Gossip ‘Cross the Table

(With a smattering of Alphabetic Alliterations)    
     
THE BARNSTABLE STOCK & TRADE      
(Founded circa: 1822) $1.25 US, $1.62 CAN/ a copy.      
Circulation: 8,703. Add 12 more if you count the cardboard settlement on the river bottom under the 4th Street bridge.      
     
Today’s forecast was set for hot.  This evening will be less hot.  There’ll be a quarter moon on the wane.  Tomorrow’s first light will be at 5:32AM.    
Bringing you the latest in our daily evening special edition.    
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Some of you might still be wondering why we went exclusively evening last month.  Here’s the most recent example:      
     
• Liberty, our luscious transplant with the overbite lisp who moved here from Lawrence two years ago and is engaged to Phil the best mechanic in these parts.      
     
Well, Ms Liberty (not the statue) is a fine little cook.  But Mr Phil (known to his garage buddies as Reese ‘cause it rhymes with ‘grease’) being in such demand all day, he waits and in fact has come to prefer opening up an evening BARNSTABLE (ever since we went evenings)      
     
while his dear mother Lois serves him some of the tastiest suppers that ever graced a family’s table or bachelor’s free-standing TV tray.  (Phil’s is made of metal with a picture of one of those covered wood bridges that one hardly ever sees nowadays).      
     
He knows how fortunate he is till he’s the recipient of his future bride’s culinary talents, ‘cause Lois retains water something fierce at her age, and standing so much in the kitchen has her ankles looking like piano legs.      
     
But she knows how much we here at BARNSTABLE admire her sacrifices.  Which reminds me to thank that dear lady for sending over one of her prize-winning pineapple upside-down cakes nested in its own enamel skillet with extra maraschino cherries as garnish. The green ones. Lois knows who on staff is partial to green.    
     
Meantime, no wedding date has been set while the blissful couple each tastefully remains single residents at separate addresses and abstains from the shenanigans that hardcore city folk usually fall temptation to.    
     
• And we all are aware of what heat does.  ‘Cause our readers know that arguably around this time every August, afternoons are aimlessly altered to suit the local CUSHMAN Road King motor scooter gang.      
     
Well, there’s only two of those good ol’ boys left, who originally were members of the COBRAS, the motorcycle gang, which had to disband ‘cause the noise of all those Scramblers unnerved so much livestock.      
     
Dairy cows, pasturing alongside some of the sprawling country roads, dried up.  My wife Pearl - you folks remember Pearl with her blue-ribbon key lime pies at the State Fair - she can still recall when some of you had hens that wouldn’t lay.      
     
And you know what a COBRA would do if it got in your hen house... since snakes slither, such silvery sinful salutations abound and on the rebound, creating deadly dangers (that) drive densely decent markets dim with all the eggs dined upon.      
     
And making life more difficult in this sweltering summer’s heat, except when it’s cold.  When cleavage cleverly concealed cannot cancel (the need for) creature comforts ( my typesetter Calvin concurs).    
     
Which will remind our readers of the local trends for faux fur that fix malfunctioning of near-frozen flesh in fabulous styles when gale-force winds down from Alberta are upon us in six months (food for thought).  Speaking of which:    
     
• Richard over in east Raleigh 16.3 miles (as the crow flies) was heard radically rubbing Rachel's radiant red ringlets (which he realized felt reasonably ‘rousing).  Richard seems to have more time on his hands lately than God had intended.      
     
• Meanwhile, his hardware store, located at the northwest corner of Smith and Wesson will remain shut down, closed tight as Dick’s hatband for the remainder of this month.  Shame.  I hear tell that’s where you can always find the best selection of gardener’s chemicals and paraphernalia this side of Charlottesville. I know first hand you can’t lose when you’re cleaving the soil for your tuber plantings with a quality hoe.    
     
• While the other side of our county fair grounds, it’s reported his good friend Timothy tries treating Tricia tenderly till two, when she leaves promptly to open her milliner shop & pizza parlor called Have One on Me,    
     
Home of The Double Take, The Triple Threat, and The Gosh-Awful-Good; and those are just the hats which look good enough to eat!  So give Trish a call.   Her pizzas are prize-winners; they practically eat themselves!    
     
• By the way, you folks recall the Philistine brothers, Harold and Frederick, don’t you?  You know, the ones who tried their hand at shrimp fry farming in Minnesota and ended up swearing off using a snow plow to plant their fields while wearing five layers of foul weather gear for gosh sakes.    
     
I mean!  I love a good flannel shirt (‘specially red plaid) if I’m wearing it sitting by a roaring fire.  But sitting atop a John Deere at 6 am with sleet crawling down my butt crack?      
     
(By the way, a big shoutout to all our mail order friends and readers in Moline.)      
     
I’d rather be on fire, you hear me?  But what I was getting at: I told those boys just last week (yes, I told them), they should’ve considered how two men joined at the coxic are not cut out for that kind of life.      
     
And now look how those words, like chickens, have come back to roost, no pun intended.      
     
But hours after that conversation, Harry had hardly felt his heart fibrillate which wasn’t welcome news for Freddie, his Siamese twin, being joined at the coxic as you can well imagine though I know I can’t.      
     
He had to share a gurney with Harry once the paramedics came to rush them off to Our Blessed Mary of Automakers Medical Center’s ER in case Harry was in trouble.      
     
But reassurances to our readers all around.  The brothers were released yesterday and are enjoying some healthful home-cooked meals via their dad Otis who went fishing over the weekend      
     
and now has everyone in his family (and their dog) with a freezer in their basement or garage with a supply of fish sticks (nothing else was biting) to choke a horse and bust a gut till Labor Day.    
     
• That makes me think of my older sister Violeta.  When we talk it’s usually on the phone ‘cause she does Meals-on-Wheels to local seniors even though she’s one herself come next spring.    
     
I always ask if she still has that framed cross-stitch sampler that’s always hung on the east wall of the utility room since 1952 (years before she moved to that house and raised a family with her late husband Famous, a Fuller Brush Man).      
     
We in fact don’t know who made it, the one that says, “Anywhere an Ant, Always an Ant.” And still she dryly replies, ‘Yup’.  And I chuckle.  It’s stuff like that.    
     
• But now I’m reminded of my first girl friend when I was a junior and she a freshman in city college where we met.  Like a nursery rhyme she was to me, but with innuendo:      
     
Pretty precocious Polly preferred pink parakeets as pets back in the day when street punks weren’t purloining them from J.J. Newberry’s to sell on the black market.    
     
Yeah... especially stuff like that.    
     
• Going to press in 20 minutes, folks, catch you at suppertime.      
— Bill, Editor-in-Chief    
     
     
     
Copyright©️2018 Jade Pandora. All Rights Reserved.    
NaPo/GloPoWriMo 2018
 
photo credit:
Showing art by first silo artist Heesco Knosnaran.