Spike Nails: Private Eye
Episode Two: The Sister...Continued
“You’re not going to believe this
butt!” I waited for the end of this sentence for a few moments. Realizing that I
wasn’t going to get one, I turned to Candy and looked at the picture on which
she rested a single long perfectly painted acrylic nail. It was the cover of our
small town’s local phone book. On it was the smiling face- not to mention the
round derriere- of last year’s carnation queen, bending to smell a flower in a
field full of that which she had been named for. “I guess they wanted to make
sure they got her good sides,” I said, rather bitterly if the truth be known.
“But let’s not talk about carnation queens. Look up Tony’s and call for pizza.
I’m starving.”
“Sorry…,” Candy flipped through
the phone book looking a bit like my dog last week when he knew I was looking
for my good shoes. And he knew where they were. Or, parts of them anyway.
I come from “Small Town, Texas”.
The name has been changed to protect the innocent, and so that the guilty don’t
know that I have it out for them. It’s your average, run-of-the-mill small town.
Everyone knows your name, your parents, and any dark secrets you might be trying
to conceal. There is no mall; there is no freeway; there is no country club.
There is the local beauty parlor, the newly paved two-lane road that has the
mayor beaming like the fat man at Christmas, and the community pool.
And once a year, there is the
parade.
I speak of course of the
Carnation Celebration, a once a year gala—where a specially selected girl in the
town gets to parade her panties off. She rides an ancient float down the center
of town (on the aforementioned new highway), waving at the “little people” who
made the occasion possible.
Then there was my year. Some call
it, “The year the carnations died”. Other, more politically correct people
simply state that there was no parade that year. No carnation queen. No court.
And certainly no major embarrassment. They would be wrong. I remember that year
well. And there was a parade. Complete with the float, the high school 24 person
marching band, Farmer Joe’s champion horses, the 4H club, even all three of the
Young Democrats Club members made an appearance (although one had to attend in
her twirling uniform so that the she could hop back and forth between them and
the band). And that year, a reporter came down from Fargus to video tape the
whole thing. We were going to be on TV.
Our small town citizens could
give a hill of beans whether they were going to be on LA Law or Fargus community
calendar. TV was TV, and TV was good. The call came one sunny Monday morning to
Reverend Tilsdale, our mayor as well as local preacher, and that same afternoon
he called a town meeting to discuss whether or not the townspeople wanted their
little affair broadcast to the local world. It was unanimously agreed that our
Carnation Coronation was worthy of fame (and I hate to admit this, but I was
there, and I voted. Regret hangs heavy on my heart. And it feels a little like
heartburn.) And that’s when it all got ugly.
First on the agenda of things to
do was select a carnation queen. There were several names on the list of young
girls who came from the “right” families and had the “right” look for TV, made
the “right” types of contributions to the community. Peggy May Sue Peterson’s
family met the criteria. (Their large checks written to the church each week,
checks embossed with a gold lettered admonition “It is better to give…” might
well have had the added phrase “…because then you will receive the carnation
crowing of your daughter”.) And so God looked down from the heavens and
proclaimed, “Let there be a Queen Peggy May Sue.” And there was a queen. And she
was good.
Until the last football game of
the year, that is. PMS, as I like to call her, was the cheerleading captain on
the high school squad. For the first time in five years, our team, the Fighting
Derricks, had a chance at going to district. Peggy was leading cheers with
enthusiasm she usually reserved for allowance day at the Peterson home. During
one such cheer, with just 25 seconds left on the clock our team at the ten yard
line and only one touchdown away from victory, Peggy got so frantic with her
cheering that as she yelled the last line to our signature cheer, “Derricks
drill for victory”, she fell over backwards onto the field. Just at that moment
Bart, our team captain, was heading for the goal line with the ball, he didn’t
see Peggy struggling to get up and out of the way. I wasn’t close enough to see
all this, but I imagine that the look on her face resembled that of a small
animal looking up at – well, looking up at a 250 lb 6’5 man in full armor
barreling down on it. The crunch was audible throughout the stadium (and it
houses 300 people, if you can imagine that). As Bart lifted himself from her,
and looked down to see if she was all right, he saw blood like he’d never seen
before. And this fighting Derrick became a very active and spewing Derrick.
No one asked Peggy May Sue to
withdraw, but suggestions were made that perhaps she could be queen next year,
when her nose wasn’t quite so Stallone-ish. Last I heard, her family had carted
her off to a fancy place in Dallas for reconstructive surgery. And a new queen
had to be named.
And that’s where I came in. In
light of the recent “incident”, it was generally agreed that the next queen
chosen should be intelligent as well as attractive. They looked at SAT scores,
club memberships, graduate ranking, and future plans. Basically, anything they
could brag about in a TV caption. This was my moment. If there’s one thing I
have over looks, it’s brains. And a sparkling personality. And a cute dog.
I interviewed with the committee,
telling them about the 32 I got on my ACT (I hadn’t taken my SAT, which to them
for some reason, made me seem smarter. It makes sense; after all, ACT spelled
something they wanted me to be able to do. Any queen could sit.). I listed my
extensive club membership (I belonged to all eight clubs on the high school
campus), and my graduate ranking of 4 out of 27. The crown jewel however, was my
acceptance next year to Lon Morris College, a junior college in the remote hills
of east Texas. I rated in the swim suit competition (although I over heard Ruth
Tilsdale on the phone to the Fargus Community Calendar asking about possible
airbrushing), and was named the 43rd and a half Carnation Queen. It was a
beautiful moment. Granted, there were no flowers, no adoring audience clapping,
no song proclaiming my entrance. Basically it consisted of “Try and lose 10lbs
before the event, dear. And remember: queens don’t wear their old high school
formals.” But it made no difference. I was queen. I would ponder the proffered
wisdom later.
With a queen chosen, the
committee (when things get trendy, city councils tend to become “committees”.
It’s seems very Washington.) turned their attentions to “modernizing” the look
of our parade. Buff and Biff, the twins, had skipped class and been caught with
their butts sticking out of car hoods at their Daddy’s shop so much that the
school decided to create a “vocational” high school. The boys, probably
completely unaware, continued to skip. However, now the “T” on their report
cards now stood for “training”, not “truancy”, and so the twins were to be given
their first real assignment, because the committee got it into their heads that
the float’s engine needed work. It had drifted a little to the left ever since
the year Billy Dee was driving the float and swerved to miss Molly, a 120 pound
pot belly pig that had stopped in the middle of the parade to show the onlookers
just how good she was at taking care of her “business” (Molly was the ceremonial
“puller” of the float. Her owner walked her on a leash once every day. The
parade confused her, it seemed). The sewing circle got together to make new band
and cheerleading uniforms. And I, thinking I was outsmarting the “committee”,
dyed my prom dress. Meanwhile, carnations were growing everywhere.
Finally, the day came. Two men
from Fargus came in a converted school bus with their single camera and
microphone. Then 12 sharp, the parade began. First in the parade was Molly and
the float. It was speeding along at 20 miles an hour (the boys had tweaked it
into a racing float) with yours truly, waving high and proud on my carnation
throne. My newly dyed dress had not completely dried over night, but this didn’t
concern me. Who would know? What had not been mentioned to me in the many words
of wisdom I had received from Ruth Tilsdale, was the fact that carnations have a
tendency to absorb any dye that touches them. Slowly, as I started to sweat in
the Texas sun, the white carnations I was sitting on turned a lovely – and very
unnatural -- shade of blue. My arms and legs soon followed suit, until my entire
body and most of the float I had touched, was as blue as the sky above.
Just as I thought things were
getting bad, I heard a sound behind me. The band that had been approaching
steadily suddenly let out an almost in unison “BLAT” on their instruments. I, as
the queen, had to maintain complete composure even in the face of this
unattractive faux pas (the offenders will be dealt with later. “Off with their
heads!”), therefore chose not to turn and see the commotion. However, the
horses, who had been behind the band, did not have the same royal leanings. All
eight reared back, and the few that couldn’t be gotten under control, ran
headlong into the spectators. The screaming that ensued would have broken even
the great Queen Liz’s composure. I turned to see what in the world the hollering
was about. Just then history, as it does when unlearned, repeated itself. Molly
turned and positioned herself for her annual show. Meanwhile the float,
barreling along at 20 miles per hour, didn’t stop. This time it was my scream
that had heads turning. Biff whipped his head around to the road he should have
been watching and slammed on the breaks. I tried desperately to hang onto my
seating, but with nothing to grab onto but slightly wet carnations, there was
little to keep me from sliding head first off the float and straight into
Molly’s “performance art”. My skirt flew up over my head and the world (at least
the one I knew) was treated to a full view of my now completely blue underwear
and legs. Dr. McWherter, who thought I was blue because I couldn’t breathe, came
running and gave me what felt like a big kiss full on the mouth. Meanwhile the
twirler, who turned out to have been the cause for the band’s blat, ran by with
half her uniform trailing behind her (with the football team in hot pursuit, of
course). Apparently the sewing circle had run out of time and pinned a few
things together, resulting in a lost uniform right in the middle of a
particularly boisterous cartwheel.
The cameraman, maintained his
poise throughout the catastrophe, and calmly filmed it all. At that moment, he
happened to have all Fargus and surrounding area’s eyes on me, looking quite
unqueenly and with a caption under my face (I was to find out later) that read,
“Carnation Queen; 4th of 27 children, 32, majoring in acting at Lawn Mowers
School next year.” A quick bit of Molly Mud thrown at the camera lens, and the
television world went black.
It’s been two years, and our town
is slowly getting it’s dignity back. Although occasionally, the church, the
Reverend Mayor Tilsdale presiding in judgment, has an anti TV sermon, in which
he tells us that he knew from the beginning what evil TV held. And occasionally
the sign out front of the church proclaims in large letters, “We’re on the
level: TV is the devil” or my personal favorite, “TV, shame”. And on one rowdy
Sunday, a remote was thrown at the Reverend Mayor (I won’t say by who). To his
credit, he took it gracefully (as gracefully as you can take a remote to the
head). As he picked it up, a zealous member of the congregation piped up with
the witty statement, “TV is the Devil!” To which Tilsdale replied, “Which is
what I’ve been saying all along!”
TO BE CONTINUED...
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Last revised: May 2, 2002