catfish 40

 That crack about Sinclair making tin hats fashionable in the north, was just a kind of literary flourish.  I didn't mean to say that there was some direct cause and action.  Though that video clip seemed a little slanted to me, I think they only showed one anti-recount person. and her only as she was summing up her speech.  Of course sane people are nowhere near as interesting as the nuts.  

See that's another reason the Foxies and Sinclairs and Qanon are dangerous, they get you being suspicious of all newsmedia and then if you are not sure which one is telling the truth then you might as well just choose the facts you like best.  Thinking back to my days as a draft dodger and commie, I recall that I was suspicious of the mainstream media.  Everything I read that I didn't like I analyzed it for a pro war bias and of course I always found it.  I think I've outgrown that now.

Anyway I have gone astray.  A salient point that Beagles mentions is that Trump carried Cheboygan with 64 percent of the vote.  Well it's kind of a cool thing for Trumpists to do, they know that if He hears about this it will bring a smile to His face, and that alone makes it all worthwhile.  And some of the elected officials are probably of that ilk and the ones who aren't are afraid to go against the flow, and some are thinking that the guys who show any reluctance, maybe they can use that as a cudgel when they run against them in the primary as The True Trump Disciple.

Kind of surprising that the Cheyboygan Daily Tribune had nothing to say about it, but I googled it and apparently there is nothing.

But anyway I know that Beagles is not a Trumpist, and I am in no way blaming him for what is happening in his backyard.  Certainly in the Toddlin Town we have our fair share of crooked politicians, but none, well almost none, of them are cuckoo, is all I am saying.

And now a little Catfish.

“Party,” I announced, “Party as my house!  Party at Catfish Estates!”  Gina’s arms tightened around me maybe too much, her smile a little frozen.  Shit, the place wasn’t really fixed up yet, there were still boxes of stuff here and there.  We had talked about what she’d called a housewarming party, but I think what she was thinking of was something other than a bunch of drunk softball players acting like a bunch of drunk softball players.

 But it was too late for that now.  “It’ll be okay,” I told her, and maybe it would.  Oh there’d  be shit like beer spilled on the floor and maybe some stuff busted up a little, but hell, nothing that couldn’t be fixed up the next day.

 “No it won’t,” she said.

 And probably she was right, but what the hell.

 And it wasn’t that bad, except for when I made a point of lighting up the fireplace and it turned out that that that flue thing hadn’t really been fixed which I’d suspected, but I was drunk and piling on those fake logs had felt so good.  Anyway ended the party kind of early, all that smoke and all, but not before Ron punched out Itch. 

 I remembered that a little.  Stupid thing.  Started out nice enough, talking about my homer. Thing was the bat, my bat, I’d just left in laying there on top of the plate.  The way it works is the runners crossing the plate, they’re supposed to get it out of the way in case there is a close play behind them, so that the runner behind them doesn’t trip over it or land flat on his back on top of it.  Neither of them did that.  It didn’t matter because I didn’t trip over it and I didn’t land flat on my back on top of it.  But Ron, just mentioning it, wondered why Itch hadn’t cleared it away, and Itch wondered why Ron hadn’t, since he’d crossed the plate in plenty of time, and his run really meant nothing while Itch, being the tying run and me being the winning run hot on his heels, had to focus more on just getting in and didn’t have the luxury of doing the housekeeping,

 “Housekeeping,” Ron snorted.  “Maybe what you were thinking was that if your buddy, Catfish broke his back that would give you a clear shot at Gina,”

 “You fucker, you hillbilly fucker,” and Itch is rising from the sofa, and on either side of him guys are trying to pull him back down but he shrugs himself free of them.

 And Ron, having gotten what he wanted, is smiling a little, “You calling me a hillbilly?”

 “I’m calling you a hillbilly fucker.”

 “Outside?” Ron wants to know.

 He could have said something.  He was a clever guy, he could’ve said something that made Ron look stupid, had everybody laughing at him, but he didn’t, he stepped outside.

 Ron let him have the first punch.  It didn’t amount to anything.  Ron gave him a quick one to the stomach followed by a fast one to the face.  That was it for Itch.  About that time the smoke started rolling in from the fireplace and that was the end of the party.