I once wrote a story about a man who’d staggered, drunk, out of a bar one night and apparently vanished. No one had heard from him, no one had seen his car in any ditches between the bar and his house, he just, poof, disappeared.
Well, of course he only disappeared in the sense that no one could see him. A week or so after my story ran, the police fished his car, and his body, out of a farm pond on his route home. He’d driven off the road and into eternity, another of the less-celebrated residents of Davy Jones’ locker. (Maybe, in this case, it should be Farmer Jones’ locker.)
His was an easy case for the crack missing-persons team in that jurisdiction, and it’s what I thought of when I read (HT: FWOb) about how divers went into some retention ponds on Indianapolis’ north side after a report that a car had been dumped there, and found…five. Most had been there “for a long time,” the Indy Star reported.
I don’t get it. When our plane passed over Pearl Harbor en route to landing in Hawaii a few years back, the pilot told us to look down at the wreck of the USS Arizona, still leaking a streak of diesel fuel half a century after Dec. 7, 1941. Granted a car isn’t a battleship, but wouldn’t you expect there’d be some surface evidence of a dumped car in a retention pond? And if not, if they keep their secrets that well, I wonder why Hollywood always shows us the killer digging the shallow grave by lantern light, when it would be so much easier to wire a couple cement blocks to the corpse and roll it out past the drop-off? Note to self: Never wonder again what the bluegill might be feeding on in those things.
Friends, that should give you an idea of the sort of conversation-starters I have today. Maybe you guys can carry the weight. Here’s a picture by Brian Stouder, snapped in the wild night before last:

And here’s little Brianette Jr., which only serves to remind me that in Michigan, the Easter egg hunt is likely to be cancelled for snow:

And here’s some bloggage:
There simply has to be more to this story than we’re getting:
It was incorrectly reported in Tuesday’s Tribune Chronicle that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton answered questions from voters in a local congressman’s office.
Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson’s staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley.
Goodall’s next assignment: Interview Santa Claus.
A new MacBook Air costs $1,800. It’s nice to know Charlie Rose can think fast. And has his priorities straight.
What if they gave haircuts at Hooters? Why, then it would be Lady Jane’s Haircuts for Men. They advertise heavily on local TV, and I gotta admit — the ads are pretty funny.
Finally, I try to keep the aw-isn’t-my-kid-cute stories to a bare minimum here, but indulge me this one: Last night at dinner, Kate plucked an onion ring out of the pile, a very small one. She slipped it over her index finger, held it up and said, “Look, a literal onion ring.” Then she ate it. Please remember this 11-year-old the next time you’re watching your local news and a highly paid, college-educated TV reporter says, “The work is literally back-breaking.” If my 11-year-old can grasp the meaning of the word, so can, and should, he.
Now I’m thinking about onion rings, with the start of spring already upon us. Ah, well, it won’t be bathing-suit season for a good long time here, will it?
Off for my 60,000-mile service. The car, not me. I have way more miles.