Floyd and the Bear

Do y’all have a zoo in your home town?  We do, and it’s the best one in the state too, everbody says so, except, that is, people in some of the other towns.  They’re just practicin’ envy, though, which the Bible tells you you’re not supposed to do.  But deep in their pagan hearts they know the truth.

            Well, I got to start this story somewhere, so back about 1960 or somethin’ old Valerie Snavely finally stopped tickin’ and died.  And like usual when death comes a-knockin’, it made all the other old folks in town start ponderin’ on their own mortalities and indiscretions.  After all, the older you get the more accumulated guilt you’re totin’ around, and the closer you get to dyin’ the more you polish up your excuses to St. Peter.  But on the other hand, as they’re waddlin’ up and viewin’ Valerie’s mortal remains, they’re also thinkin’ well, better her than me.  So they deal with their grief.  

 Anybody will tell you Valerie was kind of funny.  She kept to her house mostly, and she wasn’t real sociable like most Pinevillians are.  Agoraphobia - if that’s the right scientific word for actin’ like a hermit - is what she suffered from, everybody said.  She lived down at Sixth and Pinecone in the green and yellow gingerbread house – it needs paintin’ now - with all the birdbaths and wind chimes and yard ornaments out front.  But nobody knew much of anything about her at all.  Oh, she’d say howdy if you were walkin’ by, she wasn’t rude or anything.  In fact, she was real nice for a minute before she quick turned around and scuttled back in the door – bing, just like that - leavin’ you standin’ there with your mouth open about to mention the nice weather we’ve been havin’ but nobody to mention it to.      

            Well, Valerie had a slew of cats and dogs runnin’ in and out of her house all the time.  Whenever a meanderin’ mongrel turned up nobody else wanted, she took him in.  If somebody’s cat up and delivered some progeny, they’d take the ones they couldn’t give away – the runts and insane ones - and box ‘em up and tote ‘em over to Valerie’s.  

Birds, too, she had a big old white cockatoo sittin’ in the front window who squawked at the mailman – I guess it suffered from homopostophobia - plus budgies and canaries and lil’ fat finches and what not.  You always knew you were gettin’ close to Valerie’s place when you heard the yippin’, yelpin’, barkin’, meowin’, howlin’, growlin’, screechin and tweet-tweetin’ goin’ on.  And that’s sayin’ nothin’ about the aroma.

 When she died – she was about twelve in dog years, somebody  said -   we all wondered what was gonna become of her critters, because Valerie didn’t have any relatives due to her sister Annie gettin’ run over by a Trailways bus in Des Moines in 1956.  So for a while, people just stopped by the house and filled up all the food and water dishes and emptied the cat boxes and went on their way.  Me too, I went over there with Aunt Mary a few times but stopped when the cockatoo got peckish one day and bit the dang hand – mine - that was feedin’ it.  I got a firm policy with birds.  You bite me once and I don’t care if you ever eat again.   

Well, Charley Flintock down at the bank calls a press conference one day – his first since the run in ’49 - and proclaims that Valerie had done her bankin’ with him for years, and guess what?

            That old she-miser had about two and a half million simoleans in savings bonds and stocks and African gold coins in the bank!  Yep, turns out when she wasn’t openin’ dog food cans or cleanin’ up bird poop, Valerie was on the phone issuin’ buy and sell orders to her Jewish stockbroker up there in New York, and over the years she amassed a fine fortune.  And nobody knew anything about it because Valerie never put on the dog, so to speak.  She always wore old gingham dresses out in the yard with her hose bunchin’ up down ‘round her ankles and a snood that looked like a crawdad net.  What I’m sayin’ is, she lived a pretty pedestrian life along with her critters, who lived quadrapedestrian ones, I guess you would say.   

            Shoot, give me two and a half million dollars, I’d be spendin’ it like I just found

Donald Trump’s billfold on the sidewalk.    

            Anyway, come to find out Valerie had left all her money – every red cent of it - to her cats and dogs and what all, and she stipulates in her will that they got to build a  brand new zoo to put ‘em in, lucky dogs.  Then they have to use the rest of the money to buy some other fauna and stuff, the aim bein’ to make it into a first-class Critter Palace right here in Pineville.  Not San Diego good maybe, but pretty good.

Well, executorin’ Valerie’s will like nobody’s business, Charley appointed a committee for acquirin’ the land and buildin’ the zoo.  Then he hired a Park Ranger fresh out of Zoology School and put him in charge of fixin’ up the exhibits and the cages and scroungin’ as many mammals and vertabraes and what not as he could until Valerie’s money gave out.  It took ‘em about two years, but one fine day they had a spectacular Grand Openin’ and the zoo was hatched.  It’s our most popular tourist attraction too, though to be honest we don’t get many tourists in Pineville, except maybe some people who’ve been drinkin’ a lil’ and make a wrong turn somewhere and end up here.

So that’s how the Valerie Snavely Memorial Zoological Gardens came about, and we’re particularly proud of it, too.  It’s out over there off Highway 57 west of town where the old concrete plant used to be, but if you go past the sawmill you’ve gone too far.  Turn right just before there and follow the signs. 

            I went down to the Herald office to do some research on it for you, and thumbin’ through the clippings and gettin’ ink all over my hands, here’s what I found:

NEW PINEVILLE ZOO OPENS TODAY!

April 1, 1964 by Howard Puthoff, Reporter.  All Rights Reserved.  A new era dawned in Pineville today with the opening of the Valerie Snavely Memorial Zoological Gardens, situated on forty acres over there off Highway 57, north of where the concrete factory used to be if you’re old enough to remember that.   

The gala opening ceremonies featured the Puma Marching Band and our cheeky cheerleaders, as well as representatives from the Elks and Moose who snipped the ribbon that officially opened the place up.  Elks and Moose spokesmen, in an exclusive interview, told this reporter that they would like to see an elk and a moose in the new zoo someday.  

There were free hot dogs and $1 beer, Kool-Aid and balloons for the kiddies, and the Grand Old Army of the Republic presented the color guard.

“This is a proud day for the citizens of Pineville,” opined Mayor Peter P. “Pete” Potter, who was elected last month in a very close election that some people think they ought to take a little closer look at.  “We owe it to the beneficence of one of Pineville’s saintliest citizens, Miss Valerie Snavely, who spent all her time fooling with her dogs and cats and birds and what all, she was a regular Saint Francis of Assisi or somebody I guess you would say.  And now here they all are, plus a whole bunch of other critters for generations of Pinevillians to come enjoy the wonders of the animal kingdom.  So come on out for a relaxing, educational day, eat some cotton candy and buy some souvenirs and hopefully that’ll pay the salary of the boy we just hired to shovel all the…”  (The policy of this paper precludes reporting the mayor’s exact word).

In an exclusive off-the-record comment, the Mayor, sipping on several glasses of cider, told this reporter “I was always nice to that old gal, but she didn’t leave me nothing which I guess means I should of been a (cuss word deleted because kids read the paper) cat.”

Your correspondent, having taken the self- guided tour of the new attraction, is here to tell you that the Zoo Committee has done a fine job here, and in addition to the Avian Atrium and the Dog House,  there’s also the Nairobi Veldt, the Andes Emu and Ostrich Pavilion, the Yellowstone Snake and Lizard Reptilorium, the Felines of the World Exposition Hall (which wags are already calling the Cat Box), Fish City, and the Children’s Zoo where the kiddies can go pet the goat.  Don’t tease the goat, though, kiddies, there’s a sign expressly forbidding that.   

But it’s the disindigenous animals that for this reporter hold more interest, on account of in Pineville we don’t get to see many lemurs, dik-diks, okapi, macaws, a real laughing hyena, and an horney antelope with three white rings on his hind end.  They’ve also got a boa constrictor generously donated by Stan Strawberry in memory of his mother, an osprey, a rare three-legged Madagascar raccoon, an albino opossum from Portugal, and many other varieties of animals which are too numerous to mention since they cut my column space down last month.

 The zoo does need a puma – this is Pineville after all - and one would think the Zoo Committee would have recognized that, but no.  So maybe the youngsters at the High School can have a fundraiser and sell enough chocolate to buy one.  Seniors? 

The new zoo is in the natural habit style, an increasingly popular form of exhibitionism in zoos worldwide.  It means they put rocks and dirt and trees in the iron cages to make the animals feel at home.

By far, the crowd favorite was the cuddly young grizzly bear cub we acquired from the Seattle Zoo.  Said bear was evidently having some behavior problems of an undisclosed type up there, so they sold him to us cheap so they wouldn’t have to fool with him any more.  And what a marvelous specimen of ursus horribilis he is, too.  He’s six months old, playful and frisky and cute as a lamb’s petticoat, but there’s a sign on his cage that warns not to poke or taunt him any, because like all creatures of the wild, he’s apt to snap at you. 

There was a popular contest to name our new fuzzy citizen, with the winner getting free admission to the zoo for a whole year.  Little Chloe Mae, Clement Mae’s daughter from the Dew Drop Inn, nominated “Davy Crockett” because, in an exclusive interview, she told this reporter that the real Davy Crockett killed himself a b’ar when he was only three on a mountain top in Tennessee.  Plus, Mr. Crockett himself came through Pineville once in pursuit of some Pawnees, so there’s that too, is what young Chloe, obviously a promising young historian, related to this reporter.  Chloe is in fifth grade at Pineville Elementary.

After repairing to the Reptilorium to deliberate over several glasses of cider, the Committee indeed christened our new bear Davy Crockett.  Proposed names that lost were Lumpy, Pooh, Butterball, Khrushchev, Yogi, Stinky, Elvis, Hank, Gene, and Paw-Paw.

The zoo will be closed on Mondays, because animals get tired of being stared at and they need a day off too.  Admission is twenty-five cents for adults, and a dime for children ages 6-18.  Kids under 6 are free, but zoo officials warned parents to bring birth certificates just in case.

The view from this reporter’s soapbox is that we have every reason to be proud of our new attraction, and Pineville – indeed, all Pine County - owes a posthumous  debt of gratitude to Valerie Snavely who’s sleeping with the fishes now.  She had the vision, the mission, and the moolah to figure out what to do with all her critters upon her demise, instead of just orphaning them out to the pound which is already overpopulated and a burden to the taxpayers.  Plus kudos to the Zoo Committee for stocking the new varmint exposition with a wide variety of exotic specimens and species of the animal kingdom as a whole.  Truly, Pineville is on the way to becoming a major tourist attraction, and you can bet those people over in Elm City who don’t have a zoo are just buffaloed about it.  

            So that’s our zoo, and it’s one of our favorite picnic spots too.  You can take the family out there and have a fine time strollin’ amongst all the various colorful critters and readin’ the educational signs on their natural habitat cages.  The zoo don’t like you to stand in front of the cages eatin’ a hot dog though, because it dissatisfies some of the animals in terms of the rotten fruit and pellets and stuff they give ‘em, and if you stand there munchin’ your weenie in front of em’, they stare forlornly at you because they want a bite, too.  But you can’t give ‘em one because the sign says they have special diets, and apparently the leading zoologists don’t recommend you give hot dogs -  or Sno-Cones or cotton candy -  to your dik-diks or okapis. 

            Davy Crockett’s still there, he’s a big old man bear now and grumpy a lot of the time which, to be honest, you would be too if you had to spend thirty years in indentured agoraphobia havin’ people stare at you all day, even in your private moments.  But all in all, he’s a good old bear.  A few years ago, we took up a collection to buy a lady bear for him – there was a debate whether that’d make him more or less grumpy - but we only raised fifty-three dollars and that just won’t do in the bear market. 

            Well, that brings me to Floyd Dick, you know Floyd, he was down at the De Drop a few weeks ago havin’ an alcoholically-enhanced discussion with Chet Lester.  Floyd’d been braggin’ to Chet how Harry Truman never did get a handle on the Korean War Deal until he sent Floyd’s United States Marine Corps Unit over there, and how them Koreans quick shaped up when Floyd and the boys started showin’ em’ how the cow ate the cabbage.  Chet says I wonder what Harry Truman’d say about those thirty pounds of extra flab you got hangin’ down your over your pants now,  Major Floyd?  Well, Floyd says he’s till in fightin’ shape, and for that matter, he could whup a grizzly bear with one hand tied behind his back.  Chet thinks about that for a minute, and says which one’s got the hand tied behind his back, Floyd, you or the bear?  

So Floyd’s sittin’ there, broodin’ that he ain’t no good at snappy comebacks and shootin’ Koreans in his mind, and after a minute Chet tells Floyd it’s a moot point anyway, Floyd, on account of there ain’t been no grizzly bears around here since it was Squirrel Gulch.  Well, Chloe pipes in right then and says hold on there a minute, you ain’t forgettin’ Davy Crockett are you, Chet?

Floyd tells Chet well there you go, and here’s a Hamilton that says I can’t make mincemeat out of that bear.  Chloe, bein’ proprietary about Davy, her godbear so to speak, tells Floyd that ain’t funny.  Hiram down at the end of the bar says he’s got a Lincoln that says Davy takes Floyd any day of the week.

Chet, uppin’ the ante, slaps a Grant on the bar which just goads Floyd on further, and so to make a long story short, after fortifyin’ himself a couple more times until Chloe finally cut him off, he staggers out and makes his way to the zoo, all the way yellin’ for Davy to come out, come out wherever you are.  Floyd’s like that, he’ll do anything on a bet when he’s been drinkin’, which is most of the time.  Couple years ago somebody bet him two dollars he wouldn’t rustle up a mule and ride around town naked on it singin’ “I’m An Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande”.  We still got traumatized matrons over that.

Well by this time it was about midnight and there’s nobody – critters excepted of course - at the zoo, so Floyd just clambers over the fence, followed by an entourage of curious onlookers and gamblers.  He reels on up to Davy’s cage and starts rattlin’ the b’ar’s bars with his comb and hollerin’ at Davy, insultin’ and tauntin’ him and tryin’ to roust him up and trick him into a fight.  Easy to do when there are three-inch steel bars separatin’ you and the bear, I’m thinkin’.  But Floyd, in his drunked-up befuddled state, seems to think Davy can just come and go anytime he pleases.

            “Hey there Stinky, you call yourself a bear?  Shoot, ya’ll look like a big dumb rat with a hairy butt to me!  Come on out of there and fight like a man!”

            Davy, inured to thirty years of taunts by now – he don’t let it get to him much anymore - peers out at Floyd through half-closed eyes, sniffs and memorizes his unique aura of Wild Turkey, three-day-old sweat, Lucky Tiger hair oil, and Marlboros, so if – and that’s a big if - and when he finally gets out of his cage and he’s not doin’ anything else, he can hunt him down and eat him like everybody else on his Taunters and Pokers List.  Then he grunts and rolls over and goes back to sleep.

But Floyd keeps on – there’s nothin’ more aggravatin’ when you’re drunk than wantin’ to fight and your opponent just yawns at you – well, he’s raisin’ a ruckus and gettin’ increasingly boisterous and disturbin’ the peace of the non-nocturnal creatures in the zoo, who need their beauty sleep like everybody else.  Well, Sheriff Badger and Deputy Oates finally show up and they rassle Floyd down and hogtie him and haul him off and dump him in his front yard like usual. 

           

            Well, the morning after that, our zookeeper Willy C. Lyons – I swear that’s his name - wasn’t feelin’ too good because he’d had a big fight last night with his girlfriend Bianca, due to her makin’ the public remark that he smelled like lemur poop right there in the De Drop in front of all their friends.  So naturally, Willy’s still upset about it.  I mean, his thinkin’ is, and I agree,  if y’all’s girlfriend is gonna tell you somethin’ embarrassingly personal such as you smell like wild animal excrement, she could at least do it in private and not spread it all over Pineville.   

            So Willy was feelin’ pretty blue and pre-occupied, plus ticked off at the lemurs for interferin’ with his love life.  So goin’ about his mornin’ rounds, he takes Davy his breakfast apple.  But then – get this - he plumb forgets to lock the door behind him on the way out.

            Now Davy, in addition to his other qualities, is an observant bear, and he immediately sees Willy’d walked off without  puttin’ the lock back on, which is what he’d been wantin’ for Christmas for thirty years now.  So he goes “Yippee!” to himself and puts his Operation: Freedom plan into action, which he’d been fine-tunin’ since the day he was shanghaied from Seattle all those yesterdays ago.

            Number One, get out of the zoo without anybody seein’ him.  So he had to wait a few minutes while some Girl Scouts – earnin’ their bear badges, I guess - marched on by and went “Pew-wee!” at him.  Then he watched for Willy to go over to the Cat Box to feed the lil’ fuzzballs their Friskies like he does every morning right after he gives him his apple.

            Number Two, get out the big ball of shedded bear fur he’s been constructin’ all these years and roll it over behind his rock.  Then, pull his blankie over it so anybody lookin’ in his cage’ll think it’s him, not a faux- bear dummy, and that he’s lyin’ down and takin’ a nap.     

Three, lope on over real quick to M’gumbo’s cage.  Davy and M’gumbo – she’s our Struthio camelus if you’re a leading zoologist - had a deal that if Davy ever got out of his cage, he’d let M’gumbo out, and if M’gumbo ever gets out of her cage, she’ll let Davy out.  So bein’ a bear good to his word, he goes and noses her captivatin’ bolt right out of its hasp deal.  (In case you’re wonderin’, ostriches don’t require regular door locks because they’re too dumb to figure ‘em out.  Even slidin’ bolts baffle ‘em).

 Well, M’gumbo picks her head up out of her sand and slowly comprehends the new-found freedoms a’dawnin’ on her.  She shoots a grateful wink at Davy, then high-tails it out of her habitat and starts struttin’ and prancin’ down Africa Avenue like she’s leadin’ the Macy’s Thanksgivin’ Day Parade, fulfillin’ her life-long dream.  Davy, meanwhile, runs over behind the hydrangea bush by the Hyena Habitat, tryin’ to figure out how to work his way out to the back fence, where he knows some lawless Elm City youngsters had loosed up a board so they could sneak in the zoo for free.   

            So, watchin’ for zoogoers, picnickers, tourists, Girl Scouts, and especially Willy, he quick scoots from the dogwood tree to the cockscomb bush to the Bird of Paradise plant, hidin’ behind trash baskets and cotton candy kiosks on the way.  Finally he reaches the back fence, swats the loose board off and escapes into freedom for the first time since he jumped out of his incubator at the Seattle Zoo.

            “Ah, liberty!  Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”  Davy says to himself, or would if he knew his Patrick Henry like I do.  He was feelin’ just like anybody would who finally gets emancipated after years of meaningless servitude in a mindless existence, such as like when you quit from your job in Corporate America. 

            He got up on his hind legs and rotated himself, sniffin’ this way and that way, over here and over there, until he catches the scent of Eau de’ Wild Turkey, old sweat, Lucky Tiger Hair Oil, and Marlboros waftin’ over   from the north-north-east.

            He set out.  You could almost hear Yankee Doodle playin’.

            Meanwhile, back at the Cat Box, Willy’s havin’ one of those moments you get when there’s somethin’ naggin’ at you, like you forgot to turn the iron off or feed the ferret, but you can’t quite remember what it is.  Ever had one of them deals?  So he’s pourin’ the Friskies into the cat troughs and tryin’ to think.

            “Did I put my deodorant on this mornin’?”  He sniffs his armpits and no, that ain’t it.  “Did I forget to put the bong in the glove box?”  He went and looked and he hadn’t.  And he’s reachin’ into his pocket to make sure he’s got his condom package - you can never tell when a zoo attendant groupie might come along - and he felt somethin’ that shouldn’t’ve been there.  What the heck?  He turns his pocket out and it’s the lock to Davy’s cage.

            “Oops,” Willie goes, understatin’ the depth of his true panic-laden feelings, and he tears out of the Cat Box, so focused on gettin’ back to Davy’s cage that he plumb forgets to lock that door too.  So all the cats, about fifty, sixty of ‘em, all nationalities and persuasions, start workin’ on their own Operation: Freedom plans and shoot out of their habitats like they just heard Abraham Lincoln had inked the Cat Emancipation Proclamation.   

            In about two ticks, there were Abyssinians, Angoras, Burmese, Cheshires, Manxes, Margays, Persians, Siamese – Felines of the World, you might say - all runnin’ rampant around the zoo like a bunch of wild Indians.  They had a gang mentality, too, sneakin’ okapi food, slurpin’ opossum water, and pressin’ their faces up to the fish tanks real close and scarin’ the bejabbers out of the blowfish.  Then headin’ to the Bird Cage to get a closer look at my old friend, the big white noisy cockatoo.

            Well, to Willy’s great relief - he knows they’d fire his butt for sure if Davy ever got out and mauled a Girl Scout or ate a dik-dik -  he gets to Davy’s cage and sees him gettin’ forty winks behind his rock and lets out an audible “Whew!” and  wipes some sweat beads off his beleaguered brow.  But then, he turns around and sees a covey or coterie – I can’t make up my mind which - of cats closin’ in on the Bird Cage, and he jumps up about six inches and quick gets on his walkie-talkie and broadcasts a Code Five.

            Code One, if you’re wonderin’, is animal tauntin’.  Code Two is somebody’s throwin’ up and we need a mop.  Code Three is there’s a kid teasin’ the goat.  Code Four is zoo attendant groupies in the house, and Code Five is Escaped Critter.  Well, of course, there’s an immediate lockdown, you know, Katie bar the door, like they do at Alcatraz when the Birdman don’t answer roll call.

            Meanwhile, in town, Davy’s sneakin’ from here to there, standin’ in the shadows of Pineville and investigatin’ garbage pails.  His sensitive nose is drawin’ him closer to Fifth and Acorn - which if you guessed that’s where Floyd lives, you’d be right. 

            Well, right about then Simon, Aunt Mary’s cat who you know already, is trottin’ over to Pineville Presbyterian Church to see if the pastor’s cute lil’ calico Charity is in the mood.  Bein’ Presbyterian though, she ain’t never in the mood, but Simon, persistent pussycat that he is, keeps tryin’ anyway. 

            Well, all of a sudden Simon smells somethin’ funny.  Hmmm, he goes to himself, it ain’t dog, nope.  Nor bird.  It ain’t mouse either or anything he recognizes offhand, except it’s reminiscent of the dumpster at Pay-More when they throw their expired meat out on a hot day.  Gamy, you know.  Well, cats bein’ curious critters, Simon follows his nose over to the yellow jasmine bushes in front of Reba Calhoun’s house, where he sits there for a minute puzzlin’ on the strange smell and lickin’ his eyebrows.  Finally he can’t help himself anymore and pokes his lil’ head in the bush, and Whap!  He gets swiped plumb across the puss by a big brown hairy smelly clawed paw!

            Startled, he jumps back and licks his face, but Simon ain’t one to back away from a fight, either.  He don’t know who it is or what it is, but as you already know anybody who starts somethin’ with Simon is fixin’ to be real rueful, real soon.  He gets his back up and hisses and growls in the universal animal language:

“Come on out of there and fight like a man, you coward!  Why, I oughtta…”

            Well, when a grizzly bear is called a coward by a measly cat, it’s a matter of personal Ursidae pride.  Davy lumbers out and stares at Simon.

            Simon’s lil’ cat eyes pop out of course, like he’s seein’ but ain’t believin’, and he’s warily wonderin’ if he might have been a tad rash in challengin’ it, whatever it is, to a catfight.  But then he remembers…long, long ago…when he was just a little nipper… curlin’ up with Aunt Mary and watchin’ Grizzly Adams on the movin’ pictures box… and in his feeble lil’ cat brain he’s goin’ “Dang…double dang…here’s Ben, right here in Pineville…and the son of a bitch just slapped me on the face!”

            Well, he twitches his tail and growls and hisses and snarls at Davy - cat bravado, you know - and Davy’s snortin’ and salivatin’ and wonderin’ what cat tastes like.  So there they are, warily bluffin’ bellicosity at one another, when Reba happens to amble out to spray some aphid medicine on her mums.  Wild-eyed, she espies Simon and Davy circlin’ each other, their sabers rattlin’ and mutterin’ dark threats and imprecations in their respective bear and cat languages.

            “You better run, you mangy little feather-duster, if you know what’s good for you.”

            “That’s pretty big talk from a smelly washed-up celebrity.”

            “Who you callin’ washed-up, you whiskered shrimp fuzzface?”

            “You, that’s who.”

            “Me?”

            “What did I just say?”

            Reba, like all women do in a situation like that, jumps up about a foot, screams “Eek!” and runs in the house to call a man.  Davy, realizin’ he’s a spotted bear, looks at Simon.

            “I ain’t runnin’ from you, fish-breath, but I got things to do, people to see.”

            “Yah!  Big sissy hairball!  Hissssss!  Next time, Ben, bring ‘yo mama!”

            Davy, makin’ a mental note to come back and eat Simon on his way home, continues followin’  his snout over to Fifth and Acorn, from whence – if that’s the word I’m lookin’ for -  emanated the uniquely unmistakable stink of Floyd Dick -  aka The Midnight Taunter.  “That blue house over there, yep, Eureka!”  Davy triumphantly says to himself, and starts lopin’.

            Over at the po-lice station, Sheriff Badger picks up the phone.

            “Yep, po-lice.”

            “Sheriff, come quick!  This here’s Reba Calhoun and they’s a twelve-foot high grizzly bear in my front yard!”

            “Now Reba, ain’t it a lil’ early for that?  I thought you been goin’ to your AA meetin’s real regular.”

            “Y’all got to get over here right now!  I swear I seen me a big awful bear, Sheriff!”

            “Now Reba, you just go get your book and study on that first step some more,” and he hangs up the phone and reaches over for a fresh iced bearclaw, in one of those coincidences that make writin’ so easy. 

            Meanwhile, back at the zoo, Willy’s willy-nilly chasin’ down cats and tryin’ to haul ‘em back to their habitats, but the cats, feelin’ that  freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, ain’t bein’ especially cooperative about it with him.

            Well, and I hate to keep ping-pongin’ y’all back and forth like this, but over at his house that mornin’ after three pints of Wild Turkey, Floyd’d decided to sharpen his Korean dagger collection.  So there he is out on the porch, nose to the grindstone, when Davy waddles up, feelin’ like Lewis or Clark did when he first laid eyes on California, and he lo and beholds Floyd on the porch.  He goes “Yippee!” to himself and quick lumbers on over right behind Floyd and pokes his cold nose in the one strategic place guaranteed to make the recipient jump up about three feet.

“ROAR!”

 Floyd, discombobulated like all get-out of course, jumps up three feet, and he turns around and there’s Davy, all slaverin’ jaws and paws and claws.    

            “Hi there, it’s me, Stinky!” 

            “W-w-w-w-w…”

 “And what was that you was sayin’ about me bein’ a big hairy dumb-butt rat?  Or perhaps I misunderstood,” and he takes a swipe at Floyd’s belly, takin’ advantage of the ample target it presents. 
 

            “W-w-w w-w…”  Floyd sputters, and he jumps up on his porch swing which commences swayin’ back and forth like they do.  Which, it’s never a good idea at any time to stand up on your porch swing, but, in the extenuatin’ circumstance of bein’ confronted by a grizzly bear with a grudge, you can understand.           

“Uh, nice bear!  Pretty bear!  Hi there, bear!  Uh, wanna drink?”

            “That’s better, and just in passing, you stink worse than I do.”

            So there they are, Floyd and the b’ar, warily starin’ at each other like a couple of Mexicans havin’ a standoff.  The porch swing’s swayin’ back and forth, Floyd’s holdin’ on for dear life, and Davy’s head is movin’ up and down, back and forth followin’ it, like he’s watchin’ some jumpin’ salmon and gettin’ ready to snag one of ‘em.  

            Reba’s back on the phone.

            “Sheriff, I swear I ain’t had me nothin’ but one teensy-tiny glass of muscatel this mornin’, well, maybe two, but I swear, Sheriff, there was a big old bear out here the size of Oklahoma and he was fightin’ with Aunt Mary’s cat.”  Sheriff Badger sighs and goes “OK Reba, I’ll come on over there, but if this is like that time you seen Mother Teresa mowin’ your lawn, I’m gonna bill you for it.” 

He hangs up but the phone quick rings again, and it’s somebody else tellin’ him they just seen the bear from the zoo waitin’ for the light at Third and Acorn, pushin’ the WALK button.  Just another prank call, he’s thinkin’ to himself as he slams the phone down, but then…hmmm…Reba just called him about a bear too…hmmm…well, so to make a long story short, he decides he don’t want to get sued in case the actual bear is actually at large and somebody gets mauled while he’s on duty, so the he phones Willy at the zoo, investigatin’ the cage aspect of the case. 

“Shoot, Sheriff, Davy’s havin’ a nice lil’ siesta.  Heck no he ain’t escaped.  We run a tight ark here, Sheriff.”

 “Better go look, son, because I just got a call sayin’ there’s a bear takin’ a stroll down Acorn, dang it.”

 “Hang it, Sheriff, I just saw him not even a minute ago, layin’ down behind his rock with his blanket and snorin’ up a storm.”

            Unbeknownst to Willy of course, Davy wasn’t havin’ a nice lil’ nap in his cage, nor snorin’ up a storm or anything of the kind.  Where he was was on the front porch at 512 Acorn, and what he was doin’ was slobberin’ and swipin’ and lungin’ up at Floyd, the way perturbed grizzly bears do when they’re tryin’ to knock a possum out of a tree.

            Well Floyd, as I already told you so excuse my redundancy - if that’s the right word - had about three pints of Wild Turkey in him, and as he’s teeterin’ and totterin’ up there on the swing he’s thinkin’ to himself, hey, what if I’m hallucinatin’ and this ain’t  real?

  “Floyd,” his inner voice is counselin’ him, “I know what it is.  It’s another one of them DT deals, like that time we saw a couple of pink ocelots in our bathroom strummin’ ukuleles and croonin’ ‘Tiny Bubbles’.  There can’t really be no real dang bear up here on the porch this mornin’ as nice as pie.  Why, the very idea, it’s absurd, Floyd.”

            So Floyd looks down at the fuzzy apparition or phantasm, and yells “Hey You!  Go away!” which worked fine on the ocelots, and he tentatively climbs down off the swing.  Whereupon, Davy once and for all shatters all Floyd’s illusions by swipin’ his paw smack across his suspenders, resultin’ in Floyd standin’ there with his pants down in more ways than one.   

Well, in addition to teachin’ ‘em how to bayonet Koreans, the United States Marines also teach their boys the art of strategic retreat, which Floyd starts implementin’ immediately, runnin’ swiftly and strategically – as swiftly and strategically as you can, that is, while tryin’ to hold your pants up – like he does when he has to quick get to the liquor store before it closes.  

 Davy, startin’ to have real fun now, grins and lopes on after him.

            The leading zoologists will tell you when you’re accosted by a bear, what you don’t do is try to run away from him, because bears love The Chase.  But Floyd, not up on his bear lore, starts foamin’ out the mouth and runnin’ in circles around his house like a rabid Canis lupus familiaris – the term will be familiar to leading zoologists – chasin’ his tail.  Well, that goes on for about a half-hour, Floyd runnin’ pell-mell stumblin’ over wheelbarrows and stuff in his yard while tryin’ to hold his pants up, and Davy discoverin’ that he loves playin’ Tag and that wheelbarrows are fun to jump over.  I figure they must’ve circled Floyd’s house about thirty times, if you’re allowin’, say, one revolution per minute.

            But Davy doesn’t get too much exercise in his cage – he don’t get out much, you know - and since he’s havin’ such an eventful day anyhow, he starts to slow down a lil’ and all of a sudden he realizes it’s lunchtime.  Which, if you’re a bear, is the highlight of the day.  So he’s figurin’ hmmm…do I catch up with Marlboro Man here and devour him on the spot, or am I more in the mood for my lunch fish back home?

            Plus, since goin’ round in all them circles he’s a lil’ queasy too, and the idea of chewin’ on Floyd’s flabby fetid flesh when he could be feastin’ on a fresh filet of farm-raised flounder instead wasn’t all that appealin’ of an idea.  So he makes one final lunge, bitin’ off a chunk of Floyd’s rear end - which decisively ends his culinary indecision - and he quick turns tail to trod on home, his hairy tail disappearin’ over the horizon.

            Well, Floyd’s blinkin’ his eyes and smackin’ his forehead and tryin’ to pull his pants up – try it yourself if you think it sounds easy – and wonderin’ was it an apparition or a phantasm or the real thing?  Bear or bull?  Finally, he goes in the house to find his spare suspenders, have another pint of Wild Turkey, and put a large Curad on his butt, in that order.    

            Well, Davy gets back to the zoo, where he squeezes in through the back fence and sees all the pandemonium goin’ on everwhere, conveniently providin’ a nice distraction for him.  He scoots from the Turkey Oak to the Cow Itch bush, then from the Pigeonberry Palm over behind the Foxglove, duckin’ behind the okapi and dik-dik cages just like a United States Marine advancin’ up Mt. Pyongyang.    

He finally arrives at Africa Avenue, where the only thing between him and his lunch is the Snavely Memorial fountain, so, naturally, the bear went over the fountain.  He moseys on up to his cage, locked now, and so he sits down on the steps, tappin’ his paw and waitin’ for Willy to quit foolin’ with the felines and bring him his fresh fish plate.

            But Willy’s on the phone with the Sheriff again, who tells him he’s had five calls now sayin’ there’s a bear chasin’ Floyd around his house and disturbin’ the peace in the neighborhood, and would he, Willy, please go check one more time on Davy, before he, the sheriff, has to get up off his sweet patootie and go make a dang fool of himself chasin’ make-believe bears on Monday morning?

            So Willy goes OK Sheriff, and, holdin’ a Abyssinian by the scruff of his scrawny lil’ neck in one hand and a howlin’ Siamese under his right arm in a headlock, he quick hustles on over to Davy’s cage, and of course there’s Davy sittin’ there on the steps, whistlin’ Dixie and lookin’ as innocent as a newborn nun.  He’s endeavorin’ to convey to Willy, by look and gesture, where’s my flounder feast, friend?  And what in tarnation’s been goin’ on around here, anyway?  I’m gone for three hours and this is what I find when I come home?

            Well, seein’ Davy out of his habitat, Willy jumps up about a foot and the cats go flyin’ every which way, which they finally come down and land on their feet – cats have enhanced equilibriums which you know if you‘ve ever tossed one - and they resume trekkin’ toward the Bird Cage with anarchy on their lil’ criminal minds.

 Davy starts pawin’ the door of his cage and implorin’ Willy to stop foolin’ around and bring him his dang fish, will you puh-leeze?  So Willy ever-so-cautiously walks on up and opens the door, and Davy scoots right on in and goes and gets his  dinner bowl and noses it over the floor toward Willy in the universal gesture of animals impatient for their lunch.  Willy -  still incredulously disbelievin’ what he just seen and makin’ a mental note to lay off the bong for a few days -   peers over behind Davy’s rock and sure enough sees  a big hirsute hairball made up to look like a somnambulantin’ bear.

“Dang, Davy, where’d you learn that trick?” he goes, agape.

“Aw shucks,” Davy goes, and he lowers his head and paws the floor, modestly conveyin’ that it wasn’t so special and that any bear in his position would have done the same thing.

            “You’re a good bear, Davy, but you better hide your hairball dummy because the cat’s out of the bag, boy.  You’ve been seen runnin’ all over town pokin’ in garbage pails and gettin’ into spats with cats,  and then goin’ over to Floyd’s and bullyraggin’ him around his house.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sheriff shows up any minute, checkin’ on your alibi, OK?” 

Davy quick rolls his hairball back in its hidin’ place, and Willy locks the door behind him.

            Well, right then Sheriff Badger – facilitatin’ my continuity like nobody’s business – shows up and  says to  Willy  “Now listen here son,  I got me four believable bear sightings,  and it ain’t that I don’t trust you, which I don’t,  but I had to come out here and see with my own two eyes that that  %$!@?  bear ain’t escaped!”

            Willy tsk-tsks at the Sheriff like he was doubtin’ Thomas himself, and goes “Why certainly, Sheriff, take a look for yourself,” and he steps back and of course, there’s Davy Crockett, lookin’ up with a beatific – if that’s the word I’m lookin’ for - look in his big brown eyes.

 “Well howdy sheriff, always a pleasure to see our local law enforcement on a beautiful day at the zoo.  How’s the family?  What brings you out here?”

            The sheriff mutters “All right, dang it,” kicks some dirt up, and heads on over to Reba’s house, gettin’ ready to throw the whole dang book at her.

            Davy winks at Willy and Willy winks back, and then he goes and gets not one, but two fragrant fresh farm-raised flounder filets and hands ‘em in to Davy, who, bein’ famished, gulps ‘em down like he’s at Red Lobster on All-You-Can-Eat night. 

            Well, that night down at the AA hall, Floyd and Reba are sittin’ there discussin’ the first step, tryin’ to find some of that serenity deal so they don’t have no more bears chasin’ ‘em around their houses or pickin’ fights with Aunt Mary’s cat in their front yard.

            Things have settled down again back at zoo too, and all the cats, bats, dogs, frogs, ewes and gnus are all snuggled in for the night, yippin’ and yappin’ and howlin’ and growlin’ and cheepin’ and peepin’ and relivin’ the day’s glorious events with each other. 

            Davy, like he does every night when he goes to sleep, rolls over and starts dreamin’ of a beautiful girl bear to hug.

            Sheriff Badger’s writin’ his report, and he puts down that there wasn’t no escaped grizzly bear at all, just a few people drinkin’ too much too early in the day and seein’ things of which after a lawful search, no proof  of  possible evidentiary value could be found to exist.  Case closed, he writes, with a citation to Reba for makin’ a False Report to a Peace Officer, and he has him another tasty bearclaw.

            Willy and Bianca are sittin’ in the De Drop with all their friends, and after Willy finishes tellin’ everybody about his brave adventure capturin’ the escaped bear, Bianca, blinkin’ her pretty blue eyes up at him, confesses she didn’t really mean what she said the other night – you know, the lemur poop thing, honey.  She was just mad, she says, because he ain’t took her bowlin’ or to the movies for three weeks.  And all their friends slap Willy on the back and said they ain’t never smelled lemur poop on him either, and everybody chips in to buy him a shot of Grey Goose.

Even so, Willy pledges to Bianca that he’ll not only take her bowlin’ tomorrow night, but to the movies on Sunday after he gets off, and he’ll even take a shower first just to be sure.  She leans over and whispers in his ear how it might be all right for him to explore under her shirt for a lil’ while later on tonight.  (I realize that was gratuitous, but you got to give your readers – and your zookeepers - what they want).   

            Over by the garbage bin in back of Mamma Mia’s, Simon’s thinkin’ about his day too, and he’s tiltin’ his head to one side with a puzzled look on his face like cats do when they can’t figure somethin’ complicated out.  The illogic – sayin’ nothin’ about the improbability - of actually meetin’ up with and conversin’ with the famous TV star Ben right here in Pineville… well, it was startin’ to vex what lil’ brain he’s got, and he’s thinkin’ to himself…hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t’ve lapped up  that pint of cookin’ sherry Aunt Mary spilled on the floor this mornin’...  He pauses, turns around, licks his tail, sniffs a rock,  turns his eyes heavenward, licks his eyebrows, and takes a slow, thoughtful walk on over to the AA hall, with a slight detour by Pineville Presbyterian just on the off-chance. 

            I was talkin’ to Aunt Mary about it next mornin’ – she knew all the facts already, of course - and she tells me lately she’s been thinkin’ of doin’ somethin’ nice for Davy because he’s got a birthday comin’ up and because also, as you know, she has a heart of gold and loves all creatures, just like Valerie Snavely did before she demised.   

            “And you know what?”  she goes.

            “What?  I go, not knowin’ what.

            “Well, I just got off the phone with the Saskatchewan Zoo up there in Canada, and they got a nice sale on a cute young girl grizzly bear.  So I bought her, and she’ll be here next week!” 

            “Well, I’ll be dog,” I go.

And that goes to show you that your dreams can come true, whether they be dreams of liberty or dreams of love, even if you’re a bear. 

 

Note:  There were no animals harmed in the writing of this story.

Karaoke Night at the De Drop

Well, I’m in the shower soapin’ away, mindin’ my own business and singin’ New York,  New York like I do sometimes, and I hear this yelpin’ and  howlin’  and carryin’ on outside the bathroom door.

It’s the dog, of course, and by the way he sounds, he just got run over by a truck.  That, or he’s puttin’ on his Ethiopian starvin’-orphan-dog act, where he moans and writhes on the floor like he ain’t ate for six months.  So out I come, and there he is, sittin’ on the floor with his paws over his ears lookin’ up at me.

“What?” I go.

“It’s your singin’” he barks.  

I narrow my eyes. 

“What about it?”

“Well you know,” he yips, “Frank Sinatra’s dead now, but I don’t think he’d appreciate what you’re doin’ to his song.”

“Is that so?” Terse, you know, and I’m directin’ a piercin’ glance at him.  There ain’t nothin’ sharper than a serpents tooth than an ungrateful dog who takes his room and board for granted in the first place, but then he’s got to critique your singin’ like he’s a guest dog judge on the American Idol deal.

“So you’re President of the Frank Sinatra Fan Club today, Snoopy?”

He hates it when I call him that.

“No,“ he arfs, “but remember that time you were murderin’ My Way in the shower and old lady Armbruster called the Sheriff because she thought we were torturin’ a pot-bellied pig over here?

“She just wanted to get a man in uniform in her house, and you know it.”

“Then why did we get a warnin’ for disturbin’ the peace?” he goes, waggin’ his fool tail.

One can’t let one’s dog get too far above himself, so I lean over real close.

 “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention,” I croon in his ear, and he yelps and slinks out the back door.

It’s not as though he’s got any room to talk, either.  His own favorite song is that one where the dog barks Jingle Bells, and he bow-wows right along with the record.  Pathetic, if you ask me.   

 But, about my singin’, I admit he’s got a point.  Back in Pineville High Choir, I began to notice how Mrs. Jensen got a pained look on her face whenever I came in and sat down, and that everybody sort of sidled away from me durin’ scale practice.

But that ain’t my fault, it’s our educational system, because when they don’t know where else to put you, they stick you in choir regardless of whether you’re Frank Sinatra or not.  And if you don’t open your mouth and sing, you flunk. In my case, if you do sing, you get plenty of elbow room to do it in and a C+ for perfect attendance.

But as a rule I don’t sing in front of anybody anymore. I can take the hint - although some would say I have a distinctive tessitura baritone - but you wouldn’t think one’s own dog would be rude enough to make snide comments about it.  Eight hundred dogs in Pineville, and I get the music critic from Rolling Bone. 

Anyway, I’m down at the De Drop with Junior the other day and in walks Trina and Karen Sue.  They’re totin’ in a big old black box on a two-wheeler.  Chloe howdies and tells ‘em to set it up in the corner over there under Bambi. 

“What’s goin’ on, Chloe?”

“We’re havin’ a karaoke night tomorrow,” she goes, spritzin’ some Lysol and scrapin’ up a glob of encrusted tobacco drool off the bar.  

            “You mean where they turn the voice off and people get up and sing to it?” I go, demonstratin’ my knowledge of popular culture.

“Well, duh,” she goes, pretty much tellin’ me what she thinks of my knowledge of popular culture. 

“When did you decide to do that?”

“Well, Trina and Karen Sue wanted to do it, and I read in Trends in Better American Beverage Service that it might get me some new customers, and it ain’t like I’m opposed to that.”

Karen Sue walks up and tells me she hopes I’m comin’ to Karaoke Night tomorrow, except there’s just one teeny little problem, she goes.

I raise a quizzical eyebrow.

“There ain’t no Frank Sinatra on the machine.” She looks at me with kind of a pitiful commiseration, like she’s tellin’ me she just backed over my cat in the driveway or somethin’.

I gape, dumbfounded.  But then she goes “I talked to Aunt Mary this mornin’.”

Well, that explains it, I guess, but how Aunt Mary knows I sing New York, New York in the shower is beyond me.  I mean, it’s true she knows everything about everybody, but ain’t that the limit? And here I’ve been, all along thinkin’ it was just me and Nelson Riddle havin’ a private moment.

I’ll bet old lady Armbruster told her. That’s fine, I’ll fix her. One of these mornin’s when she’s havin’ breakfast, I’ll lean out the window and sing Little Green Apples at her, maybe her grits’ll go down the wrong way. 

Anyway, next day I’m in the shower again, hummin’ that great old song Norman like I do sometimes and gettin’ ready to go take Aunt Mary to the De Drop for Karaoke Night.  I hear this awful ghastly moanin’ comin’ from the dog’s room.  Well, I know for a fact he don’t like Norman – it’s a matter of taste -  but sooner or later he’s got to learn that this life ain’t meant for his pleasure alone. 

            Chloe says when word got out that she was fixin’ to have a karaoke night, the phone started ringin’ off the hook and for the first time since the Snavely wedding reception she’s takin’ reservations.  The thing is, a lot of people around here don’t exactly patronize the De Drop, because it’s just a ratty lil’ downtown bar like I’ve already told you.  It’s not one of your glitzy hot-spots like up in Mapleville. 

But, preparin’ for the big night, Chloe’d swept the floor, vacuumed Bambi, dusted Mr. Peanut off, replaced the dud Christmas lights, turned on the waterfall signs to encourage thirst,  pasted new date stickers on the Planters Peanuts packages,  plugged a Glade Fresh Meadow deal in both bathrooms,  and straightened the velvet Elvis that’s been hangin’ askew -  if that’s the word I want - ever since August 16, 1977 when Floyd got mad at The King for dyin’ in his bathroom and threw a bottle of Falstaff at him. 

We elbow our way on up front and sit down with Trina and Bobby Wayne and Karen Sue and Kenny Bob.  Trina’s lookin’ real fine in her little black sparkly dress, and she’s studyin’ the words to Feelings and goin’ “mi mi mi mi mi.”  Bobby Wayne, who you might know does the best Elvis in Pine County, he’s standin’ up practicin’ his hip-thrustin’ and tryin’ not to stick his rhinestoned butt in somebody’s face.  Aunt Mary said he looks like he’s doin’ the hula hoop without the hoop.

 

Kenny Bob’s combin’ his hair back and sayin’ he’s gonna do somethin’ by his idol Conway Twitty.

Which reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time we got a new preacher in town who was the spittin’ image of Conway Twitty?  Yep, he goes out into the neighborhood introducin’ himself, and he knocks on Rhetta Calhoun’s front door.  She goes “Oh my goodness, it’s Conway Twitty, right here in Pineville!”

And he goes, “No ma’am, I’m the new preacher here in town, and I just came by to invite you to Sunday service.”

He goes on to the next house where Clarice Beavers answers the door, and she’s all wide-eyed.  “Conway Twitty! What in the world are you doin’ here?” And he goes, “No, ma’am, I’m the new preacher here in town, and I just want to invite you to church Sunday for some worship and fellowship.”

So he goes on to the next house, and Wanda Kay Rushmore answers the door, except she’s just fresh out of the shower and thinkin’ it’s her husband Ricky who’s forgot his keys, she answers the door stark naked.

“Oh my stars! Conway Twitty!”

“Hello, darlin’,” he goes.

Anyway, the De Drop was packed, seemed like half of Pineville was there and some Elm City riff-raff too, over in the corner under the moose. You can always tell Elm Citians because the boys ain’t got sleeves on their tee-shirts and most of the girls are a lil’ cross-eyed and have lil’ bleached mustaches when you see ‘em up close. 

Afterwhile Chloe unplugs the jukebox smack in the middle of that one -  I don’t remember the name of it -  but it’s about this boy who’s havin’ a real hard time with everything, first one thing and then another, you know, and then to top it all off, his mama gets run over by a dang old train.  Karen Sue gets up and goes to the karaoke deal and picks up the microphone.

“Welcome to the De Drop, everybody, for Karaoke night! Woo-hoo!”

“Woo-hoo!” 

“Now this here’s the signup sheet, and you got to come up here and write your name on it and the song you want to sing, and if we got it  we’ll call you up. Everybody got that?   

Dang near everybody in the place gets up and stands in line to put their names down. I see Junior and his girlfriend Denise Dickinson, she’s waggin’ a finger in his face and tellin’ him that seein’ him get drunk and makin’ a fool of himself once - for instance two weeks ago at Red Lobster – is plenty enough for her, and he’d better be on his best behavior tonight or she’ll be mad and won’t give him somethin’ he wants later on.  I couldn’t make out exactly what she said on account of all the noise.   

Aunt Mary, like she does when you take her out somewhere, she’s cranin’ her neck and tellin’ us about everybody in the place.

“That’s Sandra Faye Fishbein over there,” she goes, pointin’ to a cross-eyed skinny redhead Elm Citian with a trace of a bleached goatee.  “Her daddy run off with her Philippine maid when she was little, poor thing.  Ever since then she’s been workin’ real hard findin’ her a new daddy, and she’s on about number three hundred and forty-seven by now.”

            She yanks her neck over yonder under the moose.

“Lookie there, that’s crazy Kyle Hamburger,” indicatin’ a seedy wild-eyed redneck hippie dude with his cap on backward and no sleeves on his tee-shirt.  “I guess they let him out for the weekend.”

Like I said, Aunt Mary knows everything about everybody.  Includin’, now that I think of it, that I like to sing Frank Sinatra in the shower. 

“Aunt Mary,” I go, flashin’ her a penetratin’ glance, “how exactly does Karen Sue know about me singin’ New York, New York in the shower?”

“Boy,” she goes, swishin’ a swallow of Old Granddad and gulpin’ it down the hatch, “Don’t you know everybody calls you the Chairman of Pinecone Street?  Har har!”  Uproarious, you know.

Well, I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted by that, so I just let it pass,  makin’ a mental note to shut the bathroom window from now on. 

“Okay everybody shut up now we’re fixin’ to start!” and Karen Sue calls up Jimmy Ray Hogg, Elmer’s boy.  You know, they have the dairy farm outside town. 

“Jimmy Ray’s gone sing Sweet Home Alabama for y’all!” and she pushes No. 263 on the karaoke deal.

“Woo-hoo!”

  Jimmy Ray stamps out his cigarette, sucks in his belly, takes a deep breath, and starts a’wailin’.

Big Wheels keep on turnin’

Carry me home to see my kin

Singing songs about the southland

I miss ole ‘Bamy once again

Everybody whoops and hollers, especially the Elm Citians, who named their elementary school after the Doobie Brothers a few years ago.

Well, I ain’t claimin’ to be a music expert or anything because back  in choir, to be honest with you, I was payin’ more attention to Eileen Applebottom’s breath control than I was to my notes and stuff, so I can’t really say I know the finer points of singin’. 

But, I do know that there’s a deal they call pitch, which means that if you sing on the right one, you’re doin’ good. But if you don’t, people look funny at you, like they did at me in school when I was doin’ my part in “Lo, How a Rose ere Bloomin’   just before they started scootin’ over toward the door.

 What singin’ on pitch means is that if the music notes are goin’ Do, Re, Mi, and Fa,  then you’re supposed to singin’ the equivalent – if that’s the word I want -  C, D, E and F notes.  Somethin’ like that. 

So what I’m sayin’ is that Jimmy Ray rips into Sweet Home Alabama and it’s goin’ C, D, E and F but he’s goin’ B, C, D and E.  I hope that makes sense and I’m explainin’ it properly.  Of course, part of the deal about karaoke is that everybody gets so drunk they don’t really care if you sing on the pitch or not.

Up in heaven, though, I imagine the boys from Lynard Skynard were lookin’ down, holdin’ their noses.

 Jimmy Ray finally gets finished comin’ on home, and everybody claps and woo-hoos just to be polite, because that’s the way we are in Pineville – gracious, you know, even when our ears hurt.

Next up was an Elm Citian, some goofball with a mullet by the name of Brett Tumple or somethin’. Karen Sue studies the list for a minute and pushes No. 263.

Big Wheels keep on turnin’

Carry me home to see my kin

Singing songs about the southland

I miss ole ‘Bamy once again

Yep, Brett’d decided to do Sweet Home Alabama too, and he wasn’t  quite as atonal, if that’s the word I’m lookin’ for, as Jimmy was, but that’s about all you can say for him, bein’ gracious and all.  He finally gets through it, but I’m startin’ to notice that song sure seems to go on for a real long time, more than strictly necessary. There’s a part at the end where it goes:

Sweet home Alabama

Sweet home Alabama

Sweet home Alabama

Sweet home Alabama

Sweet home Alabama

And it just keeps doin’ that for about ten minutes, over and over before it finally does end mercifully.  I’m thinkin’ one or two Sweet Home Alabamas’d probl’y suffice just as well, if you ask me.  

Anyway then some other people come on up, but to be honest, a lot of what they were singin’ I don’t know, because I ain’t too up on my nineteen-eighties Led Zeppelins and Pink Floyds and what not. Plus, I had Aunt Mary yakkin’ at me in one ear and I’m tryin’ to get the relentless reverberatin’ echo of Sweet Home Alabama out of my head.    

 Well, somebody finally finishes Dark Side of Lagoon or whatever it was – the guy was slurrin’ his words -  and Karen Sue gets up and goes “OK where’s Junior, if he ain’t he passed out yet?  Junior!”

So Junior lumbers on up, tossin’ down his double Dr. Pepper Jack. 

Karen Sue looks at the list and punches No. 263.

Big wheels keep on turnin’

Carry me home to see my kin

Singin’ songs about the southland

I miss ole ‘Bamy once again

Well, I don’t know about you, but me, hearin’ that song once does me just fine for a couple of months or so.  Hearin’ it twice, particularly at high volume, it starts to get a lil’ distractin’.  Hearin’ it three times in the space of an hour, well it commences chewin’ on your nerves a good deal, and you’re beginnin’ to understand what Apuleius - I been dippin’ into Roman philosophy lately – meant when he was ponderin’ on familiarity breedin’ contempt.   

But, nobody wants to hurt Junior’s feelings because you don’t want to wake up in the morning with your bird bath stole out of your yard.  So when it finally peters out everybody graciously ya-hoos and slaps him on the back but out hearts ain’t really in it.  What we’re really wantin’ is another beverage or two and we’re all knockin’ on our heads and pokin’ in our ears tryin’ to exorcise the Sweet Home Alabama out of ‘em.

Glendene Suggs and her daughter Donna Sue sashay on up next.  They’re sort of the Pine County equivalent of the Little Sisters of Charity, in their own way.  And good businesswomen, too. Aunt Mary tells me Glendene just negotiated herself a new Walmart Maytag washer and dryer combination after spendin’ lunch hour with the Appliance Manager at Motel Six, while Donna Sue was gettin’ some new tires from the boys over in Auto.

Trina punches No. 142.

Well…..Well…

Sugar in the mornin’ sugar in the evenin’

Sugar at suppertime

Be my little sugar

And love me all the time

Ain’t that a great old song? They were on the pitch and pretty  good too, particularly when you factor in that two good-lookin’ bleach-blonde hussies with low-cut ample bosoms are always gonna get a lot of applause from a bunch of boys who’ve been drinkin’ whiskey for three hours. So the crowd was real appreciative, except, that is, for all the women in the place who just sat there and sniffed at ‘em.

            Well, then it was Bobby Wayne’s turn, which everybody was lookin’ forward to, because he’s got not only the voice but the sneer too.  He’d decided on Early King too, not Flabby Vegas King:

Hey bay-bah!

I ain’t a-happy with yew

Nononononononono bay-bah!

I ain’t a-happy wit chew.

Just a bigga bigga bigga hunga love

Will dew!

Thass raht!

Dang good! The girls were swoonin’ and sighin’ at karaoke Elvis, and Bobby Wayne’s sneerin’ and wigglin’ and  thankin’ everybody very much while tryin’ not to karate-kick anybody’s drink over.  Donna Sue threw her panties at him, which luckily Trina didn’t see or there would have been trouble right then and there.  But he quick scooped ‘em up and put ‘em in his pocket, and I hope the boy’s got the sense to get rid of ‘em before he tosses his pants in the laundry basket when he gets home. 

Karen Sue gets back on the microphone again, and calls up another Elm Citian, somebody named Harmon or Herman or somethin’. I didn’t catch his name real good due to the ambient – if that’s the word I’m lookin’ for - noise.  Plus, Aunt Mary’s jabberin’ in my ear.

“The po-lice stopped that boy for a broken tail light a couple weeks ago, and he was so happy they let him off with just a warnin’ he offered ‘em one of his marijuana reefers in gratitude.”

Karen Sue pushes the button.

Big wheels keep on turnin’

Carry me home to see my kin…

Well.

This is startin’ to be an Alabamian nightmare, and to be honest with you, everybody’s gettin’ a lil’ peeved.  We’ve begun to notice that that the three chords that make up the song start to jar on your brain after a while, bein’ somewhat mindlessly repetitive, I guess is how you’d describe it.  Waterboardin’ with guitars, is what it amounts to.

So everybody’s goin’ “Good God, not again!” and rollin’ their eyes and exchangin’ disgustin’ looks back and forth.  They get up, clutchin’ their temples and scrapin’ their chairs in a marked manner, and go to the bar or the bathroom or turnin’ around to chat with their neighbor.  So the bottom line is Harmon or Herman didn’t get all that gracious of a reception, to be frank with you.

But after that, Trina got up and did Feelings, and you know there ain’t nothin’ like that song in the proper hands.  Why, she emoted it so good there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  About two minutes into it, everybody was thinkin’ about callin’ up all their old paramours or whatever they’re called and tellin’ ‘em they missed ‘em – she was that good.  Plus, she’d pre-stuck a lil’ trick slice of onion in her hankie, and she starts weepin’ toward the end in between all the wo wo wo wo wo wo’s and stuff.    

“Woo-hoo!”  The crowd was eatin’ it up

I momentarily felt like callin’ up Eileen Applebottom, but Eileen ran off ten years ago with a John Deere salesman from Des Moines and hasn’t been heard from since.  I hope she’s found some traction in her life.  

 Well, Trina gets a standing ovulation and Karen Sue announces they’re gonna take a quick break before they get to the rest of the contestants, so everybody yee-haws and all the girls line up at the bathroom jabberin’ and checkin’ their eye makeup and all the boys go some more beer and a round of shots.  The goal at intermission is to come back to the table with a full beer and an empty bladder, and that’s what everybody’s focusin’ on.

            Anyway, afterwhile Karen Sue gets up again.

“All right now, let’s welcome, let’s see here, I can’t read his name, but it’s Billy Bob somethin’.” Half the Elm Citians stand up. 

“Wait a minute, I got it, it’s Billy Bob Baggerly!”

 The other non-Baggerly Billy Bobs sit back down, and here comes shufflin’ up a slimeballish lookin’ dude who looks like he just sold your third-grader a nickel bag of heroin for ten dollars.  Aunt Mary informs us, although I’m wonderin’ how she found out, that he’s got a tattoo of an elephant head on his belly.  Think about it, she goes.

Trina punches the button.

Big wheels keep on turnin’

Carry me home to see my kin…

 

Have you ever heard about when the po-lice SWAT teams got a hostage situation on their hands and the guy won’t come out of his house, so they set up loudspeakers in his front yard and turn up the volume real loud and play music he don’t like all day? 

This finally gets on his nerves -  which are frazzled to begin with -  and so he puts his shotgun down and unties his ex-wife and comes out with his hands up, beggin’ for mercy.  I know this must be effective, because if I was holdin’ somebody hostage, all they’d have to do is play Carpenters records at me for a half-hour before I’d crack and beg ‘em to take me to away.

By this time the crowd’s lookin’ desperately every which way and seein’ if we can escape before we’re taken to Tin Ear City, Alabama again.  And no disrespect to Lynard Skynard, may he jam in peace, but a human being can only hear Sweet Home Alabama so many times before his psyche starts reelin’ out of control and his thoughts turn dark and ugly.  I’m willin’ to bet that when the Lynard Skynard boys practice up there in Heaven, St. Peter tells ‘em two or three Sweet Home Alabamas is enough, thank you fellas very much.  

Now as you know, Pinevillians are a mostly peaceful group of people. Outside of the occasional altercation over a woman at the bowling alley, we pretty much stay out of trouble and live and let live.  But we got our limits.

When Billy Bob started in on Sweet Home Alabama, well, it was sort of like you get when everything’s been gettin’ on your nerves all week, and you have a few drinks, you know, and you got all these grievances and annoyances and stuff naggin’ at you, and they’re buildin’ and percolatin’ up inside you, and you’re gettin’ tenser and tenser and can’t hold it in no longer and you finally reach your boilin’ point and you snap like a cheap pencil.

  A sudden hush had fallen over the De Drop.  Ominous, you know.

   It all started with a little hecklin’ and booin’, and then some jeerin’, and then somebody made a personal remark about Billy Bob’s mama – specifically, her hygiene - and then somebody slung a package of Planters Peanuts up which hits him square on the nose, just as he was fixin’ to tell the Lord – as if He, the Lord, didn’t know by now - how good it’d be to get back to Alabama.   

You know how when there’s a football game goin’ on, one side’s fans sit on one side of the field and the other team’s fans sit on the other side?  Then when one team makes a dirty play – let’s say stompin’ on an injured tight end - the fans all gang up on each other and start raggin’ on ‘em and then the other side starts raggin’ on them, and before you know it everybody’s callin’ each other names back and forth and threatenin’ to meet up out in the parking lot?

So we got our Christian law-abidin’ citizens of Pineville one the one side, doin’ nothin’ more than exercisin’ their free rights of speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and all the snockered hooligans and drunk thugs like crazy Kyle Hamburger from Elm City on the other side, lookin’ sullen and spoilin’ for a fight.    

It reminded me of   those old shows on TV where Black Bart and Smokey and old One-Eyed Rusty are sittin’ at the table playin’ poker, and Black Bart looks up at One-Eyed Rusty and says “I think they’s a cheatin’ skunk sittin’ at this table and I believe he’s got an ace of spades tucked up in his sleeve right now!” 

“Just who are you callin’ a cheatin’ skunk?”

“You know who I’m callin’ a cheatin’ skunk.”

“I hope it ain’t me you’re callin’ me a cheatin’ skunk, on account of I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die because he called me a cheatin’ skunk one time!”

And the next thing you know, everybody in the whole place is up and sluggin’ each other and tossin’ tables and chairs all around, the bartender’s  duckin’ behind the bar,  gunshots are shatterin’ the whiskey bottles, and the piano player’s playin’ Camptown Races til’ he gets shot.  This goes on until Marshall Dillon or somebody comes in and makes ‘em all stop.

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad, but close.  The Elm Citians  (you could call ‘em the pro-Billy Bob Baggerly faction)  are one side of the place,  and the Pinevillians  (the anti-Baggerlyists)  are on the other, and everybody’s cussin’ and hollerin’ and callin’ each other names and wavin’ cue sticks and brandishin’ beer bottles at one another.

The fact is, all of ‘em’, Pinevillians and Elm Citians alike, had  reached their personal snappin’ points due to the relentless emblazonin’ of Sweet Home Alabama on their  already soaked cerebellums, and Billy Bob Baggerly was only a pawn in their game, a delicato bagattella, as Apuleius would say.

Well, like they say in books – so I might as well use it myself – a melee ensued, and it was spectacular.   

I guess Chloe rang up Sheriff Badger, because afterwhile in he strides, right on up to the bar to ascertain the facts, evaluate the situation, and get a beer.     

“Sheriff, get in there and stop those boys,” Chloe pleads at him, eyein’ the ongoin’ pulverization of probl’y near fifty, sixty dollars worth of good tables and chairs, plus lamentin’ the broken bottles of beer on the floor she ain’t gonna get her  deposit back on now.  Plus, somebody’s gonna have to clean up all the blood.

But Sheriff Badger, who’s been readin’ Ghandi lately, addresses Chloe in a quiet tone and tells her that victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

“What? You mean you ain’t gonna stop it?” Chloe yells, about to reach the snappin’ point herself. 

“But,” the Sheriff goes, “I do see some batteries and some wanton destruction of property goin’ on here,” and he whips out his ticket book, takes a sip of his beer, and  licks his pencil.

            Up in heaven, Matt and Miss Kitty were gazin’ down, and Matt’s shakin’ his head and wonderin’ what law enforcement’s come to these days.  He’d be in there crackin’ heads, not writin’ tickets, is what he’s sayin’, and she’s sayin’ that that spectacle certainly wouldn’t be happening in her saloon.  

About this time who should saunter in but the intrepid barrister of Pine Street, Hiram Socrates Peabody III, and he starts stickin’ his card in the pants of the unconscious Elm Citians on the floor.  Then he picks his way over to Donna Sue, who’s unsnaggin’ glass out of her hair with one hand and tryin’ to retouch her mascara with the other.  He tells her she’s got a good case of negligence, and she says she’s glad he likes it, but she ain’t got no money for a lawyer and could we work somethin’ out tomorrow around noon?  And Hiram goes, why you betcha we can, and hands her a card.

Then he goes up to Chloe and advises her that an action could possibly lie against the Skynard estate and he’ll look into it for her.  Then he trots on out, lookin’ for a careless pedestrian and a drunk driver to come along.  Or, for that matter, a drunk pedestrian and a careless driver, it don’t matter to him.

            Well, the meatwagon finally shows up and the paramedic interns scrape the worst ones up off the floor and haul ‘em off, so ‘bout an hour later, the De Drop was empty, except for me, Aunt Mary, Chloe, and a whole lot of broken chairs and tables.  Plus Bambi – fortunately unscathed in the recent fracas - and velvet Elvis up on the wall, who’s re-askew, too, I’m noticin’.  Somebody must’ve shook him up!  Ha ha!

We’re sittin’ there commiseratin’ with Chloe, and Aunt Mary says she’s sorry Karaoke night turned out so bad and she wished she knew of a way to cheer her up. Me too. I mean, everybody likes Chloe.

 And then, I get an idea, an inspiration, one of them feel-good, random acts of kindness deals I get every so often. It’s just the way I am.

And it’s percolatin’ up in me, and I’m surgin’ up with such a overwhelmin’ samaritanism I just can’t help myself.

I go over to the Karaoke machine, look at the list, and punch No. 379.

Joey asked me for a date

He wanted to take

Me out to skate

But I told Joey he would have to make

‘Rangements with Norman

Norman holds me close to him

Norman kisses me and then

Norman knows my heart belongs to him and him and only him, oh

Norman! Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo Norman,

Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo

Norman, Norman my love!

Well, I look over at Aunt Mary and Chloe Mae, and I can see they’ve got tears of joy in their eyes.

In the far distance, I believe I hear a dog howlin’, but that may have been just the ambulance sirens whiskin’ all the boys over to County Hospital to get sewed up and sent back home – hopefully, to Alabama.

Well, afterwhile it’s finally time to go – they didn’t ask me to do another song - and I drop Aunt Mary off and go home.  I come in and see that the dang dog’s fallen asleep on the couch watchin’ TV again.  I’ve told him a million times not to do that, but he don’t pay the electric bill so he don’t care.  And I know, you don’t have to tell me, I never should have taught him how to work the remote in the first place.

So I go to switch off Lawrence Welk – PBS shows him every night at midnight, I guess for dogs and insomniac seniors – and Bobby’s singin’ When You Were Sweet Sixteen to Cissy, who’s delighted about it.  Since it’s pretty good, I sit down for a minute, reflectin’ that they sure don’t write songs like that anymore.

Then Lawrence comes on, and you know he talks so funny you can hardly understand what he’s sayin’ half the time. Lemme see if I can do it for you:

 “Tanka you boyce. And now laydiss and ah gents ah, for hour next number ah, da boys in de band vill all gather togedder under da Dixie moon for da beloved old ah standard ah, Stars A’Fell on Alabama. Hit it, boyce!  A-vun! A-two!”

Ain’t that somethin’?     

But I turn it off and go to bed, I ain’t in the mood for any more Alabama songs right now. Maybe in about ten years or so.

            Well, next mornin’ I’m in the shower again, soapin’ up and mindin’ my own business, and I look over see old lady Armbruster sittin’ down at the table with a nice steamin’ bowl of grits. 

God didn’t make little green apples

And it’s don’t rain in Indianapolis

In the summertime…

            I hear a choke and a gag.  It was another beautiful day in Pineville.