One day in New Jersey a gang of black punks started a row in the tent as we were tearing down, one of the punks pushed Kilowatt as he was rolling up cable and said, "get out of my way you old motherfucker".
Kilowatt pulled a pistol out of his jacket and emptied six shots point blank into this punks chest and stomach. The punk fell on the ground screaming, there was blood all over his shirt, an ambulance and the police came and took Kilowatt downtown.
The next day we only jumped 30 miles and we were in the same county, some of the same cops were on the lot. One of them told me, "You know, that old guy was wanted for murder in Laredo, Texas?" "But it happened in 1910 and there's no witnesses left or complanants, and since this was a selfdefense issue, we're cutting him loose in the afternoon."
There was a Doctor from the hospital where they took the punk and he said, " I neve saw shot so fine in my life, must've been a hundred pieces and they were all just beneath the skin, I had to dig them out with tweezers".
Kilowatt had shot the punk with a trick pistol loaded with mustard seed shot. That night he was back on the show. A few days later I asked him, " Kilowatt, tell me about that murder charge in Laredo".
"Well, kid," he said, " I was just turned 18 and had got married two weeks before. I went downtown Laredo to buy some groceries and had my wife with me. A drunk cowboy came out of a saloon shooting his pistol in the air and acting like a damn asshole and one of his bullets hit my wife in the back and killed her. So I grabbed my Winchester and blew his head off."
"Then I got to thinking, They may hang me for this, I'd better leave town. So I saddled up a horse and road across the border. The Mexican Revolution had just started and they were offering jobs for anyone who'd join up, so I joined up with Pancho Villa and learned how to use a machine gun"
"Latere on some of my friends told me, you should leave because Pancho is pissed off at the Gringos for doublecrossing him and siding with the other factions. So I left and joined up with General Obregon, after a few years General Pershing came chasing Pancho, then the First World War broke out. So I decided to try to get back to the USA before I got myself killed and followed the railroad tracks from Puebla to Veracruz,
The Americans had took over the port and I got on a ship, and the next thing I knew I was drafted and heading to France. While in France I got caught in a mustard gas attack from the Krauts and it seared my lungs. Then in the hospital I caught the swine flu . There were boys in cots on both sides of me dying every day. That ended my military career and I got sent home, where I learned the electrical trade."
Chico was listing to this tale and asked Kilowatt, "How did you get paid when you were with Villa?"
"Why you damn fool, we'd ride into town and blow the bank up. ", he said.
Talk about tough guys, Kilowatt was one of them. He told me ," Tomorrow we're playing in Maryland, and there's a store two blocks from the lot that sells chemical MACE, it's the only place in the country where an ordinary citizen can buy it."
"One day one of the black big top hands said to Kilowatt, "Mr. Kilowatt, you don't like black people do you? You never hire black people in the electric department."
"It's not that I have any prejudices against black people, he said, "it's just that electricity is invisible and you niggers don't understand it, it can kill you".
A new black kid came on the show and he started irritating Kilowatt, and Kilowatt told him, "You'd best get away from me black boy or you may regret not getting away."
The kid told another bigtop hand named sheepskin, "We ought to beat up that old motherfucker".
Sheepskin told him, " You beat him up, and it may be the last thing you do on this earth, Mr. Kilowatt has a knife, a gun, a can of Mace and a blackjack and he don't care which one he uses."
Just before Kilowatt passed away in Laredo I stopped by to see him and there was a pot head show kid staying at the same trailer park, sitting with us listening to our talk. I said, "Kilowatt you should come visit me in Puebla." He said, " No Puebla's too high" (Its 7000 feet above sea level.).
The kid said, "Too high? You can't get too high Kilowatt".
But Kilowatt had gone to Mexico to winter a few times, he would sometimes drive his camper to the Pacific Coast and camp out by a river. He told me he was parked by the banks of a river in the shade of some palm trees one morning when a knock came on his door. It was some native women and they said, " Excuse us grandfather, (Kilowatt had snow white hair), but we were wondering if it would be all right with you if we washed our clothes in the river here? the thing is we want to take our clothes off and wash them also and we don't want to offend you".
" No problem," said Kilowatt, " You ladies go right ahead and don't pay any attention to me."
Kilowatt told me he once wintered in Mexico City and he would go to the racetrack with a group of friends, one day they were watching the horses and his friends pooled their money and told him, " Can you go place this bet for us on the number 3 horse to win in the next race",
"Sure ," he said, "I was just going to place a bet myself." So he went to the track window and mistakenly placed the bet on the no. 6 horse. He went back to watch the race and the no. 6 horse came in. His friends all said,'shit, our horse lost." Kilowatt kept his mouth shut, the horse was a long shot and he had enough scratch to last him all winter.
The Tramp visited him in Laredo one year and took him to the notch joint across the river. He asked the notch broad, "How did the old guy perform?" She told him, "He was huffing and puffing but granddad made the grade."
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