Highway Robbery!

Recently, our carpet shampooer broke. Kinda. All I know is that one of the bottom rollers got "jiggy-wanked." Or something. (Okay so I've never been the most technical guy.) Either way, the roller went rogue and had fallen off the pole.

I thought, "no problem, I'll just slip it back on." But no matter how much pressure I applied, I couldn't "thread the needle." 

So it was time to find someone who could.

Immediately, I ruled out "Mr. Fixit" for a couple reasons: A) All he ever did was clean our appliances and never actually fixed them; and B) I sorta got uncomfortable when the office guy of Mr. Fixit kept flirting with me.

The place where we took our vacuum last time was definitely off the table. First, the old guy with the impenetrable accent told me that he'd rather give me a good deal on a new vacuum than fix it. He claimed it would cost about the same. (I was sold, but my wife definitely was not.) After haggling with him about fixing it, he lost the vacuum for a couple weeks. When he FINALLY found it, it was missing all of the attachments. So much for that guy. No wonder his shop shut down.

So, with the help of my research assistant, Ms. Google, I found some small mom and pop shop that I was willing to gamble on. (And it turns out that it wasn't such a small shop after all; they had about six locations throughout the greater Kansas City metro area. In fact, later on I discovered that the con man who'd closed shop was one of their affiliates.)

Anyway, I hauled our shampooer into this small, cramped little store hidden away in an old fashioned strip mall. Old and new vacuums filled every inch of the place. When a little old man begrudgingly turned away from his TV, I thought I'd made a very big mistake.

"Help you?" he asked, deciding to conserve every word he could since it seemed like such a chore to speak. 

"Um...yeah...my shampooer is...sick." Immediately, I felt out of sorts, barely dodging the dangling vacuums hanging around me like beef carcasses on hooks.

Suddenly from behind a beaded curtain, a thin, old, ball-capped man came out. Wearing overalls (are those still a thing?) and thick glasses which magnified his beady eyes, he opened his mouth, not really in a smile or a snarl, and flashed green teeth at me. "What's wrong with it?" My Texas Vacuum Massacre vibe intensified.

After finding a few feet of empty space in the store, he dropped down bringing the cleaner with him. He asked the first old guy for a Philips screwdriver, fiddled around a bit, then told me, "your problem was a belt done come off."

He stood up, clapped his hands and said, "there ya go!"

I said, "Wow! It's fixed?"

"Ayup."

I reached for my wallet and said, "what do I owe you?"

Completely stymied, he juggled his hands as if weighing the price. With a shrug, he blurted out, "Ten bucks?"

My jaw dropped. In shock, I shouted, "What? That's highway robbery!"

The anger between the two guys was nearly palpable as they stared at one another, wondering how they'd dispatch of my corpse.

Before they did, I let them off the hook with a shaky grin. "Oh...I meant...it's a rip-off for you guys. I'm not paying you anything below twenty bucks!"

As the tension left the room, so did "Mr. Green Jeans and Teeth." Original old guy number one said, "He's rarely in here. You got lucky."

Quickly, I skedaddled and did indeed consider my self lucky. Lucky to leave with my life intact. (Truth be told, though, they've got my future business. I just need to make sure to bring back-up.)

While I have murderous, backwoods old guys on my mind, check out my horror thriller, Godland. It features two of my creepiest villains ever (I think), and to tell you anything else about the plot would be doing the potential reader a bad (or it's a shameless ploy to get you to read the book). Whatever the case, you can check it out here.