Most of your professional robbers prefer the handgun. Them babies is light and small, which means you can hide ’em under your Phillies hat if you get drunk and forget to wear any pants. Besides, nothing says “I’m here to rob you” better than your handcrafted piece of American steel.
Now other guys is partial to the sawed-off. It comes in two colors, metallic blue and silver, which fashion guys’ll tell you is good for accessorizing with your Raiders jersey in case you’s doing a job in Oakland.
Still other guys got fondness for the good ol’ buck knife. She’s cheap, on account of she don’t need no ammo. She’s also easy carrying if your car got stoled and you gotta walk to the robbery. And if you happen to be strolling home down the freeway and you was to come across a dead possum, that’s just bonus round. You can skin her on the spot and score yourself some dinner.
But if you’re asking me, there’s only one bad boy you wanna show up with at the Diamond Shamrock. I’m talking about the .44 caliber Brass Frame Buffalo Revolver.
This here black powder beauty is what Old West trash used when they was robbing the stagecoach. You know them boys had class, seeing as how they’re still showing their robbing highlight films on Turner Classic. And if you was to steal a horse and come riding into the Circle K, all the customers’d be inviting you to rob their place, seeing as how they’d figure you was from the movies.
Just don’t eat the horse till after the robbery. They don’t ride too good when they’re all chewed up.
Best of all, your Buffalo Revolver got a twelve-inch barrel. So if you happen to rob a Kum ’n’ Go, and the clerk don’t speak English, you could use it as a pointer so he don’t mess up your donut order.
I don’t gotta tell you that nothing ruins a robbery more than getting home, opening your bag a loot, and finding out you got a dozen garlic bagels instead of them cheese blintzes you was hankering after.
Hood or Ski Mask?
The ski mask used to be your standard gear. Then the Unabomber done busted out that Hood & Sunglasses Look. Seeing as how he was on TV, everyone figured the guy got a ton of chicks. So all the trash started wearing it, too.
Now I ain’t saying you got problems with your ski mask. One time I was robbing this store in Flint, Michigan, and the clerk kept asking me for tips on the giant slalom. Since us trash is known for our gentlemanliness, I always make time for a question-and-answer period. Which meant I was late for supper.
But I’m figuring the Hood & Sunglasses Look gives your robbery a mixed message. This guy’s called the Unabomber, not the Unarobber. So say you hit a Quik Mart. Problem is, the clerk figures you’re there to do a bombing. And since this is usually a one-man job, he thinks you don’t need no help, so he punches out and goes home.
That means instead of you getting to wave your gun and boss him around, which is the funnest part of robbing, you gotta do all the work. And avoiding work was the whole reason you got a robbing career in the first place.
Rope or Telephone Cord?
A lot of top robbers like to do the job right quick. Maybe they’s taking the old lady to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd that night. Or maybe they just don’t wanna leave the kids alone in the car too long, on account of they’ll mooch all your cigs.
But other guys like to savor the job, do some of that basking in professional glory. Which means you gotta tie up the victims so’s you got time to read Fins and Feathers.
In the old days, you could just tie everybody up with a telephone cord. But now everybody got a cell phone. Which means the clerks keep getting loose and calling the cops.
Now ol’ Verne got no beef with cops. They’s decent working people, and usually got a good supply of power tools if you was to rob their garage.
But cops gotta way of introducing you to judges. And judges gotta way of introducing you to prison. And prison gotta way of introducing you to an eight-foot-tall guy named Harry, who might get to thinking you look pretty, even if half your face got burnt off in an industrial accident.
Which is a long way of saying that you should always bring a telephone to your robbery.
Making Your Hostage Situation Fun for the Whole Family
Everybody knows what to grab first: the seventy-nine bucks from the cash register, a couple packs of Swisher Sweets, and that new Waylon Jennings Christmas CD.
But that’s when the selecting gets hard. If you ain’t made a shopping list, chances are you’re getting stuck when you gotta decide between the Sports Illustrated or a bottle of that Valvoline Stop Leak.
This happened to my pal Billy. His selecting got so long the cops surrounded the place. So he got hisself in one of them hostage situations.
This here’s where a lot of your younger trash go wrong. Since they ain’t been teached on the fineries, they learnt their hostage situating from TV. Which means you’re supposed to do a lot of yelling and shooting into the ceiling. Which is a waste of good ammo on account of there ain’t usually no ducks up there. Which means your hostages is gonna think you suck at duck hunting. Which means TV robbers got no class.
Seeing as how us trash is prone to gentlemanliocity, you gotta think of your hostage situation like hosting a party.
If you have to herd a batch of schoolkids into the beer cooler, make sure you grab some packs of Bubblicious and have a singalong. I usually go with Raffi or Megadeth. Kids is partial to them guys.
And if you got a batch of adults, crack open the fortyouncers of Pabst and party on. Anyone who serves free beer is probably gonna have a waiting list for their next hostage situation. But don’t let your guests get too hammered. They’re gonna start bawling about their old lady leaving ’em, and you won’t be able to hear the police negotiators over the phone.
But there’s a couple things you wanna avoid: First off, don’t do no hostage situations in yuppie neighborhoods.
A buddy of mine, Big Larry, once got lost and robbed a Starbucks by mistake. There wasn’t no liquor on hand. Then the hostages wanted to hold a book discussion. Big Larry had to surrender. He figured it was better than listening to them read that goddamned Maya Angelou anymore.
You also don’t wanna start no card game. Chances are one of your hostages might be a shark. Next thing you know, she got the whole seventy-nine bucks you was meaning to take home from the robbery.
And you sure as hell don’t wanna play no strip poker. One time I had me a pack of Mary Kay salesladies as hostages. So I figured I’d start a game, take their money, and get to see ’em bare naked to boot. Next thing you know, they done won all my clothes, my gun, and the Dale Earnhardt Jr. hat I was meaning to steal.
I had to take the bus home with only my tube socks on. It wasn’t one of the prouder moments in White Trash history.
Your Getaway
Here’s the first rule of making your getaway: Do not call a cab.
Say you just robbed a nice batch of Captain Crunch, but like usual, the cab don’t show up for two hours. Chances are you forgot to rob some milk. Which means you gotta stand outside the store eating dry cereal while you wait.
Rule number two: If you’re gonna use a car, make sure it runs.
I once heard about this one guy in Pensacola, Florida. He was figuring on using his ’78 Impala for the getaway. It was Sunday morning. He was gonna nail a string of robberies, then beeline her home in time for the Buccaneers–Falcons game.
Problem is, after his first job at the Minit Mart, his damn car wouldn’t start. So by the time he pushed it to the next job, the place had already been robbed. All that was left was a sixer of Genuine Draft. He didn’t even get home till the third quarter.
That’s why your quality robbers is prone to hiring a licensed driver. While you’re busy doing the robbing, he can make sure the radio’s turned to your favorite station. Last thing you want is to get caught in a high-speed chase, and you gotta listen to Journey as your soundtrack.
By this point, I figure I got you all clued in on the job situation. But maybe somebody got to reading some of that Maya Angelou around yo
u, and your head still ain’t right.
Which is why I got me this question-and-answer period. Just like when you’re robbing, the decent self-help guy always makes time for morons who’s a little slow on the uptake. So let’s go to the mailbag:
Earn Jack and Score Chicks
Through the Lost Art of Kidnapping
Dear Dr. Verne:
I got this problem. They’re trying to wussify me.
I had a good job fixin’ lawn mowers at Sears. One day me and the boss got to fighting. That was the beginning of my problems.
I lost my job. Now I’m stuck working in some wussy-ass hotel.
I wanted to work at one of them classy places. The place I work for don’t even got vibrating beds or PBR at the bar.
I just got word from my friend down in Missouri. He got a brand-new bass boat, a huge house (it’s a double-wide) and is about to get hitched with a girl that can tune his truck. How can I compete with this?
—Wussified in Rapid City
Dear Wussified:
Working at a hotel ain’t gonna get you the good life of double-wides and bass boats. Women ain’t partial to sparking with guys whose main job is to say, “Would you like a nonsmoking room with a view of the stockyards?” I’m guessing you couldn’t even afford plastic covers for their good couch.
Which is why you gotta change careers. The way I’m thinking, you need one of them decent careers where the money’s good, the hours is short, and most of your time’s spent sleeping or doing beer bongs.
I’m talking kidnapping.
Used to be this was a decent trade for us trash. A guy could nab a couple of rich fruities, collect some decent ransom, then retire to one of them vacation paradises like Dubuque on the fruits of his labor.
I’m figuring a good person to kidnap would be a sanitation worker or a mailman. They both got union jobs that pay over minimum, which means you could probably hold ’em ransom for 135 bucks or more. Think about all the chicks you’ll be scoring when you flash that 135 around the bar. That’s the kinda sweet jack that says to a lady, “Yeah, I got your electrolysis payments covered.”
Which means the chicks will be attacking you like a herd of starved buffaloes. I’m guessing at least one of ’em gotta have a double-wide and a bass boat, even if you do gotta live at her folks.
Why Hockey Is a Better Job Than the Marines
Dear Dr. Verne:
When I was sixteen I dropped out of school so I could get the manliest job I could think of, the U.S. Marine Corps. It was great. They gave me a gun and let me shoot pinko commie bastards for a living. Then on the weekend (when I wasn’t kicking butt), me and the boys would go down to Tijuana, get loaded off tequila, beat the &%$# out of some Navy boys, and score us some women.
Nowadays, I’m lucky if I get to kick ass once a month, seeing as all we do is “peacekeeping” missions and fighting Arabs, which ain’t even commies, and they been givin’ me wussy paper-pushin’ jobs. What’s worse is now they lettin’ in women and fruity Zima-drinkin’ boys who couldn’t load a tow missile if their life depended on it.
I was thinkin’ of leaving and joining a militia, but I don’t want to leave my old Corps. What should I do?
—Corps Forever
Dear Corps:
First thing you gotta do is get a new name. I’m figuring your ma musta been drunk when she give birth, cuz most right-thinking trash don’t name their kid after a dead guy laying in the street.
But I’m feeling for you on this Marines thing. Fact is, they’s getting unmanlified. It used to be that decent people like you could make a good living shooting commies, getting hammered, and smacking around them Navy fruits. But you don’t wanna join no militia.
Militias is like the army of Idaho, which ain’t even a country. They’re too cheap to even have a president or money with pictures of Idaho guys on it.
Besides, them militias is partial to Hitler, who was this guy whose ass we kicked back in the old days, before they invented color and the world was in black and white. He had a really bad mustache. Which means militia guys only get the leftover chicks, like them babes on Sex and the City, who probably can’t even hang drywall.
If you’s looking for the pursuit of manly adventure, there’s only one line of work for you: hockey player.
They got a job called goon. You only gotta play five minutes a game, punch somebody out, then go sit down again. It’s even better than being a bouncer, cuz there’s no college boys playing rap on the jukebox.
A few years back, they started letting Ruskies into the league on account of affirmative action. You can hack ’em with your stick all you want. That’s only a two-minute penalty.
Now I’m asking you, Corps, where else can you get a job that offers free lumber, laundry, and dental, you get a clubhouse with decent carpeting, and no one calls your parole officer when you brawl?
Plus, in hockey you get to keep your mullet, so’s you don’t gotta get one of them bad Marines hairdos that only gets you them Sex and the City chicks.
If It Got French in It, It Ain’t a Manly Job
Dear Dr. Verne:
I been reading your advice for some time now. Most times I agree with you, but you keep talking about hockey being a manly job.
I got news for you, Verne: The only people who’s good at hockey is pussy foreigners like French Canadians, Norwegias, and Minnesotans. In case you don’t know, French Canadians got their ass kicked outta Louisiana, where even the deers is midgets. Which means when you stuff ’em and hang ’em above the TV, people think you got a big clump of dog fur glued on the wall.
The only manly thing to come from Minnesota is the women. And if anybodies with names like Ole, Udder, Sven, or Idder shows up at the trailer park, they gets beat up outta what we call principle.
So unless you’re from French Canadia or something, I suggest you stop calling someone on ice skates who talks like he got beer foam coming outta his nose a manly type, cause he ain’t.
—Buford in Des Moines
Dear Buford:
I can tell you’re worldly, seeing as how you got knowledge on foreign places like Canadia. You also got it right about anything French being at least part fruity, on account of they invented hairspray.
But you got it all wrong about Canadia.
For your info, Canadia is the Mecca of the White Trash. Wouldn’t you wanna live where the government pays you to eat donuts, shoot caribou, and pass out on the highway? It’s true. I heard it on TV.
Now a lotta guys think Canadia is sissified on account of they never get in no decent wars. But my cousin Elmer, he lives in Winnipeg, and he says it’s candy-ass to shoot somebody with a tank. Real men, they strap on the skates, grab some sticks, and see who can gut the other guy like a twelve-point buck, man-to-man.
I ain’t agreeing with you on Minnesota either, seeing as how even the women grow beards in the winter, is good at fishing, and can hold their liquor. Plus, they got all them Swedes who ain’t too smart, so’s it’s easy to sneak out on your bar tab.
But I’m kinda agreeing with you on them Norwegias. That’s over by Europe, where they’s always eating bran flakes and flicking their ponytails like supermodels. But for your info, the Norwegias suck at hockey. Their main job is climbing up the side of a mountain in leather shorts so they can do some yodeling, which sounds kinda like singing after you got your knee cut off in a bandsaw accident.
And I don’t gotta tell you that yelping on a mountain ain’t a very good job, on account of there ain’t no Pepsi machine to rob at lunchtime.
Ever since the Vikings landed in Ireland and told ’em they was just looking for a decent pancake house, the White Trash has been the world’s best liars. You might say it’s a gift from God, on account of He got guilt for shorting us when He was passing out the teeth.
Fact is, all the greatest lies in history—“The check is in the mail,” “I coulda sworn she was eighteen,” and “I’m an innocent man, you honor”—was thought up by us trash. If we
was to go to law school, they’d probably put us in the gifted class.
This comes in handy when you’re practicing the most important part of high finance.
How to Scam Outta Your Gambling Debts
After all, gambling involves taking on the three most powerful forces in the Universe: your woman, your boss, and your bookie.
Let’s start with the baddest, the one who can do you the most damage: your woman.
This is where a lotta guys go wrong. They get to figuring, “Hey, I’m the man. I’m the breadwinner around here. If I wanna drop fifty bucks on the Wolverines, I’m gonna. A man’s gotta be the king of his own row house, otherwise what’s the point of having chest hairs?”
But this here’s what pointy-headed college guys call your “delusional thinking,” which is fancy talk for saying you’re a dumb ass.
Everybody knows women run the world. Sure, men get all the good jobs, like president and foreman. But women got the power.
Take the president. Say he wants to bomb South Carolina, on account of he’s slumping in the polls. But say his woman don’t want him to, on account of she don’t wanna see no blown up people on TV unless it’s a movie or foreigners.
If he goes ahead and bombs, she ain’t making him supper. Which means he’s gotta eat them convenience store subs with the ham that looks like it was butchered in 1973.
That’s why you can’t be talking about no breadwinner stuff. You gotta finesse the situation. And “finesse” is Chippewa for “lying your ass off.”
Let’s try ourselves a pop quiz.
Say your woman lets you keep a hundred bucks outta each paycheck for everyday stuff, like cigs and gas and crank. But say you lay fifty bucks on the Thrashers over San Jose.
First off, what the hell you betting on the Thrashers for? A course you’re gonna lose. Which means you’ll run out of money before the next payday. Which means you gotta ask your woman for more.
Do you:
White Trash Etiquette Page 3
