Thanksgiving Apt. Adventure

Walt and Marlene went up to Capitol City for Thanksgiving with their daughter, Maria Betina. It was a different experience. Always before, Maria Betina and her friends would come down to the farm house on Wayout Road, in the Whazup River bottoms, and their son, Homer Walter, would bring his family and come, too, as would several aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and stray neighbors. But this year Homer Walter and Heloise and their children went for Thanksgiving in Omaha at her mother’s so they could meet her new husband, who is a slogan writer for The Tea Party, and Maria Betina’s friends were on Habitat-building trips to Mississippi, or to Las Vegas on habitat-losing trips, and the other relatives and neighbors had what they thought were better offers. It was a first for Marlene, not cooking the Thanksgiving dinner herself, and it was a first for both Marlene and Walter, because they had never been in an apartment building in a city before, especially not a fourth-floor walkup.

Several years ago, anticipating their “one-story only” age, they built a new ranch with a metal pole building out back, what Walt calls “an upstairs basement,” for all the stuff they would normally keep in a basement. They are not used to stairs, especially narrow enclosed stairwells where the apartment dwellers see if they can outwait the landlord when one of the weak stairwell bulbs burns out.

After they had climbed the four flights of stairs, carrying pumpkin pies, a cranberry salad, a green-bean casserole, and 8 settings of Grandma Gert’s dishes, which are required use at holiday meals, Walt propped the door to Apt. 4-A open while transferring all the food and dishes from the landing to the apartment, and Maria Betina’s three cats—Wilberforce, Disraeli, and Eleanor of Castile—escaped into the stairwell.

While Walt and Maria Betina chased the cats down the stairs, Marlene carried the food into the kitchen. At least she intended to, but she couldn’t, because, as quite a surprise to Marlene, the kitchens in city apartments are approximately one-tenth the size of a farm house kitchen, and this apartment kitchen was filled up with a burly man in a wife-beater undershirt and black jeans, with a tattoo on one bicep that read “Mother” and one on the other that read “Barbra.”

“Oh, my, who are you?” gasped Marlene.

“I’m Rudolpho, Maria Betina’s gay friend. You didn’t think she’d actually cook the meal herself, did you?”

“Oh, my, I guess I hadn’t thought about that. But I have been watching the word count go up, and I know no one reads past 450 words in a blog post, so we’d better continue this conversation tomorrow.”

Happy Bar Mitzvah, Anthony

“Not again,” sighed Betsy Kendy.

“What’s wrong?” asked her grandmother, Claire Randall.

“Oh, every cake. Every cake. Mom buys the unclaimed specialty cakes at the grocery store, because they’re cheaper, so every cake we eat says ‘Happy Bar Mitzvah, Anthony,’ on it.”

This, of course, gave Claire Randall an idea. Betsy’s birthday party was coming up. Claire went to the Slob-Mart bakery. The woman working there was a typical Slob-Mart employee—stained smock, maybe 30-maybe 50, sad face, dull eyes. Her name tag read “Cristil.”

Claire knew this would be difficult, but she went at it slowly, explaining what she wanted, a cake that said “Happy Bar Mitzvah, Anthony.” She spelled both “bar mitzvah” and “Anthony.”

“That’s interesting,” said the Cristil. “Anthony isn’t a common name for a Jewish boy. Would you like a Star of David on it?”

This was not what Claire expected. “Uh…yes, that would be nice,” she said.

“Also I could do a scroll from the Torah. Or a burning bush. Maybe the Red Sea parting. It’s harder to represent the Kaballah. Or Hasids. Is Anthony Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform?”

“Are you Jewish?” Claire blurted out.

“Oh, no,” said Cristil. “I’m Christian. But our story starts with Abraham, you know, not Jesus. Maybe you’d like something in Hebrew on Anthony’s cake?”

“No,” said Claire, “but I’d like another cake for myself. Can you write ‘Don’t assume anything, Stupid?’ on it?”

Puddings and Trebouchets

Claire and Randall Nathan went to the Cub Scout persimmon pudding auction last night. Each Cub was to create a special persimmon pudding presentation, with no help from anyone else, to be auctioned, the proceeds to go toward Thanksgiving food for those in need.

Randall and Claire and Johnny’s parents both wanted Johnny’s creation, a deep-fried pudding omelette covered in chocolate in the shape of a soccer ball, with a note that it was “trebouchet ready.” Randall was victorious, at $60, which is probably a world record for a piece of persimmon pudding.

Now he has to find a trebouchet before Monday and the Great Pudding Plastering. Until that time, all of Periwinkle County is on Thanksgiving break.

Why Manuals are Important

Pastor Patty grabbed Randall and Claire Nathan as they came through the door to church.

“Will you greet, please? It’s still hunting season, and none of our usual greeters are here.”

Randall had just gotten his mouth open to say “If it’s hunting season, and no one is here, why do you need greeters?” but Claire had already said “Of course,” but was kind enough to send him off to the street door, which is hardly ever used, while she took the parking lot door, the entryway for those intrepid enough to brave the ridicule of their fellow citizens for not being out in the woods murdering clueless animals.

Randall trudged off to the door, muttering about how he was going to lose points in the Hermudgeon* of the Year contest for saying “hello” to people.

The usual greeters weren’t the only ones missing. All the choir members were out using $5,000 worth of equipment each to “bag” a deer worth $50, so Norm and Norma Norman and their children, Nora, Nola, Noreen, Noble, and Squeeter, performing as The Norman Pumpernickel Choir, sang the special, “Won’t it Be a Revelation When We All Lose that Gravitation and Go Floating Off to Some Place High or Low.”

Randall was quite surprised when the street doors creaked open and a woman he had never seen before slipped in. He didn’t think she was a Methodist; she was carrying a Bible and a can of beer and wearing a shirt that proclaimed “The Word Suck Sucks.”

And it wasn’t just any can of beer. It was a can of Phartz Brothers Crock Ale, brewed from the persimmon leavings in the bottom of the crock after the brothers have processed the persimmons rejected for normal use into an alternate fuel for the planes for their special express delivery business.

“Is it okay if I bring my beer in?” the woman asked. “My throat gets dry.”

Since Randall is a retired preacher, he is not used to greeting people before the service. He used to stand at the door after the service and mumble “Good listening” or “Good sleeping” to each person after they had mumbled “Good sermon.” He assumed there must be something in the greeters’ manual about how to answer a question about Phartz Brothers Crock Ale, but he didn’t have a manual.

“Sure,” he said. “Bring it in. Can’t worship with a dry throat.”


*Hermudgeon is a conflation of hermit and curmudgeon.

Hanging of the Greens

Hazel Knotwith was sitting in the non-hearing section, as usual. Wait staff usually ask “Smoking or non-smoking?” but at The Methodist, the ushers ask “Hearing, or non-hearing?” Certain women of a certain age like to sit in the non-hearing section so they can say to one another, “I can’t hear; can you hear?”

At announcements time, Pastor Patty announced the Hanging of the Greens.

“I don’t know the Greens,” said Hazel, in a non-hearing section volume, “but it seems a bit extreme.”

Yard Car Heaven

The Rev. Dr. Randall Nathan, (Retard),* was surprised when Heaven “Heavy” Hudges walked into the Herbert “Herb” Highslop’s “Haven for Husbands Coffee Shop & Silence Zone.” Randall had gone to school with Heavy back in Arkansas, when he was still called Randey, and hadn’t seen him in 40 years. Heavy was immediately recognizable, though, for obvious reasons. They shook hands, but had to go out onto the sidewalk in front to talk, since Herb’s is a silence zone.

“What are you doing up here, Heavy?” Randall asked.

“I don’t go by Heavy anymore, Randey. It’s to honor my mother. She named me Heaven, so that’s who I am. But to answer your question, I’m here to get away from it.”

“What are you getting away from, Heav…en.”

“The rat race. The constant problem of what to do with all my money. My theme park has been so successful, all day, all night, people streaming in, giving me money. And everybody knows Periwinkle County is the place to come to get away from it, whatever ‘it’ is, so here I am.”

“You have a theme park?”

“Yes. ‘Heaven’s Yard Car Heaven.’ Yard cars are real important in Arkansas, real status symbols. I’ve collected the biggest bunch of yard cars you ever saw. People pay plenty to see them.”

“But I thought you inherited your dad’s junk yard.”

“Yeah, I did. But I changed the sign on it. Now it’s a theme park. Disney wanted to buy me out, but it’s a National Hysteric Site, so I have to stay and run it as a family heritage or the Tea Party gets it.”

* Where Randall comes from, "Retired" is pronounced as "Retard."

Birds Being Birds

It wasn’t a good after-school afternoon for Edith Whistle yesterday. As usual, she was doing all the work of running the “Whistle & Thistle Biker Bar & Episcopal Ladies Tea House” all by herself.

Her husband, Bob, who always claims that Edith is the thistle in The Whistle & Thistle, was in the railroad corner, showing a bunch of fifth graders how to make little trees for the railroad layout and treating them to free black cows.

“They ought to be expanding the hobo jungle beside those tracks,” muttered Edith, “because that’s where they’re all going to end up, useless bums.”

She looked over to the Episcopal ladies corner. Mrs. Hobart Hazlewood III was sipping Earl Grey and drilling a couple of freshmen on algebra. With the sense of entitlement Episcopal ladies always seem to have, she was rewarding them for right answers with donuts out of the glass stand which she had taken from the counter beside the cash register. Edith knew that Hannah Hazlewood would forget to pay.

“The rich think people like me ought to support them,” Edith muttered.

“That’s why they’re rich,” a soft voice muttered back at her. “They keep their own money and spend other people’s. That’s what my mother says, along with a lot of other stuff.”

“Oh no,” thought Edith. “Tiffany Lampe is here. She’s such a nice girl, but I know she’s going to…”

“Got any work for me, Mrs. Whistle?”

“…beg for a job again,” Edith finished her thought.

“Tiffany, if I could possibly hire someone, it would be you. But look around you. We’ve got a whole lot of business, but nobody is paying. I can’t afford help. There’s no point of you coming in here and…”

Tiffany began to sniffle.

“I don’t really come to ask for a job, Mrs. Whistle. It’s just an excuse not to go home.”

“Oh, my,” said Edith. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing special. Nothing different. It’s just that Mom never stops talking. She doesn’t yell at me, or like that. She’s proud of my grades and everything. It’s just that she never stops…”

She looked up at Edith, tears beginning to run down her smooth cheeks.

“She’s driving me crazy. What can I do to get her to stop talking all the time, Mrs. Whistle?”

Edith looked at her husband and the laughing little boys. She looked at Hannah Hazlewood smiling as Dusty Rhodes finally understood about “x.”

“Tiffany, you can tell a bird to stop singing, tell it to stop flying. It wouldn’t understand you. But if it did, and you convinced it, talked it into quitting its singing, talked it into stopping that flying, well, it wouldn’t be a bird anymore.”

She handed Tiffany a tissue.

“You’d better start by putting some more donuts in that stand over there, and sweeping up those tree leavings under that railroad table,” said the thistle.

Dr. Spits, DDS

Betsy and Johnny Kendy were at Randall and Claire Nathan’s house Tuesday night for supper. It was pizza night. It’s pizza night whenever they are there, because they simply love Claire’s homemade pizza.

After supper they watched the “Big 10 Icons” show about Mark Spitz, the great IU and Olympic swimmer.

Randall mentioned that after his swimming career was over, Spitz had gone on to be a dentist, and they thought it was a hilarious to think of a dentist named Dr. Spits. He explained that it was Spitz, which did not deter their hilarity even slightly. “It’s still pronounced spits! Dr. Spits, the dentist!”

Randall was somewhat embarrassed that he never thought of that himself.

Learning from the Cat

Percival Fauntleroy III, the NFL Hall of Fame receiver, was in town to visit his uncle, Zeke Dombrowski I. It’s not likely there will be any other Zeke Dombrowskis, since Zeke has no children, but he likes putting I after his name.

Since Claire Nathan was his teacher in high school cooking class, and Percival became a chef when his concussing days were over, he and his uncle and Zeke’s bloodhounds, Old Blue I, II, and III, met Claire for lunch at Buddy Mutts Café.

“How did you ever think of that thing you did whenever you scored a touchdown, where you acted like you were trying to kick the ball into the stands but it missed and just rolled around?” Claire asked her former student.

“Well, the first time I did it, I really intended to kick it into the stands, but I just plain missed. I couldn’t admit that, though, so every time after that, I had to do it exactly that way again, so everyone would think it was what I intended.”

“Wow, that was smart,” gushed his Uncle Zeke.

“Not really,” said Percival. “I got the idea from my cat.”

“Thank goodness you didn’t do the same thing the cat does when it wants to make it look like that was what it had in mind all along,” said Claire Nathan.

Erased From the Book

ERASED FROM THE BOOK

Randall Nathan was just ready to cut a piece of chocolate cake out of the middle, of the middle, where it wouldn’t show, to eat at his morning coffee break, since Claire was off getting her hair cut and wouldn’t see his perfidy, having seen Cliff Huxtable do a similar trick, when she surprised him by bursting in the back door.

“Why are you back so early?” he gasped, trying to stuff the middle back into the middle, and hoping he didn’t have chocolate on his breath, since most women have a bloodhound’s ability to sniff out chocolate. She wasn’t paying attention to her nefarious husband, however.

“They erased me,” she moaned. “I am no more.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went for my hair cut at ‘Bounding Mane Beauty Enhancement and Pirate Song Boutique’ and they had erased my name from the appointment book. They gave my appointment to someone else. I no longer exist.”

“You can’t fool me,” said Randall. “This is just a ploy to get me to notice that you got your hair cut. It looks very nice, too.”

That was when another name got erased.

Message? What Message?

“No, she’s not here. Can I take a message?”

That’s what Randall Nathan said to the lady who called the night before the election. One of them. The only one who asked for Claire by name. He knew it was a political call, they’d been getting them all night, so he wasn’t about to admit that his wife was sitting across the room from him.

“Oh, yes, a message would be nice. Please tell her that the Christopherson and Bankston store in the mall is having a 40% off sale tomorrow only, and she qualifies because she’s been such a good customer in the past. That means our Cecilia’s Mystery dresses will be only $500 and our special pillowcases with the Arvonne design will be only $400 each, and the Martha Puker curtains will be only $600 per panel. Can you remember all that?”

“No problem,” said Randall as he hung up.

“What was that all about?” asked Claire.

“Just another political call,” said her husband.

Zits & Standard Time

Kate Bates got 95yo Bessie Bandervilt to church on time, even with the return to Standard Time, and Bessie was surprisingly copacetic about it, since she had an extra hour to read the funnies, but it meant Kate had to hear all about the day’s “Zits” strip, including Bessie making all the faces Jeremy and his friend were making for “Make a face like a parent day,” and insisting Kate take her eyes off the road to look at each face, because Bessie thinks she knows how to deal with teenagers, and so has advice for Jeremy’s parents, which she can’t give to them directly, of course, so which she passes on to anyone who is trapped in a car with her, and of course it is only people like Bessie who think they know how to deal with teens, since she never had any.

Claire Nathan, though, knows a disgruntled teen when she sees one, since she not only had some of her own, but also taught high school, after she had been an undercover cop infiltrating teen gangs, which was pretty much the same thing as teaching high school, so she recognized a familiar look of disgruntledness on the face of Ashleey Reenee Eendsleey at church this morning.

“You didn’t tell Ashleey Reenee about falling back to standard time?” did you, she said to Ashleey Reenee’s mother, Ar.

“No,” said Ar, who has always been disgruntled by the shortness of her name, which explains her daughter’s, sort of. “I figured if we let the kids go to bed before we reset the clocks, Saam and I would have that extra hour for ourselves. Otherwise the kids would stay up an extra hour and we’d never get any time to ourselves forever and ever. Amen. Now, though, she’s so mad, and I’ll never hear the end of how I tricked her. She’ll use it as leverage every time she wants something. She already thinks she knows more about raising teenagers than I’ll ever know.”

Kate Bates was passing by on her way to the cry room and overheard.

“Does Ashleey Reenee have her driver’s license yet?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, that’s another point of contention. She’ll do anything to drive, but…”

“No problem” said Kate. “She can use my car to drive Bessie home after church. They should be good for each other.”

Get Her to the Church on Time

Pastor Patty punched up Kate Bates.

No, she didn’t hit her. That’s what younger people do with phones, they “punch” the numbers in. Older people still “dial” phones, even if they have “touch tone” phones. That’s how we talk—with a vocabulary that is no longer relevant, but which everybody understands. Even young people know what “cut and paste” means, even though no one literally cuts and pastes anymore, except at craft hour at the “Wise Acres Home for Curmudgeonly Geezers,” overlooking the parking lot of the “Furry Mammal IGA,” where Randolph Mossly, the tight end for the “Scary Animals” football team of the NFL [National Filanderers League], does his community service by teaching old Bret Pevre to send the photographs of his cut and paste activities online.

Anyway, Pastor Patty called Kate on the telephone, to see if she would bring Bessie Bandervilt to church tomorrow morning.

“It’s Marsha’s turn to bring her, but when I reminded her, she suddenly remembered she had to go to Yemen for the day. SOMEBODY has to get her, or we’ll never hear the end of it. But you know what will happen. She’ll forget to set her clock back an hour, and she’ll blame it on… us…and…”

Kate knew that Pastor Patty was about to say “blame it on ME,” because that’s what church members do whenever they make a mistake, blame it on the preacher, but it’s not acceptable for a pastor to think anything is ever about her alone, since she’s supposed to be “enabling” the congregation to be “awesome” Christians, which is enough to make anyone with any sense “puke.”

“Yes, but then I’ll have to sit there for a whole hour while she reads the funnies to me,” Kate moaned. “She always reads the funnies on Sunday morning. The last time it was my turn to bring her, I arrived three minutes early. THREE minutes, mind you. She said I was too early, though, and she hadn’t finished the funnies, so she would read them to me. Since Sunday funnies are in color, she felt she had to explain which color went with each character in each panel. This time I’ll be a whole hour early, and…”

Of course, Kate gave in, as she always does, and agreed to get Bessie tomorrow.

“I think I’ll punch her up first, though,” she muttered.

PearlsB4Dogs

Kate Bates and her husband, Prof. Ben “Seymour” Bottoms were having supper at Buddy Mutts Café, having borrowed Franklin and Eleanor, Jake and Jenny Newland’s potbellied pigs, since the brothers Jim, who own and run Buddy Mutts, will not serve you unless you are accompanied by a dog, and Jake has convinced them that Franklin and Eleanor are a special breed of the Wassafoosie family of canines, when the usually glamorous but now frazzled Danielle Boone came in with four teen-aged girls and a litter of Golden Doodles.

“Can you take these GD dogs back to The Pansy Hill Puppy Farm out on Copperattlemoccasin Road when we’re through eating?” she gasped at Kate, who is known to be a soft touch for any distasteful task that might produce a good story despite its inveiglelies, which is how she became church treasurer.

“I don’t know if I can,” said Kate. “Ben is in mourning because of the death of Sparky Anderson, and I’m afraid to leave him alone. He might try to join the Marines again.”

“If he keeps eating those deep-fried fat fritters he’ll be big enough to qualify as a few good men,” said Bessie Bandervilt from the next table, who is 95 and skinny and not known for social skills. [Bessie, not the table. The table is only 35 and is usually quite polite.] “I’ll take the GD dogs back to Pansy Hill for you. I’ve been meaning to get one for myself. It’ll give me a chance to choose the one that matches my personality. I’ve already picked out a name—Impregnable. But why can’t you take them back yourself?”

“Oh, I promised the girls I’d take them to the concert by that new band they all like so much. I thought it would be over at the university in Hope’s Promise, but it turns out it’s way up in Capitul City. We’re really on short time.”

“I’m surprised, Danielle,” sniffed Bessie. “I’m not sure ‘Pearls Before ‘Dogs” is age-appropriate for you.”

“Good grief, Ms. Bandervilt. YOU know about ‘Pearls Before Dogs?’”

“Of course. The band playing tonight in Capitul City is the enormously famous, at least for the moment, “Pearls B4 Dogs,” from Jackson, TN. It gets its name from its home city, which boasts the National Birddog Museum and the only fresh water pearl nursery in North America. I listen to them on my pPod.”

“Thank you, thank you,” gasped Danielle, pushing the box with the litter of Golden Doodles into Bessie’s arms.

“In a long line of strange places to which you have subjected me, this has to be one of the strangest,” Kate said to Ben.

“Sparky would have known what to do,” he replied.

How to Determine Memory Loss

Charlevoix and Rolando Longtude walked into “The Beauty and Booty Hairdressing and Pirate Treasure Boutique” at 10:10.

“You’re 11 minutes late,” sniffed Miles Longway, who makes appointments for one minute before the hour, something he learned in beauty & booty school in Tulsa, because it causes people to be more punctual, and who has a sign above his chair that reads “Stiles With Miles.”

“You know, don’t you,” asked Charlevoix, mostly to get him off the subject of their tardiness, “that a stile refers to a little ladder over a farm fence. It’s a style that refers to a genre of hair or clothing.”

“Of course I know that,” retorted Miles, since it was the first time he had ever heard it. “I use stile instead of style because I work on cows and pigs.”

“Quick recovery,” muttered Professor Ben “Seymour” Bottoms, [who goes to TBABHAPTB to study mores, which does not rhyme with s’mores, which he studies with the church youth group, although s’mores, in their own way, are a form of mores, especially if you pronounce mores to rhyme with the eel instead of a greater quantity, or like Morray Pi, who comes from an infinite line of men named Ray, so while studying mores, Seymour Bottoms also gets a pedicure, so he won’t seem strange], as he made a notation on the back of his hand.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Professor Bottoms,” Charlevoix whispered to him. “We’re late because Rolando got lost. How can you get lost in Periwinkle County? Can you observe him to see if he’s losing his memory?”

“No problem,” said Seymour. “I can determine that with one question.”

“Rolando, how’s the state of your soul?”

“I have a clear conscience and my heart is pure,” replied Rolando.

“Yep, he’s losing his memory,” said Seymour.

Jesus & the AHOY Contest

Randall Nathan gave rides to people yesterday so they could vote. He didn’t want to, but in a moment of weakness earlier in the week, when Angela Messenger had called and asked him to, he said he would, so he did.

It’s a continuing problem. Or maybe it’s a problem only if you see it that way. Maybe it’s only an “issue” instead of a problem. But he sees it as a problem.

He knows he should never agree to do anything, because when it comes time to do something he has agreed to do, he doesn’t want to do it. He almost always enjoys it and is glad afterward that he did it, but at the time he doesn’t want to do it.

Part of the problem is that it costs him points in the Awesome Hermudgeon* of the Year [AHOY] competition. Any contact with a real person costs points. He’s one of the few people who likes robotic political telephone calls, because you get AHOY points for hanging up on telephone calls, and he can hang up on those with a clear conscience. And ENJOYING contacts with people costs mega points. He figures if he never agrees to do anything, then he can’t enjoy anything, and he’ll get more points, and… well, it’s a never-ending struggle.

It was like that yesterday.

One of his riders was Mathtilde Gailey, 98 years old and on a walker, who told him, “It just comes on you so quick, old age. Be yourself while you’ve still got the chance.” He thought about that all day.

Another was William Pomeroy, who insisted on meeting Randall “at the DoubleCola sign on the highway, ‘cause you’ll get stuck if you come down my driveway.” At the polling place, he gave his address as “the 1964 Volvo under the Persimmon Valley Bridge.”

Another was Lucille Sigmoiden, on two canes, and he had to drag her in and out of his 1956 Ford pickup, but it turned out she had been on the same PBS* program at Hope’s Promise University that he had been on, although in different years. It brought back memories of eating with his friends at the Horatio Alger Dining Hall and Pig Worming Center.

Then there was Leeroy Johnson, who proclaimed himself as “the only white Leeroy you’ll ever meet,” and told how he was trying to figure out what beauty really is, since he had lain a rice paddy in Vietnam at night with death all around but thought that the colors of the tracers in the night sky had a beauty beyond anything he ever saw before or since. It was all in his memory, for Leeroy is blind.

Then Randall realized he was giving rides to the poor and the lame and the blind and the oppressed, the very ones Jesus said he had come for, and he was glad, as usual, that he did what he had answered the call to do, even though he didn’t want to.

“I’ll bet Jesus never won the AHOY contest, though,” he muttrerd.



*Hermudgeon is a combination of hermit and curmudgeon.
*PBS=Poor But Smart

Biker Betty

Halloween brings out… well, what is it about being in costume that brings out a person in a person that other persons never knew existed? That’s the question everyone at the community Halloween Parade, Festival, Extravaganza and Smashing Pumpkins concert was asking last night.

The Rev. Dr. Randall Nathan, (Retard), had appeared early, in his usual “hobo in top hat” costume, which requires only the addition of his crushed velvet purple Willy Wonka/Mad Hatter topper, which he also wears when he preaches during one of the purple seasons at church, to help sort the paraders into judging categories, which, since the election is Tuesday, he did by political affiliation, which is easy enough to do when you see someone in costume.

So when Biker Betty showed up, in black eyeshade and lipstick, tattoos on her arms and cigarettes in the rolled-up sleeve of black Sturgis t-shirt and chains around her neck, nobody even came closer to guessing that it was Claire Randall, retired teacher and grandmother supreme and gracious hostess to the world. Until…

…Buster Poseyville, the leader of The Hells Angles Motorcycle Gang and Geometry Club, sauntered up to her and suggested that they “start to boldly lay down rubber,” to which Biker Betty took exception, and excoriated him for splitting an infinitive.

Randall Nathan had been ready to award the purple ribbon for “Best Costume Ever” to three-year-old Clara Wembley, a member of The Lemonade Party, since she told him he could not go to heaven unless he did so, but everyone else at the extravaganza rose up with one voice and declared that there should be two purple ribbons, since they did not want actually to test Clara’s predestinarian powers, either, one to Clara and another to Claire.

You can see all this online, since Claire does not know how to work UTube, and Clara does.