CHIEF WOODENHEAD

As some of you know I am the proud...extremely proud owner of my very own authentic cigar store indian!  It's not some cheep knock off some fuckin no-teeth hick carved outta wood with his chainsaw at a county fair either, it's a legit wooden Indian and it's one of my most prized possessions!  His name is Chief Woodenhead!  This month marks the 10 anniversary of me and The Chief!  I feel a post is deserved in order to tell his proper story!  

Back in 2003 I was rock bottom!  I was living at home, pointlessly studying for my PE exam, working for an overly religious micromanager and my Mom was going through menopause!  It was a scene directly out of a B movie horror flick!  Sitting on my ass studying one night for some reason I had a brief flashback to 1987!  Now someone who doesn't know me very well would think I wanted a cigar store indian as a result of my passion for cigars!  Not the case!  I actually wanted a cigar store indian after seeing 1987's Stephen King inspired film; Creep Show 2!  The first Creep Show film was released in 1982 and featured short stories written by King with art by my all time favorite comic artist Bernie Wrightson!  Creep Show was awesome, but 1987's Creep Show 2 was even better because it featured a short story called "Old Chief Woodenhead"!  In a nutshell the story featured a cigar store indian who comes to life to avenge his owner's death at the hands of injun robbers!  After seeing that short story I instantly started fantasizing about someday owning my own cigar store Indian!  

Flash Forward about 16 years later and I was surfing around on e-bay late one night and I

got the urge to do search for cigar store indians!  Outta nowhere this particular Indian in Las Vegas (pictured to the right) pops up on my search!  After some e-mail correspondence with the sellers I learned that the indian was purchased from a casino in Vegas.  After I found that out I was bound and determined to buy this Indian!  Shit at that time I was living at home and had more disposable income than I've had before or since!  So without telling anyone I bid and won that particular indian on e-bay!  Two weeks later a snowstorm not unlike the one that recently hit was going on when I got the call from a freight carrier in Terre Haute. I had a crate at their dock to pick up!  I told my dad we had to go to Terre Haute to pick up a box in the shitty weather!  At the time I had bronchitis and an ear infection, but I wanted that damn indian!  So after work we loaded up in my Dad's giant Chevy and went to pick that indian from Sin City up!  

When we arrived at the loading dock my Dad saw this giant crate that looked like a coffin!  He asked what the hell it was and I wouldn't tell him yet!  A forklift and some tie-downs later we were on our way home in the ice and snow!  As we pulled up in the driveway I could see my Mom looking out the living-room window with this bewildered look on her face!  We pulled into the garage and I began disassembling the crate.  All I remember is the look on my Dad's face when he realized what was in the crate...a Giant Wooden Indian!  He (Woodenhead) weighed approximately 240 pounds and it took both my Dad and me to carry him in where my Mom about shit from the sight of a 6'-8" wooden Indian coming through her front door to become the odd centerpiece of her newly decorated living room!  It took a few days for the shock of the giant wooden Indian to where off of her!  Like I said she was going through menopause so she wasn't playing with a full deck to begin with!  I positioned the indian right in the bay window at my parents house so at night when the lights were just right his profile was visible to passing cars!  Needless to say a lot of cars drove by!  

Thankfully for my mom he (Woodenhead) only stayed in the living-room for about 2 months when I finally moved to my own house, menopause was too much for a guy in his early 20s!  

my cigar store indian was one of the first things to be moved to my new house.  When me and Smutdawg moved the indian to the house we did so with class and style putting him in the back of my truck where he was too big to fit all the way in the bed!  We drove through town basking in the stares!  As I stood him up in my house I named him "Chief Woodenhead" in honor of that indian in Creepshow 2!  We put the indian in my living-room where he would become the centerpiece of my home as well as an eventual lightning rod for argument.  

The first night I met my then future x-wife I introduced her to the Chief, and needless to say her overly liberal sense of self-righteousness was not impressed with the fact that I had a 6'-8" symbol of Old West American oppression and manifest destiny especially since he was wrapped in an American flag loin cloth!  She was pretty liberal in those days because she had aspirations of becoming a lawyer...needless to say that never happened!  She even hated Chief Illiniwek...right there should have been a red flag for me to dump her crazy ass, but I digress!

As our relationship progressed so did the tension between her and Chief Woodenhead!  We'd spar over and over again about him and his position as the centerpiece of my home.  She even went so far as to tell me she was embarrassed by him when her friends came to visit, the odd thing was...she didn't have a lot of friends!  Eventually it all culminated into a heated showdown one evening!  After a particular brutal loss by the Steelers at the hands of the then Jay Cutler led Denver Broncos I was feeling down and vulnerable when that she-demon attacked!  She took advantage of me and my depression and passively aggressively argued with me about the indian...she even threatened to leave!  In hindsight I shoulda let that happen!  But sadly I didn't and I eventually gave in moving Chief Woodenhead from his position as my home's centerpiece down to the basement where he would become the centerpiece of McHooligan's pub...where he stands to this day!  Girlfriends have come and gone, I've been engaged, married, divorced ect...Through the good times and the bad Chief Woodenhead has stood there never wavering!

Ironically he fits in my bar better than he did upstairs!  So Chief there Chief Woodenhead stands, watching over my bar, my beer, my cigars just like the indian in Creepshow 2!  He's been with me ever since I moved out of my parents home and the gods willing he'll be with me till the end!  

Cheers!