Howdy, kidz.
I am in - wait for it - Winnemucca, NV... A tragic event in the Orloff family brought me here. Our own BK's dad owned a restaurant, back in the day - the extraordinary Kiru, with my dad's brother Morey Orloff. Uncle Morey had two kids, Jeff and Tina - unfortunately Tina was developmentally disabled. Long sad story. But eleven years ago, two lonely misfits found each other, fell in love, and married. Tina married a distant cousin of her deceased mother, a man 17 years her senior. He up and dropped dead the other day... Tina is all alone in Winnemucca, NV - as godforsaken a place as you'd ever see - something like the surface of the moon, but blazing hot, and dotted with old RV's, prefab houses with gravel instead of lawns, and some extremely pathetic casino's - three hours drive from Reno.
Getting here was a load o' fun - 6 am flight from Seattle to San Francisico, layover, flilght to Reno, rent a car, and drive for three hours to this hellhole. That was the good part. Tina is a sweet and pleasant person - with an IQ around 70. She doesn't read. She doesn't know how to cook. She doesn't know how to run her coffee machine. Nor the washing machine. She is all but helpless. I'm wasing through her dead husband's mire of bills and credit card statements and trying to find someone local to hire to be Tina's companion. There are lotsa Church folk, but it's real hard for them to tolerate a ree-tard. I may have found one kindly soul to come in three times a week to help out. It's soul-sucking. Plus Tina is bereft.
Here's the weird, terrible part - though she has a trust fund, set up by Uncle Morey for her before he died, she has virtually NO clothes, was wearing 12 year old underwear and bras, and hasn't seen a doctor or dentist for the same 12 years... The guy she married first moved her away from southern CA to Laughlin NV, then up here to Hell - and though my cousin Bob the Lawyer was taking care of things as well as he could from LA, apparently all the money he was putting into Tina's account every month was being drained off to Televangelists and other weird stuff -- there's an RV out in the shed that is worth about 6-8 thousand dollars - and they still owe 23 K on it... I found cases and cases of pocket knives - all still in the box - must be nearly fifty of 'em. Where'd he get these, Tina? He bought 'em off the TV. You wouldn't believe what I'm finding. Oy...
She is adamant about staying in this house. All by herself. "It's my house. We just moved in a year ago." She has a little dog - thank god... She is really mostly helpless, but whaddaya do??? Anyway, I'm trying to get Social Security to give her widow's benefits, even though she's only 53 - they give 'em if the widow is over 50 if disabled... trying to track down all her special ed stuff from high school 35 years ago.
And how was YOUR summer???
