My Private Wobegon

stories from home

"They are out there in the broad daylight peddling smutty underdrawers!" exclaimed Mrs. Benedict Munn to Glois Cantrell in Glois' breakfast nook one Saturday morning.

"No!" exclaimed back Glois in a shocked and altogether taken aback sort of way.

"Yes!" exclaimed Mr. Jerome Dawkins' wife Swancie Jo, who was there with them.

"Heathens," said Glois, unscrewing the childproof top on an Extra-Strength Tylenol bottle. "Ain't nothing but heathens. No right-thinking Christian person would do such a thing."

Glois drew up a glass of water from her kitchen spigot and threw back her head and popped into her mouth three Extra-Strength Tylenols and washed them down good and then turned to Mrs. Benedict Munn and Swancie Jo Dawkins and said, "Well, let's go and have a look."

And so they lit out for the Valley Vista Open-Air Flea Market out in the little Blue Ridge mountain community of Everett, North Carolina. More specifically to Booth No. 16 at the flea market that had been rented by Glois' across-the-road neighbor, a young woman named Linda Lockridge, and Linda's friend Shirley for the purpose of peddling some unwanted items for a bit of spending cash.

Now, Linda Lockridge was not well-liked by Glois Cantrell somewhat on account of Linda being originally from Florida - a place, according to Glois, known worldwide as Satan's lair - and somewhat on account of Linda being young and pretty and unwed - things that Glois wasn't anymore - but mostly on account of Linda having had once actually lived openly in sin right there just across the road from her bay window.

About two weeks before the smutty underdrawer-flinging commenced, Linda's friend Shirley was sitting in Linda's living room sipping on a Pepsi-Cola through a straw like she was wont to do and was bemoaning how she was plain out of pocket money. And then Linda came up with a plan.

She had been thinking, Linda Lockridge had, how she had all sorts of clothes in boxes out in her shed - clothes that she had bought in Florida and that were of no use to her whatsoever up in Everett except for about five or six days every summer when it actually got hot enough to wear the sorts of clothes that one wears most every day in southwest Florida and she thought further about how she had a whole pile of her ex-boyfriend's sweaters out there, too, and how since she had gotten rid of the boyfriend himself she didn't understand why she still needed to keep his old clothes around. And so she told this to Shirley and she further told Shirley that if she got her own old clothes together, too, that they could rent a booth over at the Valley Vista Open-Air Flea Market and make some spending money and so Shirley, with visions of the semi-annual home sale over at the mall dancing in her head, looked over toward Linda Lockridge, sucked a bit of her Pepsi-Cola up through her straw, and grinned.

Linda and Shirley were not then nor had they ever been students of economics. Linda would probably recall taking a course in economics one time in college, but probably couldn't on a bet tell you anything about deficits or supply and demand or economies of scale or John Maynard Keynes or target marketing or demographics or anything else even approaching the economic knowledge needed to start one's own small business in Booth No. 16 at the Valley Vista Open-Air Flea Market. In fact, Linda couldn't get her checkbook to balance most months, but that's another story entirely. However, Linda and Shirley did have something. They had entrepreneurial spirit, dollar signs in their eyes, and a whole heap of old clothes.

They set up shop that particular Saturday morning at about seven and on about nine o'clock they had only sold two sweaters, three shirts, and one of Linda's ex-boyfriend's windbreakers when the old fellow that ran the place came calling for the $15 booth rental fee which left Linda and Shirley about $10 in the hole.

Seeing their extra spending money fast going away, Linda and Shirley decided to get up out of their folding chairs and commenced to accosting patrons and showing to them the fine quality merchandise that could be had at low, low rock-bottom prices and given their limited knowledge of sales techniques, most everyone, including Linda and Shirley, were surprised when it worked.

But they could not have even imagined the havoc that would ensue when they waved a little black lace teddy in the face of Mr. Jerome Dawkins' wife Swancie Jo. It was, as conservative economic theorists might have said if any conservative economic theorists had been shopping at the Valley Vista Open-Air Flea Market that Saturday, not exactly a prudent course to take at that particular time in the infancy of their corporate venture.

About the time that Mrs. Benedict Munn and Swancie Jo Dawkins and Glois Cantrell wheeled into the gravel parking lot at the flea market in Glois' silver Bonneville Pontiac so that Glois could get an up-close and personal view of the smutty underdrawer-flinging with her very own zealous, born again monitoring eye so as to report this sinful behavior at the next meeting of her Hallelujah Ladies church circle, Shirley was climbing up into the bed of her little truck to retrieve another box of sweaters to put out on display.

Now, this would not have been the least bit extraordinary except that a relatively harmless little brown field mouse who, on any other day may have even been considered cute, had taken up residence on the top of a soft combed-cotton black-and-white V-neck sweater there in the box and had decided that this was a fine neighborhood in which to raise up some babies and so right there, in Shirley's sweater box, she went on and had some.

When Shirley opened up the box while still standing in the bed of her truck, Shirley spied the mama mouse and spied further the baby mice and the mama mouse in turn spied Shirley and seeing has how Shirley must have looked to her for all the world like some sort of blonde Brobdingnag invading the tranquil Liliput of her sweater box, the mama mouse took leave of her senses and then took leave of her babies and then took leave of the sweater box as well.

Seeing in her mind's eye a whole raft of motherless baby mice and the evils that were in store for them as Liliputian, fuzzy orphans alone in the Swiftian confines of her sweater box, Shirley commenced to chasing the mama mouse around her truck bed but since the mama mouse did not know that Shirley had every intention of putting her back in the box with her babies and not eating her for a mid-morning snack, the mama mouse jumped out of the back end of Shirley's truck and fled into the flea market trading floor and Shirley, in a veritable state over the whole thing, raised up her fist in the general direction of the fleeing field mouse and yelled out, "You Hussy Mama!"

Of course, the worse of it was that standing near to the rear end of Shirley's truck and standing further in the general direction of the fist-shaking and "Hussy Mama"-ing was Mrs. Benedict Munn, who looked up at Shirley standing in the truck bed and said to her, "Heathen," and then stomped off into what could only be described as an evermore thoroughgoing huff.

Shirley, wanting Mrs. Benedict Munn to know that she hadn't called Mrs. Benedict Munn herself a Hussy Mama, jumped over the side wall of her pick-up truck so as to chase her down and explain the entire rodent epic.

Only she didn't get that far.

That's on account of when Shirley leapt over the side wall her left Ked landed solid, but her right Ked landed in something else entirely. She looked down expecting to see her right Ked in a pile of dog mess - which would have been bad enough - but when she did look down, she saw that she had landed square-on into the carcass of a raccoon that had sometime in the recent past taken leave of this earthly plane right there beside where she had parked her little truck and so Shirley, shocked and taken altogether aback by landing on a dead animal, began to scream and to dance around and to point at the dead raccoon and to generally make a spectacle of herself.

When Shirley did start hollering forth, Linda Lockridge turned away from the potential sale of a lacy camisole to a lady that the camisole would never have fit in a thousand years to see what was going on and just as Linda turned away, Glois Cantrell approached her and was ready to let go with a bit of well-timed scripture from Second Corinthians when Linda saw Shirley having some manner of seizure and so Linda handed the lacy camisole not to its potential buyer but delivered it right into the hands of the past-president of the Hallelujah Ladies church circle at her Baptist Church: one Glois Cantrell.

When Glois looked at what she was holding in her own two hands - hands that had polished the altar candlesticks every week - hands that had been raised to the Lord countless times - Glois could only figure that what she was holding was some harlot's underthings and so she came plain unglued and commenced to waving her Bible and setting up revival meeting right smack-dab in the middle of Booth No. 16.

Well sir, there was Shirley screaming and wailing forth about dead raccoons and there was Glois wailing forth about fiery eternal damnation and there was Mrs. Benedict Munn sinking down into her huff real good and so it seemed altogether appropriate for the Hussy Mama Mouse to take refuge from the goings-on in the relative safe haven of Swancie Jo Dawkins' left pant leg which caused Swancie Jo to holler a bit herself and to start dancing around and to drop the coffee mug with the teary-eyed picture of Elvis on it that she had just purchased two booths over. And Glois, who was preaching up a storm, took Swancie Jo's mouse-up-the-pant-leg squawking and flailing for Swancie Jo having got the Spirit in her sure enough - even though Swancie Jo was a Lutheran - let go with a "Hallelujah, Sister!" before Swancie Jo Dawkins fell over in a dead faint.

In the midst of the commotion the old fellow who owned the place ran over to Linda and Shirley and demanded to know what in tarnation was going on and Linda said to him "Dead raccoon" and Mrs. Benedict Munn said to him "Hussy Mama" and Glois Cantrell said to him "Sodom and Gomorrah" and Swancie Jo Dawkins, flat out on the ground, said "Ugh."
"Ya'll're nuts," the old man said. "I run a respectable place here. Pack it in," which caused Glois Cantrell to chime in with an "Amen, Brother! Drive the money changers from the temple of the Lord," which caused the old fellow to snarl at Glois Cantrell and tell to her, "You, too, Preacher."

Anyhow, after their bull had become a bear in the form of a field mouse, Linda Lockridge and her friend Shirley ended up making about twenty dollars each for their morning at the flea market. They took the baby mice to the pet store and they threw away Shirley's Keds on account of Shirley reckoned she could never wear them again without thinking about where they had once trod and then they went back to Linda's house and brooded.

They brooded about Glois Cantrell and they brooded about the Hussy Mama Mouse and they brooded about their American Dream of fame and fortune rising like the fabled phoenix from the ashes of their old clothes only to have their dreams dashed on the rocky shores of an inhospitable marketplace and then, when the couldn't think of anything else to brood about, Shirley fixed them both a Pepsi-Cola with a straw and they sat there on that sunny Saturday afternoon and laughed in the wake of disaster.