I heard from Pat Boone one day last week. He said to ask you how’s your mom-n-nem.
I was sort of surprised to get his call. I hadn’t seen him since his concert here the day after the first Mean Green football game in Apogee Stadium, and I didn’t think he even noticed me way in the back making jazz hands while he sang “The Wang Dang Taffy Apple Tango (Mambo cha cha cha.)”
But there he was, right on the phone, (OK, it was a recording) reminding me of the days he spent in Denton, his restaurant on the Decatur highway (U.S. Highway 380) and Highway 24, (Fulton Street, I think) and his white buck shoes. And asking me to vote for his favorite candidate for, uh, one of the major offices up for grabs on Tuesday.
I was so excited to hear his voice that I paid no attention to the office or his choice for office. But it was the one, you know, one of those guys who is always on TV telling us what a nasty jerk the other one is.
I’ll bet you’ll be glad, too, when Tuesday is over and we can stop being subjected to stories of how Ted Cruz takes money from the evil Chinese and what a huge toady liar David Dewhurst is.
Each one of those guys has convinced me that the other one drowns puppies, holds the world’s largest collection of midget porn and wets the bed.
I personally believe we should run them both out of Texas, all the way, say, to Oklahoma City, where they put up with such wickedness.
The only other runoff of interest on the state ballot is the hard-fought-for office of Surveyor of Ponds. My old friend Rockefeller Longfellow, R-Oxnard City, called another national press conference today to denounce the evil, awful, scoundralicious behavior of his opponent, Manheim LePure, R-Grittsville.
I was the only reporter to show up.
This has been the problem all along with both these candidates: no name recognition. No one voted for either one of them except their mothers, so they face a tie going into the home stretch.
Rocky held the office of Surveyor of Ponds for 16 years. Then Manheim decided the office was a bird’s nest on the ground, and he threw his hat in the ring. It is a little-known fact that people who dig ponds must have them surveyed periodically for rotten egg pollution. It’s kind of an EPA thing, but not exactly.
When a pond owner’s body of water is given a clean bill of health, he receives a certificate. It is ornate, gold rimmed, festooned with a blue ribbon and suitable for framing.
I have never seen one hanging in anyone’s living room.
Since the dawn of the “which came first” controversy, people with chickens have been throwing eggs they found too late to eat into ponds. And fish can’t swallow hen eggs. Sometimes, they try. It’s hard to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a black bass.
Not only that, there’s an odor issue. Rotten eggs stink worse than some political campaigns I could mention.
It’s a dirty job. Uncomfortable and thankless. It also carries no salary. No perks. Not even an invitation to the Lincoln Day Dinner.
But Manny realized that he could use the job as a stepping stone to bigger things — say district attorney. And now we have a horse race.
“The people of Texas deserve better than that baby-pincher,” Rocky opined loudly, though I was standing on the bottom step, well within regular talking distance, and no one else was around.
“He is on the wrong side of the issues of criminal justice, weapons of mass destruction, pornography, Iraq and the death penalty,” he yelled in lieu of loudspeaker enhancement.
“Could a person get the death penalty for a non-certified pond?” I asked.
“Actually, when the Legislature created this office, they failed to legislate any enforcement laws,” he shouted sadly. “But that’s beside the point.
“Rotten eggs smell like roses compared to some of the goings on in Manny’s campaign,” he opined. “I heard he just wants the office because he has an egg-sucking dog.”
I wish I could remember which candidate Pat Boone endorsed. I’d vote for him because, at the end of his recorded message, Pat gave me a fabulous deal on his greatest hits album and a coupon for a free dessert at the Pat Boone Country Inn.
DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com.
