Normally, a spaghetti western refers to the location, commonly Italy, where westerns are filmed. However, I will be referring to it as an out-of-time relic of the 1960s. The day of the cowboy is dead, as are the pirate and the ninja. I will be holding a candlelight vigil for the three things every little boy wants to grow up to be.
Growing up and living on a farm, there were people who would blow in and bring their own tumbleweeds. Just showing up was not dramatic enough; they would relish in ignorance and prejudice. To them, living out their days with central heating and a bad credit score was a sign of being a desperado. However, it was a long decline from the 1990s, and the interest rates aren’t what they used to be. Even the jobs that these people would get were not enough to hold on to a life they couldn’t afford. They would shout that it was better before penicillin, or the automobile. Then they would throw themselves on the ground, kicking and screaming. I remember their words, crying out into the dark, “Why do I need to learn new things?”
They wished to live out their golden years in their chosen decade. Once, I got into a verbal fight that nearly turned physical. I was trying to explain that the bank charges interest. It’s how banks make money, and this person was not getting robbed. This man started threatening to kill me. His point was that he should be able to borrow money and simply pay it back.
Denim jeans and a plaid long-sleeve shirt—just the simple things.
This man borrowed sixty thousand dollars, then went to insure his new truck. His reaction to insuring something worth sixty thousand dollars was as if people came at him with a knife. He would drunkenly show up at the farm and slur his words. It was something about riding off into the sunset with just him in the truck and a can of chewing tobacco. He then went to the trouble of buying an antique black powder revolver, the only type of gun a felon can own, which he placed under his driver’s seat. He would go on about the Mason-Dixon line and other offensively coded hate speech.
No sign of modernity could disturb this man’s understanding that he was in the old west. He would broadcast it on his smartphone and declare how much he loved his truck, and that people were trying to repossess it. This man was slowly losing it. After he got laid off and got a DUI, he was down on his luck and homeless. Eventually he made it to a shelter. Then he remembered the Alamo and the days of glory: While a fellow homeless man was making fun of him, he brandished his black powder gun, and it accidentally discharged and shot his middle finger off.
The ballad of Finger Bang
At this point I should mention my grandparent’s farm, where my mother lived. Because the farm wasn’t in her name, she was free to take out debt, and there was nothing to foreclose on.
After the accident, he started to live on the couch there, and despite him being armed, I would harass him. Just casual assault, tripping, shoving while he was drunk, and calling him Finger Bang. This man hadn’t learned that he was no longer in Kansas or the old west. He felt entitled to the farm. His given reason was that he was the only man, and something about a royal line of succession. Most of it was incomprehensible, and many people ignored this couch ne’er-do-well. However, I couldn’t afford to harass him as much as he deserved, I had important business with people I cared about.
I had been gone from the farm for a few months, when my sister’s long term boyfriend relayed to me that Finger Bang had some new plan. To say I wasn’t interested in what that simple-minded schemer was up to would be an understatement. This middle-aged overweight man with two hernias was trying to put moves on my mother, a relative of his. The goal was to get his little sausage fingers on the deed to the house. Admirable but cartoonish. When that didn’t work out, he began to scream and yell that my mother was a whore. Shortly after, he again became homeless, and legend has it that Finger Bang went to a farm far, far away.
