Hands Up! The Long Overdue Hughes Tour of Feguson

Our bus full of Liberal Arts college grad dissidents, East Coast Charles Schumer fans, biracial bisexual couples, and causes in search of adherents will board at Florissant Road & I-70, so you’d better believe the driver will be traveling at the speed limit headed north through Beautiful Cool Valley, Missouri. Off to the left is a building owned by a Catholic religious order Hughes was sent into on some sort of “mission” lost to the 2016 organic memory chips called “neurons.” These facilities are always on a hill, in case the indigenous non-Catholic people should approach with torches and pitchforks.

Soon our driver will point out a building that used to house the Datsun dealer who charged so much for a transmission and clutch wrecked by a future Air Force girlfriend, the agreement was like this: “If it ever even makes a funny noise, your labor is free, or I’m calling the goddamn Attorney General’s office.” That was 1975; nothing much has changed on this end. No sex for Hughes on that deal, but it did commence suspiciously way later in the Year of Our Lord 1999, and this is not a party, or a Prince song on WB.

Up further on the right is the cop station, where there was always a friendly Lieutenant to chat it up when a 1993 Hughes case management report went like this: “Jay’s up all night hollering, quit his job, ran off his roommate, chopped-up the furniture, put it on the curb, and threatened to beat my ass.” Son, that’s bipolar! A few doors to the north, a dilapidated frame house is long gone where future .gov contractors went in the same cop station wearing sunglasses and said, “Sargent, someone stole our pot plant.” In 1974? Amazingly, no one did any time, to this correspondent’s meager knowledge.

Moving on toward Church Street is a storefront on the left where long ago many Missourians were almost found dehydrated and dead waiting for a driver’s license and / or license plate. To the right is a bakery where mental health community worker and donut connoisseur Hughes would stop for a Long John or brownie. There was supposed to have been a book jacket photo snapped there, but these things take time, because packs of stalkers and movie mafia intellectual property thieves are not on the cop radar like a sedan full of Negroes.

Moving on to the intersection of Florissant & Chambers, volunteers will distribute bottles of Poland spring water for the long red light, and take it from Hughes, no matter how you drive, it’s always red. To the left is the storefront where Hughes did not work for a 1970’s record store called “Peaches,” because though the manager called with a job, the answering machine had not been invented yet, and Rick was told, “I just don’t answer the phone with a killer hangover.” Today, this writer is glad Wild Turkey shot girl brought a bottle of booze, not a firearm. Was the record store manager in cahoots with my girl? A communist writer in Cuba may care someday, not today. If I was date raped too, he’ll get a book deal, not me.

As our bus moves north, the Pantera Pizza may be gone, but efforts to cheesily “frame” this writer for perceived misconduct have simply become more grandiose, not this Hughes. All blackmailers should know the patient’s daughter was not dancing at the gentlemen’s club yet when she was driven to work at the pizza joint. Once employed on the East Side, Hughes as case manager endorsed the move as sensible with two young biracial mouths to feed. Dad was where? Not shooting a gun at Hughes is all that mattered. I’m sure I was quoted to him as saying, “You don’t need medication like your mom.”

The Ferguson library was moved to a new location from the days when state paperwork was completed on the fly there, so your bus will stop to catalog the many ways strangers are kept off Soldier Boy’s Internet. The government has spies in the library? Heavens no! Are you nuts? Traveler cameras banished? The foreign tourists on our bus may want to know why in this “Land of the free.” After being tossed off public property by the private sector security guard, passengers will then be excited by the famous McDonald’s, beauty supply store, and charred gas station. There will be plenty of time allowed to trigger—oops—a visit from the under new management Ferguson cops. Who called the cops on our tourists? Outrageous!

After clearing up that matter peacefully, the bus will proceed to the “nice part” of Ferguson, if it has not succumbed to ever westward “white flight.” The bus will again stop at Hughes’ old grocery store, office supply store, and K-Mart, all gone thanks to good government and race relations that should be a model for all real estate scumbags looking for some abandoned commercial properties. The Hughes Pasta House is gone? There’s always U. City if our foreign visitors are not happy with a White Castle that my satellite leased by Google says is still there.

The illogical last stop is the best donut shop in town, nicknamed “The Old Army Donut Shop” due to conversations overheard by elderly guys of all colors back when this writer lived out there. The nearly abducted at that shop story requires a microphone clipped to a lapel not yet purchased by this Hughes. An abduction was averted when a Hughes hand found no wallet in the pocket. Yet another cop-free James Bond movie-like drive down I-170 found this particular pack of rodents fleeing on to private jet rental property, and you don’t get it? This tale is a lie? The problem is, it’s not relevant until it’s told under oath with someone’s big ass on a judicial spit.

Our return trip will feature a southbound route down Elizabeth Avenue, where Ferguson’s Finest actually expect, and will see, 15 m.p.h. on the radar gun for several miles, so be sure your pod is fully charged before you board the bus. Mary S.’s house is on the left, and did we ever play you all with the 17 year-old North County, “Let’s not, and act like we did.” Where did we go to high school? So glad you asked, Wildwood Missouri neo-NaziMan. Mary attended St. Joseph’s Academy, and I was the Head of Stoner State at Rosary High. No lie, and we can prove it.