‘We the People’—Democracy in Action?

The Musings of a Simple Country Man

By Hobie Morris

(Brookfield, NY – July 2014) The monthly Town Board meeting began with many smiles and nods of greeting.  It was as quiet and peaceful as the evening outside.

Six hours later the same room looked like a war zone.  Bodies flopped on the floor like match sticks.  Flowing water with a tinge of red saturating the official papers that had been strewn all around the room in complete disarray.  It was pure chaos as people desperately tried to get out the door in exits while heavily armed police officers were coming in the same exits.  One unknown to history town official weakly yelled over the tremendous pandemonium “meeting adjourned.”  But this announcement came long after the fact.

The first order of town business some six hours before was the necessity of the town complying  with a state mandate to enumerate and put into public record the name and breed of each dog in the township.  Failure to comply with this new state law would result in loss of state funding for local projects.

This meant that the names of 2,143 dogs, according to the most recent canine survey, had to be read in alphabetical order as per the state instructions.  Each town official had his list to call out.  The first official began:  “Adolph”—German Shepherd……”Bama”—Black Lab…. After 5-and-a-half hours there were still 95 dogs to go.  Three members of the board had done their reading duty and were now head in hands on the table sound asleep, albeit with occasional off key snoring.

Half the people in attendance wanted to protest to the board their opposition to natural gas drilling but most of them had left the meeting to go home when the dog names had got into the “m’s”—by the way there were six dogs with the name “Mac.”

Several audience diehards, after napping in their chair, had decided to lie on the floor with their head resting on their hands.  There were countless yawns that seemed to spread like wildfire among those able to stay awake.  But the meeting was still peaceful although somewhat sonorous.

Then it happened.  A rather dazed council member got up to use the pencil sharpener.  He was so punchy and tired from hearing dog names he somehow put his pointer—not a dog—finger in the sharpener by mistake.  He started cranking.  It took the pain several minutes to reach the brain.  Then he let out a war hoop that could be heard by the boisterous and well lubricated customers in the bar next door.  The councilman was screaming bloody murder as he grabbed his freely bleeding finger that he had just sharpened.

In the meantime another official had, a few minutes before, gone into the men’s room to use the facility.  While on the chamber he fell asleep.  The howl of the bleeding finger councilman suddenly waking his colleague up.  Totally confused and disoriented he tripped over his pants that were around his ankles and feet and he fell head first into the porcelain urinal, breaking it.  An Artesian gusher of water quickly erupted from the broken facility.  When he opened the men’s room door, pants in hand, water began flooding the meeting room floor.

When the water hit the audience members lying on the floor sleeping, they thought a tsunami had hit the township.   The injured finger man was screaming so loudly that the boys in the next door tavern thought somebody was being killed so they promptly called 911.  The dispatcher thought she heard something about a killing, but the slurred connection was not very clear.  To be on the safe side, the county and state police were ordered to the scene as soon as possible.

Within 10 minutes sevent police cars were roaring into the village with sirens blaring and red and blue lights brightly flashing.  A special SWAT team with M-16 rifles gathered outside the meeting building, preparing to attack.   A special State Police drone had flown in from Rome to provide information to those officials on the ground as they tried to discern whether this was a domestic or foreign backed insurgency.

Amid this total chaos a black and white inquisitive animal had unobtrusively wandered into the room through the now open door.  A hard sleeping, pro-drilling farmer lying on the floor, waking up from his dog enumerating slumber with a mouthful of water from the men’s room tsunami, inadvertently kicked the black and white animal.  It wasn’t a cat.   It was a skunk and he let go his greetings big time.  The few shocked people remaining in the room began running through the water and now the gas attack for the exits.  At the precise moment the police were attacking through the same exits.  You can only imagine the resulting scene.

The tavern boys watched this entire scenario with considerable amusement, especially when they heard the weak, feeble voice from within yelling “The meeting is adjourned.”

It was indeed pure democracy in action.  The greatest system of governing ever devised.  And 10 dog names still hadn’t been read into the record.  But there is still the next monthly meeting.

Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.