i had my shop mainly to support my collecting. i would take trades and make special orders for people, many who became fast friends. i charged cost plus 10% on new stuff and most of the used stuff i charged according to how much i liked the item myself. i had many LA county Sheriff deputies as friends and costumers. sitting there one day and a guy that owned the frame shop next door came running in and told us a car load of inner city types had just pulled up to the small bank diagonally across the street. four of them in long dusters holding something tight had gone to the bank. at the intersection a friend who drove for a lumber company and banked at that branch saw what was going down. he told me later that he just started to see red. when the group of morons came out and jumped into their little honda Pat gunned his truck and rammed them into a power pole, blocking both street side doors and one of the sidewalk side doors. broke one guy's legs and the other 3 scrambled out the back door, opened up with full auto pieces and emptied in one burst into the front of the truck. then they ran around the block to the apartments that the car was registered to and every thing was over in about 20 minutes. the deputies in my shop all gained rank and citations that day.
the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded. Robert E Lee ~Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla~
