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There is a cliché out there for older ladies that live alone with an unwieldy brood of cats. Everyone knows a cat lady, I’m betting you know one too.
Curt was the male version of a cat lady. He lived alone, proud to be a single guy with no attachments. Making the same decent money as the rest of us, he spent his money on his favorite hobby, a collection of guns. Revolvers, semi-auto pistols, military surplus rifles from eastern bloc countries, there was no hole maker Curt didn’t love.
After a while, folks started to get a little jumpy about Curt. You could be talking about taking your grandmother for Sunday brunch, and somehow Curt would figure out a way to switch the conversation into a story about blowing something away.
Some of the other people that worked there started to worry that he was approaching maniac levels of fascination with his shooting hobby.
Eventually, I think he caught wind that people were getting freaked out, and the gun conversations eventually died down. Curt bought himself a little vacation shack on the prairies and started telling stories about fixing the place up, going out there every weekend off to clear his head. He seemed pretty happy.
It was the days before smartphones and social media, so when Curt showed up one Monday morning to work with a photo envelope full of ‘vacation pictures’ that he broke out at the lunch table.
Curt’s idea of a vacation was a little different than most people’s. Each picture was of a dead prairie dog, ripped and obliterated by Curt’s expertly sighted-in .50 caliber rifle.
“Check this one out!” Curt would say as he flipped over a picture of a rodent with its stomach blown out and exposed in the grass beside where it lay dead.
It was more than enough to put a guy off his lunch.
Years later, after most of us had left that job, I was conversing with another guy about some of the kooky folks we had met over the years. After I told him the story of Uncle Russ, he said, “I can top that! Last summer I was working with this one sick fuck who would ask everyone if they wanted to see his vacation pictures, and then show everyone his pictures of dead gophers!”
“You worked with Curt?” I asked. “How’s he doing?”
To the best of my knowledge, Curt’s gun collection has continued to grow, and one can imagine that the rodent population must be getting pretty nervous around his vacation property.