“DUCK TAPE”

“Be careful”, Merry scolded. 

“I will”, Hanger smiled at her. 

Then he saw the stern look on her face and knew she was serious. 

“I mean it, Henry. No more zigzagging or loopty-loos like at the festival. You nearly scared half the town to death and Dexter Dolby had a heck of a time getting those poor turkeys back in their crates,” Merry looked sternly at Hanger. 

Merry was referring to the flyover Hanger did at the Harvest Film Festival. 

“It’s a good thing Roger had ‘duck tape’ on hand.” 

“That’s ‘duct tape’, my dear, Hanger giggled. 

Merry looked perplexed. 

“You say, ‘duct’. I say, ‘quack, quack’. 

Hanger got in his Ol’ Jenny and flew off in the direction of the Connelly potato farm. He worked many summers on that farm digging potatoes for Ol’ Man Connelly and daydreaming of the day when he could fly.  

Hanger joined the Army shortly thereafter, got married and raised a family. Now, all these years later, he finally has his own plane. He still works at the Connelly farm fertilizing the crops. Ol’ Man Connelly passed away shortly after Hanger went into the Army. His son owns it now. 

Hanger thought back to the festival that day and the chaos that followed. He couldn’t help but smile as he remembered how Justice, Ol’ Man Connelly’s son and Garrett Storm, Letongaloosa’s leading weather man had dared Hanger to buzz over Dexter during his speech because he tended to be a tad longwinded. The boys thought it’d be fun to shake things up a bit. 

Everything was going fine. Hanger was all set to fly when his knob to his radio fell off. Hanger was caught off guard, but he was able to pull off scaring Dexter, but he got a little too close to the crowd and the turkeys. It caused all sorts of commotion, not to mention a disgruntled   mayor.  

After Hanger apologized and helped Dexter gather a few angry birds, everyone in town was laughing at what had just happened. Including the speech presenter. 

“You sure gave me a start!” Dexter quipped. Your flyover gave me an idea for a new project. My boss at the studio has been asking me about writing a new script and I couldn’t think of anything until today thanks to you. I mean a sequel to my film, ‘Attack of the 50-FootTurkey” would be…”  

“Glad to be helpful,” Hanger sighed and walked toward the hardware store to find a quick fix for the radio knob for his Jenny. 

Justice Connelly was standing with a roll of duct tape in hand by the time Hanger reached Rollins Hardware. 

“Here you go!” Justice grinned. 

“Thanks. That should hold it till I get back to the shop. Merry is going to be upset with me for this stunt.,” Hanger sighed. 

And he was right, 

“I know Dexter talks a lot, but those poor turkeys!” Merry said. 

She was trying to sound stern, but Merry was having a hard time trying not to smile as she saw the look on Mayor Turners face once the turkeys broke free from their pen. 

“Seriously, Henry. You could have been hurt.” Merry said. 

“I know,” Hanger said as he kissed her cheek and headed toward his shop to fix the knob that started all the commotion and the inspiration for Dexter’s potential upcoming blockbuster. 

Oh, that was a fun and memorable day. Hanger smiled as he got into Jenny. He looked over at the knob. The outline of the ‘duck tape’ was faint.  

Heading off in the direction of Ol’ Man Connelly’s, Hanger grinned, looked over his shoulder to make sure no turkeys were in flight and did al oopty loo for luck. 

Pecked to Death by Ducks©

With the summer season just around the corner, most people are making vacation plans. I, on the other hand, have been busy stressing about all of the things around my house that need my attention.

I’ve been thinking about what to do with all my “stuff” in the attic. Emmaline runs a trim ship.   I sail a kind of garbage scow.

It’s time to get the wet leaves out of the roof gutters, put fertilizer on the lawn, fetch some sacks of pebbles for the rock garden.  On a more personal note, I wanted to rescue a couple of my favorite shirts from the church donation box sitting by the front door.
Whenever I think that I have too much to do, my stress rises. When that happens, it’s like I’m being pecked to death by ducks.  Its as if I were tied hand and foot and lying on wet grass with a raft, team or paddling (see Google) of ducks pecking me.  Their blunt beaks don’t break the skin on my head like the peck of a woodpecker would, but the sensation is still painful, and
emotionally draining.

The feeling comes when I think I have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. I often get relief by day dreaming about decades past when I traveled a lot—to Latin America, the Caribbean, North and Central Africa, Japan.  But if I day dream too deeply while I’m doing something like trimming the hedge, and I mess it up, and—out come the ducks.

I’ve been thinking Emmaline and I need to go back to the Caribbean, or Latin America. But then I realize that what we really need is to go back to our good old rental cabin in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I always love our days on the river there, floating downstream on inner tubes, drinking steins of root beer with my friends, the little old colonial Dutchmen.
Back in March I got in touch with my humor column friends and colleagues at The Enchantment, that dingy roadhouse on the edge of town where so many of them congregate. I told them to meet us at the cabin. Then, what with the ducks in my head and all, I nearly forgot about the trip to the cabin.

So today, I got the word out—on Internet, by smoke signals, by homing pigeons, by mental telepathy–and by a few other means of communication that I won’t elaborate on here. I invited everyone

to meet us at the cabin.  The invitation to my  robot friend KB11.2 (Kaybe, for short) went zinging  through outer space to his home planet that’s just a few parsecs from our nearest star, Alpha Centuari.   And I asked Kaybe to stop by Cuba on his way andpick up Kate in the jungle down there.
Emmaline thought we couldn’t go to the cabin right now because there was too much to be done here: paint the shutters, plant a garden, clean out the garage, etc., etc.

“And What about Ginger?” she asked.  Ginger is our dog.

“I promise to paint the shutters when we get back. The weather will be better then, anyway.  It’s been a late spring, so we can put in the garden after we get back.  Ginger always comes with us, remember? Her carrier is just inside the front door, next to that donation box we’re taking to the church.”

I knew that Emmaline wanted to go to the cabin all along, but we needed to tie up loose ends.  After she went to pack, she called down to say she was including a variety of ceramic root beer steins.

She had chosen one for everybody. A few days later as we got ready to leave the ducks in my head took a nap—a nice long one, I hoped.

When I lifted Ginger into her carrier, she nestled down on top of my favorite dear old (not to be discarded) shirt. It was folded neatly underneath her.

I put the church donation box in the car to drop off on the way out of town.

-30-

 

Dr. Larry day is a retired J-School professor turned humor writer. His book, Day Dreaming: Tales From the Fourth Dementia is available for purchase via his website: http://www.daydreaming.co