Once upon a time.....

by RayLee, Thursday, May 11, 2023, 10:12 (562 days ago) @ JimT
edited by RayLee, Thursday, May 11, 2023, 10:22

The right honorable Edgar Parker was what they called a "triple dipper". Four years in uncle harry's boy scouts (u.s. army) then two decades as a d.o.d. civil servant greasing tank & a.p.c. tracks at the ordnance depot. Then he retired and rolled that over for 2/3ds. years of service into the state's retirement scheme as a municipal firefighter. He timed the tenure/vestment requirements just right and in time for s.s./medicare age. Now all he had to do was tend his garden and keep his bees but 1980 was an election year. From sea to shining sea horizontally speaking and from the little muddy down in the desert to the frigid north in the vertical orientation, folk chose the hokey actor with the rouged cheeks over the wide-mouthed, thick-lipped goober farmer.....and, in patona city, they chose Edgar Parker over Greedy Gyp Garnett for mayor.

Mister Parker served three terms as mayor and did a tolerable job at it and would still be doing it if that governor's ethics committee delegation from down in montgomery hadn't intervened. So the right honorable Edgar Parker was finally retired for good. Old habits die hard though. Banned from the city barn (public works) & utilities service center and city hall and the police & fire stations, he had to make-do just listening to the city's radio bands on his scanner.

So one morning as Indian summer was just transitioning to autumn Mister Parker packed a thumb spraining bowl of fruity shagg into his pipe and, with a steaming cup of joe, he chilled on/in his carport and heard some traffic on the scanner that got his attention.

Pugsy Vanderhoot and Orville Livingstone had found a wild bee hive in a water meter box over on the harbourville cutoff and requested James Dudley and Razor Hooey fetch a pump sprayer full of diesel with which to slay said bees.

Now mister Parker had his vegetable garden and a few thriving hives in the backyard of his domicile but he also had some ailing hives on a truck patch of several individual derelict vacant lots in the disreputable, defunct industrial area near the utilities barn. What those ailing hives needed was an importation some black bee stock. If he could just stave-off the imminent bee slaughter long enough to catch that wild queen who reigned in that meter box.

A phone call to the utilities barn and a few heated and pointed impreciations of a most personal nature intimidated Woodrow Scoggins into radioing the would-be bee killers and ordering a pause, if not outright cessation of the toxic spraying.

In a little more than a quarter hour, mister Parker showed up on-site duded in a complete beekeeping protective livery. The plan was simple. James Dudley would manipulate the bellows of the smoke puffer whilst Razor kept the hopper of the puffer fueled with pine straw. The theory being, according to the man in the space suit, was that the smoke would have a soporific affect on the bees and keep them civil. Mayor Parker would use a garden trowel and try to herd the queen and her protective court into the lidded box that he had provided for their transportation. Pugsy and Orville would stand by with the diesel sprayer just in case the operation got out of hand.

So Dudley began puffing smoke with Razor feeding fuel whilst the beekeeper began digging about in the meter box. The first problem was that there was not enough space for all three to do their respective tasks. The former mayor's bonnet and netting was nigh-on as wide as his shoulders. Dudley was puffing smoke over and under and around the former mayor and Razor was having difficulty in reaching the opening of the straw hopper to keep the contraption emitting smoke. All the time the former mayor was yelling for more smoke.

In less than the time it took me to type this, all three were covered with buzzing and crawling bees. Suddenly there was no smoke and the former mayor was alone with the angry bees. He deftly slid the box lid closed on what he hoped was the queen amongst the writhing mass and jumped into his truck and accelerated to enough velocity to outrun the main swarm as he headed back to town still costumed in the protective suit.

Later, Dudley and Razor were called a up on the carpet at the debriefing in Woodrow Scoggins office. When accused of dereliction of duty and abandoning their posts, Dudley began cussing in his precise and scientific manner words that I promised mom never to repeat or put into print. When the eyes of the court-martial turned onto Razor, he calmly and succinctly testified in his own defense.....

"When them creepy crawlers gots into my ears and under my collar, I'ze just couldn't keeps my feets still no matter how hard I tried !"