Public Notice!

PUBLIC NOTICE!

by

Anthonystjoseph

     On this occasion I had been sent to a town called Ward in the state of Colorado.  I was told that my client’s home was hard to find so I could go to the post office and she would meet me there if I had trouble finding her home.  I drove through the mountains for an hour and arrived in the town called Ward.  It looked like something from a Clint Eastwood movie.  The town was only about three blocks long and comprised of all steep hills with houses very close to each other.  I stopped at the general store and parked to ask directions not wanting my client to know that I was unable to find her home.

     In parking my car as I looked out the passenger side window I saw an outhouse with a sign posted on it.  It was a supposed public notice that had been put up to warn.  Well I had never been to Ward, Colorado so I figured I better READ UP!  It read as follows:  saying things like 'if you're not prepared to kill your neighbor' on line fourteen:

      I sat there in awe reading this letter and wondering about the person’s psyche who wrote it.  I assumed it was an old man who escaped to this small town to avoid the ‘voices’.  I found out later it was a young man of about thirty years of age.  Can you say UNABOMBER!  J  Surely I jest…

     I then went into the grocery store and the store clerk, a barefooted woman in a flowing skirt walked from the back smelling of incense and wearing crystals but still not that friendly.  She had no idea where the street was I was looking for because as I was soon to find out the street didn’t really exist, well at least it didn’t exist at that time of the year.  My client’s street, as she later informed me, actually closes down during the winter months.

     The store clerk decided not to cast a spell on me and pointed me towards the post office which was on the opposite hill from where I was standing at the same height.  I drove the block to get there and asked a man getting into his car did he know where Crank Street was.  He said, “Yeah, who you looking for?”  I said my clients name and he abruptly said, “No one lives on that street with that name.” Then he jumped in his car and sped off.  Uh-oh…  I walked into the post office and saw a list of registered voters posted in the foyer and there was my clients name with the same street address.  That was strange – welcome to Ward.

     The post office clerk or post mistress, as she is called, was warm and friendly.  Very different than the woman I saw walking through town with a huge backpack carrying a baby or a doll in her arms, I wasn’t sure, I was sure she thought it was a baby though.  There was also the two gentlemen, which I thought for a moment were young confederate soldiers, driving a midnight blue Riviera who sent a slight chill through my spine the way they looked at me like I was prey…  Getting back to the post mistress…  She was very friendly and receptive and told me my client had informed her I was coming and she would call her.

     I couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring up the ‘PUBLIC NOTICE’ posted on the outhouse!  The Post Mistress asked what I thought and I politely said that I thought it was very eccentric and I would love to meet the author explaining that he seemed very passionate about his beliefs.  All the while people kept coming in and getting their mail.  Maybe they knew I was there but it was sure busy.  All of a sudden the Post Mistress clamed up at my questions and told me I should ask HOWARD if I wanted to know more about him.  I felt as though I had offended her or something.  I apologized and she got my client on the phone.

     I then drove back out of town about two blocks to meet my client on the highway and we would have to WALK to her home about ‘two and a half football fields’ as she put it, ‘UP THE MOUNTAIN’!

     My client was an extremely friendly woman of about sixty with a roaming dog in tow.  She wanted me to leave my car on the highway to which I wasn’t comfortable with due to the fact that the confederate soldiers in the  Blue Riviera saw me.  I could drive it up about fifty yards and then we would have to walk the rest of the way she told me, I said, “Okay”.  My first attempt up the fifty yards was a total failure.  I got stuck in the slush and ice and started sliding down the hill backwards.  Uh OH!  I still couldn’t leave my car for the confederate soldiers to dismantle so I made another attempt and was successful.  Thank God.

     Then she said we had to walk the next two hundred yards.  I gathered all my presentation materials and gave her a bag as well.  She obliged.  I then proceeded up rough terrain that reminded me of my old Army days.  We came to a wooden house, and I’m being very liberal calling it a house, that was basically just boards nailed together with no electricity or running water.  My presentation is four hours so at one point during this presentation I had to use the restroom.  She pointed me towards the restroom.  THE TREE IN THE BACK!  I do hope that was the dog’s poop I was looking at.  Something tells me it was her poop.  She did tell me it was ‘the’ toilet.

     She had a horse and a parrot to keep the dog company.  The parrot, as she explained to me, was neurotic, so it had pulled out all its feathers a while back.  Later that day it thought my finger was a feather and went after it!  No stitches but it did break the skin.  An hour into the presentation I needed something else from the car – NO!  YES!  I had to make the trek back to the car so we made it together.  The horse came up behind me and nudged me from the back – I guess the mane of hair I have led him to believe I was another horse or something…  Thank God he didn’t try to mount me.  He did scare the heck out of me though because she was in front of me and I had forgotten about him on this isolated mountain.  Flashes of the confederate soldiers went through my mind.

     She informed me during our visit that the town had had a town meeting to go after the Post Mistress because of the ‘PUBLIC NOTICE’!  Apparently it was originally posted at the post office but the Post Mistress had it removed.  So the whole town of potential una-bombers had accused her of censorship.  Hence the clam up I had received from her after all my questions regarding the notice.  She probably thought I was an attorney or something for Howard Drew Brittain considering I was wearing a suit and tie and an outsider.  The man who denied that my client lived on her street was the police commissioner it turned out, and thought I was someone from the public defender’s office regarding one of my clients ‘cases’.  Apparently my client has a little problem with the justice system herself.  So in fact, I hadn’t offended the Post Mistress, I had just gotten involved in one of her battles.  According to my client, the town meeting was pretty intense and she was the villain in the piece.

     The presentation was over and my client was happy, so I gathered my things.  I proceeded down the mountain and made it a lot quicker due to the fact that I fell down half the mountain and slid through horse shit, dog shit, snow, and ice…  And I’m sure some of her human feces was in the mountain slide recipe somewhere as well that painted and ruined my Oscar De La Renta SUIT!  Even though I looked like Katherine Hepburn after falling in the river in the movie, ‘African Queen’, I got up and acted like it didn’t even happen.  I’m sure it was the medical condition referred to as shock. I drove home thanking God for the wonderful job that was revealing more of his wonderful interesting world and took a long HOT SHOWER!

By

Anthonystjoseph

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