Episode 9
Dango and the King- Part 1
The second event in my early twenties occurred one summer while I was mowing lawns with a crew of other lawn mowers. It was before I read the book of secrets, and I was still too young and naive to understand the objects of value and perceived values.
Unknowingly, my focus was to use the perceived value of big muscles, long hair, and a nicely tanned body to obtain at the time what I thought was an object of value, a girlfriend.
The girlfriend didn’t happen right away because one day, an older orange-colored panel truck pulled up to where we were working. A guy also in his early twenties jumped out and found the foreman, who then put him to work trimming bushes around the lawns we were mowing.
He wore a beret-type hat, with longer brown hair streaming out from beneath it. His face bore thick glasses and a scraggly beard, while his body wore a t-shirt and jeans, and other than the hat, he fit right in with the rest of us. In addition, he constantly had an illegal smile on his face that never went away, never. Not that he was stoned, at least at that moment, but it seemed he knew things only a few other people did. Let’s say his name was Dango.
During our lunch break, we all gathered around the newbie lawn care agent to perform our inquisition on him. His answers came with a strange accent and were always vague, brief, and direct.
Q: Where are you from?
Dango: Back east.
Q: What are you doing here?
Dango: Traveling.
Q: Got a girlfriend?
Dango: Nope.
Q: Smoke pot?
Dango: Yep.
Q: Got any on yah?
Dango: Nope.
He was cool, and like I said, he fit right in. As work broke up for the day, Dango asked where I lived. I told him with a bunch of others in a big house. He then asked if I thought he could park his panel truck in the driveway and sleep in it. I told him there was a spare room in the house, and we could see if it’d be OK if he crashed there. Later, the other house members agreed.
Dango and I would become good friends, and when summer started shutting down, he asked if I had plans for Thanksgiving. I didn’t, and then he asked if I would join him at his parents’ house back east for the holiday and help with driving and a few chores he needed to complete back home. I agreed.
During the drive to Dango’s parents, he opened up some more, primarily, I think, to prepare me for what I was about to experience. Either he was going to be the tallest teller of tall tales I would ever meet, or everything he told me would be factual. It didn’t make sense why he would make any of it up, since I was about to witness most of what he was telling me, and then I’d know he was the greatest liar in the world. He wasn’t.
To this day, I still don’t know why he chose me to go with him on this life-changing experience, except maybe he knew I would someday be a witness to what he was about to show and tell me, and then, even though I was under advisement not to, perhaps if he died, I’d someday expose his bigger picture.
The reason for his accent was that Dango went to a private school abroad. Now, going to a private or boarding school isn’t earth-shaking until you learn the school was only meant for a few people. Sure, you’d learn the reading, writing, and arithmetic stuff, but also other things about the world not taught in schools or anywhere else. Of course you’d need money to go to a private school, but even more to go to this school—a lot more.
Dango carried a credit card from which he could buy whatever he wanted for the rest of his life and never max it out. In fact, everyone in the world could probably buy whatever they wanted from the family wealth and never spend it all. You see, there are billionaires in the world, but only a few more wealthy we never know about that can make billionaires look like paupers.
Despite having access to unlimited wealth, Dango didn’t want any part of it beyond meeting basic needs, and then I understood his disguise as just another hippie traveling worker.
To say his relationship with his dad (let’s call him “the king,” since it is more accurate) was strained would be a huge understatement. The king was a retired negotiator-attorney who worked with the guv that negotiated everything about legal contracts between other countries that nobody ever hears.
I have no idea what this department is called or if it even exists, as only the very few with the need to know do, but more probably a department isn’t needed, or otherwise it might be accountable somehow or somewhere.
As we approached our destination and exited off the freeway, we then drove down a two-lane highway for many miles. The orange panel truck then turned left down a two-lane road for many more miles, eventually turning right onto a graded gravel road for about two more miles. At the end of the road, we pulled into a circular drive.
To the right was a very nice but simple Swiss-looking farmhouse. To the left was a freshly-painted barn and other outbuildings. Further to the left was a small two-bedroom guest house where Dango and I would stay.
In the background, a historic river silently moved along, with heavily wooded acres all around the house and across the river. Although I didn’t see any, I imagined there were sharpshooters hiding in the foliage protecting home and family.
In about another minute, his mom, the king, and sisters spilled out of the house, and when Dango got out of his truck, he was mobbed by the women with hugs and kisses.
King was about a foot taller than anyone else, obviously the oldest of the bunch, also with thick Dango-type glasses and a pointy beard. All of them were dressed casually, the women in long, Amish-style flowered cotton dresses and the king in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, and they all spoke with the same Dango accent. I wasn’t sure if I was stepping into a cult or perhaps going to be the cooked centerpiece on the Thanksgiving table.
King waited his turn and then stuck out his hand to shake Dango’s. He finally waved at me to get out of the truck, and as I did, I could hear Dango introduce me.
I was also greeted with hugs and pretend kisses from the women, and it seemed both Mom and King said “welcome” at the same time, and he also shook my hand.
Mom told Dango and me to drop our luggage (backpacks) off in the guest house, rest, and clean up, then join them later for dinner. As I followed Dango into the nicely appointed guest house and dropped my pack near the corner of one of the two bedrooms, he looked at me with an even bigger grin. “So, what do you think?” I looked back at him stunned, “You’ve got to be effing kidding me!” That brought out a long, bent-over laugh from both of us.
What seemed the most shocking is these people were not pretentious in any way. Casual clothing was the dress, and everything was very nice but not gaudy. There were no statues spitting water or gold columns or marbled walls or steps. Anyone driving up would think it was just another nice farmstead. That was the plan.
The guest house was also nice with all the comforts of home, with serene views out every window. Dango told me more stories to help me adjust, and then we cleaned up and went to the house for dinner.
As we entered, Mom yelled for Dango to come into the kitchen, where the rest of the women were preparing dinner. After he did, I realized I’d be out of place, so then my eyes caught the king sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the living room.
As I entered the room, I noticed there was a console TV in one corner, with a large fire burning in the fireplace left of the TV. The nightly news was on, and then I glanced back at the king, who had a folded-up newspaper in one hand while drawing smoke from a pipe in his other hand.
Every now and then he’d glance up from the paper to glance at the TV. Before I could do or say anything, King blurted, “Well, don’t just stand there; sit down like you own the place.” I laughed and said, “Thanks,” and moved to a chair aside from him with a round antique table separating us, which was supporting a lamp and ashtray.
“So, how did you meet my son?” was the first question, which was his way of breaking the ice before further questions would rank me socially on whether I was royalty or a simple peon like the rest of the people outside his world.
I must have stammered a bit, because his next words were, “Well, mean what you say and say what you mean.” Now I may have that backwards, but I could tell he probably said it ad nauseam throughout his life.
I was admittedly intimidated by this man. I mean, what do you say or talk about to probably the most powerful and richest man in the world… ”Yo...sup, king?”
Eventually we got around to why I was there, to help Dango drive and assist with chores around the house that needed to get done. “Well good, you can earn your keep then,” was the next condescending thing to come from his mouth. It took me less than five minutes to realize why Dango kept his distance from the king.
I am thinking now that Dango must have overheard his dad berating me and came into the room to place an obstacle between us.
He did the same thing I did, first looking at the TV and then at the fireplace, and then at the king, and said, “I see some things never change,” which not only meant Dad watching TV with a newspaper and a pipe but also being clueless on how to communicate with other people of perhaps less stature.
King ignored his comment, “I have a list for you to do while you’re here, and I understand your partner in crime is going to help,” the king flinging his thumb in my direction.
“That’s the plan,” Dango smiled back at the king. I realized then and there why Dango always had a smile on his face; there would never be anything the king could say or do that would bother him anymore.
Still ignoring Dango’s replies, “Before I forget, there’s a change in plans. Hopefully you can get the jobs done quickly and help me drive the trailer down to Florida, or else your brother will have to.”
There were two hidden meanings in this statement. Dango knew what it meant driving the trailer down to Florida, and also having his brother drive would be the last thing in the world the king wanted.
His brother was the black sheep of the family, with King constantly pulling strings to get him out of serious trouble.
The brother had no qualms about spending his lot of fortune, wearing thousand-dollar suits, having his hair styled and greased back, and driving the most expensive cars available. All of his business adventures ended up bankrupt, except for a major pot farm in a tropical country, where he spent most of his days.
Going to Florida meant King going to a private island offshore for a meeting, and the brother would constantly pester King to take him with him, which everyone knew would be the worst disaster ever placed on this world.
Dango’s siblings also went to the private school, and everyone knew what went on in the meetings on the island, but as the proverbial elephant in the room, nobody wanted any part of it, except the dimwitted brother.
“I suppose you can drag him (throwing another thumb in my direction) along, or else I can fly him back home, because I also need you to drop a package off at Barkley’s.”
Dango glanced over to me. “Wanna take a road trip to Louisiana? You can meet Barkley; he’s a trip and lives in a museum.”
“He doesn’t live in a museum,” King interrupted, then corrected himself, “OK, maybe he does.” Then they both laughed. “I guess he can help you drive,” King said, still acting as if I wasn’t in the room. I simply said, “Sounds like fun.”
It was at this point that our attention turned to the outside door slamming, and Dango’s brother breezed into the room. He ignored the rest of us and demanded his papaw’s direct attention. It was the first time I ever heard a dad referred to as papaw.
Dango jerked his head to the left, intimating to me we should leave the room. We left and went into the kitchen, where the women started their inquisition on me.
This is a good place to absorb the contents of the straw in this episode before we go further on our journey.
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