Margeaux Boudreaux the Dummy From Thibodeaux

Another story from the wicked imagination of Uncle George

Of Whitlow Enterprises Smoke School

This is the story of Margeaux Boudreaux from just a little southeast of Thibodeaux. First of all, let me admit that this is just a story from the imagination of Uncle George Whitlow. Any likeness or similarities to people or families is all fictional. Some of the people in this story do exist, but I have never met them and or—well it is just fictional. And that is about all I want to say about that. My momma used to say that life is just like a box of chocolates, you never know just what you are going to get. And I got it from a Dumpster. Who would a thunk it?

About four weeks ago the Whitlow Enterprise smoke school crew and I were having supper at Joe’s Crab Shack on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The crew consisted of myself, Debbie- the chief cook and bottle washer, and Ben, Barb, and Heather, my 14-year-old daughter- the one who spends most of the money on Wal-Mart, jewelry, ragged clothes, fingernails, tanning sessions, pedicures, and makeup. Heather came home the other day with a pair of 60 dollar blue jeans that were so ragged, they looked like someone put them in a ditch and shot off a load of 12-guage buckshot in the buttocks and the kneecap. "That's the style, Daddy."

We had just tackled a pile of blue point crabs and I had about 3 margaritas. That was about 1,2-3 too many Margaritavilles for me. We were on our way out to the Bat Mobile and Big Bertha the smoke machine trailer on this dark warm April spring night in the green city of Baton Rouge, when I spotted legs hanging out of the open door of the dipsy dumpster behind Joe’s Crab Shack. We all moseyed over to the Dumpster to take a gander at the legs.

The legs looked rather attractive and female, but they just did not feel right. They were cold and rather stiff. Debbie said that she felt like the legs were dead. I took out my cell phone, flipped it open and punched in 9-1-1.

"This is 9-1-1." the sexy female voice said. "Would you like to report an emergency?"

"I do," I replied." "This is Uncle George and we have spotted a set of female legs completely covered with crabs, hanging out of a Dumpster at Joe’s Crab Shack."

Within five minutes one of Baton Rouge’s finest came swerving into the parking lot, tires squalling, sirens blasting, and red and blue lights flashing -illuminating the dark south Baton Rouge ssky. The cop got out of the police car and it was my old hunting partner, Willie Vick from Baton Rouge Homicide. Willie Vick was a mountain of a man. He was so large, that the cop uniforms would not fit him any more and they allowed him to work in his faded blue Denham overhauls. He kept the top two buttons on the sides undone and he had his girdle off so his belly could flop around freely. I could see the 45 caliber Smith and Wesson on his shiny all leather gun belt and the images of his 9 hidden pistols against the tight material of his overhauls. When Willie Vick got out of the Marine Corp after the Vietnam War his leatherneck was the size of a number five washtub. Willie Vick was wounded in the war- he was shot 9 times with an A-K-47 from just below his groin to just above the knee. He crawled out of the jungle 3 days on his belly to make it back to his unit.

Gangrene had set in and the doctors wanted to take his leg off. Willie Vick reached out with that hard left hand, grabbed the doctor by the throat, spat a wad of Beechnut chewing tobacco juice at the bedpan, and said in a John Wayne style, "If you take off that leg, I take off that head!" The doctor thought Willie Vick was Clint Eastwood.

The doctors kept the leg open 6 months treating it with a saline solution and other miracle drugs and managed to save the leg. Consequently, Willie Vick has that John Wayne staggering walk about him today.

Willie Vick just kept getting larger after the war. He was about 7-foot tall and about 480 pounds of solid rock. He could have easily played tackle for the New Orleans Saints if it were not for the limp and the war. Heck, hell might have frozen over and the Saints may have won the Super Bowl. We had to build his deer stands out of pressure treated 4 X 4 boards because 2 X 4s just crumbled like a stack of toothpicks. Willie Vick tried one those fancy-climbing tree deer stands one time and just peeled the bark off that pine tree all the way to the ground and landed with a large thud. He scared a 30-point buck to death. Can you imagine?

It used to get a lot colder in Louisiana- I guess it is global warming. Years ago, it was a frigid morning in North Louisiana near Castor Creek where our Road Kill Hunting Club hunted deer. We got the name Road Kill Hunting Club after Willie Vick and my cop brother, Crazy Ricky, ran over a doe on old highway 90 along the Atchalaya River Basin between Baton Rouge and Lafayette Louisiana. They just wounded the deer. Willie Vick thought the deer was dead, but she was just knocked out. She came to inside the back of Willie Vick's van, kicked all the glass out, and she ran off into the flooded cypress trees in Henderson swamp into the darkness near the exit for Whiskey Bay. But Willie Vick jumped out of the van, jumped into the frigid Bayou, knocked out a 16-foot alligator, killed a cottonmouth with his bare bear hands, and caught the doe by the leg. Then he stabbed her with a pocketknife. When the game warden stopped them near Bunkie Louisiana on highway 71, Willie Vick and Crazy Ricky just slid the their Jax beer cans through the hole rusted out in the floorboard of the old rickety van. Then they flipped out their badges, and explained the situation. Columbia Louisiana is about 2 six-packs away from Baton Rouge. The game warden gave them some slack and let them go. He just never knew when he might get caught speeding in Baton Rouge and might need a break himself. That road kill deer and a couple road kill possums, road kill rabbits, turtles, rattle snakes, cottonmouths, mudbugs, the alligator from Whiskey Bay, and road kill squirrels was the only camp meat we had that whole year. Us Louisiana folks, especially the Cajuns- well we will eat just about anything at all. We did drink a lot of Jax Beer and that is what hunting is all about. Now you know the rest of the story.

On that frigid morning, frost was on the pumpkin when I let Willie Vick out at his deer stand way before daylight. Frost was on the 2 x 4 floor of Willie Vicks’s 10-foot leaning ladder platform deer stand. Willie Vick was sitting on a 5-gallon McDonald’s white grease bucket we found in a dipsy dumpster. We had drank Jax Beer and played Boo-Ray Poker all night, and when the sun came out Willie Vick fell asleep. The grease bucket slipped in the frost, and Willie Vick plummeted to the ground with a very large thud. He scared another 30-point buck to death.

I heard the thud from a hundred yards away. I got in my picking up truck and drove to Willie Vicks’s stand in the piney woods along the grassy logging road. Willie Vick was on the ground beside the deer unconscious. When he came to, his face was bent and half-paralyzed in a crooked smile. The Beechnut chewing tobacco juice was dripping out of his mouth. I thought he was dead as a doornail.

So, when Willie Vick got out of the squad car at Joe’s Crab Shack- well there he was, a mountain of a man, crooked smile, staggering limp, overhauls with a tin badge on the strap, and a John Wayne attitude. He had a lump of Beechnut chewing tobacco in his cheek, as he always does. He spit the tobacco juice on the Dumpster and spoke.

"What’s going in here, Whitlow?" he gurffed, "Where’s the body."

"In the dipsy dumpster."

Willie Vick staggered over and looked at the cold female legs covered in crabs hanging out of the Dumpster. He spit another wad of tobacco juice out on the Dumpster. "Crap!" he mumbled. "Now I have to call the coroner."

Thus arrived Hippolite Klinepeter the local Baton Rouge coroner. Hippolite Klinepeter had not had a very good night. In fact he was not too satisfied with his life in general.

I feel an urge to remind you that this story is fictional. There is a Klinepeter dairy in Baton Rouge. But to my knowledge, Hippolite Klinepeter never existed. It is just a story. Now back to the story.

Hippolite Klinepeter had not had a very good night. In fact he was not too satisfied with his life. Everyone around Baton Rouge drinks Klinepeter milk. They will deliver it to your door, even today. The Klinepeter plantation old antebellum mansion and Dairy farm is located south of Baton Rouge off Highland Road, not that far from the Mississippi River. They will take you on a hayride and let you kiss a cow. It is a beautiful home and you can take tours of it. You should see it.

Hippolite Klinepeter hated cows with a passion. It all started back when he was 8-years-old and was milking old Elsie the cow from a 3-legged dairy stool. He reached out and grabbed one of them teats, that was painted red. His daddy had painted the teat red because it had a sore on it and it was infected. Hippolite Klinepeter was not aware that the red paint was a warning to stay off this teat.

He grabbed the red teat, that cow kicked him so hard and so fast against the wall of that barn, that Hippolite Klinepeter, just did not know what happened. Consequently Hippolite Klinepeter hated cows with a passion.

He hated the smell of a cow, he hated the flies on a cow’s back, he hated the cowbirds that hung around the cows- he just did not like cows. He hated the feel of the udders and the teats. He hated stepping in and smelling cow patties. He could not understand why some people smoked the mushrooms that grew inside these cow patties. He had heard some rumors about hallucinations. He hated the thought of getting kicked again.

He did not want any part of the family business, the dairy farm. What Hippolite Klinepeter really wanted to do, even as a small boy was to become a gynecologist. Some boys dreamed of being a cowboy or a baseball pitcher, but not Hippolite Klinepeter. He dreamed of being a gynecologist both night and day. If I could be a gynecologist I would be on time every single day for work. I would get there early. "What time is it?’

"What are you doing calling here- don’t you know it is four in the morning!"

"I gotta go to work, I’m a gynecologist- got to get there."

Hippolite Klinepeter wanted to be a gynecologist, but his daddy wouldn’t have any part of it. "Hippolite- my first born son," his daddy said. "One of these days they will come up with a cure for it, and all the gynecologist will become unemployed. If you want to be a doctor, you should be a pathologist. You could become a coroner. because people are always going to be dying."

Anything was better than milking cows, so Hippolite Klinepeter enrolled at Tulane University at age 15 to become a medical student concentrating in pathology. This was the beginning of his downfall. For at Tulane, he took a German language class where Hippolite Klinepeter learned that in German, the word kline meant small. Now stop and think about that.

That knowledge led Hippolite Klinepeter into many confusing relationships with various girls and women for the rest of his life. Hippolite Klinepeter was 78 years old and had been married six times when he showed up at the Dumpster at Joe’s Crab Shack. He had simply hated his life as a pathologist and a coroner. All those dead bodies. Why hadn’t he ignored his daddy and became a gynecologist. After medical school he discovered Prozac and its ability to treat chronic depression. After he was hooked on it, he discovered that it affected his sex life- it ended it. For years and years he settled with abstinence until he married his great-granddaughter’s roommate at Tulane. They were married about a week before our encounter at the Dumpster. When I read about the wedding in the Baton Rouge Advocate, I got mad. I went to Neville High School where I graduated after six years and found my old math teacher, Mister Robertson, there in Monroe Louisiana. I showed him the newspaper story about Hippolite Klinepeter's wedding and I said, "See here, I told you that 78 could go into 19!"

Before the wedding Hippolite Klinepeter discovered the powers of Viagra. He read on the label, if this last more than four hours, then call a doctor. He thought well, I am a doctor. On that faithful night, he planed a romantic dinner and encounter with his new bride, Candy. He took a Viagra and the phone rang. It was Willie Vick reporting a body at Joe’s Crab Shack.

I was standing beside the dumpster talking about deer hunting with Willie Vick of homicide, when I saw the back city car drive into the parking lot and Hippolite Klinepeter got out hurriedly. He looked like he had a tent show going on inside his fruit of the looms. I could hang my hat on it. "Where is the body, Vick?" he grumbled.

Hippolite Klinepeter walked over to Dumpster and felt Margeaux’s legs. They were stiff and cold. "Get her out, Vick!" he barked. When Willie Vick pulled Margeaux out of the Dumpster, the crabs slithered clear across the parking lot. She was covered in crabs. Willie Vick spat a wad of Beechnut juice on one of the crabs. Hippolite Klinepeter looked in discuss at the the tobacco juice on the crab. Then he reluctantly got down on his knees and felt for Margeaux's pulse. Then  Hippolite Klinepeter stuck his stethoscope into his ears. "By the powers invested in me by the state of Louisiana, I now pronounce you as dead as a doornail."

He paused, looked into Margeaux’s fixed eyes and exclaimed, "Wait a minute something is not right. This is a dummy-- a mannequin."

I thought about what Hippolite Klinepeter had said and shouted, "Good, can I keep her?"

Well I have been married three or four times. All of my life I have been searching for a redheaded woman, kaleidoscope eyes, seven foot tall, 87 pounds, and freckles. I’m still searching. If you know of any, then let me know. I about gave up on the redhead, and I decided to settle on a second choice, a woman who would not start arguments and who did not mind that I was going deaf. I am looking for a mate that actually does think bald is beautiful and likes to rub her fingers across my scalp. I want one who doesn't care if I am getting as fat as a butterball turkey. One who don't complain about my bad jokes, bad image, bad hair, bad teeth, bad breath, nor if I drink too much, or pass gas in the bed. I need one who doesn't care if I forget our anniversary or her birthday. after all, I am nearly 60 years old. I did find out that there is one good thing about having Alzheimer's disease. You can hide your own Easter Eggs. I have been there, done that. Sometimes I did not find them until the next year at Easter. God has a sense of humor and he answered my prayer. He gave me Margeaux, a dummy a mannequin. Margeaux and I are like this, inseparable. I can do no wrong with Margeaux. She never complains, she can't talk.

Margeaux started talking not long after we met. She told me she was Margeaux Boudreaux and she was from just a little southeast of Thibodeaux, Louisiana. Her mother, Hanna, raised her. Her daddy called himself Amos Moses and he was a man of the cloth. She had a dog-named Phideaux, a Labrador retriever, who could read a newspaper and walk on top of the water to get ducks and walk back on top of the water and bring the ducks back to the Pirogue, the Cajun dugout boat. As a child, Margeaux wanted to buy a golden lab, but it was too  expensive. Then she wanted to buy a black lab, but it was also too expensive. Then she brought a meth lab and she could afford any dog she wanted.

Margeaux Boudreaux did not have any hands. They were bitten off by a group of alligators down on Bayou Teche near New Iberia. I found Margeaux Boudreaux some used hands on EBay for 26 bucks. I hope to have them glued on by the time you meet her. The hands bend at the knuckles, so Margeaux Boudreaux should be able to give sign language. Use your imagination.

With the smoke school crew, we did not have any room in the Ford Excursion Bat Mobile for Margeaux Boudreaux to sit. She was too hard and too stiff to get into the door anyway. So I tied her to the smokestack on our smoke school trailer, Big Bertha. You should have seen the looks and heard the honks form passersby on the interstate. Margeaux Boudreaux wore her glasses and was smiling and waving with her nubs to the other drivers.

I once had a sign on the back of the smoke school trailer, Big Bertha, that read, "Honk if you love Jesus." I had to take it off because too many people honked and some bent  their knuckles to give me some sign language. I got tired of tail-gaiters so I put a sign up that said "Honk if parts fall off."

I heard horns honking, they woke me us as I was driving down the interstate. Then we had a problem, the bungee cord broke that held Margeaux Boudreaux to the smokestack on Big Bertha. I looked in the rearview mirror- in horror and saw Margeaux Boudreaux leaning over the side rails of the trailer. We were doing 80 down the interstate. She fell off the trailer. I saw her plummeting about 50 yards behind the trailer when the bungee cord finally broke.

Have you ever wondered where they decide to tie the first knot in a bungee cord jump at the county fair? "Step right up folks, try the bungee cord jump."

"Wait a minute, Fred, tie the knot a little higher- and give that lady a free tee-shirt."

Miraculously, Margeaux Boudreaux was not hurt that badly when she fell off the Big Bertha. She had lost a patch of hair and she wore a hole in her shirt and her back. Otherwise, for a dummy, she looked pretty good. Margeaux Boudreaux has been on the road again with us for smoke schools in the hurricane ravished Mississippi gulf coast, Baltimore, Washington DC, Ripley West Virginia and Ashland Kentucky. Margeaux Boudreaux has become our certified registered EPA Auditor. It is just a coincidence that she is a dummy. I have been working hand and hand with the EPA for might near 30 years. I know EPA has good people working for them, but I personally have not met any. One EPA employee from Michigan sent someone an email in a chat room that said I was a good-OLE- boy. I sit around and wonder sometimes how much money us taxpayers are paying for EPA members to be in chat rooms. No offence EPA, like I said, this is a fictional story. Got you thinking though- didn’t I.

Well Margeaux Boudreaux wants to meet all of you at smoke school, so come pass a good time and learn something too. Life really is like a box of chocolates, you never know just what you are going to get. And that my friends is about all I want to say about that. If you liked this story, if it made you chuckle just a little and took your mind off your troubles- well that is good. If you liked it, then tell everybody and if you did not like it, don't tell nobody. If you liked the story, you may want to check out my novel that I wrote on the back of a napkin while eating dinner at the Union 76 truck stop in Lafayette, Louisiana while I was employed doing air quality sampling site maintenance and smoke school for the Louisiana DEQ. I had a lot of time to drive across the state, do a lot of thinking in my head about stories, and a lot of writing. I think it was all those lonely nights in hotel rooms that got me this way. I owe a lot to Dizzy Dean.

I grew up in Monroe Louisiana back in the fifty's and sixty's watching the CBS Baseball Game of the Week with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese explaining how Roger Marris and Mickey Mantle blasted Babe Ruth's home run record into oblivion. Those were exciting times and Dizzy Dean could sure make baseball interesting with all those country buttermilk stories about the players and the game. My novel is set in the summer of 61 and has a lot in it about Dizzy and the home run race. Those were the good ole days- the days that were. It is a Forrest Gump type novel. it is very descriptive of fishing on the Louisiana Bayous, deer hunting, the Louisiana woods, and baseball. You will enjoy it if you read it real slow. I think it would make a good movie. We could get Tom Hanks to play in it. And I would be a kazillionaire. Now, with all that dough, I could get a hair transplant and loose about a thousand pounds.  Buy it, bring it to smoke school and I will put my John Henry on it in magic marker. Blue Bayou Days- The Summer of 61/ a novel by Uncle George

Margeaux Boudreaux from Thibodaux Photo Album, click the links below

Margeaux Boudreaux and me, Uncle George

Margeaux Boudreaux, Hope and Cindy at the Office in Washington Indiana These are the voice of Whitlow Enterprises

Margeaux Boudreaux. Hope and Cindy, another view

Margeaux Boudreaux. Hope and Heather Whitlow, my 14-year-old daughter who never misses a day at Wal-Mart

Margeaux Boudreaux outside at the smoke school with friends in Frankfort Kentucky

Margeaux Boudreaux in the smoke school classroom in Washington Indiana

Margeaux Boudreaux. another view in the classroom

Some men just cant resist Margeaux Boudreaux

Margeaux Boudreaux, her brother Boudreaux Boudreaux, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Yosemite Sam, and Forest Gump

I always tell stories like the Margeaux story at smoke school, it keeps the stress out. I just hate stress, don't you. So come on down to smoke school and pass a good time. You might just accidentally learn something. If you like this story, you should check out my other stories. smoke school stories and family stories

come on down to smoke school www.smokeschool.net Bye now, see ya later alegator.