Our Very First Monday Mayberry Moment

And as the weekend went on I was getting a little anxious about this weekly feature. Would I always have something entertaining to exemplify the Mayberry (dare I say it) Culture? Well, little did I know late Sunday afternoon...


Let me set the scene: It's a humid Sunday afternoon and we're out doing yard work. We know we'll have to go in soon because thunder has begun to rumble in the distance, though there's no sign of lightning yet. Small son is swinging his broom around like a samurai every time Daddy's not looking and Mom is just constantly pushing her hair off her face while she weeds.

The neighbors across the street leave. The nice elderly ones, with the disabled husband who thinks my hubby is just wonderful ever since the time he helped them load a dresser onto their pickup without being asked. The same neighbors who have told me that no one should ever be at their house when they're not home. Not even their children because a couple of them are overly covetous of some of their parent's antiques and light fingered too, apparently.

Ten minutes later, a beat up multi colored (not the sort of crap you see in my neighborhood) pickup truck pulls up and drives through their gates into their yard. Hubby looks at me. I look at him. We both know no one is supposed to be there. But there is one son who IS allowed there. He's the GOOD SON. We couldn't see who was driving. We don't know what he looks like. We only know that the bad son has a beard. I take a walk down to the end of the block and turn around and head back to our house trying to surreptitiously look over/through the fence. I'm too short. I can't see anything but the top of a baseball bat and a guy digging through a tool box in the bed of the ratty pickup.

I go back to the house and call the sheriff. I explain very carefully all of the info that Miz Jeannie (everybody down here is Miz this or Mr. that) had passed on. I explained that I couldn't be certain that it wasn't the good son, but I'd just like a deputy to come out and have a look. Dispatch kept me on the phone the whole time in case the "perpetrators" left.

In mere minutes Betty Fife shows up. She passes right by the house and turns around at the cul de sac and heads back up our way. I'm pointing at the white house, she still almost stops at my house. She gets out with A RIFLE. She approaches the "suspect" at GUN POINT.

Meanwhile, I'm having major second thoughts and a minor panic that maybe this guy is just her son and is going to be pissed that I sent Betty Fife and her one bullet after him. I'm envisioning being retaliated against by this guy sometime at 3:30 in the morning when hubby has already left. Now another deputy pulls up in an unmarked blazer. Now another. Now another. Now there are four deputies (Gomer, Goober, Floyd, Barney) and Betty Fife has still got them in the rifle site. Sometimes I'm not nearly INVISIBLE enough.

One deputy comes across to me and says these guys are not her sons and that they claim they're supposed to be there because Miz Jean and Mr. Jim are selling them their pickup. I know nothing about this. The deputy says this guy is known trouble around town (F'in' great -just who I need to come back and retaliate) but I'm not to worry because they're telling him he'd better not come near me and cause any trouble (oh good! Give him ideas he might not have already thought of). Deputy Floyd wants to know if I know where Miz Jean might have gone. I tell him, they basically never go anywhere but Walmart or the VFW. They send a Deputy to go find Miz Jean and ask if these guys are supposed to be there.

Two hours later (or so it seemed) Miz Jean comes home. The first thing she says to me is, "Ya know. I tol' Jim Ah Shoulda tolt youuuuu that them bowyz was gonna be comin' up in heah." Then she says, "But you done right. I tole youuuuu to call the shairf if'n anybody shows up here when I ain't home." Then she proceeds to apologize to those boys (as did I) by saying, "I'm sorry y'all but she looks out for me. Ya know she's from New Jersey and they's a whole lot more crime up there than here." I guess she thinks New Jersey is the crime capital of the country. Little does she know I lived across the street from a feed farm and a green house and down the corner from a horse farm.

I present to you, the first Monday Mayberry Moment and certify that it is absolutely correct and as wildly hilarious as it seems. I still can't believe Betty Fife approached with Rifle drawn.