Mrs.
Forrest has always been a compulsive feeder. Before she
retired, she was cooking for the Mule Barn truck stop’s
customers, and is singularly responsible for about three
flabby tons of avoirdupois on this nation’s truck drivers, and
may have been marginally responsible, third-hand, for a
cardiac event or two.
But now she’s retired, and a widow, and her kids
all have kids and are scattered like a covey of quail.
Local bachelors of a certain age know if they should just
happen to be chatting with Mrs. Forrest on her front lawn
along about supper time, there’s a dang-near dead certainty
they’ll get a meal out of it.
And, through the magic of telepathic
communication and the synchronistic wave lengths of humanity,
the message about Mrs. Forrest’s unstoppable feeding
compulsion had somehow reached the psyches of the homeless.
At any rate, two of the aforementioned drifters
had knocked on Mrs. Forrest’s door and asked if there were any
chores she needed done in exchange for some food. Well, you
should’ve seen her eyes light up at that question. She said
she had a bunch of firewood that needed to be split into
kindling and if they didn’t mind doing that, she’d fix them a
chicken dinner with cream gravy. Mrs. Forrest puts cream gravy
on everything.
So she busied herself in the kitchen, and then
went out to see how these fellows were doing. And there,
leaning on an axe handle, was one of them, and the other was
doing gymnastics in and around the woodpile. It was amazing.
He’d come out of a round-off flip flop and then gracefully go
into a full layout Sukuhara with a right-hand twist. She
watched in awe for a few minutes before whispering to this
gymnast’s partner.
“I had no idea your friend was an acrobat,” she
whispered.
He looked at her and whispered back, “Neither did
I ‘til I cracked him on the shin with this axe.”
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Treat yourself to a once-in-a-lifetime Iltis ax. Worth every
penny. sandy.kurtes@ufsupplies.com