Attack Of The Chainsaw

Due to the NCAA tournament rudely preempting Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, I hadn’t planned on writing this evening. With no Survivor, what could I possibly write about? But after dining on a quarter-pound hot dog smothered in ketchup and mustard, I have decided to give it a go. So I fired up my MacBook, turned the Marquette/Washington basketball game on TV and tuned the Bose into some scintillating talk radio. Now all I had to do is think of something to write about.

With no Survivor, I considered my options. I have finished listing my favorite athletes by the number, so that was out. Recently stories about The 400 Club have been popular and a while back, the tales of Koos Inc. were all the rage, especially those about Arno. Hmmm, what to do?

After much consternation I decided to squeeze out one more story about the legendary Koos madman, Arno Schubert. And what better story then the time he battled a chainsaw and lost. And I am not kidding.

A quick recap on Mr. Schubert. As I previously wrote in Arno: A Koos Legend, he was a cantankerous old German who weighed in at about 230 pounds and stood 6’2”. His unkept hair was reddish-brown and, as was his scraggly beard and moustache. Arno had more scars on his body than teeth in his mouth.

The infamous chainsaw incident resulted in Arno gaining a new scar to that already mangled body. He was at his parent’s house helping his father clean up trees that had fallen in the yard. The two had been at it for some time when Arno began cutting up the trees into smaller pieces with the chainsaw.

The chainsaw, like Arno, was weather-beaten and broken down. It wasn’t long before it became stuck in a thick log. Try as he might, Arno couldn’t extract the chainsaw from the wood. Being a stubborn Kraut, he gave it one last, mighty jerk and it finally came free!

Unfortunately, he had no idea that the chainsaw would start running again once it was loose. To make matters worse, the force of Arno’s mighty tug had caused him to stumble backwards with the buzzing chainsaw in his hands.

When Arno landed on the ground, the sharp chainsaw blade smacked him the head, digging into the left side of his head and cutting into his eye. Arno’s father rushed him to the hospital and unbelievably his eye was saved.

I say unbelievably, because given his track record, anybody that knew Arno would have assumed the worst. At the very least it was thought he would be sporting a shiny new glass eyeball. Instead he had to settle for a black eye patch for the next couple of weeks.

Arno told us that the eye patch was necessary because the muscles in his eyelid were damaged and therefore his eye would not close. We thought he was just bullshitting us, because, after all, he was a world-class bullshitter. We figured that he was just making it worse than it actually was. None of us believed that his eye wouldn’t close.

That was until one eventful Sunday morning when he stopped by the apartment that Harry and I rented. Arno had just dropped his wife and daughters off at church and came over to our place in search of a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Evidently the case he had poured into his head the night before had lost its effect.

Disgruntled because our supply of beer was exhausted, Arno decided to crash on the mattress in the corner of our living room. When it appeared that he was asleep, Harry and I jumped on he opportunity to check out whether or not his eye would close.

We quietly tiptoed over to the snoring Arno, trying not to giggle. Harry gently peeled the dirty eye patch back. Much to our surprise, there was a crusty, bloodshot eye staring back at us!

He hadn’t been lying, his eye would not close. Even when he was sleeping. And trust me, we checked it a half dozen more times before the grumpy Arno came to. It was pretty cool, it did indeed stay open. Wait until the rest of the guys at Koos heard about this.

Please don’t think unkindly of Harry or me. Unless you have met Arno Schubert, you would not understand. The man was a legend, but for all the wrong reasons. And this time the legend took on a chainsaw and lost. Until next time…from the booth.