It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway,1989
Episode 16 – It Takes Some Thought to Run for State Representative
We were sitting around one day talking about good old Tommy Thompson and how he was out of a job again.
“Isn’t Senator Flogg due to step down this year?” asked Sully. It was true: Senator Flogg had been having some trouble with the press and it wasn’t exactly a secret that he had been promoting a Florida real estate deal, which had got him some property down there. Representative Boyd Ferrel would naturally step up to take the Senate seat, but that would leave Boyd’s seat open.
“You don’t have to be very smart to be a State Representative,”: Orville reminded everyone.
“That’s one thing you can’t be,” said J.C.
Everyone admits that Tommy Thompson was the best quarterback that Cherryville ever had, but that was quite a few years ago, and life goes on.
Tommy has worked at just about every job anyone could manufacture for him. Lots of people have bought insurance policies, used cars, stocks or futures from him that didn’t really want. Whatever it was though, people could tell that Tommy didn’t have the heart for it. He should have been a coach, but he could never get his Teacher’s Certificate.
Orville went on, “I don’t think Tommy would be any worse than your average Representative. I don’t see how he could possibly do anyone any harm, and since everyone in the county knows Tommy, he could probably get the job.”
Then Sully brought up the sad fact that you couldn’t run any kind of campaign without money, and he didn’t think Tommy had any. But if you didn’t have buttons and bumper-stickers and such no-one would take you seriously. He had a point.
Most of the afternoon was taken up considering exactly how we could help Tommy Thompson in his forthcoming campaign. We agreed, most of us, that is, that the only thing he needed to win was money, and so the consideration came down to how we could get some for him. We crossed off a Benefit Goat Roping, a Benefit Beer Bust at the Fair Grounds, and The First Annual Invitational Great Tortoise-Trot–they were the only ideas we had.
Orville suggested a Wet T-shirt contest, but after we discussed it we decided there wasn’t enough good material in town to make it very interesting.
One thing about the It’ll Do, you just had to wait awhile and some one will come through the door. So we got some more suggestions. Fletch Flecher thought maybe someone could sit a flag pole for two or three weeks, but no-one volunteered to do it. There was the idea of raffling off a woman, and Gordon said he would talk to the bar-maid at the “Barn”, who would probably help out for a good cause–but that was just talk.
Vera made more sense than anyone, but that’s not unusual, when she said before we went off half-cocked perhaps someone should ask Tommy’s wife, Mary Sue, what she thought? You notice, Vera didn’t say anything about asking Tommy. Vera said she would pick up Mavis and the two of them would drive out and talk with Mary Sue.
This was fine with the rest of us, because we had started to seriously consider the problem, and there were some interesting possibilities coming to light. Vera–God Bless her–didn’t have the type of sense of humor which would allow her to appreciate some of the things we were thinking.
To tell the truth, we couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t either too dangerous, like having a Demolition Derby on Main street, or too illegal.
The idea of building a Viking ship, sailing it from here down the river and up to Scandinavia came up. Having people pledge so much a nautical mile would have been legal, if anyone would actually go through with it. Nobody wanted too. Thad came in from his farm with about eight gallons of honey in his truck and Orville suggested to him that the best hing you could do with honey was to make Mead. You could home-brew some powerful stuff with honey. Orville said mead was what the old Vikings drank.
By the time Vera got back we had pretty well decided on it.
There’s an old quarry north of town that is almost like an amphitheater, a pretty place. In the quarry there’s always some water standing; deep enough for perch, clear as a bell. We would put on a revival there, and the water would be handy for baptisms.
Now, what we would do is to make up about ten five-gallon jugs of mead. We could get the honey donated, we wouldn’t call this drink by its right name, we would call it Nectar, and sell it for fifty-cents the jigger. We wouldn’t even need a percentage from the collection plate.
Vera said that she and Mavis had talked with Tommy–Mary Sue was getting her hair done–and Tommy wasn’t sure he was the right man for the job. He was giving serious consideration to taking over the Florida business from Flogg, when Flogg retired….
Living and Writing in Mexico 
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