This morning, before voting, I stopped off at the convenience store in town to get some cigarettes.
There was a Lions' Club raffle going on, for some sort of firearm. I couldn't care less about firearms--other than that I think those who want to have them, have a Constitutional right to have them--but as it was for the Lions' Club, a splendid organization, I went ahead and bought several tickets anyway.
The prize is a Benelli Super 90 12-Gauge Shotgun.
I have no idea, but if I win, I suppose I can give it away to someone; for all I know, it might be like one of those Daisy kid's rifles which used to be advertised in the pages of comics-books.....or it might be something really good.
Anyway.
While I was standing in line, I noticed a hippycouple near me. They were both about 60 years old. Hippyhubby had thinning hair, a burgeoning pauch, and a pony-tail. Hippywife was stout and careworn and wearing a muu-muu, looking as if she was carrying the burdens of the world on her shoulders.
No; it couldn't be. It would be too much of a coincidence, the real Mrs. Alfred Packer and Wild Bill.
I nodded to them, and greeted them, as is my custom even to complete strangers.
They told me they were from Oklahoma.
No way; it would be
way too much of a coincidence.
They named a town, which was pretty small, and said it was located near Tulsa.
No no way, I thought. It couldn't be.
The hippywife mentioned she does a lot of cooking and baking.
I was freaking.
My eyes grew as big as saucers as they revealed to me other details of their lives, mostly that they were
aficiandos of a simpler life as it was in the old days. The hippyhubby was a native of Oklahoma; hippywife was a native of Ohio. The hippyhubby had built their house himself; hippywife worked in a nursing home.
I can't tell how much I was freaking.
Man, I was freaking.
On the inside; on the outside I stoically retained my composure.
Then finally I inquired how they were going to vote, given that the election's today and they're, uh, rather far from home.
They told me they'd voted before leaving Oklahoma for this trip north.
"If Romney doesn't get it," hippyhubby warned, "we're finished, America's history, down the tubes."
I heaved a sigh of relief; this wasn't the notorious "hippywife" primitive of Skins's island after all.
I hadn't at the time noticed they'd arrived in a 2012 model vehicle; I didn't see that until later, but if I had, I would've been much less tense and nervous than I was, hoping to get my hands on the Benelli shotgun, whatever it is, to shield myself from the wrath of the man-eater hippyhubby Wild Bill.
