I feel like this story has been a long time coming. As follows are the trials and tribulations of my interactions with Jason Thornberry's father, aka "Fast Eddy."
Others may only know him as "Old Eddy," which was how his son Jason Thornburg, referred to him habitually. Yes his real name is Thornburg, not Thornberry. It's pertinent to know: Jason absolutely hated being referred to as Thornberry - initially...Around the time we first met there was a Nickelodean show named The Wild Thornberrys. I've never seen the show and know nothing about it but that was my jumping off point to both make fun of him and later befriend him. In retrospect, I may have been an asshole (just this once).
It's ironic when you fast forward, that he not only accepted the "Thornberry" moniker but embraced it. Even having a pseudo-wrestling move named after "himself" (although I came up with the name - just like I came up with "the truth hurts" - Zidane... but that's another story) The infamous "Thornberry Dicksucker." Essentially it entails putting someone's head between your legs when they're probably bent down or vulnerable and then shouting "ahhhh!" Both pathetic and apropos - and also socially conducive, as everyone can perform this.
All of this interaction happened during our first sophomore year at North Meck HS. Given we live on parallel streets within walking distance from one another, when a new high school opened up, Hopewell, we were both once again lopped together. Being thrust into an alien environment naturally brings people closer. So Jason & I started spending more time together after school. Once I "got" a parking pass (and by got I mean parked illegally in random peoples spaces), I offered to drive him both to & from school, which he accepted. Picking him to and from his home obviously exposed to me to a different part of his life. Enter: Edward Charles Thornburg.
Jason had continually been referring to and making fun of his dad as "Old Eddy." This was essentially one of the tenants of our friendship: making fun of this character he was in sole control of describing: "Old Eddy." He'd bring him up in conversation continually as a reference to essentially a stubborn idiot, at whom we'd both laugh. The longer this continued however, the more of an enigma Old Eddy was in my mind. Until...
One day I was jumping on Jason's trampoline doing flips and his dad came out of his double-wide screaming "what the fuck, man? Man, what the fuck?" toward Jason, clearly about my acrobatics. He was convinced I was going to intentionally injure myself to sue him and demanded I stopped. I did, however I found this entire situation gloriously hilarious. The absurdity of me intentionally disfiguring myself aside, I think I could've chosen a better target if that was my end-game. So I stopped jumping and got down off the trampoline for a meet and greet with this man who took me to task.
He's a tall slender man with a grey mustache out of Tombstone and angry, piercing eyes.
"Hi, sorry for freaking you out, I'm Chase." I said.
He hesitantly shook my hand and replied "hey, Eddy."
Jason diffused the tension by asking his dad to show me his workshop, where he had a drag-car as a work-in-progress. I had seen some of the pictures Jason had showed me before of his dad's former cars so I was legitimately interested and Eddy seemed to pick up on this, as he seemed actually eager, despite trying to subtly disguise his emotion, to show me his current project.
We approach this large metal warehouse, like something those crossfit losers would use and he opens the large steel slide-up garage door. This facility was intimidating... it looked like a meat locker, except instead of carcasses hanging from hooks, there were engines hanging from chains from the ceiling. Wow, was my reaction.
"Wow." I exclaimed. "You have a ton of engines here." Half of his mustache perked up as he smirked confidently and grunts "...Yeah."
Then I can't help but address the elephant in the room, which was absolutely why he had agreed to show me this. It was an older station wagon... one of those old Buick's with the wood-looking siding. However, this one was "slightly" modified. He popped open the hood and it had a super-charged 454 inside it... Sick. Then he opened the door and told me "sit in the driver seat for a sec."
"Okay" I replied. Then he exposes the NOS containers and switches and says "this stuff keeps 'em guessing," with a smile wider than his mustache. Both Jason and I busted out laughing to the extent we were nearly in tears. Oh - I almost forgot (lie: I never forget) to finish describing the car. On the side of the car, superimposed over the wood finish there was large red print that read: "Fast Eddy." Fucking awesome.
As Jason and I became closer friends his dad became more and more comfortable with me whilst I simultaneously realized how paranoid and odd some of his behavior was.
"Don't tell anyone about anything you've seen in here." He kept telling me, referring to his garage. I'm not sure who he thinks I would've told. Eventually I joined the Hopewell wrestling team and I couldn't give Jason a ride home, but encouraged him - because he was constantly trying to wrestle everyone - that he should try it out. He came to a few practices with me and one day "Fast Eddy" showed up to spectate. He seemed impressed enough to regal Jason and me with a random story of his about "farm wrestling."
"Yeah, I'll tell you what man..."he begins. "Back in the day I was working on the farm and at the end of the day all them big ole farm boys was like 'it's time to wrastle'." At this point Jason, I and several other members of the wrestling team are looking at each other, partially confused and totally entertained.
He continues "And man, I was like 'I ain't wanna wrastle man, you know?' So they was gonna try anyway, and right when we was getting up, BLAM, I elbow 'em in the eye." He stated beaming at his audience, half of whom were too stunned to react. "Yeah... he continues, I was a scrapper." He says.
Jason and I are laughing our asses off which is made awkward by the fact that anyone else who heard seems utterly confused and hesitant to react. Later, he drove us home in his Mazda light-truck (which also had a 454 in it) from practice. This was the closest Eddy and I became.
***
...So back to the future, canonically, which is technically in the past, presently. A friend who probably doesn't want to be named, let's call him "Leo" -for the sake of storytelling- and I were in my basement sitting on chairs removed from a Toyota and taking shots on a drawing board while listening to music on my Xbox. Leo looks at me with a gleam in his eye.
"We should go do something." he says. This is the same gleam in his eye he had when the neighboring development of Birkdale was being built next to my property and we used to T-off and drive through houses, golf drive... Anyhow this look had me slightly worried.
"What is something?" I ask. "Something fun" he assures me. "This is stupid," I reply while following him out to his truck. "Yeah," he replies excitedly.
So we're both drunk, underage and driving down Babe Stillwell. The reason for this still eludes me and solely resides in Leo's head, I hope. Then he starts veering off the road. "What the fuck are you doing?" I scream. "Trust me." he replied.
Then the truck slowly approaches someone's mailbox and knocks it over. The first of many we would knock over that night. One of which, as you can probably guess, was the mailbox that belonged to a Mr. Edward Charles Thornburg aka "Fast Eddy." It's pertinent to remember here: he is a scrapper.
I awoke the next morning to the calm, dark void that is my room, formerly known by some as the V.I.P. lounge. An underground palace without windows or any external stimuli - I miss it. Anyhow after I exit my room and make my requisite restroom break, my friends Leo and Bill are there hanging out.
Bill and I always had a proclivity for verbal sparring in general - when we first met, he and his cohorts would call me "Ultrafag" as some sort of wordplay to my AIM screen-name Ultrachase. They were a creative bunch. Anyhow, verbal sparring... knowing Old Eddy's mailbox had been knocked over for whatever reason I decided this would be the perfect time to deride him further, with my the help of several of my friend's who are simply aliases. Roger McCormick stood up - a British jackass. And for the aforementioned reasons, I decided it'd be funny if Roger McCormick now was a postal worker, who needed to contact Eddy to inform him of his mail being "backed up." After Roger called him I actually felt somewhat guilty as he seemed to believe me. He rectifies his mailbox the next day and all is fine. 'Til Leo runs over it again that is.
This time Roger McCormick had the day off and Bill's alias "Clementine" who also happened to work for the US Postal Service, contacts Eddy about his mail "problem." It's pertinent to know that "Clementine" was a thug in every sense of the word and this probably scared Eddy even more than his mailbox being decimated twice. His response was what any paranoid white guy with a mustache would do: put up a new mailbox the next day. Unfortunately, this was turning into a vicious cycle which Leo viewed as a challenge.
A passer-bye wouldn't have noticed the difference in Eddy's mailbox the next day. Little did Leo, Bill or I realize,.. Fast Eddy was about to "start trying." He bought a reinforced steel pole for his "mailbox" that was all of 12 feet long, along with creating a concrete base - real stalk. He also contacted his corrupt police friend, "Officer Harrington." A man who accused me of half a dozen things I'd never done. For example: he looked at my dad's truck tires like he was a one-man CSI unit and decided "these tires match the tire tracks on Oliver Hager Road, this truck has hit a mailbox." "That truck hasn't even been driven in weeks." I replied, to no avail.
Weeks later I had to come home from NC State to deal with a bullshit traffic ticket I shouldn't have been accused of to begin with (single mom vs 5 eye-witnesses: she didn't even show up but I still had to spend money both returning and for a lawyer: what a cunt) to face officer Harrington's accusations of me supposedly running over "Fast Eddy's" mailbox(es). To his credit, Leo was there to potentially confess, so I didn't get thrown in-jail as "all" I did was make harassing but hilarious phone calls, not "destruction of personal property."
In the end it didn't matter as Fast Eddy didn't show up for the case, as he essentially realized he had none (his officer friend made up a ton). However, that hadn't stopped his corrupt officer friend from filing several warrants on me. So despite me "winning" the case, I was immediately jailed for simply showing up...and received an unexpected but perhaps deserved...
...Reality Check.
