Bookshelf Battle

Dames.  Can’t live with ’em….and that’s it.  You can’t live with ’em.

Jake Hatcher, a 1950’s era hardboiled film noir detective operating in 2015, has had his share of heartache, courtesy of these bodacious babes.  Below and in his own voice, our noble detective gives us the straight skinny on the ones who got away:

Trixie Bordeaux

EX-WIFE #1 – Trixie Bordeaux – Don’t get me wrong.  Trixie was a sweet gal and all, but it’s just that I’ve seen cacti with a better shot at passing a Standard Aptitude Test.  When she took me up on my marriage proposal, the first thought to clunk around inside my roomy skull was, “Good for you, Hatch.  You landed the skirt that every Tom, Dick and Harry is chasing.”

Lunkhead that I was, it wasn’t till a few weeks after the nuptials that I realized I was going to have to fight off every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Then again, I have no one to blame but yours truly.  All you unwed fellas out there, here’s some free advice from your old Uncle Jake:

Marrying a woman is like buying a car.  It’s a long commitment so you should walk right past the sporty number that will suck up all your gas and stall out when the first raindrop falls and plunk your cash down for the reliable one that’s going to get you where you need to be even when it snows.

Muffy Sinclair

EX-WIFE #2 – Muffy Sinclair – She was a crack shot who could pick a flea off a blood hound’s backside at fifty paces, yet after blasting yours truly six times with the business end of a Saturday Night Special, she managed to miss every vital organ.  Keep your cards and candy, folks.  That’s real love.

Last I heard, she’d hightailed it to the Caribbean faster than a jackrabbit with an extra set of legs.  And with all that ill-gotten loot, who can blame her?

Want some more words of wisdom?

Never trust a broad named “Muffy.”

Connie Connors

EX-WIFE #3 – Constance “Connie” Connors – The best and most loyal of all my ex-wives, the “car that will get you where you need to be even when it’s snowing” if you will.  (Don’t tell her I called her a car.)

Naturally, this gumshoe fouled things up with this sweetheart worse than a bathroom stall after the ninth inning of an LA Dodgers game on free chili dog night.

I hit the hooch harder than Max Baer’s fist against the face of an unsuspecting pugilist.

I didn’t want to but I needed to dull the pain caused me by Ex-Wives 1 and 2.  Alas, I didn’t realize I was driving away the best wife I ever had until it was too late.  After one too many nights of seeing her man passed out on giggle juice, she hopped the first train to Albuquerque and never looked back.  Can’t say as I blamed her.  I kick myself harder than a karate sensei wearing a steel tipped boot whenever I think about it though.

One final kernel of truth for you palookas:

When you find the dame who makes you a better man, chuck that bottle faster than a Whitey Ford curveball.

What?  You don’t know who Whitey Ford was?  Damnation, I’ve been alive for too long.

Hatcher gets down to business on the Bookshelf Battle Blog in June.

Copyright (C) Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015.  All Rights Reserved.