Lohbado committed the sin of pride. It was bad enough to speed down a sacred highway, but to boast about it had disastrous consequences. However, this story is inspirational. It does have a happy ending.
One night Lohbado went to the bar, drank too much wine and began boasting about his 1967 Oldsmobile with a 455 cc engine. That thing roared under the hood like a lion when you started it up. Out on the highway, the only way you’d know you were going over a hundred miles an hour was how the hydro poles whipped past the window. He’d take that car out on a flat stretch of country road and bury the needle.
One afternoon, a policeman pulled him over, but didn't give Lohbado a ticket. He let him off with a warning. Divine intervention put the policeman in a good mood and saved Lohbado from a costly fine.
Later that night, in the Bull’s Blood Tavern, Lohbado ordered a bottle of house wine and started boasting about how fast he was driving and how the cop let him go. His buddies didn’t find the story so exciting, just average, half boring, half ok. They weren’t too excited about Lohbado and how he avoided a speeding ticket. But Lohbado went on and on as if he was king of the road in his huge gas guzzling car.
Pride comes before a fall. Spirits hovering above the Bull’s Blood Tavern heard his boastful, swaggering talk and didn't like it. Lohbado showed no humility or appreciation. He took all the credit for himself, as if there was something clever about how he talked to the cop. Had Lohbado been a bit more humble, he might have noticed how a highway spirit had intervened on Lohbado’s behalf, and influenced the policeman to not give Lohbado a ticket. Instead of thanking his lucky stars, Lohbado got puffed up and arrogant about it. The spirits didn’t like that. They decided to teach him a lesson.
After closing time, Lohbado staggered out to the parking lot with a Lohbada, who had been drinking coke and agreed to drive him home. He handed her the keys and walked around to the passenger size when a huge bang sent bricks flying and shattered windows up and down the street. People screamed. A bomb went off in the Milky Way Cabaret across the street, owned by Snake Skin Biker Gang. They were having a turf war with Raven Riders of Paradise. The bomb blast knocked Lohbado to the ground. Lohbado screamed as Hank drove over him, in his 1972 pea green Chevrolet Impala. The car ran over his two arms. Lohbado went unconscious and had a near death experience.
That’s another story, Lohbado’s Dance of Death. This story has an inspirational twist. Lohbado wasn’t a bad guy. He fed squirrels and pigeons, gave change to homeless people, helped little old ladies across the street and once rescued a cat from a tree. He’d been in and out of love a few times, but was still on reasonable terms with his ex. He took his son Rex every other weekend to Joey’s diner for a hamburger, fries and a large pop. When Joey grew too big for his bicycle, Lohbado bought him a larger one. All and all, Lohbado was all right. He’d done nothing wrong, except boast a little too loud sometimes and occasionally drink too much. Some people might find Lohbado's punishment a little severe. Let this be a warning to not offend local spirits.
Lohbado woke up without arms. The doctors, for some reason Lohbado could not quite understand, had to amputate both arms at the ball and socket joint, right where the arms joined his shoulders. Lohbado didn’t realize that this was the work of the road spirits. Angry demons told the doctors where to cut. Lohbado didn't pay in money. He paid with the loss of his arms, for the arrogance of racing down the sacred to Isabella Stumps. In a house off this road, five hundred years ago, when the road was nothing but a game trail, Isabella Stumps experienced the mysteries of Oogah and Oorsis. To race down that sacred highway was disrespectful to the Sacred Isabella Tradition of the Oogah-Oorsis Mysteries. It was Isabella who sent the policeman to stop Lohbado. He wasn’t an ordinary cop. He was a spirit messenger from Isabella.
The policeman had all the signs of being a spirit cop. Had Lohbado paused long enough to gaze into the policeman’s eyes, he would have seen tiny, luminous letter As in each pupil and a tiny red bead of light between the eye brows. He didn’t notice the rainbow light reflected on the shiny visor of the policeman’s hat, or his crystal front teeth. Lohbado’s vision was obscured. His mind was elsewhere. He hadn't been aware of where he was or what he had been doing when he raced down that northern highway.
Lohbado got pulled over for speeding. He was given a chance. But he didn’t get the message. He wasn’t connected or tuned in to what was going on. Lohbado was disembodied, or separated from his true nature. His mind sank into soggy clouds of daydream and fantasy. He missed the drama going on in front of his nose.
The spirits tried to warn Lohbado as he drank wine and started guffawing about his wild antics out on the highway. Lohbado talked like he expected to live a thousand years, as if he would leave a monument behind to himself and his stunt driving. What a shock, to wake up in hospital without arms. There was no way he could wipe his nose or scratch his ear. He would have to learn to do all that with his feet. A long, steep learning curve lay ahead. So many bodily functions and activities, would require the use of his feet. He would have to do yoga exercises to stretch the leg muscles, so that he could rub his eyes with his toes and use toe nails to pick meat scraps from between his teeth.
The biggest blow was that Lohbado would have to stop being a handyman. A handyman requires hands in order to be handy. Lohbado cursed himself, over and over again for his big words at the bar table. He’d really put a foot in his mouth. He had a vague feeling at the time, that something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on the problem. After the arms were gone, it became quite clear.
After the amputation, Lohbado went through a time of depression and discouragement, which lasted about two years. He went on welfare, lost motivation and wasted away to skin and bone. Sometimes he would sit on the street and beg for spare change, but mostly he lay in bed, his face to the wall.
After two years, Isabella decided Lohbado had suffered enough. She sent spirits to help a medical scientist, Dr. La-man, who was doing research using cells from unborn babies in a clinic on a secret Island in the Pacific. To protect his work, the location of this secret island will not be revealed at this time. It was situated in a power spot, at a star shaped juncture of ionic energies, a cosmic portal to celestial streaming from deep within the Milky Way. Dr. La-man milked energy coming from the stars. Some people thought his methods were pretty cheesy. There are always critics ready to tear apart a good thing. Some people thought it was a sin to be tampering with unborn babies, or aborted fetuses. It was a highly emotional issue, overlaid with strong opinions.
While opinions raged, pro and con, Dr. La-man discovered a means to plant fetus cells into human tissue in order to spawn new limbs. He tried it on a three-legged dog. The dog, with the fetal cells, miraculously grew a fourth leg. Dr. La-man had never tried it on humans. When Lohbado heard about the underground clinic on a secret island, he decided to go in search of this miracle cure for missing limbs.
There was one obstacle. He had to raise money for plane fare, plus costs of the expensive medical procedure. How would a welfare man like Lohbado come up with the money? His initial high hopes of obtaining a miracle cure were dashed to the ground as he realized the overwhelming obstacle of trying to obtain a large amount of money in a short time.
Lohbado went to the loan sharks, organized criminals who would lend money to anyone, but disembowel whoever did not pay when it was time to pay up. It took courage to borrow from the Gonzale loan sharks. A man hung himself the other day. He figured it was less painful to take his own life than to let the loan sharks sink their teeth into him when it became obvious that he would not be able to pay off the debt.
Big Louis laughed when Lohbado walked in, no arms and reached out a foot to shake hands. Lohbado figured he could earn the money to pay back Big Louis by going on educational TV programs. If Louis would help him get started, Lohbado would contact a producer and new reporters to make sure the miracle procedure of restoring missing limbs became a lucrative, media event. Big Louis agreed about the possibility of raking in big bucks if the operation was a success. But he didn’t believe in miracles. He figured Dr. La-man was a scam. Lohbado went on Internet and showed him the photos and documentation about the growth of a fourth leg on a three legged dog. Big Louis happened to love dogs. He shared a bed with an English Mastiff and owned a Great Dane and a St. Bernard. Big Louis couldn’t resist the Dubetube video of the cute dog and its fourth limb. He agreed to lend the money.
There was just one catch. After Dr. La-man agreed to do the procedure on Lohbado, he told Lohbado that they couldn’t operate until they found the right fetal cells. The cells had to be fresh. If not handled correctly, the cells could die. For the procedure to work, the cells had to be kept at bodily temperature, in a saline solution. Some slight fermentation would actually aid the procedure. The cells would be allowed to ripen, like cheese. Once the cell culture peaked, they would have to be installed, without hesitation into the recipient, if the procedure was to work.
Here’s where the inspirational part comes in. Lohbado wouldn’t give up. He’d sunk into poverty, alienation and despair. Right when he had begun to thing about suicide, he heard about the miracle cure on the secret island in the Pacific. He knew that with the right baby cells, he could grow new arms out of the stumps of his shoulder blades. If Dr. La-man could implant fetal cells into the shoulders, new arms would grow. Lohbado was convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the operation would be a success. It worked on the dog. It had to work on Lohbado. Big Louis lent him the money. There was no turning back. All he had to do was get those cells.
Get those cells! To wrap up the loan deal, Big Louis took Lohbado to the Milky Way Cabaret to have a few drinks and watch the go-go girls. One of the dancers, Lulu, was pregnant, but could still dance. Her belly was starting to swell, but not too much. Nobody said anything about it. The night Big Louis and Lohbado went in for drinks, a misfortune happened to Lulu. I won’t go into painful details. It makes me sad just thinking about it, but Lulu experienced cramps while dancing and then collapsed and had a miscarriage.
Someone asked if there was a doctor in the audience. As if on cue, Lohbado jumped up, rushed on stage to help Lulu. People were too shocked by the miscarriage and a bit intimidated by the fact that Lohbado had no arms. They didn’t say anything. They did what he said; as if it were normal for an armless man to rush on stage at a cabaret and play doctor. Lohbado slipped her a thousand dollars and had her sign a napkin saying the fetus was being purchased for medical purposes. She was about to scream at him in horror and outrage, the sheer audacity of his request, but she noticed his lack of arms and the way he held the bundle of twenties between his toes make the situation so intensely absurd, she quickly signed the napkin and ran sobbing from the stage.
He gathered up the aborted fetus in his feet and asked that it be put in a plastic container of warm salt water. He then instructed the other go-go girls to help Lulu get cleaned up and to take her home. He prescribed a week of rest and gave her five morphine tablets, which Louis had offered Lohbado. This was a miraculous coincidence, where loose threads came together. Lohbado had a generous loan from the most dangerous shark himself, Big Louis. He had a fresh fetus. All he had to do was get to the secret island of Dr. La-man as quickly as possible.
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