Get beaten with the Ugly Stick

Behold: The Ugly. An original Con Ugly, which fell into my possession through a rather circuitous route. Belonged a while back to a friend’s brother, whose ex-girlfriend I ran into one day on the beach. She was trying to raise gas money to get to Portland, and wanted to sell a bunch of boards he’d given her, including the Ugly. For sixty bucks, I was the new owner of four, mostly busted, boards. They hung out for a while in my garage, while I dreamt of hacking them up for patio furniture. Then my friend wanted them, and we made a trade – the boards in exchange for a moderately thrashed shortie. The boards ended up lying in the side yard for months before I asked for 2 of them back – the ugly and a Noll, both missing most of the underside glass. It was a hot commodity – I had at least four people offer me grand things in trade for it. All of them wanted to reglass it, use it. Noble, really. I wasn’t tempted, except to reglass it for myself. Then my friend’s sister wanted the Ugly, and I couldn’t say no. She said it belonged ‘in the family.’ I scraped about 15 years of what seemed like mostly beeswax and straight paraffin off of it – a 6-hour job – and polished it with an old pair of nylons. It became a birthday present to her, and she had planned to hang it in her house. It’s now holding up her garage wall. Such is life. Farewell, Ugly. You belonged to me, but were never really mine.