Riding Shotgun is a new series from sludgo featuring interviews with notable members of the BaT community. Last month we published his first interview with Cobrahandler, and this week he has talked to ValiantJim, winner of the 2024 Cognoscenti Award and prominent member of the BaT MOPAR mob. He had a lot to say, only some of it about Valiants!
sludgo can take it from here:
We are planning a special surprise to celebrate sludgo’s 200th installment of Mile Markers. Because of this, publication is delayed by one week—you’ll see #200 next Friday, August 29. Stay tuned!
We noted that Mile Marker 200 would come with a special surprise, and here it is! This week marks the 200th installment of sludgo’s Mile Markers, and to celebrate we’re issuing a limited run of 200 commemorative posters, each signed and numbered by sludgo himself. Posters are now available in the BaT gear store, and all proceeds from the sales will be donated to the American Diabetes Association in honor of sludgo’s father, the Oldsmobile Man.
I love the old Andy Griffith Show. Have since I was a little kid and would catch reruns of it after school on my Grandma Lettie’s black-and-white Philco. I’ve nothing but fond memories of Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney and ‘Aint’ Bea. Opie and Helen and Thelma Lou. Floyd the barber. Otis the drunk. Gomer the grease-monkey and his cousin Goober. Emmett the fix-it shop owner and even Howard Sprague the Howard Sprague. One of my favorite episodes is where Barney buys a used car from a sweet little old lady who turns out to have swindled him in the deal by passing him a lemon. There’s the famous scene where Andy and Barney are commiserating in the courthouse after he’d had the car towed to Gomer’s service station to have Gomer’s always unseen boss ‘Wally’ take a look at it and Gomer returns with the results—a mile-long laundry-list of repairs he reads off as Barney sinks miserably and hilariously down into his chair. That’s exactly the way I felt about a month ago when my new mechanic Tyrone called to talk to me about the ‘B.
It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating sludgo’s 100th Mile Marker, but in fact it was four years ago. Since then, he’s continued to grace our pages with his special brand of wit, wisdom, and humanity. Today, we’ll be publishing Mile Marker 200, and that’s cause for celebration. It’s been an amazing journey that shows no signs of slowing down, and in fact his role on BaT has recently expanded with the new Riding Shotgun interview series.
It was my twelfth August. 1973. Late on a Friday evening following another wretchedly hot and humid day in sludgoville. The sludgos didn’t have air conditioning—only rich people had that—so I was trying to beat the heat by soaking in our bathtub, which was filled up to my shoulders with cold water and every ice cube I could find in the freezer. I was listening to KSLG-AM on my trusty Panasonic transistor enjoying the scratchy-staticky country sounds of Donna Fargo and Mel Tillis and Charley Pride when the top-of-the-hour hit and the news came on. The tersely-toned broadcaster introduced himself—‘Doug Dickerson,’ or something like that—then dove in to his report, eagerly noting there was plenty happening in the world that night. Said that the war in Vietnam might actually be over for good. That something was up between President Nixon and a hotel in DC with a funky name. That one of the astronauts on Skylab 3 had doubled the world-record for length of a space walk. That Willie Mays—the Say Hey Kid—had hit his six-hundred-sixtieth home run. And so on and so on and so on, but as I laid there in the tub with the ice cubes melting and my fingers and toes getting pruny I couldn’t have cared less about any of that junk. I had only one thing on my mind—the dead body in Old Man Granger’s garage.
This is Part Two of a three-part series. Click the link to read Part One.
It had been a glorious NoDak autumn Saturday morning for twelve-year-old me. I’d woken to a gorgeous orange-red sunrise and the cool prairie breeze drifting across my face as it blew through my opened window. All the birds outside were merrily greeting the day in song, all the robins and wrens and sparrows and meadowlarks and mourning doves, even the peacocks and ducks and geese and swans calling out from over at the Deaf School pond. I’d jumped out of bed and into my routine early, stripping off my pajamas and putting on my weekend duds before pouring myself a heaping bowlful of Lucky Charms then parking out on the living room couch to watch cartoons on our big thirty-six inch color console RCA. Four hours later—after Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner and the Jetsons and Scooby-Doo and Josie and the Pussycats and Archie and then Fat Albert—it was noontime and the Lucky Charms were long gone and I was hungry again so I’d decided to hop on my StingRay and ride across town to Grandma Lettie’s to see if she’d make me one of her world-famous fried bologna and Miracle-Whip sandwiches but when I got there she wasn’t home. Figured I’d wait for her a bit and headed out to her backyard to climb Big Olie, the giant oak she’d planted as a sapling fifty years ago when she first bought the house, but as I walked up to Olie’s trunk, I glanced across the way at Old Man Granger’s place and noticed something interesting—the walk-in door to his garage was ever-so-slightly ajar. Hm.
This is Part Two of a three-part series. Click the link to read Part One.
It had been a glorious NoDak autumn Saturday morning for twelve-year-old me. I’d woken to a gorgeous orange-red sunrise and the cool prairie breeze drifting across my face as it blew through my opened window. All the birds outside were merrily greeting the day in song, all the robins and wrens and sparrows and meadowlarks and mourning doves, even the peacocks and ducks and geese and swans calling out from over at the Deaf School pond. I’d jumped out of bed and into my routine early, stripping off my pajamas and putting on my weekend duds before pouring myself a heaping bowlful of Lucky Charms then parking out on the living room couch to watch cartoons on our big thirty-six inch color console RCA. Four hours later—after Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner and the Jetsons and Scooby-Doo and Josie and the Pussycats and Archie and then Fat Albert—it was noontime and the Lucky Charms were long gone and I was hungry again so I’d decided to hop on my StingRay and ride across town to Grandma Lettie’s to see if she’d make me one of her world-famous fried bologna and Miracle-Whip sandwiches but when I got there she wasn’t home. Figured I’d wait for her a bit and headed out to her backyard to climb Big Olie, the giant oak she’d planted as a sapling fifty years ago when she first bought the house, but as I walked up to Olie’s trunk, I glanced across the way at Old Man Granger’s place and noticed something interesting—the walk-in door to his garage was ever-so-slightly ajar. Hm.
This is Part Three of a multi-part series. Click the links to read Part One and Part Two.
I threw my hands up in the air. Instinct. Tried to speak but my voice caught somewhere in the back of my throat and I choked on whatever it was I was going to say. Found out it’s true that you see your life pass before your eyes when you’re facing death but since I was only twelve my retrospective went by pretty quickly and just like that I was back in the here and now, August of 1973, standing in Old Man Granger’s dark and dank and dingy garage, staring straight up the barrel of his shotgun.
This is Part Four of a multi-part series. Click the links to read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
The next Saturday in sludgoville was absolutely splendid. The crisp scent of October was in the morning air and most of the leaves had already fallen, but Indian Summer was in full swing, skies clear and blue and a harvest-orange sun lazily edging daytime temps into the seventies. It was just after noon and I was high up in Big Olie—the big oak in my Grandma’s back yard. The Beehive hated me climbing trees but I loved it and Olie was such a terrific tree to climb, bent this way and that with lumps and bumps growing here and there that fell perfectly under my twelve year-old feet and hands. I’d scampered up his trunk like a jungle cat and took a right turn onto the first big branch. It was as fat around as a pony and I’d straddled and skittered out to its very end to my favorite crook and was finally settling in when I heard it—twin rattly rumbles of diesel-fired horsepower and torque getting closer and closer and louder and louder. I leaned forward from my perch to get a better look at what was going on just in time to see two shiny-black extra-large tow-trucks chug into Old Man Granger’s driveway and hiss to a stop. Time to pick up the Cadillacs.
It was just after six on a sleepy Saturday morning a couple months ago and I was driving the Beehive’s snow-white Toyota Cross through sludgoville, heading to the foo-foo coffee shop next to the junior college. The flight back to New Sludgoville was scheduled for noon and I still had to pack and was feeling a little rushed but I made sure I drove slowly. Twenty-five miles per hour is the posted maximum all across town and you can count on good ol’ Deputy Randall to be hiding out there somewhere in his black-under-blue Police Interceptor waiting to nail you for even a couple over the limit. Tell it to the judge, sir. But I didn’t mind driving slowly that morning because it had hit me the night before that aside from returning to sludgoville for Big Sis’s or the Beehive’s eventual funeral it was very likely the last time I’d ever visit my beloved NoDak hometown. Thought I’d better take the morning’s opportunity to check out some of the important sights of my life one final time. Shoot some pics to help my increasingly glitchy memory banks link this place to that face. And at the very top of my list was Old Man Granger’s house. Figured it might make a good Mile Marker story too. You never know.