Across the parking lot from Deep Sushi down Deep Ellum way there is a wall painted with four portraits. I have no idea who painted these or why…. I haven’t done any research on the paintings. For some reason I don’t want to.
The parking lot for Deep Sushi, down in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas.
The four are all Dallas musicians… but a very eclectic lot. First off, Erykah Badu – by far the most famous. You know who she is.
Erykah Badu
The next is a little more obscure. Ronnie Dawson was pure, absolute, Dallas Rockabilly. He was born here in 1939 and died of throat cancer in 2003. He was much more popular in England than here.
Ronnie Dawson
After these two classics, there are two current up-and-coming local artists. I have seen both of them in the last year and have written about them. First of all, the duo called the O’s. I saw them at the Patio Sessions at the Winspear Opera House… and was very impressed.
So here they are. If nothing else, a pretty good set of examples of the wide variety of music spawned on the overheated streets of Dallas. I’ll bet there are folks like that where you are from too… even if there aren’t paintings of them on a wall somewhere.
As it lurches wildly out of its Redneck Past, the City of Dallas – now completely strangled by its noose of suburbs – is forced to turn inward. It has to flip over its long-neglected flat rocks and deal with what scrambles out from underneath. It has to somehow transform its neglected barren shadowy hinterlands into fertile soil where it can grow shiny new developments for the future.
Few people in the city fully realize this yet, but the only successful path into the world of tomorrow leads directly and literally to the other side of the tracks and across the river. Success for the city will depend on how well this difficult process is done. It doesn’t have to (and can’t be) done perfectly… but it has to be done and has to be done thoughtfully and has to be done soon (faster, please).
One of the critical junctures in this process is a long-ignored wide spot in the road called Cedars West. If you look at an old aerial photograph of Cedars West from, say the 1930’s, you will see it was an island. The meandering Trinity River split into two branches forming the area that would become Cedars West, and then, only a short distance downstream, they joined back together. The Corinth Street Viaduct, a long, concrete structure joining Dallas North and South, gave access to this swampy little piece of land.
This cheap, almost useless, scrap of land quickly became home to the low-end forgotten businesses that none of the snootier residents wanted in their neighborhoods. Wrecking yards, scrap metal, wholesale auto parts, and oil and grease distributors settled in where they could be easily ignored and for decades thrived in that godforsaken tract.
Until now.
You see, the City of Dallas wants a developer to build a huge multi-use development nearby. The area was to be transformed into a hipster doofus haven (and I mean that in a good way, I really do) where the modern millennial could work, live, and play. Giant piles of scrap metal, reclaimed wood siding, and tanks of used grease were not considered good neighbors for such a cool crowd.
So, in typical heavy-handed corrupt government style, the City Council simply voted to change the zoning in Cedars West, and give all those ugly, smelly, and un-hip squatters five years to vamoose. This was going to force the present stewards of the land, who had been working their asses off trying to build their businesses, employing the otherwise unemployable, and making use of a part of the city that few others even knew existed (I sure didn’t) for several generations now, into oblivion to make way for the wave of the future.
But, in a surprising move, the businesses of Cedars West decided to fight back… and in a very cool and interesting way.
They organized and went to the council to point out that a new urban development that consisted of all shiny, fancy, clean, pre-planned white-bread construction was doomed to fail. Residents of such an area want to live in an urban environment, not in a high-rise version of Plano. Otherwise, they would live in Plano.
They offered to simply clean up their act. They would put up new, attractive fencing and metal walls to hide the ugly portions of their business and to actively encourage artistic uses of their products and to promote the “Green” aspects of their business. Yesterday’s scrap iron and wrecking yards ares tomorrow’s sustainable recycling.
So they did. And the council, in a shocking bit of intelligence, agreed. They gave the businesses of the area two years to clean up their act. Anyone that succeeded in pulling off a transformation from an ugly old low-tech business to a modern artistic vintage funky sort of urban oasis could stay. Anyone that didn’t… had to go.
A fascinating story… and one, I’m afraid, that I missed totally.
Until, looking through the web for something to do over the weekend, I came across mention of the First Annual Cedars West Arts Festival. At first, I was lukewarm to the idea… another Arts Festival? Haven’t I seen enough of these things? But then I heard that one of my favorite food trucks, The Bomb Fried Pies was going to be there, and I took another look.
It threw me when I pulled up the address (2021 Rock Island) in Google Maps and took a look at the aerial photo. There were the swampy Trinity River Bottoms and a little stretch of road that ran through the most awful stretch of industrial wasteland you will see anywhere. It looked like the last place on earth you would hold an arts festival. So I began to read the history of the area and the reason behind the festival. They were throwing this shindig to show off the work they had done to spruce up their area and to demonstrate to the city at large how these types of businesses can contribute to the cultural life of the city.
And I knew I had to be there.
So Candy and I made our plans. We knew it was going to be a hot day and Candy doesn’t like to be out in the Texas blast furnace heat any more than necessary so we wanted to go right when it opened at eleven. We didn’t want to drive and the festival advertised that it had blocked off a lane of the Corinth Street Viaduct so you could take the DART train to Oak Cliff and walk across. I wondered why they didn’t have folks walking from the Cedars Station which looked a little closer, but that was what they planned, so that is what we did.
It was a long walk; the Corinth Street Viaduct is about a mile long. Sure enough, they had barriers up the entire length, blocking off an entire lane. They went to a lot of expense for us – we didn’t see anyone else using the viaduct to walk in. I enjoyed the trek across and over the trackless wilderness of the Trinity River bottoms, with a view of Downtown on one side and the DART trains/Testle Trail and manmade river rapids on the other – but it was already too hot for Candy.
The Arts Festival was really a lot of fun. The local businesses went all out in making everyone welcome and showing off the work they had done in beautifying, hipster-ing, and funkifying their places. OKON Scrap Metals had a big pile of used iron which their employees were picking from and creating sculptures behind clear yellow welding screens.
I was really impressed with Orr-Reed Wrecking Company. Their business is in tearing down old buildings and homes and preserving as much as they can. Their place in Cedars West is a big, long shed full of salvaged materials. From hardwood flooring, to bathroom fixtures, from vintage lighting to stained-glass windows… they had it all. If you are in the DFW Metroplex and are remodeling a home, be sure and go down there and see what they have to offer. It truly was an amazing place.
Beyond simply saving, preserving, and selling – Orr-Reed Wrecking was touting itself as a home and source for artists. There were rooms full of furniture and sculptures made with materials culled from their vintage collections for sale. They even offer low-cost studio space for anyone wanting to work with what they have to offer. Walking around was an eclectic crowd of relaxed artsy-looking young folks that worked there, both providing labor for the company and providing their inspiration for the aesthetic of their products.
Candy and I wandered around the place for a while, but it soon became too hot and we decided to head home. We were both really hungry and I wanted to find a local place that I had never tried before. Candy dreaded crossing that bridge again in the blistering afternoon sun so I suggested we walk the opposite direction to the Cedars DART station and get something to eat in that area.
Big mistake.
We soon discovered why the Arts Festival closed off the lane and suggested folks walk across from Oak Cliff. The stretch along Corinth to Lamar was the most awful, neglected, and scary war zone of urban decay you will ever see. It’s amazing how the city could even think of forcing out the businesses of Cedar’s West while they could let their own streets and sidewalks run down into a horrible condition like that.
Intrepid and idiotic as we are, we made it through, hungry and dehydrated. We ate at The Cedars Social bar and restaurant, a really nice cool oasis in the urban wasteland. It felt like stepping into the set of Mad Men… with a brunch menu.
I’m going to be keeping an eye on Cedar’s West going forward. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, there are surprising things happening in places you don’t expect, and I think this may be one of them.
Although the Trinity River Channel has been redirected to the bottom of the photo, the Cedars West is still pretty much an island in the river bottoms. The Arts Festival was on Rock Island, the part colored in yellow.
Two employees/artists at Orr-Reed Wrecking. Her T-Shirt says, “Show Us Your Junk,” which is their motto.
Reclaimed hardwood flooring from Orr-Reed. They had acres of the stuff.
Before and After. Recycled bathroom fixtures.
Using vintage products as art and architecture. The exterior of Orr-Reed Wrecking.
The King of Junk. Surveying his kingdom.
The Arts Festival had a nice, downhome, neighborhood feel to it. Here is a smoking grill a food vendor was using to make burgers and a little trailer selling refreshments.
The route we walked out along is so God-Awful that there is a proposal for a pedestrial bridge to skip over the whole thing. I doubt it will get built – but wouldn’t this be cool?
There was a lot going on Saturday, so I pulled myself out of bed and headed out for the first stop – Don Johle’s Bike world in Garland for a Vintage Bicycle Swap Meet.
I confess I had no plans to buy anything (which is not surprising, I have no money) and was simply going over there to gawk. And gawk I did.
Rows of vintage bicycles. Vintage means many things. It can mean classic and valuable…. But mostly it means old, useless, rusty and overpriced… which is how I feel… so I suppose that gave me something in common with these bikes.
There were a few that had been restored, but mostly we were looking at raw materials here. There were some oddities too, and that was way cool.
Here’s an old moped-style that you don’t see every day. Beautifully restored.
A cool looking old thing… not sure if it was worth the smoke.
The bike looks broken, but it isn’t… well not as much as it looks. It is a folding bicycle, the seat tube holds it straight when it is working.
A heavy, crude, but still pretty cool mechanism.
Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Enough wrappers and you can get a folding bike, courtesy of Marlboro.
Here’s a drivetrain you don’t see every day – a shaft-driven bicycle. I guess it would be good in the mud. I did spent a good part of a day cleaning my chain – this would get around that.
A 1970 or so Raleigh Record. I may be an old fart, but I think that bicycles of this era are among the most beautiful things on earth. I need to get out more.
The classic old bikes made me think of the Raleigh Technium I have hanging in the garage. It needs new tires, handlebar tape, and a good going over… but maybe I should give it a try. The engine is still old and worn out though, I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.
In the Northeast quadrant of the city of Dallas, about six miles out from the skyscrapers of Downtown, sits a big ol’ apartment development, The Village. It was always a big part of my life the first decade or so I lived in Texas, though I never lived there. A lot of my friends did and I spent a lot of time hanging out in The Village.
When I first moved here The Village was the big Singles Apartment Development. It held about fourteen different apartment complexes with maybe ten thousand residents – almost all of them single. It was when it was still legal to have “adult apartments” that did not allow children. A little pricey for me, I lived a couple of cheaper places in the area and a lot of people I knew had an apartment there at one time or another.
The central nexus was The Village Country Club – a complex of pools, tennis courts, athletic fields, with a large clubhouse right in the center of all the action. They would have parties, live music, or sports leagues there, indoors and out. For a wide swath of Dallas young people, it was the place to be. I felt a little above all of that… preferring the more bohemian downbeat parts of town… but looking back it was a lot of fun. I spent a lot more time there than I thought I was and always had a good time.
All this came to a screeching halt in 1989 when the federal government made it illegal to refuse children from rental housing. Overnight, The Village became nothing more than another bunch of crappy apartments. I miss it.
So I saw on this interweb thing that there were going to be some food trucks down in the Village Country Club parking lot after work. I decided to run down there and grab a bite. I went more out of nostalgia than hunger.
It hadn’t changed much – the trees were much larger, the atmosphere more laid back and family friendly, but there were memories stirred up… all of them good.
The trucks down there were the usual suspects – but there was a pizza truck I had never been to before, The Gepetto Pizza Truck – so I bought an eight inch pie. It was pretty good – pizza is pizza and always good eats.
One of the lines of food trucks at the Village Country Club.
When you visit a place you haven’t seen in years – it’s always surprising how much the trees have grown.
The Gepetto Pizza Truck
Making Pizzas.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pizza I didn’t like.
After I ate, I called Candy to see if she wanted me to bring something back for her and she asked about desserts. Rockstar Bakeshop was down there with their truck, “Layla”, so I bought her a homemade whoopie pie… and didn’t eat any of it. She said it was good… rich, but good.
Rockstar Bakeshop always gives its fare fantastic names.
One of the best things about a big food truck fair is that the huge crowds will attract food trucks from other cities. Not surprisingly, some of the best ones drive up from Austin.
At the last big fair I went to I was walking around looking for trucks I hadn’t tried before, with a special eye out for trucks from other towns, I spotted a food truck that offered Colombian food. It was called Sabor Colombiano on Wheels and is based in San Antonio. It looked different from the other trucks which are mostly based on large, boxy, UPS-style bodies. This one was a converted RV.
There wasn’t much of a line waiting to order, but more like a large clot standing off to the side. Their menu was simple: Chicken and Rice, Fried Plantains, and Beef Empanadas. I ordered the arroz con pollo with the platanos fritos on the side. They explained that the food came out in big batches and that was why everybody was standing in a group.
So I pushed into the crowd and waited. After a while, the orders started coming out. There was a little table with some sort of relish and a pinkish sauce. I have no idea what these were, but I knew I wanted some. When my order came up I pushed the crowd back so I could get to the little table and ladle on plenty of the two mystery sauces.
The food was really good. It wasn’t too pimped up or fancy… simply good hearty Colombian peasant fare. I really like the arroz con pollo – it was just right. I’ve eaten a lot of platanos fritos in my day, and everybody makes them differently. These were slices of plantain smashed flat and fried crisp, which was very good.
The food truck extravaganza was packed. I knew from experience that the trucks would be running out of food soon. Desperate for something new, I scanned for the closest truck that I had never tried before and spotted one called Crazy Fish – sushi, baby. That’s the ticket.
I scurried to the back of the long line and found it moving quicker than it looked. While I was waiting I scanned the board. Most trucks, when faced with giant crowds like this, simplify their menu in order to get the food out quicker. They had four rolls advertised – Sweet n Spicy, Crunchy Philli, Eye of the Tiger, and TNT. I settled on the last two.
As I crept closer to the front of the line the woman kept yelling out at the crowd, apologizing. “We’re making these rolls fresh, by hand, on order, so it takes a while,” she said. She looked harried and exhausted.
Finally I placed my order. While I was chatting with the woman making my rolls the next guy stood up to order. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “We have to close for a few hours, we just ran out of rice.”
I was lucky enough to get the last two rolls. I guess I should have shared them with the folks in line behind me.
But they were too good to share.
The Crazy Fish food truck.
The menu, four different rolls.
It really is all about the sauce. How can you not love anything that has both Sriracha and Wasabi in squirt bottles? In my opinion, food is best when used as a method of transporting spicy sauces to the taste buds.
The line, waiting for Sushi.
My two rolls. The Crazy Fish truck makes it clear that they are not about tradition – they are about deliciousness. I find that philosophy hard to argue with. And yes, I put a lot of Wasabi and Sriracha on my food. So sue me.
I was waiting outside for the day to get going and noticed the tree next to me had been drilled by a woodpecker in a long series of horizontal rows of holes – hundreds of them, all over the tree. The woodpecker must work the same hours as I do, because I had not heard him out there, pecking away.
All the trees tell stories in their bark. I didn’t have to move more than ten feet to get these pictures, but look at the variety of the tree skin, from tough and rugged, to torn and wounded, to almost soft and curvaceous.
But nobody ever looks at them… not closely, not like that.
The woodpecker has left a line of holes in this tree like Al Capone’s gunners on Saint Valentine’s day.
The other day I was down on Flora Street in the Dallas Arts District wandering around, looking at the crowds by the food trucks when I noticed music coming from the direction of the Winspear Opera House. It sounded like some AC/DC – so I meandered in that general direction to find out what was going on.
It was a concert by the kids from the School of Rock and, sure enough they were hammering out some AC/DC. It wasn’t too bad. Of course, if you spend enough time working on one song you can get to play it pretty well, but it is what it is.
I stayed for a while as different groups climbed up on stage and played different classic rock songs. They were all pretty good at what they were doing. The vocals were the weakest part of the performance, but at that age wailing like Robert Plant isn’t the easiest thing to pull off.
It was pretty odd watching the thing. There were so many elements of a middle school band concert – the eager kids taking their turn at a moment in the sun, the smiling parents sitting around, focused on their spawn, their work, and the results of their cash. But it was different too – the hard rock, the skinny little girl playing a bass bigger than she is, the powerful amplifiers. And the enthusiasm was not as nerdy.
The kids were all pretty good – you could hear all of their hard work. But then this one guy gets up there and plays Misirlou – you know the old Dick Dale surf guitar riff that you probably remember from the opening of Pulp Fiction. He tore that thing up. He knew what he was doing around that guitar string.
I didn’t stay around too long – but I did get a kick out of it. The band launched into a Led Zeppelin instrumental… I think it was Moby Dick. The guitars took a rest and a tiny girl perched on the kit took over grinning, waved her sticks in the air, and launched into a long drum solo. The parents went nuts.
Oh, God, not that. I was born in 1957, so I was around for the whole thing. Music is important to me, all the music, a wide diversity. But, if I had my druthers, there is one thing… only one thing that I would have taken away from the decades of rock music… and that is the interminable drum solo. A good portion of my life has been wasted waiting for the things to end and the real music to start up again. I understand that the drum solo has an important purpose – for the rest of the band to go backstage, do a couple of lines and maybe a groupie or three – but that doesn’t mean the payin’ folks out in the crowd have to be subjected to that endless noise.
So, long live rock, teach your children well, but please, lets end the drum solos.
On the way to the restrooms, down in the cool, dim Basement (where the deadly burning rays of the Museum Tower cannot reach) of the Nasher Sculpture Center is a room with three oddly disturbing sculptures. This is the first installation at the Nasher by a local artist. His name is Erick Swenson, and he makes strange meticulous tableaux out of resin, most involving animals in some stage of death or decomposition. They are arrestingly realistic and strangely surreal at the same time.
You can trap and kill snails and slugs in your garden with beer. This sculpture is called Schwärmerei – a German import to English that means something like fanatical enthusiasm, or the deadly insanity of the crowd (a word that could be fine-tuned and well-understood in Germany).
He says, “This is a static object. I’m asking you to look at this for more than three seconds. That’s hard to do sometimes. People just blow through stuff, you know. So it’s leaving things sort of enigmatic and open-ended.”
I granted his wish, staying and staring, then photographing the Stein ‘N Snails. Other than the obvious metaphorical underpinning, it was a gorgeous and highly skilled work of craftsmanship. I can see it as an advertising piece for a new chain of eateries called the Brewpub Escargot.
Unfortunately, I don’t posses a macro lens or decent flash lighting so the photos do not do due justice. For a good picture of a snail go here. So I suppose y’all will have to go down to the Nasher and see for yourself. By the way, the third sculpture, the one hidden from the squeamish public behind the little wall, is a doozy… you are forewarned.
Most folks were spending more than three seconds at the sculpture.
When my writing group was wandering around the Dallas Arboretum doing our photography thing, I took a step to the side while we were in the Women’s Garden and looked down some steps into a large, rectangular formal garden setting. There, in the center of the garden, sitting on a wooden crate, was an attractive young couple, messing around with something that was wrapped in a complex packaging.
It was obviously a staged engagement. The couple was surrounded by smiling people, friends and relatives, all pointing cameras in their direction. I took a couple shots of the scene and moved on.
Now I have a picture of all these people I don’t know at all. That’s a good way to practice doing character sketches. I take a look at each one and try to make up their story.
I know that’s a nasty thing to do… make up a bunch of stupid lies about a group of complete strangers and then put the thing out on the web. But there is something about expectation of privacy at work here… and if you are going to get yourself engaged in the middle of a formal garden in the Dallas Arboretum on a Saturday Morning… well you can kiss any expectation of privacy goodbye.
So, here, without any further ado… I give you:
The Happy Couple
Roberta Bustamante Franklin Sellars
They met when stuck next to each other for two hours on the Texas Twister ride at the second-rate amusement park Frontier Daze. The ride was upside down for the entire time with the riders hanging from their safety harnesses and Roberta liked that Franklin had smuggled in a sizable flask in his pant leg. Franklin had chugged a good part of the flask to empty it so Roberta would have a place to pee. She thought that was a chivalrous thing to do; he was impressed by the gymnastics.
The park had been rented out by Franklin’s boss, Tyrone Woodchipper and his company Acrasia Investments as a cheap morale booster. Franklin hated the place but felt he had to attend.
Franklin has never been given a straight answer as to why Roberta was there.
They dated for some time and then moved in with each other a year ago. Roberta had a much larger and more luxurious apartment but she insisted on moving into Franklin’s. He has always wondered how she could have afforded such a nice place and was disappointed they couldn’t move there. Franklin loved the window treatments.
Their long-range plans pretty much peter out at the end of their European honeymoon.
The Parents and entourage
Front to back:
Svetlana Bustamante (Roberta’s young half-sister) Smithsonian (Smitty) Bustamante (Father) Georgia Bustamante (Stepmother) Metal Hurlant (Mrs. Sellars’ personal secretary – barely visible) Claudia Sellars (Mother) Freemont Sellars (Father)
Smitty is a widower – his first wife, Roberta’s mother, was killed in a mall parking lot – run down by a shoplifting suspect speeding in a pickup truck, fleeing mall security. Georgia was a mail order bride from the Ukraine. Smitty had never lived on his own and didn’t want to mess around with the dating scene. The little girl, Svetlana, is Georgia’s daughter. She left her behind with relatives and didn’t tell Smitty about her until they had been married a year – he immediately sent for her and loves her like his own.
In the back are Franklin’s parents Freemont and Claudia. He made a fortune off of the chain of furniture rental shops he inherited from his father. He always expected Franklin to follow in his footsteps but was secretly relieved when he went off on his own. Even though he undoubtedly loves his son – the kid always made him uneasy when he was around him too much.
The two, Freemont and Claudia, were high school sweethearts. They watch a lot of television. He collects antique watches, she likes to crochet.
Next to Claudia, barely visible in the photograph, is Claudia’s personal secretary who was originally hired from France as an au pair to help raise their daughter, Penelope. Her name is Metal Hurlant – and is from Marseilles – although Claudia tells everybody she is from Paris. Metal organized and set up the whole engagement extravaganza.
Jimmy Bustamante
Roberta’s little brother. He was an infant when his mother was killed and doesn’t remember her at all.
He has been in a very good mood lately after finding a motherlode of illegal drugs hidden in what used to be Roberta’s underwear drawer. He made the discovery when he finally moved into her bedroom after she became engaged and made it clear she would not be moving home.
The drugs were stashed there in a panic by Joaquin Smirnov – a handsome yet terribly addled fling of Roberta’s. Joaquin panicked and threw the bundle of baggies into the drawer when he heard Franklin, Roberta’s fiancé, coming up the stairs. Joaquin hid under the bed, naked, while Franklin paced around, waiting for Roberta, upset (he suspected something) for over an hour and a half. Roberta, unknown to anyone, had gone downstairs for a glass of ice water and bailed out the back door when Franklin drove up and was hiding, also naked, in a large clump of ornamental grass waiting for him to leave.
Joaquin forgot about the stash due to the strain of hiding under the bed for ninety minutes. The drugs stayed there for Jimmy to find because Roberta never looked in the drawer – she hasn’t worn underwear for a year and a half.
Jimmy is now the most popular kid in General George S. Patton Junior High School. He is taking photos with the new hi-tech Nikon compact camera he bought with sale proceeds.
Wendal Fruitbat
He is Metal Hurlant’s boyfriend, though nobody in the family knows this. She is madly in love with him. Their only discussion of the future has been her telling him that if they ever marry, she will not take his last name. He understands perfectly that she does not want to go by the name Metal Fruitbat.
She hired him for the engagement when he told her he had been his high school yearbook photographer. Metal rented him his equipment. Unfortunately, though Wendal is a good person generally, he is a helpless inveterate liar. He knows nothing about photography and is currently using a terrifically expensive camera without a data card.
Reginald Von Sample.
He is Franklin’s oldest and closest friend. They met by random their freshman year at university when they were put in a room together due to an experimental and controversial software program that analyzed students’ admission essays and placed freshmen that the algorithms deemed compatible. They lived the entire six years of both their undergraduate studies together in the same dormitory room.
Reginald left after graduation for a stint in the Merchant Marine. He said he wanted to see the world. He returned two years early and said there didn’t seem to be much out there worth seeing. He moved back in with Franklin until there was a nasty drunken argument late one night. Reginald suffered a serious cut under one arm that seemed to be inflicted by a Cuisinart Chef’s knife. He declined to press charges but moved out.
There was a distance between Reginald and Franklin after this, but the engagement seems to have brought them close together again.
Deasel Widdershins
Deasel is a private investigator hired by an unknown person (even to herself). She receives her instructions by anonymous email and payment through a mysterious Paypal account. She has been instructed to get to know the family and report on anything untoward.
Her cover story is that she is a scout for an obscure cable channel that is considering a newlywed reality show.
It was made clear that she was selected due to a reputation of absolute trustworthiness. Her honesty is not accompanied by competency, however, and she has not found out anything interesting yet.
Penelope Sellars
Franklin’s little sister. She is at that confusing age… made even more confusing by the sudden appearance of deep feelings for her brother’s fiancé. She has made the decision to simply go with it and see what happens. She doesn’t really have any choice.
Tyrone Woodchipper
He has been the Sugardaddy to the soon-to-be blushing bride for the last three years. He made his fortune through his company, Acrasia Investments, which advertises itself as offering speculation in arbitrage futures, but is in reality a front used by Mexican drug cartels to launder their United States profits.
He met Roberta through his son, Luther, who saw her briefly but passionately after their meeting at a speed-dating event. Roberta had an acrimonious breakup with Luther a month after she started sleeping with his father.
Tyrone has very mixed feelings about his mistress’ upcoming nuptials. He is glad that her husband works for him, which will enable him to keep her around easily, but he feels his manhood threatened in general. He is not getting any younger.
Luther Woodchipper (hiding in bushes)
Luther has never recovered from his breakup with Roberta and desperately manages to keep tabs despite the various court issued restraining orders. He doesn’t know what he will do but knows that whatever it is, it has to be soon.
Bill Chance 