Orville Highpockets Jarrett found himself standing before the Pearly Gates of Heaven. 

Saint Peter stared uneasily at him through the golden bars and was just about ready to press the "Enter" button to let him in, when it hit him! "What the hell is that smell?" Saint Peter cried out. Then he quickly pressed the "Reject" button which sent poor Orville straight to the pits of hell.

The Lord of Flies was making his rounds when he stumbled upon the dejected war hero from Loose Screws, West Virginia. He took a good whiff and then bellowed out: "Oh, hell, no! You're not coming down here and funk-up my crib!" Old Beezelbub went straight to his hot line (the Red Phone) and dialed 1-800-GOD. After an hour of bickering back and forth, the rulers of Good and Evil agreed that Old Orville still had plenty of life left on Earth. And they sent him back to, of all places, Bollywood, India!

Orville had finally made the Big Time at last. He was given a small part on CW's Supernatural television show, which had recently moved its operations from Hollywood to Bollywood to save on the costs of production. The episode he was to star in was titled: "The Man Who Would be King of Loose Screws, West Virginia."  But, after working several days with Orville on the set, the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean, went to the show's creator, the great Eric Kripe, and asked him to please change the title of this episode to: "The Man Who Smelled So Funky that He Was Thrown Out of Heaven and Hell." Mr. Kripe granted them their wish. 

And the story of Orville Highpockets Jarrett will live on for another day.

- - - - - -

A Note from the Author: I would like to take this time to dedicate this little story to all of my homies named Orville. I've come to believe that there's a little Orville in all of us. Haven't you ever been riding down the highway with the windows open on a hot summer's dog-day afternoon, and you catch a whiff of something that gives you the urge to check your underarm deodorant? And you say: "What the hell is that smell?"

The End

Another Orville story will appear soon. Thanks for dropping by!

The Feds Come to the Rescue:

Orville was housed at Red Onion State Prison and this is where I met him, as he and I would share a cell. His strong B.O. would be his own personal salvation. For when we went outside for recreation, the northeasterly winds would carry this smell all the way to the footsteps of Washington, D.C., more than four hundred miles away. The U.S. Secretary of Defense got a good whiff of Orville’s strong odor one evening on his way to Happy Hour. He had his driver follow the horrible smell all the way down to Wise County, Virginia, where he found the source of it inside of Red Onion State Prison.

Orville Highpockets Jarrett was immediately pardoned from prison and put on a special Air Force plane to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he would become America’s number one weapon against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He was given an AK-47 rifle, but with no bullets. Unbeknownst to him, his main weapon against the enemy was his body odor! He felt a strong sense of pride and patriotism when he would be sent out all alone into the hills of Afghanistan and round up the terrorists as they surrendered to the awful smell.

 

The terrorists were slowly dwindling, but some die hards held fast. Until their sheep and cattle came out of the hills with front legs held high in the air, crying out: "Baa Baa" and "Moo Moo." Which translated means: "We Surrender!" Followed by: "What the hell is that smell?"

Finally, the die hards all were gone, and America's war with terrorism was over! And Orville Highpockets Jarrett became an instant hero and  household name overnight.

Orville was sought after by the media, and he did interviews on shows with Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and many others before finally returning home to Loose Screws, West Virginia. There was a ticker-tape parade, where all eleven residents honored him and carried signs saying "Orville For President" and "Orville for Mayor." It felt good to be home again, as he strutted his Body Odor stuff down the dirt main street of town, barefoot, shirtless, and with his suspenders pulled up all the way to under his arm pits. After a long day and night of celebrations and drinking white-lightning from a jug, Orville stopped by the Donald's restaurant and ordered the 20--piece chicken nuggets dinner. He was given a free room at the Dewdrop Inn Motel, right next door to Donald's. He was very tired, and he went to use the bathroom before he retired for the night. Unfortunately, he stepped on - of all things - a bar of Irish Spring soap, causing his feet to fly up from beneath him. He hit the back of his head on the white porcelain bath tub, crushing his skull and killing him instantly.

not finished yet . . . 

Hello to my readers:

I have mentioned previously my cell mate, Orville, whose body odor was way beyond normal. I have written a fantasy story about him and want to share it with you. It helps a little to share the story, even if I can't actually send you a sample of the smell. Good news for you!

Here is part one The Saga of Orville Highpockets Jarrett -

Introduction: How Orville came to be in prison.

Orville came from a small town called Loose Screws, West Virginia, population eleven. In the spring of 2007, he decided to venture out from the secure nest of homes and hitchhike to Bollywood. Of course, no one ever told him that Bollywood was in the country of India, clear across a lot of water. He had made up his mind that once he had made it across the great Ocean of the Mississippi, he would be at his destination, scott-free.

His luck was with him that early June morning, when a hog farmer driving a ‘57 Chevy truck picked him up. Unfortunately though, his luck didn’t hold up very long as the hog farmer drove south instead of west. Before the night was over with, Orville was stranded in the city of Roanoke, Virginia.

Already broke and very hungry, Orville came across the strange sight (to him) of the Golden Arches of MacDonald’s. (In Loose Screws, the restaurant was only called Donald's. The Mac part and the Golden Arches had not yet arrived.) He smelled food! For the next week he would sleep out in the woods during the day hours, and after the MacDonald’s closed at midnight he would discretely venture out to go dumpster-diving behind the store where he would find boxes and boxes of Chicken MacNuggets. As he made his way back to his sleeping nest in the woods with his stomach filled with fried golden nuggets, he told himself that he never had it so good. 

       But the Sisters of Fate would soon urinate on his parade, and he was arrested for loitering. He was given a forty year sentence to serve, one year for vagrancy and thirty-nine years for funking up the city with his body odor. An odor that five years later still lingered in the nostrils of the good folks in Roanoke.

more to come . . .

Welcome to those of you who are just joining us. Please scroll down to read my articles in order from bottom to top.
Kenny Ray

Here is a story that Ruth Ann has asked me to share with you all. In 1983-84, my cousin and I had just finished preparing a new cafe in Mobile, Alabama to open. It was called The Cock of the Walk, and it opened on January 1, 1984. The name came from the old Riverboat days of the 1800’s, when the meanest, baddest dude on the Riverboat was called the “cock of the walk.” I had been hired on as a waiter, which was an easy gig because the only food the restaurant specialized in was the best tasting filet of farm-raised cat fish you will ever put into your mouth, along with a side order of fried green dill pickles. So, a waiter didn’t have to memorize too much from a menu. I wore a black felt, wide-brimmed hat with a goose feather sticking out of the side, a red long puffy sleeved shirt with long draw strings, and black pants and shoes. The hours were from 5:00 to 10:00 during the dinner time hours. Our bread and butter, as the owners explained to us waiters, was this jalapeño cornbread served from a black cast iron eight-inch round skillet. The whole novelty behind us waiters making good tips would come down to how good we were at flipping our cornbread into the air and catching it again in the skillet. We quickly became masters of the game, and once we got that down we started flipping the bread and catching it behind our backs. The customers loved it when we were successful, but it didn’t take long to discover that they loved it even more when we dropped our cornbread! Then we would quickly pick it up, brush it off and say: “We’ll put that back in the oven and use it again later.” They would laugh at our goings-on.  Whole families would return week after week and ask for their favorite waiter by name. It was, like overnight, we had become a part of their families. But, the show must go on and our act had to grow. So, we began to toss our cornbread from one waiter to another. They loved us even more. Finally, we came up with the four-waiter toss. It was a hot Mobile Friday evening, and there were at least seventy-five people in the front room of the restaurant. We had carefully placed a waiter in each corner, four in all, and on “GO” we would toss our cornbread to one another. It was a long toss, to say the least. But, one thing we forgot to account for. Since the toss would be a long one, it had to have enough height and speed to make it to the other waiter. And we had forgotten all about the ceiling fans between us. We tossed the cornbread, the fans caught it and shredded it and then showered it all over the customers. “Oh, no!” I thought, “we have really messed it up this time.” But the customers loved having cornbread shredded all over them. Everybody laughed and had a gay old time!

 Ahhh, only in America! Or, only in Mobile, Alabama on a hot summer’s evening!

Like Grandma and I had done for two years to Grandpa's grave, I was now taking flowers to place on her grave. I would sit and talk to her, and I told her how much I loved her and missed her.  Sometimes I would feel close to her, and other times I would feel nothing at all. Then it suddenly dawned upon me that this would have meant everything to her, for I realized that it is the little things in life that mean the most. And this is what she taught me, just by her actions of taking those flowers to place on my Grandpa's grave. For in life, the hands of fate and time give little to us at first, and then take so much from us in the end.

I return often to these memories. They recall to me the best part of my life. Losing my grandparents and my plans for a happy future while I was in my middle teens sent me into a free fall that resulted in years of alcoholism, as I tried to live with the pain and the confusion. I became a disappointment to my family and to myself. And I know that in this real world there is no going back.

Sometimes, as I lie in my cell, I think - and hope - that I am a young boy again sleeping and dreaming on the couch in the farm house. Then I shall finally wake up from this nightmare and walk into the kitchen and there they all will be, Grandma and Grandpa and maybe even Freckles and Eggroll, like nobody ever left or died. And I can be Kenny Ray, the happy young man who works the farm with the two people he loves most in the world.

. . . . . . This is the end of my memories of my beloved grandparents. Thank you for sharing them with me.

In my next message, I will post a story about my early days as a waiter that Ruth Ann thinks is very funny.

Grandma's cancer progressed. She would lie in the back seat of her Chevy Malibu while I drove her down to the Naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, for her to receive radiation treatments. As we drove down Highway 460 and through the town of Waverly, she would point out places to me that she remembered as a small girl.

Eventually, like a foreign invading army, the cancer ate its way through her body, and she moved in with us to be with family. We set up a bed for her in our living room, where I would sit with her as she talked of days gone by.

I turned to drugs and alcohol to kill my pain of watching her slowly die. She had been the sun my world had revolved around since I was born, and she was only sixty-four years old.  I was slowly dying inside with her. My pain and hurt would selfishly turn to anger toward her for the act of dying before her time. And what about the promises we had made to one another years before while harvesting those concord grapes? I was keeping my end of the bargain. Unfortunately, she couldn't keep hers.

Finally, on a cold, snowing February Sunday in 1979, as she begged the Good Lord up above to please take her to relieve her suffering, she fell into a coma and died. I do believe with all my heart that she instantly went to a much better realm, for a faint smile was born across her lips as she took her last breath in this world.

They would leave the farm to me. But I immediately sold it to Grandpa's sister, who lived in Norfolk. I sold it for two reasons: one, I was young and broke; and two, I did not want to go down to the farm and picture my Grandma standing over the stove frying chickens, or my Grandpa as he walked the fields or through the woods. Although, if it had been about a decade later, I might have kept the old place and worked it in honor of their memory.

Next post will be the last of these memories with my beloved grandparents . . .