A CRIME AGAINST NATURE

 I must have been on school the day the High Sheriff of Bindweed County   visited my mother but my little sister remembers vividly clinging to her skirts in fear as he harangued my mother over…..what?

Over the heinous crime of polluting the river?  Of what great import was it to the law and order of Bindweed County that we dumped the hot ashes from our wood stove into the Tippecanoe River?  Hot ashes were not a thing you wanted to have close to buildings especially on a windy day.  Beside that, everyone had been dumping everything into the Tippecanoe since the first white man sank up to his knees in its muddy banks.  And of all the people to accuse; MY MOTHER who wouldn’t even remove the tag that said: “DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW”.

It is well my father was gone that afternoon.  He would have stood up to the man, Sheriff or not.  As it was he just told my mother to wait a week or two and then resume business as usual.  The old man was pretty low key and I can’t remember him ever getting into a rage.

Sheriff Morris Morris, “Mo” to everyone in the county except for the increasing number who had had a run in with him, was on his third term as Sheriff of Bindweed County.  A local boy, he had returned from World War II a much decorated war hero where he had reputedly strangled a Japanese officer with his bare hands during the vicious island fighting in the effort to invade Japan.  The local citizens thought ‘What better man to enforce law and order in Bindweed and environs.  Mo had his own idea of “law and order according to Mo”.   A deeply religious man, he was a lay preacher in

‘The Church of the Revelation of the Risen Spirit’ where he had attended since his youth.  What fostered his absolute hatred of alcohol and those who drank it or were even suspect of drinking it, nobody knows.  As the Sheriff advanced toward middle age his temper grew more and more ungoverned.  He was known to simply go off on people and launch a tirade of verbal abuse.  On more than one occasion he roughed up men for little reason.

I suppose any man who, given a gun and almost absolute power over almost 400 square miles and the residents thereof along with the enthusiastic backing of the local newspaper, could confuse himself with the Deity.

And then there are some who think that to hassle a defenseless housewife with a small child is tantamount to being a bully.

THE SHADOW SAYS:  WHY DO YOU SAY WHITE MAN WHEN IT IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT TO SAY BLACK MAN OR RED MAN?

 Listen here, Shadow.  You are not indispensable to this blog!