The Boogeymen of Granby.
Mar 26, 2023 7:39:42 GMT
Casanova English, Max f'n Daemon, and 5 more like this
Post by Jonathan Bacchus on Mar 26, 2023 7:39:42 GMT
At the age of 52, Marvin Heemeyer died alone and in the dark by his own hand. He left behind no immediate family or close friends – only a condemned muffler shop in the town of Granby, Colorado, population: 1,749. It’s a town so small – so rural and largely insignificant – that while our event is ostensibly billed as being hosted here, it’s actually taking place an hour and a half’s drive east over at the CU Event Center in Boulder. By all intents and purposes, Granby should be a town unknown to the American, let alone global consciousness. Furthermore, the pitiful death of Marvin Heemeyer, Granby resident and bachelor, should be just as unremarkable; lord knows, there aren’t thousands of Mavin Heemeyers who die broken and alone in rural towns every year.
But Marvin Heemeyer was different. Because Marvin Heemeyer’s madness made him a boogeyman.
I’m much more interested in a town like Granby far more than I’d ever be in Boulder, and that’s why I booked a room at the Little Tree Inn, about half a mile up the road from a lumber company which serves as the only truly meaningful employer in town. It’s a humble motel that probably doesn’t see many visitors when the weather gets this cold, and though the frail old woman behind the desk offers me the most courteous smile her sagging lips can muster, I can tell from the eyes behind her tiny, half-moon glasses that I don’t belong here. In my room, I wash my face in the sink and take a moment to curse my decision to dye my hair back to bright red before entering this town – I look nothing if not like an outsider. Still, money talks a universal American language, and it affords me a cup of coffee down at the Java Lava Cafe, even if the server doesn’t seem interested in speaking to me.
Granby is dying. Alone and in the dark, by their own hand. And Casanova English’s circus has rolled into town to ensure any sutures in place are torn out posthaste.
Marvin Heemeyer is the reason that our illustrious ringleader has selected Granby as his next killing field, as nineteen years ago he modified a Kamatsu bulldozer with custom armor plating and layers of concrete to go on a rampage through town over a zoning dispute. Dubbed “The Killdozer Incident”, Heemeyer’s rampage destroyed six buildings and totaled $7 million in damages. It destroyed a concrete plant (the only other viable place of employment besides the lumber mill), a local newspaper, a hardware store, the town hall, the library, and the home of a former mayor’s widow. He fired fifteen bullets from within the armored shell, and yet not a single death arose from the incident.
“Killdozer”, if you can’t gather, is a misnomer. “Killdozer” is a boogeyman.
How fitting it feels to me, as I trundle through snow and the bitter Colorado wind, that my opponents are no doubt in gyms, warehouses, and lord knows where else lacerating their skin or practicing their chair swings for this upcoming bout, while I walk a lonesome road towards the outskirts of town to find something resembling an answer. Casanova English has always used his siren song of carnival cruelty to lure in the stupid and violent – your Glums and Kilroys of the world who see this as their funhouse. They’re here – Kilroy was here – but the glitters is never golden enough to keep them for long. Their stories are those of Marvin Heemeyer’s: loud, nihilistic, and best worth forgetting.
Marvin Heemeyer owned a muffler shop just off of US Highway 40, which consists as the main thoroughfare through Granby. Granby’s not particularly remarkable in this regard – many small towns grew out of construction of the highways in the early 1900’s. Heemeyer moved to town less than fifteen years before his rampage, and when a local man asked to buy the land to construct a concrete plant, Heemeyer agreed for the sum of a quarter million dollars. Of course, upon agreeing to the deal, he changed his mind – just under a third of a million, and when that was also accepted, he asked for a million. The deal fell through. Heemeyer had made enough stink to get the locals onto his scent, and when they discovered his shop wasn’t in sewage compliance, he was fined.
But that’s enough to make some people snap – just being shown how grossly in the wrong they are. Stupid, pathetic men never liked being dressed down; they need to be be victim and villain in equal and opposing measures to fuel their own bitter madness at the world.
If my ol’ pal Max Daemon was here, and I was discussing this aloud, I’d wonder if he’d draw the conclusion. Our acrimony has gone so long it feels timeless, but I remember Max casting the first stones. I remember him salivating at the mouth to face me, and I remember beating him like a dog into unconsciousness with a chair. No doubt, Max is rearing his Killdozer and aiming squarely for my house first. Max, like Heemeyer, will think of himself as a Robin Hood ordained by God to punish the unjust, but in reality he’s nothing but a tyrannical, authoritarian child. You don’t lionize these people – you lift them by their ankle and spank them until they shut up.
To my left was the Country Ace Hardware – rebuilt since the rampage. It was here that the Killdozer’s escapade came to an end, trapped when the floor gave way and it found itself wedge in a basement. After two hours of police attempting in vain to end the madness, it was Heemeyer’s own stupidity and lack of foresight which doomed him. This tournament is practically designed to hoist competitors by their own petards and goad them into dangerous decision-making. You can speculate who the biggest sharks in the pond are – the Ronnie Straders, the Junko Suomas, and the Daturas of it all – but overpreparation for perceived threats is bad strategy. A day you spend obsessing over Kallie Reznik’s tape means nothing if she suddenly biting the dust and Kaeda Iruma’s in the next match. And, of course, there’s also the Craig Cogans over the world you expect to rip through without any rhyme or reason, more than content to take out a library as they are Town Hall.
The danger in the tournament is not the opposition – it’s the tournament itself. The Killdozer Cup is not the Killdozer – it’s the basement of the hardware store, waiting to buckle in and trap you in its shallow grave.
After twenty minutes, the coffee in my hands had lost its warmth, but it hardly mattered with my pilgrimage complete. The land before me was white and pristine with snow, save the leaves of dead grass which peaked out through the accumulation and the trail of a hare. It was here not even twenty years ago where Marvin Heemeyer began his assault on the sleepy town of Granby by tearing down his once beloved muffler shop. On one hand, I found irony in this first victim: the muffler shop which Heemeyer had been so determined to wring money from that it wrung his own throat, sold for just enough to complete his twisted revenge project, and bashed to pieces beneath the treads of his new monster. On the other hand, there could be nothing more appropriate: Heemeyer buried his boogeyman, that muffler shop which drove him to destruction, into the ground first so as to bury whatever power he felt it had in his warped mind.
As I watched the wind continue to swirl the snow in the field, I wondered what answers could be found here – what answers was I even seeking? A cursory glance showed that almost two decades of naturally reclamation and the diligence of the people of Granby had rendered the site unrecognizable. Were it not that I’d done my research before traveling here, it would’ve been almost impossible to recognize the importance of this lonely, desolate field – that is, were it not for the few fragmented remains of that concrete plant Heemeyer had moved onto as his second victim.
It was only a few old, rusted barrels, some broken cement pillars, and some rebar which suggested its location. After the destruction, the plant was never rebuilt and simply relocated to another town, and the lot still sat uninhabited to this day. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but applaud the town of Granby, whether intentional or not, to leave the specter of Heemeyer’s nemesis looming over his folly. Casanova English brought us to Granby to pick the scabs of a broken old town, hold their faces to a reimagining of their nightmares, and use us as his puppets in this twisted bit of theater. It was now I asked myself how many of my opponents – some of them good, decent people like Datura or my personal friend Addy – would see through the dangled prize to catch onto the act. Grandiose rewards can tempt foolish people to commit terrible atrocities, and the belief in divine providence and purpose can drive them to commit atrocity.
All you’d have to do is ask Marvin Heemeyer. If he was still here.
I lit a cigarette to warm myself, even if my gloves made it difficult to fish one from the pack and then manipulate the spark wheel. The sun would be setting soon, and I didn’t look forward to another long walk back in the cold after dark. I didn’t think much while I smoked, until about halfway through, when I took note that nobody had walked past and no cars had turned down this road during my visit. Even the sound of fauna was absent; only the blow of the wind as it urged snow to slowly erase the hare’s footprints accompanied me.
When I won this idiotic gladiatorial match, would I bother putting it down on a resume? What use was there to revel in the company of a man who exploded in blind, idiot rage on a quiet rural town where the best target was the elderly widow of his deceased nemesis mayor? How could I find pride in lifting a trophy of a lunatic who crashed through a library during a children’s story hour?
Marvin Heemeyer ended his rampage the same way it began: the destruction of the self. His bulldozer ripping through his muffler shop, and his bullet ripping through his brain. And when I won, the representation of his myth would be returned to the resting place he deserved: a trash pit. It was upon this epiphany I understood how necessary it was for myself or my associate, Grace, to come out on top.
There was no prize to be won: no title shot being dangled over my head like bait or spite to serve anyone through deprivation. All that mattered was to give Casanova English the black eye he deserved. And that act – that was one I could relish.
I apologized to nobody that today’s mood was less than my usual puckishness, but I felt little desire to pay homage or even lip service to the casual cruelty and abject futility of this tournament’s eponymous inspiration. Marvin Heemeyer was a cuckold who died alone and in the dark by his own hand, and anyone salivating at some notion of prestige in his legacy is one as well. Casanova English will always be the one on top fucking you. The Killdozer was a smoke and mirrors monstrosity that left psychic scars on the weak but ultimately amounted to little more than a snowy field and catchy name. Granby had the correct diagnosis: Heemeyer’s bulldozer was scrapped and sold to several scrap yards so as to prevent souvenir taking.
You don’t exorcize the boogeymen of myth by capturing and reappropriating them.
You do so by relegating them to the ground alongside Martin Heemeyer.
That night, I dreamed of Lissie Hope.
That night, I dreamed of Lissie Hope.
