Ma'am, it's powerful hard to fergit where ya live. Out here in The West (Texas excluded itself when it didn't re-elect Ann Richards and voted in a Frat Boy instead), sometimes we find it needful to resort to weaponry.

For example, jist last night Slim Jim got a bellyful up at the Legion Hovel and decided to see what was down the smokestack of Old 1630, a 4-8-8-3 steam engine on display at the Park. Now, he's called Slim Jim 'cause he ain't, toppin' the scales at about 500 pounds and there ain't any of it pure muscle. Anyways, he got hisself stuck in the smokestack of that engine and raised more noise than a diesel's air horn. Finally he attracts the attention of Betty Bambam, whose customers were being driven away by the noise. Betty, being a good soul, called the Legion to come get him, which was pretty smart as most of the fire department was up there anyway.

There was a lot of discussion about the best way to get Slim Jim out.    There was the idea of using a crane, but nobody wanted mess up the flowers in the park with something like that. Finally, Chief Quick of the FD clumb up and poured a couple gallons of cooking oil around Slim Jim. See, they were going to fire up the boilers on the old engine and they figgered that Slim Jim would thereby sweat off enough fat that, combined with the cooking oil, a half dozen strong guys could pull him out.

Problem was, the boiler was dry and nobody wanted to fire 'er up and maybe crack the boiler -- ya never know when you might need a big locomotive, ya know. Also Slim Jim hisself was hollering some objections or other to the plan.

So there was some more palaver whilst a new plan was developed. Prit near half the folks wanted to just leave him stuck there as an object lesson (or, as Honest Pete called it, "an objectible lesion"), but hotter heads prevailed and they brought up the lines from the air compressor over at the sewage treatment plant. This is one BIG compressor, so a half-mile or so of air hose hardly made a dent in the PSI output. They hooked that line up to the boiler and turned on the air.

Well, bein' the weakest spot in the system, so to speak, ol' Slim Jim shot outa there like a cork from champagne bottle. Mountain Home and Hill AFBs caught him on their radars and scrambled a full flight of interceptors, F-20s I think they were, to shoot him down. Only what goes up must come down and ol' Slim Jim did just that, makin' his landing splat in Fightin' Frank's manure pile. Frank come a runnin' outa his house, shotgun in hand, and Slim Jim stood up, the manure coverin' him from head to toes and jist a-drippin' manure and cooking oil.

Frank took one look, screamed something about The Blob, threw down his scattergun and took off for the back forty. Mrs. Frank saw a glimmer of humanity in what stood before her and turned on the garden hose. Right quick Slim Jim was standin' there, pretty much soaked in cooking oil but fairly clear of manure. Mrs. Frank tossed him the end of a lariat and quietly led him to the porch. She called the Sheriff, who sent a pickup to take him into town.

All ended well, except that Slim Jim got tossed into durance vile for thirty days from running around without pants -- they'd got ripped right offa him when he shot outa the smoke stack. Frank finally found his way home and Mrs. Frank soothed his troubles about The Blob by reminding him of what they were doing the night that the movie played at the Sunny-Up Drive Inn.

So ya see, ma'am, sometimes out here we gotta shoot things to make 'em right.

Or something.