Vindicated

After weeks of ridicule, I have been vindicated.

The ridicule mounted so high I was inspired to write a note to Bill McClellan, a columnist for the Post-Dispatch, to wit:

Am I the only one who remembers in the late eighties/early nineties there was a string of Clydesdale murders? I distinctly recall a series of weeks during which all of Saint Louis would wake up hearing another Clydesdale was found shot to death at Grant's Farm. There was suspicion the shooter was firing from Highway 40, then there was suspicion the shooter was a member of the Busch family. I mentioned the Clydesdale killings to my colleagues who have no recall of this but have instead escalated it into a wild paranoid fantasy complete with grassy knolls. Google, the Internet, and your archive service have revealed nothing.  If I am just a raving lunatic, let me know, but this memory is so clear I can't see how I would have concocted it.

He emailed back: "I recall nothing of this. "

But happily, Holly dates a guy who works at Grant's Farm, and he reported that:

It was about 1980, and someone drove up to the stop sign at the corner of Grant's Farm and Pardee Road, shot a Clydesdale, and drove off. He was never caught. The Clydesdale died. Years later, someone else tried to poison a Clydesdale with a poisoned apple. All they could do to protect the Clydesdales was to put up fences. They put up an electric fence first and then they put up a white plastic fence.

Okay, I know what you're saying. I was off by a decade, it was Pardee Road, not Highway Forty, and as Marcia observed, "[the sniper] couldn't possibly hit Grant's Farm from Highway 40, unless he/she used a JDAM-guided, short-range missile. " Well, at that time I was 17 and I still couldn't drive, so if they said "A road near Grant's Farm" I would assume it was Hwy 40. And if they reported on it for two consecutive mornings I would have probably figured it was multiple shootings.

So, HAH. Certain friends and company presidents are going to have to kiss my wide wobbly Midwestern ass.

Comments

[Marcia]

I'm glad you're vindicated (even if it was only one killing). I was in college in Ashcroft/Blunt country at the time, so chances are I wouldn't have heard about it.

[Friend 2]

One Clydesdale murder (and one attempted murder) does not a constitute "two weeks of waking up every morning to news of another murdered Clydesdale."

It's not serial equinicide, it's two stupid people who didn't have anything better to do with their Saturday nights.

[Marcia]

Come on, guys. Let's not beat a dead horse.

[Caroline]

When did F. Mark get promoted to president?

And maybe you confused Pardee with 40 because half of St. Louis says farty.

I'm warming up my smoocher, but it's aimed squarely at Marcia for the best pun of the day.