Page 7 of 10 FirstFirst ... 56789 ... LastLast
Results 61 to 70 of 92

Thread: Mayberry?

  1. #61
    Member Larry Sellers's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2015
    Location
    Connecticut
    I grew up in mayberry. Great schools, great neighborhoods yada yada yada. We had a family who was held hostage overnight, father was beaten with a baseball bat several times, tied up in the basement and left for dead. They arrived at the house at roughly 0300 and held the family until the banks opened in the morning. Suspect 1 takes mother to bank to withdraw 15k in cash and then returns home. Both suspects promised the family that they would be unharmed as long as they got the $. While suspect 1 is at the bank. #2 ties up, rapes and photographs said girls (11 and 15) and pours gasoline throughout the first and second floors of the colonial home. #1 arrives from bank with mom, strangles her with a piece of romex from the garage at which time #2 lights gasoline and away they go. At 21 years of age and with very little real world experience, responding to and searching that home as a volunteer firefighter was life-changing.

    Evil is everywhere and it knows no bounds...
    Look! Just because we're bereaved, that doesn't make us saps!

  2. #62
    Site Supporter psalms144.1's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Location
    Bloomington, IN
    I grew up in a Mayberry too - less than 10K folks in the town, consistently rated as one of the best and most desirable suburbs of NYC, top notch schools, the whole shebang. During the summer and on weekends, I'd eat breakfast, jump on my bike, meet my buddies and go tear-assing around the area - and come home just in time for dinner. Folks never worried about a thing.

    -When I was 14 or so, a class mate was grabbed by a group of other kids from the next town over, and they shoved rocks down his throat until he was dead.
    -Our modest house was broken into three times while we were away on vacation.
    -When I was in HS, the local drive through milk&eggs joint was held up at shotgun point

    Now, 30+ years later, the town is more crowded, and things have changed a bit. My mom passed in early 2016, and when I go to check on her house, I routinely find discarded syringes in the grass.

    There is no Mayberry. Never was.

  3. #63
    banana republican blues's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
    Location
    Blue Ridge Mtns
    Quote Originally Posted by psalms144.1 View Post
    I grew up in a Mayberry too - less than 10K folks in the town, consistently rated as one of the best and most desirable suburbs of NYC, top notch schools, the whole shebang. During the summer and on weekends, I'd eat breakfast, jump on my bike, meet my buddies and go tear-assing around the area - and come home just in time for dinner. Folks never worried about a thing.

    -When I was 14 or so, a class mate was grabbed by a group of other kids from the next town over, and they shoved rocks down his throat until he was dead.
    -Our modest house was broken into three times while we were away on vacation.
    -When I was in HS, the local drive through milk&eggs joint was held up at shotgun point

    Now, 30+ years later, the town is more crowded, and things have changed a bit. My mom passed in early 2016, and when I go to check on her house, I routinely find discarded syringes in the grass.

    There is no Mayberry. Never was.
    Of course I've got some years on you, Kevin, but that was the life we led as kids...even growing up in apartment building developments in Queens.

    Leave the house, jump on the bike, ride miles and miles to God knows where...and eventually make your way home around dinner time to avoid a skinning.

    That said, it wasn't without a certain amount of peril. When I was about three some guy tried to coax me into his car while waiting for my mother outside the bank in the Brooklyn neighborhood we lived in. Fortunately, I had already been taught to avoid strangers and made a bee line for the guard in the bank.

    You may be too young to remember, but when I was about 12 our next door neighbor was Alice Crimmins who was famous / notorious for having been involved in the murder of her two young children who I often watched for her in front of our building while playing with friends.

    She was the first woman I ever had a boyhood crush on. (I know how to pick 'em.) And was only too happy to run to the candy store and pick up cigarettes or sundries for her.

    Other than that...the usual gamut of suicides and violent crimes of one variety or another over the years.
    Last edited by blues; 07-13-2017 at 03:54 PM.
    There's nothing civil about this war.

    Read: Harrison Bergeron

  4. #64
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    south TX
    When I lived in northeast Nebraska, it used to grind my gears every time I heard, "That kind of stuff doesn't happen around here."

    And five people weren't murdered during a botched bank robbery in Norfolk......until they were:
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/2002/09...k-murders.html
    "It's surprising how often you start wondering just how featureless a desert some people's inner landscapes must be."
    -Maple Syrup Actual

  5. #65
    Modding this sack of shit BehindBlueI's's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    Midwest
    "Mayberry" and the drug trade, seems relevant: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/16/us/pen...ity/index.html

  6. #66
    banana republican blues's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
    Location
    Blue Ridge Mtns
    Quote Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's View Post
    "Mayberry" and the drug trade, seems relevant: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/16/us/pen...ity/index.html
    That's a sad tale, BBI. Been following that sporadically over the past several days...

    On a somewhat lighter note...(no disrespect to the dead)

    Last edited by blues; 07-16-2017 at 12:07 PM.
    There's nothing civil about this war.

    Read: Harrison Bergeron

  7. #67
    Member John Hearne's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Northern Mississippi
    Mantachie, MS (population 1440) just had a bank teller executed during a robbery: http://www.wtva.com/clip/13432130/ma...fatal-shooting

    In the town I just moved from (population 5,600), we had a Simon City Royal almost execute the manager of the Dominos pizza. The SCR had drawn come behind the counter to draw SCR graffiti on white board and the manager wiped it off while dude was waiting on his pizza. The SCR's girlfriend is probably the only reason the manager is still around.
    • It's not the odds, it's the stakes.
    • If you aren't dry practicing every week, you're not serious.....
    • "Tache-Psyche Effect - a polite way of saying 'You suck.' " - GG

  8. #68
    Site Supporter Totem Polar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    PacNW
    Quote Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's View Post
    Cities have always been shitholes to a greater or lesser degree, but it took job loss and modern drugs to really fuck up the small towns.
    Astute observation on American life that extends beyond our Mayberry discussion.

  9. #69
    In the span of about a year our sleepy, quaint little town saw two deputies shot by a pedophile who then murdered his teen girlfriend then committed suicide; all of it happening in the parking lot of our local Walmart. See video of the shooting - https://youtube.com/watch?feature=yo...&v=Ad-yyJ8660M

    Then a state trooper was murdered on the highway about a mile from our home, his cowardly murderer committing suicide hours afterward - http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...atened-police/
    Last edited by Shawn Dodson; 07-17-2017 at 09:08 PM.

  10. #70
    Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Location
    Behind the redwood curtain
    Quote Originally Posted by blues View Post
    Speaking for myself, I'm glad to have drastically downsized. One of the smarter moves I've made.
    Yeah. I am so happy that we got out of Chicago 16 years ago. Not close to any of the really extreme crime rate neighborhoods making the news now, but we were urban pioneers, two broke kids just out of college buying what we could afford in a neighborhood where our friends were afraid to visit for the first few years, half a mile north of and within sight of Cabrini Green. Wasn't at all unusual to hear gunfire in the early years. The neighborhood is expensive and gentrified now, probably not much safer though although we never had a problem in part because we got to know the old timers.

    Now I'm in a place with a population of 1,500. Less than half the size of my high school, probably fewer people than lived within three blocks of me back then in a metro area of 8 million. No one can remember the last murder here, although there are about 20 a year in the county and it's only 15 miles to a 30,000-ish city where some of them have happened, and where I work five or six days a week.

    A couple of unique things here: There are only three ways in or out, and about five miles to block somebody before they can get across the bridges. You'd think bottom feeders would stay away especially since it's common knowledge that half of us are armed. Most of the bottom feeders don't make a habit of thinking much though, and it's amazing how many people get caught driving through on the way to someplace else with meth or heroin in the trunk. A few years back a guy killed three people elsewhere in the county and drove through here on the way to the backcountry where he grew up, turns out he killed himself the first day but it took days for the dogs to find his body back there.

    I know a lot of guys who only carry when they go over the bridge and into town... gotta wonder about that. Still, given the small population, the odds of encountering a nutjob are a lot less here on any given day. Not impossible, but better than in the big city where it's a given that I passed a dozen of them most days on the way to the office.

User Tag List

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •