Mr.
Polasky waddled down the front stoop, pushed his way through the white
picket fence, and squeezed himself into his little Japanese car. He was
already sweating profusely, patches of spreading wetness quite visible
on his light blue work shirt. Breathing heavily, he inserted the key
into the ignition and gave it a turn. Spark! The car started right up.
Mr.
Polaski, "Stan" if you worked or bowled with him, shifted his weight to
the right in order to reach the stick-shift which, as far as he was
concerned, was located too close to the driver's seat for a motorist of
his "stature".
Of
course, he thought to himself, if he could have foreseen then in the
span of one short year his "personality", as he liked to call it, would
expand to such gregarious proportions, he might have purchased something
more along the lines of a Van or Motor-home to accomodate the new him.
Mr.
Polasky sighed at what might have been, gripped the stick shift with
his stubby little fingers, and put the car into reverse. Upon stepping
on the gas, Mr. Polasky got quite a surprise.
The entire car, along with Mr. Polasky, exploded.
Apparently,
Mrs. Polasky, "Shirley" to the Milkman, was sick of living with a dull,
disgustingly fat, pig of a husband, and had been going out at night
with some of her girlfiends to a local bar to see male strippers.
It
seemed she hit it off quite well with one of the dancers there, a guy
named Mel, and they had a "thing" going. Shortly, this "thing" became
serious and the two entertained themselves with the idea of running off
to some paradise oceanside resort where they could frolic on the beach
in ignorant bliss.
If
only, thought Shirley - if only that fat pig of a husband wasn't
standing in my way. If only that obese hog, that flatulent, lard-bellied
oaf were DEAD!
And so Shirley began to plot. And as it happened, Mel had been a demolitions expert back in 'Nam. Well, it was child's play for him to rig poor Stan's car to explode. It only took him seven or eight minutes (seven, I think).
With
the car all rigged to go, Shirl and Mel fled to a paradise oceanside
resort (in New Jersey). Shirley left strict instructions with her
sister, Tahlula, to take care of any and all inquiries (especially
insurance, yes?) until the heat wore off.
But
Tahlula was a woman of conscience and also she hated her sister's guts.
As soon as she received news of Shirley's foul plans, she told her
husband Norbert, who played cards with this guy Tony, who was a cop.
The
thing is, Norbert and Tony and the guys only get together once a week,
every Thursday night. Tahlula got word of her hated sister's foul plans
on Friday, so Norbert didn't get around to mentioning it to Tony until
the next week at the Thursday night game.
Stan Polasky had already been dead for three days.
Eventually,
however, Shirl and Mel were arrested, which is probably just as well - -
they were getting on each other's nerves. Shirley testified that Mel
had forced her to "do all that stuff you said I done, ya Honah...". They
believed her.
Mel
was put away for a long, long time. But a long, long time went by and
one day, when Shirley was on line in a Toys-R-Us buying a wagon-load of
Cabbage Patch Pampers, Mel suddenly appeared and blew her brains out
with a service revolver.
Mel
fled... and got away with murder, but it was a small consolation to
him. Finding himself now too old to perform as he once had, and lacking
any formal or trade education, Mel took to living off the streets. A
bum, a vagabond, a vagrant.
And
if you should find yourself on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey,
and you happen across a smelly old man wearing a silk shirt open to the
navel and gaudy fake gold chains around his neck... well, that'll be
Mel. And he'll tell you this very same story for fifty cents... maybe
for a quarter.
......the END?
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