As a reporter, it was always fascinating how much the people in charge and the people with power were supposedly up to no good. Not in the decently frequent but relatively mundane forms of malfeasance and general governmental stupidity I spent an awful lot of time checking out, but in the dreamed up ways that usually belligerently anonymous callers would go on and on to me about.

For example, there was the gentleman who assured me that they would zone in a crack house — no, literally — as soon as they annexed his virginal neighborhood. Presumably next to the new firehouse. They come in pairs, you see.

Then there was the woman who demanded that they had given her a $20 Wal-Mart gift card in a drawing but had not bothered to put any money on it — just to mess with her poor old soul. I asked her if she had called the people she won the gift card from before talking to me and asked if they had activated it. She had not.

And then there was the man who discovered a conspiracy theory — probably reaching to the White House and beyond — connected to their malevolent placement of a pole near some property he owned. I wish I could flesh out that theory for you, but he cursed me out 15 minutes into the conversation because he did not think I was taking the pole seriously enough, concluding before he hung up that even though he had called me he “would not wipe (his) damn ass with (my) damn paper.” I can only assume that since then the war has continued. A lot like Terminator. Except with a pole. Continue reading “LETTERS TO DIXIE: No sale”