Crawfordsville origins: the Valium mother, the blinded paddle-ball father

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texture · UNDATED (pre-tour, ~B.S.)

When: UNDATED (before/behind his tour years; revealed only at his funeral)
What: Eric Clipperton hailed from Crawfordsville, Indiana. His mother was a late-stage Valium addict; his ex-soybean-farmer father, blinded in the hailstorms of B.S. '94, spent all day every day playing paddle-ball "with an understandable lack of success." The tranquilized, sightless parents had no idea where Eric disappeared to on weekends and believed his trophies came from an after-school job as a freelance tennis-trophy designer — "not exactly the two brightest bulbs in the great U.S. parental light-show."