My torts professor was old-school. Short, pudgy, longish gray hair, black-rimmed glasses, Santa Claus beard. He was one of eight people who graduated from the law school summa cum laude in the decades between 1969 and 2007. He clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked as general counsel for the United Mine Workers, and has taught torts and jurisprudence since 1973. His standard response to boneheaded statements was a sentence that began with the phrase, ‘That’s exactly right, and’ and ended with a quiet dismantling of his interlocutor’s logic. The only time I heard him say, ‘That’s crazy’ was when a friend of mine made an absurd suggestion by way of a joke; the sarcasm passed over him like a dunning request sent to a meth-head. He exuded quiet brilliance, unflappability, good nature, and an almost Asperger’s-like focus on the task at hand.
So – imagine the laugh he got when he mentioned the Beavis and Butt-Head defense.
Beavis and Butt-Head started out as two characters in a short film made by Mike Judge called Frog Baseball in 1992. They got their own series shortly thereafter. Other than a hiatus during the late nineties and the mid-to-late two thousands, they have been on the air with new content produced by Judge ever since. Beavis and Butt-Head are two teenaged boys who live up to their names. They are ugly, stupid, reckless, selfish, self-absorbed, sex-obsessed and misogynistic. They are normal teenaged boys.
In 1993, a five-year-old boy living in a mobile home park near Dayton, OH lit the manufactured home that he lived in with his mother and two-year-old sister on fire. The home was destroyed. He and his mother managed to escape the fire, but his little sister was killed. When asked about the boy’s behavior, the mother blamed it on Beavis and Butt-Head. She said that her son had been taught that fire was fun when he saw an episode of the show in which Beavis lights Butt-Head’s hair on fire and Butt-Head has a colloquy with a dumpster fire. Thatis what my torts professor referenced, when he mentioned Beavis and Butt-Head.[1]
I recently bought three new TRU mobile homes from Clayton Homes. TRU homes are the Toyota Corollas of the manufactured housing industry. They are the cheapest well-built models on the market. Clayton keeps costs for the TRU line down by eliminating customization. Everything in a TRU home is bog-standard, well-enough built, and uniform. Design kinks have been worked out in a way that is serviceable and cost-efficient.[2] Since Clayton has economies of scale, they can provide warranties and customer service that other manufacturers generally do not offer. I am a cheap bastard, so I like TRU.
I ordered the homes during the spring. Two weeks ago, Clayton contacted me to tell me that they were ready for delivery. I asked the sales rep if they could delay delivery to central New York because the pad in that park had been poured the day before, and I wanted the cement to cure. He said that they could not do that, because they do not have warehouse space to store the homes that they produce. Once they come off the line, they have to go out.
‘Could you give me a week?’, I asked. My mouth was watering because the sales rep’s Tennessee accent sounded like bourbon. ‘Sure’, he said.
‘Can you deliver the two homes to the park in northern New York on Thursday next week and the home to central New York on Friday? I would like to be there when they arrive, and I can’t be in two places at once.’
‘Of course’.
He sent an email confirming our conversation. The homes to be sent to northern New York would arrive on Thursday. The home for central New York would be there on Friday. I made travel plans.
At 10:30 Thursday morning, Mike, the manager of the park in northern New York and I were standing near the mailboxes in that park, waiting for the homes to arrive. A resident exited her home, saw us and waved. Mike said, ‘Here’s trouble’. I said, ‘She’s a nasty drunk, but she’s OK when she is sober.’
The resident was sober. We made some chit-chat. The last time we had spoken, she had been wearing a heavy winter coat. This time, she was wearing a tank top. I noticed that she had a tattoo at the point where her pec tendon meets her humerus, just above the top of her breast. She asked me why an educated, clean-cut guy from down-state like me would buy a park in northern New York. I told her that I bought the park to pay for my sins.
Then, my phone rang.
The dispatcher from Clayton told me that the drivers with the homes for northern New York were ninety minutes out, and that the driver with the home for central New York would be there in an hour. ‘The fuck you say’, I said. ‘That home is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I want to be there when it arrives, and I can’t be there today.’
‘The driver is on the way now.’
‘Friday is Friday and Thursday is Thursday. That is what we agreed.’
The dispatcher’s voice became hesitant. He said, ‘The driver has plane tickets to go on vacation for Saturday. He can’t get back to Tennessee in time, if he drops it on Friday.’
I don’t fucking care when he goes to Disneyland, I thought, I didn’t buy his fucking plane tickets and he knew this when he picked up the load. ‘That’s not what we agreed’, I said. ‘He will have to deliver it tomorrow. I am not ready to take delivery today.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
I scrambled to see if Dee Dee, the manager of that park, or Ivan, the maintenance guy, could cover for me. Both had made plans to be there on Friday, and could not rearrange their schedules.
When the homes arrived at the park in northern New York, one of the escort drivers asked me, ‘Y’all don’t have rednecks up here?’ I looked at Mike and said, ‘Oh, yeah. We have rednecks.’
‘But y’all don’t have hillbillies.’
‘That’s just a different flavor.’
That guy had a red beard down to his stomach. He said that he liked to make mead moonshine. It was illegal to sell it, but he would dispose of it on the barter system. Another said that, until Clayton had installed cameras in the cabs of their trucks, he had watched midget porn when he hauled loads. His wife was a midget and he got to missing her when he was on the road. I said,
‘A midget used to live in this park. He was a degenerate.’
‘This Trump country?’
I looked around and saw five Trump voters. ‘I’ll make it easy for you guys’, I said. I will bend over and grab my ankles.’
‘You a Democrat?’
‘I am a reasonable guy.’
‘I’m gonna put a sign that says ‘I love Trump’s butt’ on your car!’
As we were chatting, the dispatcher called again. The home had been delivered to the park in central New York. It was sitting on the pad. The fuck, I thought. After I asked them three times to not deliver it today! Then, I thought, Whatever. The toothpaste was already out of the tube. Yelling at the dispatcher wouldn’t unring the bell. ‘One of the drivers with you now can give you the paperwork when you inspect the home tomorrow morning’, the dispatcher told me. ‘Or we can just leave it in the home and you can send it to us with your signature.’ I looked at the driver who wanted to get back to his little-person wife. If I allowed them to leave the paperwork for me, he could go home a day early. ‘That’s OK’, I said. ‘You’re Clayton. If you say the home is on the pad, the home is on the pad. Let your guys go home.’
That evening, I drove down to the park in central New York. The home was not on the pad. It was half on and half off, with one set of wheels and the hitch hanging over the edge. The roof had been damaged in transit. And the driver had knocked over a lamppost when he backed it into the lot. I took pictures, noted the damage in the delivery report and sent everything to Clayton. When I looked at the paperwork that had been left for me, I saw that the name of the driver who had damaged the roof and knocked over the lamppost – the driver who had refused to show up when I would be there because he had to get to Disneyland and then lied about the facts – was named Rob Beavis. I can only imagine that his escort driver’s name was Ed Butt-Head. Butt-Head directed Beavis as Beavis was backing the home onto the pad. When Beavis knocked over the lamppost, Butt-Head laughed ‘Uh-uh-uh-uh’. Beavis got out of the cab, surveyed the damage, and then hunted around for a frog. The two had a game of catch, downed some Monster energy drinks, unhooked the home, and then headed back to Tennessee.
Only the unstable could make this shit up. I wish I could make it up, but I can’t. I’m a Democrat, but I’m not that crazy.
[1] The boy who set the fire is now thirty-five years old. He has told reporters that he never watched Beavis and Butt-Head when he was little, because his family did not have cable. To my knowledge, no law suits arose out of the incident.
[2] One example of a design innovation in the TRU Elation is the way the main living space is configured. In most mobile homes, the central part of the box is a combined open-plan kitchen and living space. The master bedroom is at one end of the box, and one or two bedrooms are at the other end. There is a small nook next to the back door, near the kids’ bedrooms, which holds washer-dryer hookups, the furnace is in a specially-made cabinet near the kitchen, and the hot water heater is hidden somewhere near one of the bathrooms. In the TRU Elation, the washer-dryer nook is eliminated. In its place is a small pantry off the kitchen area, which holds washer-dryer hookups as well as, behind some sheetrock, the furnace and the hot water heater. Inside the pantry, the main water intake, which feeds the washer-dryer hookups, has a shutoff valve. This frees up space at the other end of the living area and gives the homeowner a pantry. It also allows the owner to turn off water to the home without crawling underneath, to shut it off at the riser.
After looking at our exams, my torts professor commented that apparently none of us learned much about torts during our semester with him. He then suggested that after viewing our grades we read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to put our disappointment in perspective.