Whenever I see Nancy Pelosi’s face in the news, I am reminded of a fella many years ago who used to live in my hometown. His name was Earl.
Earl never married until just three days after his 70th birthday. When asked why he waited so long to marry, this was his response, “That way if you get a bad one, you don’t have to live with her so long.”
But what’s that got to do with Nancy Pelosi’s face? Funny you should ask.
It had been nearly five years since Earl had been married and everyone had come to recognize that Earl never went anywhere without his wife…….I mean anywhere. When he went for a walk, he took her. If he went outside to mow the lawn, he made her come out and sit on the steps and watch. And even when he went to the Elks Lodge meetings, he always dragged his bride along with him. One time the two went to the county fair. Earl had to go to the bathroom. All there was available were those port-a-potties. He even took her inside one of those while he went to the bathroom. It was bad. There wasn’t a place Earl went that he didn’t take his wife.
This certainly got the townspeople talking. It was almost as scandalous as the time the town manager found old man Guy Crowse lying dead in the middle of Main Street early one morning. Until one year at the annual Old Home Days in town, a few of the old fellas got together before the pig chase and had a drink or two. By the time they had made their way to the town field, a couple of the boys were just a tad of what we used to call, three sheets to the wind.
As sure as I can think up a bad story, two of the boys met up with Earl. And just as sure as you can count on a cat pissing in the flower bed, Earl had his wife with him. One of the fellas, full of false bravado from his doses of corn liquor, grabbed Earl by the arm and yanked him aside.
“Say, Earl,” he says. “Me and the boys was wondering. Why is it you never go anywhere without your wife?”
Earl looked back over his right shoulder quickly and then edged his way a bit further away from his wife so as to explain to his buddy. “Geez,” Earl said. “Have you looked at her face? I’d rather take her with me everywhere I go than have to kiss her goodbye!”
Tom Remington
