friends
Posted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 1:00 pm
"Friends", I was discussing the subject with Feral not long ago. The topic being, some stick and some disappear. My theory being that if a friendship is based on a single common interest, once that topic is gone so is the friendship. If you have common experiences/values/deeply held beliefs, the friendship endures and can be picked up even after long absences.
I can’t recall how I met Leawood. It was probably at a tailgate feast near Memorial Stadium or at AFH going to a game with Defixione, back when Defix had access to front row seats behind the scorer’s table. We both grew up to become professionals and have our own practices, and we both have a penchant for fighting for and helping the “little guys”. Me, because I grew up poor and Leawood, well.....he is short.
Whether he called me or I called him I don’t remember, it was probably a decade ago. But we got word of an Amish farmer in the sad little town of Windsor MO who was being sued. The farmer, being in need of supplemental income would work demolition, taking apart collapsing buildings on Main Street and selling the lumber/bricks for salvage. There was a small town grifter and her attorney accomplice who were suing the guy because they claimed his work on a building had affected her building two doors down. Her building was uninhabitable now because of roof and structural damage.
Leawood and I slow rolled into town, hired guns from the big city.
It was hard to reach our client as he had no phone and our only contact was via a phone at the local hardware store. The store owner was sympathetic to his plight and was trying to help him find someone who could help him. Leawood knew this as an attempt to take the farm from the farmer by judgement seeing as the farmer knew of no way to contest the case. Leawood was pissed, “this will not stand”.
I did my assessment first. It didn’t take long to document that their whole premise was full of shit. The demolition work a couple of months prior, reportedly “had damaged the new roof on the building”. The roof was built up roofing felts with a liquid tar coating on top. It was alligator cracked all to hell and there were multiple empty buckets of sealer laying up there that had been poured out into cracks and left when I climbed up for a look. Even the patches were alligator cracked. I seem to recall a small tree growing through the roofing as well. For a “new” roof, it seemed to have aged decades rather quickly. The building itself was built between two taller masonry structures and was framed independent of them. The shaking of the building adjacent to it was only able to transmit impact across a tar paper flashing. Hardly a good conduit for vibration transmission.
I wrote my report and loaded the Leawood gun with the signed and sealed expert opinion bullet. He fired on them in a withering barrage of letters/emails. If you think he is funny on here, his letters to the plaintiff’s attorney were good reading as well. In the end the case was dropped and the grifters left the farmer alone. Leawood seemed pretty pleased with himself. I could tell he enjoyed kicking the bastards in the nuts. In the end we both got stiffed on our invoices. But it was the moral cause of meting out a little rural justice that was the point of it all, so we just walked away.
It’s that sort of shit that makes Leawood my friend to this day. If he needs anything, he knows I will join his posse. He’s a good dude.
I can’t recall how I met Leawood. It was probably at a tailgate feast near Memorial Stadium or at AFH going to a game with Defixione, back when Defix had access to front row seats behind the scorer’s table. We both grew up to become professionals and have our own practices, and we both have a penchant for fighting for and helping the “little guys”. Me, because I grew up poor and Leawood, well.....he is short.
Whether he called me or I called him I don’t remember, it was probably a decade ago. But we got word of an Amish farmer in the sad little town of Windsor MO who was being sued. The farmer, being in need of supplemental income would work demolition, taking apart collapsing buildings on Main Street and selling the lumber/bricks for salvage. There was a small town grifter and her attorney accomplice who were suing the guy because they claimed his work on a building had affected her building two doors down. Her building was uninhabitable now because of roof and structural damage.
Leawood and I slow rolled into town, hired guns from the big city.
It was hard to reach our client as he had no phone and our only contact was via a phone at the local hardware store. The store owner was sympathetic to his plight and was trying to help him find someone who could help him. Leawood knew this as an attempt to take the farm from the farmer by judgement seeing as the farmer knew of no way to contest the case. Leawood was pissed, “this will not stand”.
I did my assessment first. It didn’t take long to document that their whole premise was full of shit. The demolition work a couple of months prior, reportedly “had damaged the new roof on the building”. The roof was built up roofing felts with a liquid tar coating on top. It was alligator cracked all to hell and there were multiple empty buckets of sealer laying up there that had been poured out into cracks and left when I climbed up for a look. Even the patches were alligator cracked. I seem to recall a small tree growing through the roofing as well. For a “new” roof, it seemed to have aged decades rather quickly. The building itself was built between two taller masonry structures and was framed independent of them. The shaking of the building adjacent to it was only able to transmit impact across a tar paper flashing. Hardly a good conduit for vibration transmission.
I wrote my report and loaded the Leawood gun with the signed and sealed expert opinion bullet. He fired on them in a withering barrage of letters/emails. If you think he is funny on here, his letters to the plaintiff’s attorney were good reading as well. In the end the case was dropped and the grifters left the farmer alone. Leawood seemed pretty pleased with himself. I could tell he enjoyed kicking the bastards in the nuts. In the end we both got stiffed on our invoices. But it was the moral cause of meting out a little rural justice that was the point of it all, so we just walked away.
It’s that sort of shit that makes Leawood my friend to this day. If he needs anything, he knows I will join his posse. He’s a good dude.
