Hey, Gothboy Called Today

It's nice to see you here, Eva! I bet that you could write a good Gothboy addition.

Hey this looks like fun!

You should write in, Fortune . We'd be glad to hear your piece of the Gothboy story.

Righto drom, I'll give it a shot!

When the bus finally arrived at the last stop it would make on it's long, winding easterly route, the window seat on the eleventh row was empty.

Meanwhile, the tourists have been snapping up the merchandise and Gothboy has hastened to call good ol' Joe to give him the good news. Back in the office of 'Blissful Krieger's Kosher Furniture', the phone is answered by a sinister old man with a strange, slightly maniacal, eye tick. Blithely Gothboy relates the results of the Memphis venture to the silently listening Joe.

At last, thinks the man who has designed himself as Joe, the new proprietor of 'Blissful Krieger's Kosher Furniture', at last my plan is coming to fruition. And Gothboy is none the wiser

It had all started some time before with a phone call from a 'friends' cell phone....

Intriguing twist, there, Fortune . I am so glad that I bumped this thread up-- your part of the story, and Smog, (and obviously the parts of the creator, RJB) have been amazing...

Anyway, I'll post my part up to-morrow.....

Cool! Thanks, drom, for revisiting this thread.
Smog's story was great. And fortune, I have no idea where you are going, but it looks like fun.
-realjohnboy-

ps: I did a bunch of Google searching this afternoon and I found out a lot about "Winking Joe"
Jackson. He was a player back in the 1940's in the "Negro League" that barnstormed the South.
He was a pitcher and he had an eye problem and that really intimidated hitters. They got the notion that he couldn't see them and so his fastball
might end up coming anywhere, like towards their heads. His fastball wasn't too great, if truth be known.
In fact, "Winking Joe" could see fine but he had that bizarre eye-twitching.
I don't know if gothboy and Katie met the real "Winking-Joe" but now you know the complete story.
-realjohnboy-

(Wow, I guessed pretty correctly in my story about Winking Joe, then!)

Don't get smug, smog. Pretty much of everything I write is total fiction. I would caution you against making a bar-room bet about Winking Joe, for example. I can't be trusted when it comes to what is "real."
Waiting for Drom (and fortune, eva and letty and anyone else). johnboy

You're tricky! Reeeaaalllll tricky.

And yes, I'm waiting for dròm and everyone else too.

Gothboy eyed the proprietor of Blissful Krieger's while the man's back was turned. He certainly didn't look Jewish. Of course, Gothboy had been fooled before, but something about this man just didn't ring true.

Two years of wandering around the country, surviving by his instincts, had taught Gothboy to trust his intuition about strangers. The slightly queasy feeling in his gut said, "This is no furniture salesman." Who was this man, and whatever was he doing here?

"Joe" turned and faced Gothboy again, giving him a card with a phone number written on the back. "Call Jackie at this number," he said, "and tell her I said to give you a decent room...and make it cheap!" Funny, but he thought he detected a slight New York accent to the man's voice. Well, Gothboy thought, at least the room was worth checking out. He did need somewhere to stay, especially if he was going to work at this store for a while.

Iowa. Well, this would be different.

Gothboy thought back at all the places he had seen in the past two years. He wasn't ready to give up life on the road, but right now he was out of cash. He thought he'd stay here and help out Joe for a few weeks. Then, once he'd saved a couple of hundred dollars or so, he'd take the first bus out of town as he always did, and see where it led him.

Gothboy fingered the business card, wondering how much this Jackie would charge for a room and how soon she'd expect payment. He started to put the card in his pocket, but something stopped him. Inadvertently, he had flipped the card over. Instead of reading "Blissful Krieger's Kosher Furniture" on the front as he had expected, the card read:

A1A Private Investigations
4550 Broad Street, Suite 207
Newark, New Jersey 07112-3314

Samuel R. Harris, P.I.
(862) 633-4550 - 24 hours

Where's Drom? She promised to tell us a story!

Oh well, guess I might as well continue...

Gothboy would have to stay in town a few days while he restocked on merchandise for the tourists. Joe seemed to have a pretty good gig here, spending his days on his farm making bric-a-brac for some stooge (Gothboy in this case) to flog on the road. He wondered why Joe even bothered keeping the office. Well, Katie would be waiting for him in Memphis so Gothboy was looking forward to finishing this little errand as soon as possible and getting on his way again. This was starting to get way too much like a job.

Gothboy looked about him for a pay-phone. He would have used the one at Blissful Kriegers' but Joe had gotten a call just before he left, something which had resulted in some rather unusual behaviour from Joe, he had excused himself rather hurriedly and taken the phone out the back. The man seemed to be turning funny on Gothboy. Whatever, he thought, just so long as he pays.

Gothboy fished the card inscribed with Jackie's number out of his pocket and looked it over one more time. Odd that Joe should have a card like this, Gothboy wondered who Joe had been having investigated. Deciding it was none of his business, he slipped into a phonebooth and placed the call to Jackie.

Jackie sounded like a smoker, a heavy smoker. Her tones were thick with the heavy, clinging burr of years tobacco abuse. At first she seemed unfriendly, but at the mention of Joe's name she unbent. Yes, she had a room. No, it wasn't expensive. Of course, he could take all the time he wanted to pay her! Quickly scribbling the address on the same card Joe had given him, Gothboy hung up the reciever and stepped back out onto the street. With most of the day left to kill, Gothboy decided to take a look around town.

Meanwhile, in the back of Blissful Kriegers, Joe was still on the phone. Speaking low and hastily he issued instructions in a manner that, could he have heard it, would have made Gothboy rethink his association with this man. The cheerful Southern lilt was gone, the eye twitch, which had seemed strange at first, had reached truly frightening proportions.

Good evening...
I have no idea what is going on with gothboy but I am confident he will be okay.
I am a morning person; I tend to get to work at around 7 am. At 7:10 the phone rang. I usually don't answer an hour and a half before we open. But the ringing was persistent and so I picked up.
It was Katie. First time I'd talked to her. She is one cool lady. I can see why gothboy could be in love. We talked and laughed for a half-hour.
She is running the stall on a street in Memphis, selling junk to tourists. She is happy, much happier than she would be back in Houston.

drom, I loved your line about when you and Katie were in Japan: "...going to every metro stop...to look at the lights."

I lived in London for awhile, the first really big city this country boy from the mountains of Virginia had ever lived in. I spent the better part of a month riding the rail system, checking out each station. How weird is that?
(and that, smog, is not fiction). -johnboy

Hey, Fortune, Smog, RJB; I have been way off the beaten track, and thus my internet connection has been playing up awfully... I wrote a few stories, which I'll change about later so that they can fit into what has been written while I was away.

RJB, I am originally from Virginia too. Also not fiction. And dròm, a "few stories"?! Now I'm even more excited to read what you wrote.

Really, smog? Whereabouts?
Letty, who is one of the A2K veterans, has roots in the red-clay country of Nelson County; one county south of me, where the old tv show called "The Walton's" was sited. If you are old enough to remember that rather syrupy program you will recall that the lead character in the story of family life in the mountains during the depression was Johnboy. My given name is John and I'm not fictional, so I am realjohnboy.
We look forward to hearing from drom but I reckon anyone else with a notion to should continue to write.
ps: smog got to 500 posts in less than 3 weeks; realjohnboy is at 800 in 20 months.

... and yet, you are both legends. Forget about the posts, feel the quality. I am approaching 9,000 post, and yet there are plenty better than me with less.

And, my stories don't really fit in at the moment; but I will change them so as they will. I'm glad that you liked the 'lights' description, RJB .

Was there not a song-title, or perhaps a lyric in a song, about someone being " a legend in his own mind." -rjb

I don't know; what's going through my mind at the moment is: 'ring the moon like a broken bell...'

RJB, Arlington. Not really mountain territory, but still Virgina, although sometimes I wish it weren't, but that's a different issue entirely.

(And all of my posts are due to those silly word games. They're silly.)

(And dròm, I am no legend.)

As one of the many crossover people from there, the word games are not silly.

(Bah, you're great.)