Quiet Options

Despite Lynda Allen's adamant refusal to remove - or move and enclose - the icemaker, the machine decided on its own to take a break. It ceased operating sometime last Monday and has been quiet for three days so far. (May it be so forever. God be praised.)


What choices does its unfortunate demise present to the poor, grieving catering truck driver, whose entire body and soul (and social graces) have been dessicated by. . . (oops!) dedicated to the thieving ways of a cut-throat business. (Did that come out right?)


Her options are many:


1. Gather her coven of crones, buy a ouija board, and hold a seance to determine the machine's future - or place a pox on it. She has already practiced her black arts on her neighbor (- and his future looks dismally bleak.)


2. Pay her good friend and staunch supporter, Bill, the refrigeration guy, who uses his company's truck on weekends and holidays to make a little extra money on the side, to come out yet again to cobble the wires, hoses, gears, switches, and other junk back into a coolly operating contraption. After all, he has fixed it untold numbers of times over the years. (Keep pouring money down that machine's rathole.)


3. Buy more fencing material and rebuild the Berlin Wall around 810 Fishback Street to keep the rest of the world at a defensible distance. Make it six feet thick and twenty feet high and top its length with razor wire. Place machine gun turrets, search lights and sirens every few feet. Loose a half-dozen viscious junkyard dogs in a no-man's run to discourage an assault by one particularly damned irritating neighbor (oh, wait... that last one is already in place.)


4. Not pay the refrigeration guy, but instead hire an attorney and file a Response to the noise nuisance lawsuit. Although, hmmm... that might be a hasty action, fraught with peril to her beloved ice machine, the relentlessly broadcasting centerpiece of her illegally operating business. Hasty? She has been successfully cheating and intimidating everyone for twenty-five years already (so why worry about a mere one week deadline?)


5. Have her customers pay her with more chickens. She could convert all the abandoned cars, trucks, roach coaches and walk-in freezers to chicken coops and sell eggs and fertilizer. OK, this might run afoul (yuk, yuk) of Manteca's Municipal Code, but since the City Farters (sp?) only pass laws they will never enforce, who cares?


6. Polish up her belly dancing (or lap dancing) skills. Along with her two cronies, the trio should be able deploy their assets to "fix" the outcome of any legal actions by investigators, law enforcement officers, prosecuters, judges, and even whole juries. (Ooh... ooh... Imagine, their opening number costumes could be the summer daytime uniform described in the previous post!)


Ah, yes! Her options are endless, limited only by the exclusionary blinders she has worn for all these years and the tiny, circular path her neurosynapse impulses travel. Even the yappy dogs have a larger repertoire.


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