Hooooooo

Last week, a woman came into the hotel who could only be described as a female Hacksaw Jim Duggan, if Hacksaw Jim Duggan were journeying to Rivendell past the forests of Mirthwood to become a member of the Fellowship of the Ring.

She wore a forest-green, floor-length, felt cape with maroon lining, and a large, copper pendant shaped like an upside-down metronome with an embedded turquoise stone. Her hair was long, stringy, and dirty-blonde. She had an over-sized face with rosy, expansive, slightly weathered cheeks. She spoke with a slight lisp, and she had a cartoonish facial tic where the left corner of her mouth curled up periodically as if she had just been struck dumb or flummoxed by something. I suspect that in the old West she might have been referred to as 'addled' or 'soft-brained.'

I have highly refined sense organs for good stories (an eye, an ear, a nose), so I went ahead and threw a line out there to see if I'd catch anything.

"Where'd ya get that cape?" I asked approvingly.
"Oh, in India," she said with goofy nonchalance.
Oop, there's a little tug. Time to reel it in a bit.

"Oh, where in India? I was there for a while."

Off she goes. "Oh, well, I was only there for a while, small town called Kalikut. I was on a freighter, went everywhere on that thing. Thailand, India, Tanzania. Started out in Yemen. Course the British called it Aden back then. Everything was so cheap there! Bought lots of electronics, clothes, spices. We were gonna resell it for a nice profit. But when I got to India, the people were so poor and I felt so bad, I just gave it all away."

There wasn't really much time to talk more because things were so busy at the time, but that's a pretty tantalizing morsel of a life, eh?