Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

BigUn

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Big’un@Big_un

February 14, 2026

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves

La Hacienda de Hombre Grande (The estate of the ‘big man’) as I used to call our ‘Palatial Estate’…
It was a 30 year old 3900 sq ft brick rambler, with a full basement, on 7 wooded acres. Built personally by the original owner (poorly).
It had a 1/5 of a mile long, paved asphalt driveway.
When we took possession, there was the beginning of a pothole near the entrance. Later, When we replaced our shallow well, and had ‘City water’ hooked up, they of course had to cut a strip of it up in order to connect the water to the main.
It was a bit of a mess. I had purchased several 5 gal buckets of ‘cold patch’ to repair it.
Then one day I came back from a work trip to discover my double garage full of my Sister in laws household goods for storage. I would not see the interior of my garage for 3 years. (Yes, I’m still a little miffed about it)
I finally found those buckets of cold patch, a decade later, out in the woods, behind our storage shed.
But, I digress.

In the mean time, one day, while I was home, a truck with two men came all the way down our driveway. Which was unusual.
As our house wasn’t visible from the road we lived on.
They had a ‘Deal’ for me!
They would top the entire driveway with a 1/4” of asphalt, for ‘only’ $1600.00. Which I knew was B.S.

I walked them down to the street entrance and showed them my ever expanding pot/construction hole, and told them;
“If you just patch this area, and top this first section, I’ll give you $600.00.”
We had an agreement, or so I thought.
When they started the work, I walked down and looked at their equipment, which was beat up and not really maintained to the level it should have been.
Being a former LEO, I wrote down all of their license plate numbers, expirations, vehicle makes, and types.
They were not really pleased with that.

At some point the crew finished work, and left. I couldn’t tell when that exactly was because the entrance of the driveway wasn’t visible from my house.
My buddy Bob, showed up and noticed the ‘new asphalt’ as he was driving down to the house.
Upon arrival, he asked about it.
I decided we should go and inspect the work.
As we were walking down the driveway, I was met by an older woman whom was my neighbor. Their house was off about 150 ft to one side of my driveway. Our property was shaped like a capital ‘P’, the driveway being in ‘the leg’ of the ‘P’. Her house was on 1 1/2 acres that had been part of our property sometime in the past.
She was in tears. One of the 20 or so Chihuahuas (not an exaggeration) they owned, was dead, its head had been crushed.
As we got to the ‘work area’ I could see that it was the annoying tiny one that could and did climb her fence. It was always yapping at, and ‘chasing me’, or so it thought, whenever I walked by their yard. It obviously was doing that to the asphalt crew, and someone smacked it with a shovel, killing it.
Even though I wasn’t a fan of the dog, I was not pleased.

Bob and I then inspected the sad excuse for an asphalt job. They had scraped the new asphalt so thin, that there were areas that the old asphalt was completely uncovered.
Further, they did a half assed job with the primary issue I had, the ‘pot hole’ near the road entrance.
I would not be paying for this.

Bob and I walked back to the house and were hanging out talking in my front yard, when ‘the boss’ of the crew I’d originally spoken with, arrived in a pick-up truck, driven by another man. In the bed of the truck was a jet-ski.
They pulled up in front of my attached double garage.
The ‘boss’ exited the passenger side of the truck and approached us.
“Hey, would you like to buy a ‘Jetski’?” He asked
“Ah… No…” I answered flatly
I assumed, it was most likely, ‘hotter than a two dollar pistol’.

“Well, I’m here to collect our fee.”
He said with a smile. I then erased it.
“Nope, I’m not going to be giving you any money today.”
He looked surprised.
“Why not?!?”
“Because I’m not going to pay for that poor excuse for an asphalt job. My driveway looks worse now, than before your supposed ‘crew’ fucked it up.”
As you can imagine, he was even less happy.
“Well let’s walk down and look at it.” He quipped
“What about him?” I asked pointing to the man in the truck.
“Ah, he’s just going to wait here.”
I then turned to Bob.
“Hey Bob, would you mind going to the Dog Run and letting the Rottweilers out. You are one of the few people they won’t bite.”
“No problem buddy!” He responded.
I had two Rotties at the time, but they were still basically puppies and wouldn’t hurt anyone.
These two dumbasses didn’t know that. They wanted me out of the way, so the guy in the truck could case my house, and possibly steal something.
As I and ‘The boss’, began to walk down the driveway, to inspect their work, lo and behold, the guy in the truck with the jet-ski, turned it around and followed us.
Imagine that…

We got down to the area in question and I pointed out the crap job he expected compensation for.
“Tell you what” he began
“You pay me for this, and we’ll comeback tomorrow and fix it.”
“Yyyeahhh, that’s not going to happen. How about you come back tomorrow, put the 1/4” on like you promised, rolled like it’s supposed to be, and I’ll pay you the $600, and if it’s done correctly, I’ll throw in another $100.”

The gentleman driving the truck walked over in the mean time and stood near where we were ‘haggling’.
“How about this?” The ‘boss’ said
“You give us $400.00 now, and $400.00 tomorrow when we come back?”
“Put the crack pipe down, and step away. I’ll give you $600.00 when you complete the job per our original agreement.”

Can’t help it, I’m a smart ass. That really pissed him off. The ‘boss’ might have had an inch on me in height, the ‘driver’ was about an inch shorter. I had at least 50 lbs of muscle on each of them. I’m not a small man. Plus, under my shirt, unbeknownst to either of them, over my right rear pocket, was a 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol, holstered.
They both got within my personal space, in order to intimidate me.
I immediately shifted my right foot back so that I was standing at a 45 degree angle to these gents, my hands resting at my belt buckle. It is my trained LEO defensive position. It takes my firearm out of their range, and gives me room to draw and fire a pistol, from close range.
The ‘boss’ then said
“I think you should give us our money now.”
I laughed out loud, a guffaw if you will.
“That shit has the aerodynamics of a cinder block, it ain’t going to fly. If you believe I can be intimidated, you’ve sadly mistaken the situation.”

About this time, my buddy Bob arrived with the two Rotties on leashes.
They saw the aggressive posture of the two gentleman and lost their damn minds. Bob was doing all he could to hold on.

That completely changed their attitudes.
“Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow then.” The ‘boss’ responded.
They both got into the truck and left.
Never to be seen again.

Several days later, the local newspaper had an article about ‘Gypsie pavers’ ripping off people, doing substandard work, and stealing from the houses where they were working.

They picked the wrong house.

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Were at a local park for a birthday celebration. Being one if the first ‘warm’ sunny days in Pittsburgh, it’s packed.
There is a set of adorable 4-5 yr old twin girls here running around.

“Look at the two twins, aren’t they adorable!”
“Well, yes they are, although you may not realize this, but the fact they are twins, means there are ‘two’ of them…”

I’ve done it myself..

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‘Why do people say a ‘pair of pants’ when there is a single item of clothing?’

The reason we say “a pair of pants” (instead of “a pant” or treating it as singular) comes down to a mix of historical fashion and quirky English grammar.
Pants is what’s called a plurale tantum (Latin for “plural only”)—a noun that only exists in plural form in standard usage, even though it refers to one single item. English does this with several objects that have two connected or symmetrical parts, especially bifurcated (two-branching) ones covering the legs:
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• A pair of glasses (spectacles)
• A pair of pliers
• A pair of jeans/trousers/slacks
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Historically, this plural habit for leg garments goes back centuries. Early leg coverings (like those worn by Ötzi the Iceman around 3300 BCE) were often two separate leggings or hose tied at the waist—one ...

Big’un@Big_un

November 30, 2022

The Day I Retired

Its almost the sixth anniversary...

Some of you may have looked at my photos and thought; what young looking handsome man… He couldn't be old enough to retire …

Thank you Mama

Anyway, I am 60 and I retired at 55 in July of 2017. I was given a retainer for two more months in order to be on call. I couldn’t always get a reliable Internet connection and I can’t take someone’s money for nothing, so I shut that down in Sept 2017…

So you are thinking, what day in July did you retire? I didn’t really retire in July 2017. I quit going to work then…

I retired Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016…

Life was good for @The_CINC and I.

It was shortly before Christmas 2016. Tiny dancer, our surprise baby was a junior in college. We had a 4K sqft house on 7 acres, 40 miles south of Washington DC. It was our second house in 33 yrs of marriage. We had lived there for over 20 yrs. The final house payment was due Nov 10, 2017.

The CINC was at the highest point you can achieve as a civilian Govt Employee without going into the Senior Executive Service. When she was offered SES, the CINC had gotten to the point at which it would have meant more work, more time away from home, for no more money (because of the pay structure) for at least five to seven years. We also knew we wanted to Retire, so it made no sense to invest the time required for an SES position.

She worked for OSD, DOD, WHS (The office that runs the Pentagon, they are the ‘Landlords’) for 34 years. At one point she ran a division that had a yearly budget of $1 Billion.

She would be eligible to retire in April 2017. We really hadn’t decided what we were going to do. My top-secret NSA/DOD clearance was supposed to be coming through anytime. One of my specialties was encrypted secure communications.

I was a subcontractor for IBM and they were paying $50,000 for my vetting. It had been 2 years because I was a traveling consultant that didn’t associate with my neighbors… I was gone all of the time and I couldn’t see any of them from my house anyway..

Once that clearance came through, I could double or triple my salary which wasn’t small in the first place.

Here we were, at the top of our earning potential, few bills, house almost paid for, kids all gone…

Life was good…

Then Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016, happened…

I was in Birmingham AL, working at the US HQ, of a regional US bank that had been acquired by a Spanish bank. I was digitizing and updating their manual and electronic bank and treasury transactions. I had been on this contract for three years. The last 10 months or so I had been mostly remote, working from my lazy boy.

They wanted me to come in for some end of the year meetings and Christmas parties.

I flew in Monday mornings, getting to the office around 10:00 AM. I would work 10 hours Monday, 12-14 Tuesday and Wednesday, 6-8 Thursday and then catch a flight home around 4:00 pm Thursday. I would have 40-45 hours in 4 days by the time I caught my flight home.

I was sitting at my ‘station’, there weren’t really ‘cubes’, just tables with 3-4” dividers that had plugs. It was basically a giant open room, semi closed at each end by meeting rooms. My seat was near the meeting rooms. Behind me to my right was a large opening which led to a spacious elevator lobby.

The bank of elevators were the divider for another large working area. If you really tried, you could easily get 150-200 people in the elevator lobby.

I had just come back from lunch. I was trying to wrap a few things up before heading to the airport. A woman calmly walks behind me and says “Does anybody know first aid?”

I stood up “Excuse me?!?” She pointed to the elevator lobby behind her.

So I walked that way to see what was happening…

I am a trained first responder. I was a police officer at the pentagon and I was a FFX County VA police officer. I am also a trained BSA leader with back country first aid training.

As I entered the elevator lobby I saw an extremely obese man laying partially on his back. A woman by his side rubbing his hand looking concerned. Another man near his feet watching. I looked around, there were about 10 gawkers.

“MA’AM!”

I startled the woman to look at me…

“We have to treat him for shock”

First thing I could think of, get him flat on his back, elevate his feet.

"Go get that footstool"

That gave her something to do and think about.

I looked at the gentleman "Find me something to keep him warm."

I got him on his back. He must have weighed 400 Lbs.

I ripped his shirt open, put my head on his chest.

No Breathing, no heartbeat.

I took his pulse at his carotid artery to make sure.

No, pulse, his face was white, blue lips, his eye lids were partially open, his eyes were already clouding over...

He was already dead.

I looked up for a second...

At least 175-200 people were watching me...

I could hear people sobbing..

Where the hell did they all come from?

So I measured up his sternum, and began compressions..

If you've never really done CPR...

The first time will gross you out. I broke every bone in his chest away from his sternum. It sounded like I was crushing a bag of potato chips.

Another gentleman, kneeling beside me asked "Shouldn't you do the breaths?"

I was doing this for show. I knew he was dead. I have seen and handled many dead bodies. He was already dead, he wasn't coming back.

I looked over at the decedent's face, my compressions were forcing his lunch out of his mouth.

"Turn his head to the side, sweep his mouth, knock yourself out."

About that time a woman came over with an automatic defibrillator.

As I was giving compressions, I talked her through placement of the electrodes. She was so upset, she couldn't read the instructions.

She placed the electrodes, hit the switch, and audible countdown started from 15. When it got to one, it would send the charge.

I kept doing compressions until the Defib audibly said 'CLEAR', at which time, for some reason , I through my arms up like a touchdown. As soon as the cycle was over, I started compressions again.

I was starting to get winded, when I heard the elevators open and EMTs emerged.

one immediately kneeled across from me and took over.

I simply stood up, and walked away.

I didn't want to be there anymore.

I walked back to my station, and packed my stuff.

I was going to the airport.

As luck would have it..

I followed the gurney down to the lobby, one of the EMTs on the guy's chest still giving compressions.

On the drive to the airport, the shakes hit... I can stay extremely calm in the most stressful situations, but it takes a heavy toll later.

After arriving at my gate, I sat down, my cell phone rang. It was my boss from the bank "I just wanted to let you know that the guy didn't make it."

'I know" I said, "I knew that before I left, thanks for letting me know"

I called @The_CINC and told her everything. I then said "I don't want to die in a cube farm. Let's retire"

The Bank, and my employer tried to do some kind of ceremony for me. I told them not to, it was a dumb idea. If he would have lived it would have been a celebration of his life. He died, there was nothing to be proud of.

That was why they gave me the retainer...

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