is that a machete in your pants, or...

No, that's not a cheesy pick-up line!! Perverts!

Well, I'll try my best, but when I tell this story out loud I crack up laughing - not because it's funny, but because it's so bizaaaaaare:

Regular Sunday night at the Catholic Worker: doors open at 4, guests arrive, dinner starts at 6. People are in motion, guests chill on the porch. I had scored an evening off and was attempting to nap upstairs in my room. Eventually, I couldn't continue with my nap because there was all sorts of loud screaming and arguing downstairs... so I mosy on down to see what's happening and learn that there's a man with a big german shepherd who has come up onto the porch. Apparently, in a neighborhood not too far from here, a few weeks ago this very dog bit one of the women who visits our house, and she was petrified of this big mean dog. Well the argument is ugly, and eventually Bro. Louis had the guy go to the back of the house, where he had chained his dog and was waiting for a plate of food (or something to this effect). By the time I got to the porch, he had made his way back to the front, and had attached this HUGE chain to his dog and was coming too close to the porch again, thus re-igniting the fight. Several of our "tougher" guests were trying to act as hard as they could and make sure the guy knew who was in control.

He takes the dog to his car, which was parked in a lot across the street, and another guy who was with him went over to meet him at the car. They open the trunk, and lo and behold, while they're screaming across the street and fighting with the people on the porch, the one guy pulls a MACHETE out of the trunk and starts waving it around while screaming at the people in the front of the house. They put it back in its sheath (Derek has started calling the police at this point...did they hurry? Of course not.) and the second guy tucks it into his pants and begins walking back across the street, where I meet him before he gets onto our property. I calmly "explained" to him that clearly he wouldn't be allowed to come in for supper (he was trying to tell me all he wanted was something to eat) because I saw him place the machete in his pants... The first guy, knife in pocket and something else tucked into his pants too, also tried to come back across the street to "eat supper" and couldn't believe we wouldn't let him back in to eat, calling us hypocrites for claiming to do "God's work". (I'm pretty sure we have a no-machete policy here!)

Long story short, they left, the police came a bit afterwards, and the rest is history...

Things I have since learned about the back-asswards state of Missouri:
- Concealed weapons are completely LEGAL.
- Corporal punishment (hitting children) is still pretty legal and a practice in many parts of rural MO.
- Police here don't really consider sticking a machete in your pants and approaching a crowd of people after waving it at them during an argument a "threat". Apparently you have to be within 21 feet of the person before it can be considered so. (What I want to know is, who established this 21-foot rule, and HOW?)