 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
As usual, the unusual happened -- regularly
© St. Petersburg Times A Trilby man invents a toilet that flushes itself and even remembers to put down the seat. A rabid fox grabs hold of a man's pant leg only to find no leg inside the pants. Turns out the crazy -- and now dead -- fox messed with the wrong double amputee. A divorce lawyer gets caught allegedly carrying a marijuana pipe into the courthouse. Tabloid writers would kill for such stories. Note to struggling tabloid writer: Spend some time in Pasco County. Here at the Pasco Times, we take great pride in seeking out wacky tales from our community. And why not? People love reading them. We love writing them. And there's never any shortage of material. Last year was no different. Here, then, in the tradition of the Pasco Times, is a look back at some of the year's highlights from the realm of the bizarre. We begin on the golf course, a peaceful enough place where people spend four hours away from life's pressures, whacking around a little white ball. But in Pasco last year, the golf course proved to be a perilous place. There was the story in April of 89-year-old Santo Bonventre, who finished a Saturday round at Holiday's Forest Hills Golf and Country Club and then went off in search of lost balls along the fairway of the par-5 sixth hole. He brought along his driver and a ball retriever. He ventured into swampy woods and lost his way. Then he got stuck. As night fell and temperatures dropped, Bonventre went to sleep. The search began the next day, after Bonventre didn't show up for church. And then, more than 24 hours after Bonventre disappeared, a spotter in a Sheriff's Office helicopter saw a man lying on his back in the mud, just a few hundred yards from the sixth fairway. Bonventre was waving his driver. Then there was the convoluted story of a brawl between two foursomes on the 17th tee of the Meadow Oaks golf course in Hudson. On the previous hole, one foursome teed off without waiting for the group in front to play their shots from the fairway. The foursome in the fairway became angry when three balls whizzed past their heads. Words were exchanged. Punches were thrown. A golf club was wielded. When it was over, the men walked away. The same cannot be said for the golf club, which was not designed to strike a man's back. Some say the club was an iron. Others say it was a 3-wood. Typical. Even reasonable men can disagree over club selection. Animals, particularly rabid ones, stir up trouble every year. But this year, a rabid fox picked an unlikely victim in Eddie "Buddy" Suggs of Hudson. Suggs is a double amputee, and a pretty tough one at that, as this story illustrates. The fox went for Suggs' pant leg and came up with a mouthful of britches. Suggs threw himself out of his scooter and on top of the fox. And then a neighbor came running with a hammer. The hammer won. Potty humor? Let's just say that John Velasco of Trilby gave new meaning to the term "royal flush." Velasco calls his invention -- now U.S. Patent No. 6,374,429 -- the "johnnyflush." It is a toilet with a brain. A toilet that never forgets to flush, or to put down the seat. Sitting on the seat pulls back a spring, and standing triggers the flush. For men, lifting the seat will also set a timer. When the timer runs out, the seat lowers itself. "This," said Velasco, 56, who is retired from a career in computer programming and management, "is my future." Such brilliant thinking, of course, is not universal. Take Korey Bradd Henderson of Lakeland. It's hard to stand out from the crowd at the annual Livestock hard rock festival in Zephyrhills. Henderson tried. He donned a bright orange jail uniform for the occasion. Bad move. A keen deputy took notice. Deductive reasoning told the deputy, "Something ain't right here." The deputy was right. Henderson, 25, had smuggled the uniform out of the Polk County Jail when he was released in January. That was the least of Henderson's problems. A quick computer check showed that Henderson was supposed to be on house arrest. He was sent back to the Polk County Jail and issued a new uniform. Tampa attorney James Lowy came to the New Port Richey courthouse in October to argue a family law case. He left with a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia. On his way into the courthouse, Lowy passed his briefcase through an X-ray machine. The machine detected a suspicious object. With Lowy's permission, a court bailiff opened the briefcase. Inside, the bailiff found a small pipe with some residue. The residue, according to a Sheriff's Office report, tested positive for marijuana. And who could forget the industrious group of inmates at Zephyrhills Correctional Institute who worked for months to dig a tunnel to freedom. They fashioned shovels out of old metal fan blades and filled pillow cases with dirt. They hid the bulging pillow cases in air conditioning ducts in the ceiling. Most members of the group were serving life sentences, and this was their only shot at freedom. They got within 40 feet. Their downfall: loose lips. They bragged about their plan to other inmates. A convicted murderer, hoping to win a transfer to another prison so he could serve his time alongside his brother, ratted out the group. If these stories share a common element, it is this: Nobody set out to do something funny or whacky. Maybe that's what makes the stories so appealing. Which brings us to former Sheriff's Office corrections deputy Neal McMinn, who showed what can happen when you try too hard to be funny. McMinn's idea of a joke: While on duty at the jail, he dialed up a toll-free gay phone sex line, then transferred the calls to unsuspecting corrections officers. He did this, according to a Sheriff's Office investigation, at least 168 times. Before he could be punished, McMinn resigned.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times |
