thought, ‘Now I know why he always jingled.’

Sticking to the parking theme, a homeless man in Destin, Florida figured out a way to make some cash. He noticed that a certain business closed every day at 5:00 PM and that patrons of the restaurant next door parked in the closed business’s parking lot. So, he set up a lawn chair at the entrance to the lot and charged restaurant goers a parking fee. The bad news is someone finally caught on and police arrested him for a licensing violation. The good news is that the offense is punishable by up to five years in jail, so the man is no longer homeless.

Several fire-related stories have recently been burning up the news wires. In Thurman, New York a genius named Glen Germain was stealing gasoline from a truck by siphoning it into a can. It was dark and he wanted to see how full the can was so he (already ahead of me, aren’t you) ignited his lighter and held it up to the can. That caused burns to his face and hands and the fire spread to a nearby forklift which was destroyed. Presumably his nickname in the hoosegow will be "Zippo."

John Jenkins, a construction worker in Morgantown, West Virginia, just wanted to sit in a porta-potty and take a break from the job on which he was working. What he didn’t know was that the potty was sitting atop a gas line that had been accidentally broken when heavy equipment rolled over it. So, when Jenkins sat down and lit up a cigarette, the potty detonated, blowing the top off the potty and Jenkins out the door. He suffered severe burns on some parts of his body (ahead of me again, aren’t you) and has a pending lawsuit for $10 million in "damages."

Adding to the evidence that cigarette smoking is hazardous to your health, Jeff Foran of Foreman, Arkansas, was riding with his buddy, the car doing about 60 mph down a highway. Jeff’s cigarette blew out the window and those things are expensive, so he did the only logical thing – he jumped out after it. Landing on his nose and chin probably nixed his chances of becoming a male model, unless it’s for face shots of Hormel chili.

Still with fire, have you ever wanted guests to leave but couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of them? Dean Craig of Geneva, Illinois has a solution for you, just set your home on fire. When his guests refused to depart, Dean simply doused the living room with rubbing alcohol and set the house ablaze. It worked; no more pushy guests. Of course the house, owned by his mother, was a total loss. "Hey Ma, we got any weenies and marshmallows?"

Finally, an entry in the "sad but true" department. On April 25, Gregory Desperes of Minto, New Brunswick, Canada showed up at a U.S.-Canadian border crossing in Calais, Maine carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles, and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. He was wearing a sweatshirt with red and brown stains. The border guards confiscated the weapons and when questioned Desperes told them he was an assassin, and when they checked his criminal background they discovered he was scheduled to appear in a Canadian court the next day on charges he assaulted and threatened to kill his neighbor’s son-in-law. Then they let him into the United States because authorities said they had no reason to detain him. "Our people don’t have a crime lab up there," said a U.S. Customs and Border spokesman. The following day the couple who lived next door to Desperes were found dead in their home. The husband’s body had been decapitated and his head stuffed in a pillowcase on the kitchen floor; the wife was stabbed to death in the bedroom. The next day Massachusetts police found Desperes, still wearing the blood-stained shirt, wandering on foot down a highway and they arrested him.

Sleep safe tonight. The Department of Homeland Security is standing guard.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com . Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews .