8 Pounds of Pressure

Warrior Sam was a one legged indian who was Tav Falcos' neighbor in Memphis, TN. They both lived in rather modest shacks on Peabody street in one of the poorer parts of town. Tav kept his head above water through photography and by promoting his band The Unapproachable Panther Burns. Sammy I think collected checks from the government. Welfare checks and veteran benefits.

Also on Peabody street was a sweet old lady in her eighties who lived with her mentally challenged middle aged son George. George was right out of of Mice and Men. He was extremely tall at about 6 foot 7 inches. Very imposing, yet very quiet he would stand for hours at the edge of their property staring off into space.

Sammy's house was more of a compound than a home. He had an improvised fence along the perimeter of his property. A six foot high wall composed of abandoned washing machines, refrigerators, oil drums, old tires and rusted bicycles. In his back yard he had an old school bus up on cinder blocks, a rusted out jeep and a primer grey Camaro with 3 flat tires. Sam had no education to speak of. He seemed quite happy living his one legged life with his overweight hillbilly wife and their two undernourished dull eyed children. 

One time Sammy rescued me when my Moto Guzzi broke down on my way to Nashville. On the ride back to Memphis he told me how he lost his leg: He was riding his motorcycle and misjudged the path of a tornado. The tornado picked up both him and the bike and threw them into a field about 500 feet away. The bike landed on his right leg and crushed it completely. 

I asked about the scars on his arms and he smiled exposing his toothless gums. He said that his wife kept four rattlesnakes in the house to discourage burglars. I suppose it was a sort of a hillbilly security system. Anyway sometimes he would reach behind the sofa to plug or unplug something or he would reach deep into his underwear drawer and damn it …he would get bitten again. 

Later inside his " living room" i noticed a set of wooden cases that were stacked to the ceiling in the corner of the room. They were moist, glistening and seemed to be leaking fluid. I found this curious and had to ask him about the boxes. He cackled and said that they contained old hand grenades. They were so old they were leaking the nitroglycerine and he did not know what to do with them. They were now so unstable that 8 pounds of pressure was all it would take to set them off and blow his house and family to smithereens.