The question I get most frequently about my work with the paper is, are those Magic Mike stories really true? And the answer is yes, all of them are 100% true.

But still, people have trouble believing that, I don’t know if these situations are specifically unique to my family because we are subject to some kind of curse or if these things happen to everyone else and just no one admits it. Either way, this week I have proof.

So, this story takes place last Wednesday. My Ma had a friend and coworker who had just had some surgery, so she thought she’d bake some cookies, and we’d bring it over to him like ya do. We wait till four in the afternoon when my sister gets off work, so she can drive us because for some reason my Ma is nervous.

I think she was nervous because A. we were going to his house where we didn’t know where it was, and B. we were showing up unannounced, granted just to drop off some cookies. I was in charge of getting his address, which took me like five minutes online. I feel like I could’ve been a detective.

We head out, and we are driving and talking, and following Google Maps. The first thing you need to know is that my sister will follow Google Maps off a cliff if it told her to, that’s not even a joke, just a sad fact that has got us into more predicaments and on more back roads than I care to admit.

Michael D. Davis.

We are going along, and we come to a gravel road, we groan, and continue ahead. My sister’s little car bounces like a ball on the gravel as the banjos start playing as we pass cemeteries and abandoned barns.

We travel for a few miles and then come to a stop. Google Maps says to keep going forward, but the metal sign in front of us says dead end. My sister listens to Google and goes forward. Right before the gravel road turns into a dirt path leading to a hill full of trees that were probably home to a cannibalistic Sawney Bean type of family, we see two houses right next to each other. Google says to go to house number 2.

We pull up, Ma gets out, knocks, and the coworker’s father-in-law answers the door. He also used to work with my Ma, I just don’t think he was expecting’ to see her at his door with a thing full of cookies. She asked the father-in-law about his son-in-law and was told not only does he live in house number 1, but we’d just missed him.

Of course we did. Ma gave the cookies to the father-in-law, who said he’d pass them on, but let’s just say it is doubtful they ever made it to their intended recipient.

After this excursion, we didn’t think things could get any stranger for us that evening. But then went on to Hyvee. As my Ma and sister got some shopping done, I mainly scoped out candy. Eventually, I made my way back to them, we were in the produce section when it happened. This kid, I wanna say 10 years old, I may be wrong, comes walking up to us, a big tote bag hanging from his shoulder. He mumbled something.

I said, “What?” He mumbled. I said, “What?” He mumbled. I said, “One more time for me.” And he asked if I wanted to buy some art.

Being an artist myself, I wanted to support another budding artist, and thought why not? So, the kid started pulling pictures out of the tote bag. The first one he pulled out he told me was reserved by another customer. He pulled out about a half a dozen describing each one as he did.

I asked if he had any portraits, and he said no only art. One that he took out was a drawing of a bus, which had the word bus written in kid scrawl on the back of the paper. In describing this work, he said something like, “I don’t know how to draw a bus, but there is a bus.” I asked him how much, he said a buck, I gave him two, and I got a picture of a bus.

The entirety of this story I guarantee is true, and happened on the afternoon of Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. My proof is that somewhere next to this story published in this week’s paper is the picture of the bus that I bought in the Hy-Vee, next to the lettuce, for two bucks.

Believe it or not, that was Wednesday.