Juney Says 'Bye

[The entire liberal and progressive blogosphere is riled to a rolling boil this morning by the President's compromise with the Republican party on continuation of the Bush era tax cuts to all income levels. Instead of adding to the furor, I've chosen today to provide the comic relief.]

Nobody savors the eccentricities of the South more than a Southerner. I offer a story from the Florence, South Carolina, "Morning News" about Mr. Albert Simons, Jr. (Juney, to his family and friends).  I got an exclusive interview with Albert's first cousin today, who noted drily that this article, "sounds just like him." My source gave me two more highly colorful tales to add to the Morning News feature. To my fiction-writing friends: you know you couldn't make up anything this good.

December 6th, 2010:

Independent Welder Plans To Close Shop To Public

Albert Simon has been doing “creative” welding at Simon’s Welding Shop for 49 years.

Simon’s philosophy is, “I can make just about anything and fix just about anything else.”

Take for instance the cab of an old school bus. It sits at the front of the shop.

Take a peek inside.

There’s a huge cushion on the first step to make it easier to get to the second step. Once inside, one can luxuriate in a well-worn easy chair that resides where the driver’s seat used to be.

And just across the way is another easy chair covered with a blanket.

Country music wafted from a portable stereo placed in front of the side window, which was covered with an American flag. A scanner was next to the stereo so that Simon can keep up with all that’s going on in Darlington.

“The front of that bus is my front office,” Simon said. “I can sit out there, get my business done and at the same time keep my eye out for customers.”

But come the end of this month, Simon isn’t going to be looking for customers because he’s planning to close his shop to the public.

He said this will be the end of an era because he’s the last independent welding shop in Darlington.

“I’m not retiring,” he emphasized. “I’m just not going to be here most of the time. I’m going to be here when I want to be here.”

Saying Simon and his shop are unique would be a vast understatement.

Take for example exotic birds. Simon has been into them for more than five years.

He makes them out of recycled material. The one he’s featuring now is a stork with a body made out of a fire extinguisher.

“It will look real good once I get it painted a color I like,” Simon said. “This is about the last one I’m making out of fire extinguishers because they are getting too hard to get. I’m going to use small propane cylinders like you use on a grill from here on.”

And Simon has a genuine Bud Lite lamp in his building. He made it out of a Bud Lite beer bottle.

But there’s another project that Simon has been working on for 10 years. He hasn’t finished it because most of the people who started out helping him with it have died.

The project is the remains of an old Trailways bus that came from Canada.

“We just cut the cab off of it to put on a pontoon boat,” he said. “It’s been right time consuming, but we are down to the part of putting the cab on the boat. It takes about six hands and I ain’t got but two. I don’t have no help anymore.”

There’s an unusual chair near the bus. It is anchored by a truck rim. A pole rises up to greet a boat seat that is welded on it.

“I put a table on it to read the Morning News so that when the phone rings I can just push the table away and get up and answer the phone,” Simon said. “I put drink holders in it that I made out of the bottoms of propane cylinders and then made me a place to eat.”

The last thing Simon worries about in the winter is staying warm in the airy building. He built a heater that can burn used motor oil out of an air conditioning compressor tank . He stood it up on its end, put legs on it, added a door and put a stack on it. He pumps oil into it from 55-gallon drums in the rear of the shop.

People from all walks of life have left their autographs and written things on one of the doors in the shop.

One of the more interesting ones reads, “Free at last after 562 days in jail.”

Meanwhile, closing his shop to the public will give Simon more time to enjoy his motor home. He converted a 1965 school bus into a camper replete with a dead-bolt lock on the front door.

Among others, he uses it to go on trips to Lake Wateree in Camden or Santee.

In that exclusive interview today, Juney's first cousin Susan was willing to speak on the record. When I expressed some reticence about publishing Mr. Simon's story, Susan gave me an ironic look and said, "It was on the front page of the local paper." Well, there is that. In this age of leaked secrets, I take my chances.

Susan reports that Juney's father, Albert Sr., owned an auto paint shop that painted stock cars raced at the Darlington Motor Speedway. In high school, Juney would take his shoes out to the paint shop before school and spray paint them to match his outfit. She said the girls were just wild about Juney; he was voted Most Popular senior year at Florence High School.

Somewhere back there, Juney lost his front teeth--had to wear a partial plate. He liked to drop that plate down over his bottom lip and stick his tongue out through the gap in order to gum people. One time he tried gumming out the window of his car while driving fast and his partial was whipped right out of his mouth. Gone with the wind.