Kidner Transport Roll Call - Part Three

Rich - The Harvester of Sorrows

From deep in the dark wastelands of Pennsylvania there was born a force of nature unable to be retrained by the mores of polite society. Yea, this beast, this Krakken amongst mortals strode with heavy purpose and a deathly glare and fear split wide before him like a parting sea. The gross part was that he did all that striding and glaring in cutoff jean shorts that were so skimpy that his nuts would peek out when he sat down.

Rich, (aka the Harvester of Sorrows), was one half of the Rich and D.J. imbecile troupe. He was by far one of the scariest, most backwards ass, and explosively violent fuckers I have ever known. While Mike and Jeff from previous posts could be violent and somewhat scary by act of circumstance Rich made being ill-tempered and mean a full time job. He had spent time in jail where he purported that he went to law school even though he had never graduated high school or earned a G.E.D. Someone once questioned him on the truthfulness of that and got his face knocked off in the middle of the Clarendon 7-11. Being that he had a driver’s license when he started Rich became a crew chief and wielded whatever implied authority that brought like a Nordic war-hammer. “YOU…PICK THAT UP…NOW…YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER GET OFF MY TRUCK!!!” These were the routine managerial techniques he employed. After his second D.U.I. he lost his license and his title and became ever more surly, especially towards sawed off little shits like me that had some sort of design on a life beyond diesel fumes and stealing change from a widow’s kitchen drawer. His disdain for me and my little cadre of dorks that worked there was clear and his threats on our lives were neither infrequent nor veiled. How I escaped getting beaten to death by him I have no idea other than he actually was scared of our boss John Kidner and John always made it apparent to the rednecks that beating my ass was not a good way to stay employed, (I was one of the only people that could read, drive, do simple math and operate a telephone…invaluable assets to Kidner).

Rich loved music as long as it was Metallica, Sabbath, Judas Priest or Ozzy. He received his nickname shortly after he got his first Walkman (stolen from a customer of course). We were at a retirement home unloading some old codger’s things so he could get ready to die and Rich was headbanging wildly in the truck with his oversized headphones perched atop his fuzzy blonde mullet. I guess the metal just overwhelmed when he ran down the ramp and started flailing the truck with both fists and berserker style screaming, “HARVESTER OF SORROWS, HARVESTER OF SORROWS….YAAAAAAAAWWWWWOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” If no octogenarians died of a massive heart attack because of that berserker war cry that nursing home either had the best difribulators or the worst hearing aids ever produced by man. Rich did passionately love his heavy metal and equally despised, “stupid faggot music” which seemed to encompass anything I ever listened to. He just wasn’t the kind of guy to get into the Hanoi Rocks vibe I suppose.

He loved Black Sabbath so much that he had a jailhouse style India ink tattoo of an iron cross with the names of the four original members inside each prong on his arm. It’s a good thing for the guy that inked it on that Rich was functionally illiterate because if he knew that Ozzy didn’t spell his last name “Osborne” as it was displayed he most likely would have killed the artist with a good old fashioned curb sandwich followed by a cleaver to the face. Rich had other great tattoos as well; “hate” and “kill” across the knuckles and the pizza de la reezistance a faded green outline of Garfield the Cat with no stripes holding up a big smoking joint. That ruled. He would talk about his next round of tats incessantly. He wanted to get Elmer Fudd on his ass cheek pointing an elephant gun at his asshole with a voice balloon saying “come on out you wascally wabbit” and a pair of squirrels on his legs, one running up towards his sack and the other running down with a nut in its mouth.

Rich was a class act I’ll tell ya.

If you can’t guess Rich was a terrible racist and homophobe and generally was just a nasty shit to be around. He was bad sober and much worse drunk, the only thing that made him tolerable was weed and only when both of us were smoking it. He punched my buddy Russell so hard in the leg one day after some innocuous comment that we thought amputation might be in order due to the huge black spot that enveloped his thigh for days afterwards. While Rich never beat me up per se he did trip me, kick me, slap me, hit me with the hanger to a wardrobe box, snap me on my bare back with a moving strap, burp directly into my face, piss on my sandwich, steal my cigarettes and throw my car keys out the window of the truck while it was moving. I would implore Kidner to not make me work with him and John would always say, “awww, you’re crazy. Rich really likes you. He tells me so all the time!” That was scarier than all the abuse combined.

Kidner and Rich had an all-out fist throwing blowout over something one day (rarely have I been happier than when Kidner blew Rich’s nose up with a straight right hand to the face) and the cops were called by the people in the office next door. Did I fail to mention that all of this insanity occurred in a legitimate office building where legitimate businesses were trying to exist and prosper? I’m sure, “listening to screaming racist maniacs hurling invectives at each other all day”, wasn’t included in their lease agreements. Ah well, caveat emptor motherfucker. Anyway, John beat Rich’s ass until the cops showed up and when the constables arrived and ran the ID’s of both m’boys it became clear that Rich had several open invitations to stay as an all expense paid guest of the state in numerous locales. So off he went with a banshee shriek and a bloody face and I didn’t see him anymore. I wonder if he ever got that squirrel tattoo? Maybe that would have made him happy, like Citizen Kane with Rosebud. Only way more disgusting.