plank flew off with a big clatter, and he waved the pinch bar at us and yelled, “She’s a chicken-drownder!”
Uncle Sagamore took out his plug and bit off a chew. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “it kind of makes a man nervous after a while, never knowin’ when he may wake up and find the house gone from over his head.”
“How big has that ark got to be, anyhow?” Pop asked.
“Well, I don’t rightly know, Sam. From what I can find out the Vision was kind of hazy about the specifications. He’s got the hen-house in her now, and seven privvies if I ain’t lost count, and three of Marvin Jimerson’s hawg-pens, and a wagon-bed from a pore feller that drove over here one day to do some mule-tradin’ with me. Man was real bitter about it, havin’ to ride home a-straddle of the runnin’ gear.”
Well, it took ten minutes or so to convince Uncle Finley it was a false alarm and the world wasn’t ending yet, and by the time we all got back in bed we’d forgot what had started the uproar in the first place. But I remembered it later.
It was around two o’clock in the afternoon and I was fishing for red perch off the end of a log that stuck out in the lake. It was still and hot and the water was like a big piece of glass. And then I heard the noise of an airplane.
It was a small one, and it wasn’t very high. It come on over, and then doggone if there wasn’t a whole bunch of papers fluttering back from it like somebody’d throwed them out. The plane went on out of sight, but the papers swirled around and started drifting down. The whole thing sure looked funny to me, so I threw down the fishing pole and took out after ’em to see what they was. Sig Freed barked and ran with me.
They fluttered and turned over real lazy in the air, but they was coming down pretty straight because there wasn’t any wind, and I could see they was going to land in the cornfield that’s between the back of the house and the timber that goes down toward the big river bottom. I got there just as they begin falling in among the cornstalks, and I ran along the rows gathering them up.
They was printed handbills, and there was three different colors of ’em—pink, blue, and white. I squatted down on a corn row to see what they said, and doggone if they wasn’t about Curly Minifee.
All the pink ones said, in real big print:
HAD ENOUGH?
VOTE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT
ELECT J. L. (CURLY) MINIFEE
Signed: (Minifee for Sheriff Committee)
The blue ones said, in even bigger print:
MINIFEE’S YOUR MAN!!!!
MINIFEE FOR LAW AND ORDER!!!!
MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF!!!!
But the white ones was the longest. They had a lot of printing on them, and it took me a while to read it all:
“Folks, don’t bother to read this—
— if you’d rather have comedy than law enforcement.
— if you really want the county flooded all the time with rotgut moonshine.
— if you think gangsters and gang wars are good publicity for Blossom County.
— if you like con games, gambling, and crooks, and being fleeced out of your hard-earned money.
“And if you do read it, but feel that anybody who’d put a stop to all this good clean fun is just an old sorehead and a grouch, for Heaven’s sake don’t vote for Curly Minifee. He hasn’t got any sense of humor at all, folks, and he’d probably break up the whole show by taking a lot of these smart-aleck crooks out of circulation and putting them behind bars. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Think what a dull place Blossom County would be if you could leave a paved street lying out in front of your house all night and still find it there in the morning, or if your school-age children had to go all the way to Memphis or New Orleans to find out what a naked belly-dancer looks like. There’s no telling where this could lead. Why, people might quit laughing at us all over the State and making jokes about “Blossom County tea.”
“But on the other hand, if you’re fed up with twelve years of futility and
Uncle Sagamore took out his plug and bit off a chew. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “it kind of makes a man nervous after a while, never knowin’ when he may wake up and find the house gone from over his head.”
“How big has that ark got to be, anyhow?” Pop asked.
“Well, I don’t rightly know, Sam. From what I can find out the Vision was kind of hazy about the specifications. He’s got the hen-house in her now, and seven privvies if I ain’t lost count, and three of Marvin Jimerson’s hawg-pens, and a wagon-bed from a pore feller that drove over here one day to do some mule-tradin’ with me. Man was real bitter about it, havin’ to ride home a-straddle of the runnin’ gear.”
Well, it took ten minutes or so to convince Uncle Finley it was a false alarm and the world wasn’t ending yet, and by the time we all got back in bed we’d forgot what had started the uproar in the first place. But I remembered it later.
It was around two o’clock in the afternoon and I was fishing for red perch off the end of a log that stuck out in the lake. It was still and hot and the water was like a big piece of glass. And then I heard the noise of an airplane.
It was a small one, and it wasn’t very high. It come on over, and then doggone if there wasn’t a whole bunch of papers fluttering back from it like somebody’d throwed them out. The plane went on out of sight, but the papers swirled around and started drifting down. The whole thing sure looked funny to me, so I threw down the fishing pole and took out after ’em to see what they was. Sig Freed barked and ran with me.
They fluttered and turned over real lazy in the air, but they was coming down pretty straight because there wasn’t any wind, and I could see they was going to land in the cornfield that’s between the back of the house and the timber that goes down toward the big river bottom. I got there just as they begin falling in among the cornstalks, and I ran along the rows gathering them up.
They was printed handbills, and there was three different colors of ’em—pink, blue, and white. I squatted down on a corn row to see what they said, and doggone if they wasn’t about Curly Minifee.
All the pink ones said, in real big print:
HAD ENOUGH?
VOTE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT
ELECT J. L. (CURLY) MINIFEE
Signed: (Minifee for Sheriff Committee)
The blue ones said, in even bigger print:
MINIFEE’S YOUR MAN!!!!
MINIFEE FOR LAW AND ORDER!!!!
MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF!!!!
But the white ones was the longest. They had a lot of printing on them, and it took me a while to read it all:
“Folks, don’t bother to read this—
— if you’d rather have comedy than law enforcement.
— if you really want the county flooded all the time with rotgut moonshine.
— if you think gangsters and gang wars are good publicity for Blossom County.
— if you like con games, gambling, and crooks, and being fleeced out of your hard-earned money.
“And if you do read it, but feel that anybody who’d put a stop to all this good clean fun is just an old sorehead and a grouch, for Heaven’s sake don’t vote for Curly Minifee. He hasn’t got any sense of humor at all, folks, and he’d probably break up the whole show by taking a lot of these smart-aleck crooks out of circulation and putting them behind bars. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Think what a dull place Blossom County would be if you could leave a paved street lying out in front of your house all night and still find it there in the morning, or if your school-age children had to go all the way to Memphis or New Orleans to find out what a naked belly-dancer looks like. There’s no telling where this could lead. Why, people might quit laughing at us all over the State and making jokes about “Blossom County tea.”
“But on the other hand, if you’re fed up with twelve years of futility and
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