Anne sent me the following missive on Thursday:
Mark, there is a web comic called Axe Cop. I don’t know what the website looks like, but the hard copy version of the comic was pretty funny. Got to go now, Dan and the truck are back again…
The following is the Wiki synopsis:
Axe Cop is a web comic by two brothers: Malachai (age 6) and Ethan (age 29). Malachai is responsible for the ideas and stories, while Ethan turns them into comics. The first four comics were drawn in December 2009 and posted to Facebook; the website was not launched until January 2010. Axe Cop focuses on the adventures of a police officer who prefers to wield an axe in battle. “Axe Cop” tends to help people victimized by aliens; he often gathers other heroes to assist him. His most common partner is his sibling, “Flute Cop”, who undergoes many transformations during the series.
While were on the subjects of cops, I was reminded on Thursday of a police action that I once initiated. What reminded me was a question that I was asked at work. The Perma-Bear asked me for directions to Seamus McDaniel’s. Seamus is an Irish pub in the Dogtown neighborhood of town, a neighborhood that is known for its Irish heritage. Every Saint Patrick’s Day, Dogtown holds their own parade and always on March 17th. The rest of Saint Louis is content to celebrate on the nearest Saturday.
I digress though; we had just moved to Saint Louis and had only lived here a year or two. We were renting an efficiency in Clayton’s DeMun neighborhood at the time. We lived on the second floor. There was a steel fire escape in the back, with access through the kitchen door. We also shared this fire escape with the neighboring apartment. The final piece in this scene was our bedroom. It jutted out from the rest of the building and flanked the fire escape with a full view of that fateful summer night’s proceedings.
As it had in the past, the curtain opened around 3 AM. It opened with the clomp, clomp, clomp of high heels coming up the fire escape. Our adjoining second floor neighbor seemed like a nice, quiet, single woman. Unfortunately, she was involved with Bill. Bill was the owner or manger or something at Seamus. You knew that I had to circle back around to there sometime, right? If you ask me, Bill was a two timer. He had a nice steady squeeze who just happened to live right next to us, but then he also had this devil woman, who was clomping up the metal fire escape at 3 AM.
This was by no means the first time that this little love triangle had publicly exercised its angst and always at 3 AM. Even so, I restrained myself as the devil woman began her melodious soliloquy, “Bill, I know you’re in there. Bill!” All said and repeated in that syrupy sing-song that only the truly drunk can emulate. When she broke the neighbor’s kitchen door window I bolted from bed and dialed 911. When I came back to bed Anne asked me, “Did you tell them?” “Did I tell them what?” “Did you tell the police that she has a gun?” No, I missed that part of the conversation. So we hunkered down and slide under the open window’s sill and awaited the police. All the while a drunken woman was brandishing a gun just fifteen feet away.
The cops arrived quickly, although it seemed longer at the time and took control of the situation. They disarmed her without a struggle and led her away in cuffs. She was crying by then and as she descended the fire escape I heard the following dialog, “But it wasn’t loaded.” “It doesn’t matter ma’am.” She never returned, but then I don’t recall ever seeing Bill again either.