VfthSW: The Brown Paper Bag

Thirty years ago, I lived on the highest street in the village, the house lots behind me and downhill were vacant.  Cross from them on a lonely street lived my best friend and his neighbor.  Whenever Paul’s neighbor let out the dogs, they would poop in the middle of his front lawn.  Paul had spoken to the neighbor to no avail.  

 One Saturday morning, maybe mid-morning, I finally got out of my bed.  Everyone else in our village of 100 had headed “into town” for groceries and shopping.  Either of the closest bigger towns were an hour away and everyone usually made a day of it.    My first chore; scooping dog poop in my back yard.  So, shovel and brown paper bag in hand I went out to doo my dooty.  (Ha ha!)   Not a big job.  When I finished, I looked down on Paul’s front yard.  Even at that distance I could see where the grass had been killed by the neighbor’s dogs. 

I said to myself, “What the hay! I already have a bag of dog poop.” 

So I marched down the hill and shoveled up the poop in Paul’s front yard.    

I swear by God Almighty what happen next was not premediated.  I had the brown paper bag half full of dog poop.  What was I going to do with it?  I walked over and placed it in the middle of the neighbor’s front lawn. 

I don’t know what I was doing when the neighbor came home from shopping.  The Judge was visiting and she saw it all real clear through the window at the kitchen sink.  The neighbor parked on the street.  The dogs jumped out of the truck with him and ran off to Paul’s yard, while he carried in arms full of groceries in brown paper bags.  Apparently the dogs distracted him further when he walked to the truck for the second load.  Returning to the house with his arms full of bags again, he noticed the brown paper bag I’d left and apparently assumed a bag had slipped out of his arms on the first trip.  So after depositing the second load of brown paper bags in the house, he returned to the middle of his front lawn for the one he thought had slipped out of his arms.  The Judge couldn’t tell, but she was pretty sure he didn’t suspect anything when he opened the bag to see if its contents were broken.  Apparently the aroma of dog poop and the visual hit him at the same time.  He slammed the lip of the bag shut.  The Judge had tossed down her dish towel and stepped back into the shadows of the kitchen.  So when the neighbor looked about, he saw no one watching and Paul’s truck still clearly absent.  Embarrassed he hurried around to the side of his house and buried the brown paper bag in his garbage can.