Home-field advantage: Video

 The video went live four hours later.

It started with a wizened, old man walking up a sidewalk in “the neighborhood”. 

The man was clearly being videoed by somebody on foot. The technical qualities of the recording were poor. The person taking the video was slowly circling the speaker so you could see a 360 degree panorama behind the speaker:

-Beautiful, un-molested houses on Spencer Street which ran north/south.

-Smoldering foundations on the cross street that ran east.


“The American Marxists isn’t worth a shit” the old man sneered.

He looked like a librarian in a cardigan the color of canned peas and reading glasses perched on his nose. His slacks had razor-sharp creases in them and his back was as straight as a poker.

“They wouldn’t have made the fourth-string in the Viet Cong” he continued, letting you know he had been in the dust-up of the 1960s and early ‘70s.

“You asked me about their leadership ability. Let me tell you. I have seen a lot of leaders, both good and bad. It is my educated opinion that these Marxists couldn’t lead a puppy across the street if they had it on a leash.”

Then cuts to various people from the neighborhood. A few other interviews.

One of the cuts was to seven men. Not a single man appeared to be younger than 70. Their firearms were all old, military bolt action rifles with heavy, leather slings. They even had bayonets mounted on them as if the ancient geezers were prepared to engage in close, hand-to-hand combat  with twenty year-old men. They stood six feet apart. The buttplates at the rear of the weapons' stocks were touching the ground and the muzzles were all tipped forward.

Then back to “librarian”. “We said Spencer Street is our red-line. And we stopped them. A half a dozen determined riflemen and the cowards turned their tails and ran like rabbits.”

The old man’s diction was perfect and screamed elite, east-coast education. His voice dripped with scorn. His scowl fierce. He was the best actor in the neighborhood.

The video panned the neighborhood, lingering over the smoldering foundations and the old man said as he pointed with the stem of his pipe “This is what happens when spoiled children play with matches.”

Then the video panned across the gingerbread-perfect houses on Spencer. “They needed a spanking and we gave it to them. If you punks want to come back for a rematch, our men will jam it up your ass and break it off!”

Then a fade-out with the camera on the street sign for the corner of Spencer and Ottawa. You could hear the old man's voice trailing off in the background "Not fit to lead three mama-sans with honey-buckets". 

It was only 58 seconds long. Alex delegated up-loading to a couple of kids. They hopped right on it.

*

Four hours earlier: As I was passing the ammo to Alex, he asked how much it was.

I hadn’t counted. I had merely cleared shelves. Hefting one of the tubs I said “At fifty pounds to the thousand, I am guessing I am handing off a couple thousand 7.62” Then hefting the 5.56mm I said “and probably three times as much 5.56 and 9mm”

“I am not sure we are going to need this” Alex said.

“Oh, you will. I can almost guarantee it.” Then I told him that the Marxists could not afford a defeat. Their magical ability to recruit was based on the illusion that they were unbeatable. "The unstoppable avalanche of history"

“They will come back because they cannot afford to let this neighborhood stand. They will come back and burn it all down, just like they did to Mom’s” I said.

Alex was mulling that over and was not liking it.

“If I may make a suggestion?” I ventured.

“What?” Alex said.

“I don’t know how much Vince told you about me, but I raise cattle. You gotta have good fences to raise cattle. One of them gets in the street and gets hit, hell, you gotta defend yourself in court.” I said.

Alex made a “hurry up” motion with hand.

“A cow can get through or over any fence I can build. The way to build a fence to keep a cow in, or terrorists out, is to get inside their head” I said.

“Easier said than done” Alex grunted.

“It isn’t hard to get inside a cow’s head” I assured him.

“I build a training fence. I make a short run of fence, about fifty feet long and I run all of the output of the charger to that short stretch of fence. Then, I pour half a bucket of shelled corn right under that fence.” I said.

“Then what happens?” Alex couldn’t help but asking.

“Well those cows edge up and start slurping up that corn. It is like candy bars and potato-chips to a teenager. Pretty soon, they are more focused on the corn than the fence...remember, they don’t respect it yet.” I reminded him.

“Then, one of those cows has its face pressed into the bottom wire when the pulse comes down the line.” I said.

“The charger is  only powering that fifty feet of fence. There aren’t any weeds dragging down the voltage, no shorts, nothing. Just fifty feet of wire whacking in the cow in the face with six Joules of electricity.” I said.

“The thing about a regular fence is that cows don’t have many nerve endings in their lower legs. They can walk into a low wire with their legs and it isn’t that uncomfortable.”

“You pass six Joules of electricity through their face and through their brains...they NEVER forget” I said. "The Marxists can always get more meat by the tens-of-thousands. Brains are hard to come by.

“Why are you telling me this?” Alex asked.

I figured he knew why but was just checking for the sake of clarity. “Pick your most defensible line. Keep it compact. Figure out how to drop the hammer-of-God on that line. Then pour a line of corn on it. Put a pile up the candy bars and potato-chips on that line, something that the head-of-the-snake will take personal and won’t be able to resist. Design the battle. Make them come to you.” I said.

My respect for Alex grew after that video. His house was on the west side of Spencer Street. He was daring "the punks" to burn his house down. 

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