Down Portalville Way - Huge

[pjthompson]

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-18)
2. We're just a little town. Don't go in much for big and showy, but we had us a fella once who liked to write his name everywhere in town.
3. Wasn't a building or a fence or a bench or a sidewalk safe from his red spray can. "Huge, Huge, Huge" it said everywhere.
4. Natty Knowles spent all his time scrubbing it off things & the town shelled out so much money for it they finally confronted Freddy Huge.
5. Said they were going to make him pay all the expenses. At first, Freddy tried to blame one of the Syrian refugee families in town.
6. But everyone knew Ahmed Shah was a hard-working man who just wanted to raise his family in a safe, peaceful place.
7. And his wife, Halimah, was busy raising their two boys, Idris and Harun, 4 and 3, respectively.
8. Besides, she was eight months pregnant at the time with their daughter, Bilqis, and everyone knew she couldn’t be doing it.
9. Besides, Minnie Halverson, head of the Beale Street Neighborhood Watch was on stakeout one night and saw what happened.
10. Freddy would never dirty his own hands with anything like real work, but his Russian accountant, Ivan Drago, was up for the job.
11. Minnie literally caught him red-handed as the spray paint leaked back over his fingers some.
12. Faced with this evidence and a huge bill from the city, Freddy and Ivan declared bankruptcy.
13. They snuck out of town one night and folks hear tell they set up shop in New Jersey where waste management is a…big industry.
14. Sad to say they left the shareholders at Huge Waste Management holding the bag, and people lost badly needed jobs.
15. Like I’ve said before, we take care of our own in this town. Mayor Begay formed a city waste management firm.
16. The shareholders were happy to buy into that, folks kept their jobs, and we saw no more red spray paint around town.
17. Meanwhile, Freddy and his Russian contact are growing wealthy. Hear tell they’ve opened a university for the waste management business.
18. Naturally, it’s called Huge Waste University.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

You can read the entire Portalville saga (so far) at https://pjthompson.dreamwidth.org/1672524.html