Apeshit croaks

I began playing in Jerry 'Apeshit' Apa's illegal poker games in the basement of the Bodega in Deadwood somewhere around 1985. It was a seminal time. The late Mike O'Connell was a founding father of legal gambling in the Gulch and every time Apa would go on tilt in a poker game Mike would shout, "he's gone apeshit!" The name stuck. 

Lead is where if two people get divorced they're still father and daughter and unfortunately (or not), Lead doesn't have a pot to piss in because the bulk of its taxpayers are lining up with their walkers or lying on gurneys awaiting their turns for the various cemeteries splattered throughout town. The residents are obese, white retirees from somewhere else who fled cultural diversity in their own states taking advantage of South Dakota's regressive tax structure and are now returning in their RVs after the strings below-zero days. 

Too many Lead residents are local high school dropouts who married their sisters, are strung out on meth somewhere and are only paying taxes through video lootery, Mickey's malt liquor, cigarettes and fuel. 

A former legislator and Lead mayor, a lifelong Earth hater and member of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers, Apa's scathing indictment of South Dakota Republican Party leadership and its ownership of SD Game, Fish and Plunder helped kill a state land grab in Spearditch Canyon.

To his credit Jerry was the only South Dakota politician who ever seriously considered my plan to build an ice climbing park in the Open Cut.

Apa died on April Fools' Day. He was 80 and was preceded in death by his son, Jason. Funeral arrangements are pending. 

Learn more about Apeshit Apa linked here.