November 2, 1999 - Journal entry

On Friday, I went to Winona to see Arthur and had a pretty good time. We ate at Taco John's where I saw one of my old college professors, Don Salyards. I had two economics classes with him. His favorite saying was, "and here's the kicker..." He wore an apron (that said "Dr. Don" on it) when he was at the chalkboard so as not to get his clothes dirty. I also saw Alvin Smothers at TJ's. My brothers used to know him. This one time, Matt was playing outside and saw Alvin just up the road. Matt was about 13 years old and had heard that Alvin had access to videos of a sexual nature, so he yelled to him, "Do some business!" He was able to get a super explicit video from him and watched it. And let other friends like Pete and Pat watch it, too. Like the ring of power in "LOTR", the video corrupted all who watched. After a few months, he destroyed it. I think he felt guilty about having it or it could just be that he grew tired of watching the same old scenes over and over again. Either way, he didn't just throw it away. He tore it into little pieces so no one would ever be corrupted by it again.

On a related note, after we got done eating, Arthur asked me to take him to the adult book and video store that opened in Winona about 2 weeks ago. I told him about the private booths in back. He didn't have much money, so I gave him a dollar so that he had 5 bucks to watch a half hour of any video he wanted. He chose a video that consisted of several dozen women waiting patiently in line for their turn to have sex with a man. It was called, "Put it in Reverse". He told me that he did satisfy himself, more than once, actually. Then afterward, he didn't want to tell his wife he had been there, but did fess up to it later that night. I was actually pretty tired from working earlier in the day, but did, for the most part, have a good evening.