By Michael D. Martin, E.C.P.D.
Retired
About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.
XVI. Dolfus and the Rose Bush
Between 1980 and 1985 while I was an Eden Police Officer, My Brother Steve
and I had a 10x50 mobile home on Smith Mountain Lake. We were at Dolfus
Lumpkin's Marina and I missed very few weekends going up there to fish. I
soon learned that old man Dolfus Lumpkins was a fine fella and I grew to
like him very much. Back then old man Dolfus Lumpkins was about seventy
years of age and weighed nearly three hundred pounds and was as strong as a
bull elephant. I also learned that Dolfus had a sweet tooth for Kentucky
Bourbon and it was forty miles in either direction from his marina to
an ABC store. Eden had just opened its ABC store so I would go by and
pick up a bottle for Dolfus on my way to the lake and a little for my
fishing trip too.
Well, after a few months, I got a visit from
Dolfus's son who told me that this had to stop, or I had to move my trailer
and I promised not to bring Dolfus any more bourbon. The problem was, I had
a neighbor in the marina that always kept a gallon or two of vodka in his
trailer and Dolfus quickly became his friend too.
Dolfus would get the gout from time to time and he
finally got himself a golf cart to drive up the hill to the trailers. I went
to fish one weekend and found Dolfus cut all to peices, every square inch of
his skin had a nasty looking cut, he looked like he had been in a prize
fight with a mountain lion. I asked Dolfus "what in the world happened
to you?"
Dolfus kinda lowered his head and said, I was up on
the hill visiting (the neighbor) and it got late and about four in the
morning I got in my golf cart to go home and it got away from me. I run into
that big old rose bush the old lady has been growing (for thirty years) and
when I hit it, it tossed me right over in the middle of it. Every time I
tried to move, it stuck and cut me so I began to yell for the old lady to
come out and help me. Every time she tried to pull me out, the thorns would
cut me again so she went and woke up my son. They got limb loppers and
started cutting the rose bush out around me, after an hour or so, I finally
got out but it cut my butt all to pieces and I gotta sit on this here
pillow.
That was the old lady's favorite rose bush and she ain't spoke to me since.
I looked over and saw that her rosebush, that once covered twenty-five
square feet now looked like an asparagus garden. I held a straight, grim
face, got in my boat and got out about two hundred yards from the marina,
after that, every time I thought about it I got to laughing so hard I could
not see to bait a fish hook
Michael D. Martin