Buttering Up Parker’s Aunt

Inheritance

Back in the seventies, Parker was under 30 and he had a widowed great aunt who was quite rich and who liked him. He must have really buttered her up when he was around her, for I could see no reason why an old lady would be fond of the erratic fast-talking crazy man that I knew him to be! For whatever reason, though, he had a fantasy that he would inherit a large amount of money when she passed away.

I always had a notion that he obsessed about it more than was good for him, but I didn’t think that much about it. When I heard that he’d gotten drunk and high with a couple of his less cautious friends and told them about the old aunt and made it sound as if the death had actually just happened, I grinned, but I couldn’t believe it. What’s more, he’d invited those friends to go with him on a world cruise, all expenses paid! Parker woke up the next morning, desperate to contact the two guys and set them straight. He was terrified they’d quit their jobs before he could get hold of them and stop them!

I guess he did get hold of them in time. I never heard anything about it directly from Parker, but that says nothing one way or the other about the probable truth of the matter. There were so many Parker stories already known to be true, so many daffy exploits.

There were the stories about his punching holes in the wall and kicking through doors when he was angry, for instance. Once he’d even broken his wrist in the process—at first, he’d told some lie about it to everyone, but the truth caught up with him when the guy who’d taken him to the hospital for it spread the story.

And there were stories of him breaking into and damaging residences that he shared with other people just because he’d lost his key. I think once he’d broken into a friend’s apartment when no one was home just because Parker had been promised that he could borrow some records. Does the phrase “out of control” come to mind?

He mysteriously parked me once in the apartment of some friends of his that I didn’t know while he drove all around the parking lot until he found a Volkswagen like his so that he could steal the spare tire. I didn’t know he was doing all this, but when I got back in his car, it wasn’t hard to figure out. There was the tire in plain sight and I knew Parker didn’t have money for a new tire, nor had he purchased it in the dark of night!

“Oh, shit, Parker!” I groaned. “You’ve stolen somebody else’s tire who probably needs it just as bad as you do!”

“Well, I’ve GOT to go out of town tomorrow to see my folks and I CAN’T go on a long trip like that without a spare tire, can I?” he said, sounding very intense and reasonable. He always made things sound reasonable because he was so heart-felt about everything—nobody could sound more sincere because he was sincere and he believed himself! He would just NEVER have done it EXCEPT…and so on. That’s how he convinced his friends, I guess, that they were invited along on a free world cruise! I was glad I wasn’t smoking any of what they were having!

Surely that old aunt has passed away by now! I wonder if Parker got the money and if I could get any of it from him?

No, wait a minute, that’s not the end of it! Now I recall; at one point about 10 years ago I heard that his old aunt did die and Parker ended up with nothing. Some other nephews got it, some that had been too young for Parker to take into account when he first starting wishing his aunt’s health to turn ill. While he was worrying if she was ever gonna die, the younger ones had been buttering her up!

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Eleanor Rigby
..... Lennon/McCartney

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face
that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie, writing the words
of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks
in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby, died in the church
and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt
from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

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