I lost an old friend this month.

Terry McCutchen, AKA “The Furry Beast”.

I’ll willing to bet that the average intelligence of the country dropped a point when he passed away. While I was putting together the Tank post (proceeding) I realized that I had so many great stories about Terry.  He once told me that his departure from the Army came after he flipped a tank he was driving in Georgia.  Apparently those “escape” hatches on the bottom don’t work very well if the tank is upside down. He had a three digit employee badge at Digital Equipment Company (DEC) which means something to those in the know (and in the NE).

I remember watching the television coverage of Three Mile Island (the overblown nuclear “accident”) and getting the color coverage from Terry. He was doing the nuclear physics in his head and beating the talking heads on TV to the punch by at least a half an hour.

While moving into our new house in Weymouth, (in the first and only road rage incident where someone came at me with a weapon) Terry casually disarmed the attacker. Who immediately fled back to his car and attempted to flee. Terry sauntered up to his car window and expertly hit him in the throat with the side of his hand. I’d never before seen a car drive off… staggering.  All this, while daintily holding his lit cigarette in the other hand and in-between puffs.

He is the inventor of the phrase,”Grumphe”.   Which he defined as the wonderful feeling you have in the morning when you wake up from a lovely dream in which you consumed the worlds biggest and most delicious marshmallow, only to discover that your pillow is missing.

Have a fantastic journey my friend, see you on the other side.