DISASTER AT THE JUNIOR CONSERVATION BANQUET—PART 2
The mere appearance of Mitzi, or for that matter any girl who was even moderately attractive, was sufficient to turn Mollygrubs’ face an alarming shade of scarlet. The mere thought of talking to her, much less asking for a date, produced in him a level of intestinal stress reminiscent of his Boy Scout case of the green apple trots and its poison ivy aftermath. That timidity was not an inherited trait, at least on the maternal side, and it wasn’t as if testosterone didn’t rage in the lad. Carefully concealed issues of Playboy magazine, with their centerfolds coming apart from having been opened so often, bore telling testimony on that front. Mind you, in his most secret moments while perusing said magazines, Mollygrubs reckoned those unrobed, buxom lasses gracing their pages fell well short of Mitzi Merkel when it came to comparison of upper story physical attributes.
Such considerations aside, there was no way on this green earth that Mollygrubs was going to build up sufficient courage to ask the lovely lass to accompany him to the Junior Conservation Banquet. It didn’t matter, because his mother, as was her wont, took matters fully in hand. Indeed so confident and determined was Karen Messer that Mitzi would accompany her wunderkind to the gala that she made it a one-woman mission where no obstacle would stand in the way of success.
In a multi-faceted blitz that would have been the envy of a political consultant overseeing campaigns for national office, Karen Messer launched her campaign. She gave not so much as a passing thought to Mollygrubs’ views of the matter, and precisely the same held true for the fetching Miss Merkle. The destroyer S. S. Karen Messer had left port with orders of damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. She was determined to be shape her son’s destiny, and if conniving, underhanded behavior, bribery, or other steps were required, so be it. She cajoled, pulled strings, called in favors, employed stealth tactics as needed, and purportedly resorted to nasty underhandedness if not outright blackmail. Nothing would stand in the way of Mollygrubs escorting the delectable Mitzi Merkel on that special occasion, and accordingly matters proceeded with all the certainty of an arranged marriage in some Middle Eastern backwater.
A full month in advance of the banquet, which was always nicely timed to come in March after fall and winter hunting seasons were over and prior to opening day of turkey season, all the basic arrangements were in place. Orders had been placed and purchases made to ensure that Mollygrubs was nattily attired in traditional semi-formal fashion as it was practiced in Stony Lonesome. His outfit included a spiffy camouflage jacket with black velour lapels; a bow tie, short waistcoat, and cummerbund in matching the camouflage pattern of his jacket; khaki slacks with a crease so sharp you could have shaved with it; and even cowboy style boots in the same camo pattern employed elsewhere in his outfit. In his mother’s view, and that of his father as well, although that hopelessly hen-pecked soul never offered so much as a hint of an original opinion when his spouse was within earshot, Mollygrubs was a source of great pride and a sight to behold.
Those duds for Mollygrubs put an appreciable dent in the modest Messer family budget, and the breadwinner, long suffering Wallace “Wally” Messer, secretly thought that the outflow of money for the Junior Conservation Banquet would have been far better spent on a substantial down payment for a dandy little Parker 16 gauge with 90 percent bluing intact that closed tight as a miser’s purse he had been admiring on the local pawn shop’s gun rack. But he would as soon have given away his prize feist, a four-legged squirrel-treeing machine, as to bring the matter before his irrepressible spouse.
For her part Mrs. Messer, never one to show much economic awareness even in times when her mental processes were on a more even keel, didn’t care if they ended up broke as the Ten Commandments. Her son was going to “do things right” and be the source of community –wide envy at the upcoming social event of Stony Lonesome’s social season. Indeed, “Caring Karen” didn’t stop at having Mollygrubs dressed in fine fashion. She arranged for special transportation, in the form of a retired hearse a local garage owner had converted to what he styled a limousine, to convey Mollygrubs and the lovely Miss Mitzi Merkle to the event.
Her son, who had harbored far-fetched visions of driving the family jalopy and enjoying some post-banquet smooching at a remote pull-off on a Forest Service road he knew about, likewise never so much as whispered a whimper of dissent regarding transportation for the special evening. Father and son alike knew better, thanks to ample past experience, than to get in the way when Karen Messer had set her mind on something.
Eventually the long-anticipated evening arrived, and with endless rehearsals of precisely how his role in the grand saga was to be played, Mollygrubs climbed into the hearse-cum- limo. His overwrought mother, wound tight as an eight-day clock and only one or two steps removed from a total meltdown, made one final course correction, almost screaming that he wasn’t to ride shotgun alongside the mechanic turned chauffeur while en route to the Merkel household. Rather he was ordered to make the trip, never mind that it was less than two miles, in solitary splendor on the capacious back seat. That passenger space featured a built-in bar (albeit in this instance lacking anything remotely resembling the so-called “golden moonbeam” produced by some illicit branch-water distilleries in the area), an audio system that allowed passengers to tune into the radio with speakers in the back area, and even a partition offering isolation from the driver. Mollygrubs only companion for the moment was a lovely orchid neatly boxed and fresh from the local florist. It was a sort of final flourish, although the cost far exceeded any potential value in the view of the male portion of the Messer family, that would adorn his companion for the evening. As in all other matters connected with the banquet, their views were meaningless.
That costly addition to the evening’s ever-mounting financial toll was amplified by the expense of a carnation boutonniere dyed a suitable wildwood green that graced Mollygrubs’ jacket lapel. The corsage portion of the floral “add ons” would also represent the first of an unfolding series of disasters culminating in one of the most memorable, not to mention most miserable, cataclysms the young lad’s unfolding life of never-ending woe.
Mollygrubs arrived at Mitzi’s home, situated in the closest thing Stony Lonesome could offer to regal splendor, with said corsage in hand. He was met at the door by Mrs. Merkel. This imposing, intimidating matron rivaled “Caring Karen” when it came to matters such as who wore the pants in the household. Likewise, she was another force to reckon with on the local social scene, driven by dogged determination to see that her daughter was the fairest, most favored rose adorning the mountainous local landscape.
Mollygrubs, ill at ease as a tomcat in a room full of occupied rocking chairs, anxiously perched on the edge of a chair after being told Mitzi would be downstairs shortly and that he could then pin the lovely corsage on her. In mere minutes, although the wait seemed interminable, she arrived in all her glory. Her mother approvingly said that Mollygrubs had brought a lovely orchid corsage and invited him to attach it to her fetching outfit with the provided pin that was a shorter version of old-time hairpins with their pearl-like knobs. That was when the first of a cascade of the dominoes of disaster began to tumble.
All went well until matters got up close and personal. At that point, despite earnest efforts to the contrary, Mollygrubs’ Greyhound bus of courtship left the four-lane highway and took a rocky gravel road. The combination of his jitters and irresistible visual spelunking into the crevice of cleavage before his eyes and adjacent to the spot for the corsage was simply too much sensory overload. His focus strayed from placement of the corsage pin to the nearby opening resembling a gap between twin torpedoes at precisely the wrong moment. As a result the pin gouged flesh rather than finery, and Mitzi’s shocked yelp was accompanied by a tell-tale drop of blood. Fortunately Mrs. Merkle rose to the occasion, and with a wee bit of first aid and her taking over corsage pinning duties, matters were put in order. This inauspicious beginning was, however, but an augury of what lay ahead.
This work, which is an updated and revised combination of two venison cookbooks Casada wrote with his late wife, Ann, runs to 264 pages of recipes and a detailed index along with an additional 14 pages of narrative material on subjects such as how to handle your deer at every step from shot to pot, health information, and more. Buy Now
