We’ll, it’s happened.  

A third of the folks in Fort Stockton swore they’d never live to see it.  A third of them are saying it’s years overdue.  A third of them don’t even know it’s happened and probably never will because of their own diminished capacities or general indifference.  But it was the lead story in the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and went out on a flash bulletin on KFSX, so there can be no dispute over the validity of of reports.  “The news don’t lie,” like Rusty says over at the hardware store.

Mayor Goodman has been arrested.

Folks were shocked only because, with a history of corruption, allegations of assault on women, shady business practices, nepotism with public works jobs, and a general disregard for normal accepted decent Christian political behavior, they figured it would just never happen, since it never had.  But the parking tickets got him.

Mavis, over at the traffic court, noticed lots of parking tickets had gone missing. Not just a few, but boxes. She described it as “A butt load,” but in the write up in the paper it was defined as between 30 and 60 boxes. She thought there was a chance the Mayor had taken them home, for some reason known only to him, but didn’t want to confront him. She mentioned the situation in passing to Judge Conroe over at the Traffic Court and Animal Shelter and he asked the Mayor about it. Of course, Mayor Goodman denied everything, said it was a politically motivated question posed by his political rival, Skeeter Bogsworth, who’s running against him in the next election, and claimed he was being persecuted. Again.

But then, a few months later, Trixie was at the Goodman’s home for a meeting of the Baptist Women’s Sewing Circle.  The Bailey’s Irish Cream, Kailua, and Jim Beam that Mrs. Goodman put in the coffee caused an almost immediate intestinal issue, due to her lactose intolerance, and she made a beeline for the bathroom.  Once in the John with door locked, Trixie reached in the shower to turn on the water full blast to try to drown out the ungodly sounds she knew were about to be expelled from places never discussed in mixed company.

A can of Glade Country Fresh room freshener in one had, she pulled back the shower curtain with the other, only to find two dozen bankers boxes stacked inside the shower.  She barely was able to lift the lid on the top box and see that it was full of parking tickets before an eruption took place that made Mount Vesuvius look like a hiccup in the earth’s crust.

Long story longer, Trixie would have kept the discovery to herself had Mrs. Goodman not gotten on the phone the next day and made a snide comment to Hazel Gumby about having to have her bathroom re-wallpapered because she was never going to get the odor out.  Hearing of that insult, Trixie hightailed it to the Traffic Court, shared her discovery with Mavis.  The two of them were on Judge Conroe like ducks on a June bug, demanding he get to the bottom of the situation.

“Why would he even have parking tickets in his shower?” Judge Conroe inquired.  “Makes no damn sense.”  

“Neither does what he did to that woman in the back of the Ben Franklin back in the day, but she swears in happened and a jury believed her,” Trixie said.

“Maybe he was going to use the parking tickets against folks he didn’t like,” Mavis said.  “Wouldn’t put it past him.  Maybe he just likes showing off to other mayors when they come to Fort Stockton for the Annual Feral Hog Hunt.  But those are the private records of Pecos Country, not personal souvenirs,” Mavis implored.

Judge Conroe, more to placate the women folk that anything else, swung by the mayor’s office and asked him to return the parking tickets.  First the mayor said he didn’t have them, then he said they were his to do with what he wanted.  Then he threatened the judge with revealing that the judge, himself, had an unpaid ticket for double parking at the Piggly Wiggly back in 2006.  “I was just buying a bag of ice from the Igloo Ice Machine out front!” The judge yelled back.

The die was cast.

Judge Conroe issued a warrant, took it over to Chief Martin, and the next day the chief had the unenviable task of getting in his Ford Galaxie 500 police cruiser, heading over to the mayor’s house, putting him in cuffs, and stuffing him in the back seat for the short trip to the pokey. The Stockton Telegram-Dispatch said the mayor was delivered to city hall in “a plain brown wrapper”, which all of us at The Grounds for Divorce thought was as clever as anything we’d read in the STD in quite a while. A discussion broke out over the advantages of a whip antenna, and driver controlled spotlight. “I, for one, miss dog dish hubcaps,” Pastor Peterson said. “The world was a better place when you could get a full sized sedan with a 429 V8 and poverty hubcaps.”

To be sure, this is just the beginning of the Shakespearean drama soon to play out in our fair berg.  Mayor Goodman was out on bail and holding a rally over at the National Guard Armory within hours, record contributions being thrown in the hat as they passed it towards the end of his two hour speech.  How much of that will go to his defense fund is hard to say.  Biggest surprise is the fact that, even if he’s convicted, he’ll still be able to continue serving as mayor, even be re-elected if enough folks pull the lever next to his name.  Folks who wrote the town charter, back in the day, apparently never thought such an event was even possible, so they never addressed it.

Skeeter Bogsworth, who’s running against the mayor in the upcoming election, says it just proves that Mayor Goodman is unfit for office.  But then, Skeeter is bumping 85 pretty hard and has been known to wander into the wrong house by mistake.  His son, who’s fallen off the wagon more times than a Texas homesteader shot full of arrows, has also never explained how he was able to buy the old McDougall Ranch for over seven figures when he’s never been able to hold down a job for longer than his next car payment.

Of course, most folks are just tired of the whole thing and tend to tune it out. Sure, the brown Galaxie 500 hauling off the mayor to the hoosegow captured the news cycle for a day. It’s all anyone could talk about over at The Rusty Hammer Hardware Store last week. But Lucinda summed it up pretty well over coffee Saturday morning.

“You really mean to tell me this is all we got to choose from?” She asked the table.  “In a town the size of Fort Stockton, with a history as rich as ours, and a tradition of rock solid values and being the symbol of West Texas, this is the best we can come up with?”

Nobody really had an answer.  We just stared at the menu that we all have memorized.  A couple guys clicked on Bring a Trailer to see if there wasn’t a car we could talk about instead.  Looked like just Porsches and Ferraris today, and nobody in Fort Stockton cares about those.

Then Chief Martin’s ‘72 Galaxie 500 sedan pulled up and parked out front. “The Plain Brown Wrapper”. The chief walked in, threw his big ol’ Stetson hat on the table and flopped into a chair, a look of disgust plastered on his old weathered face. Lucinda put a mug in front of him and filled it with Folgers. “You look like you just had your tail feathers trimmed,” she said.

“On my way out to Skeeter Bogsworth’s place,” Chief Martin said.  “Trixie found a stack of parking tickets in his garage, right next to his Mercury Grand Marquis.”  He took a paper napkin and wiped the sweat off his forehead.  We all shook our heads.  “Then I gotta drive out to Stooter Bassett’s.”

“The dog catcher?”  Rusty asked.

“Yep.”  The Stockton Telegram-Dispatch is running a story tomorrow about a whole mound of dog collars being discovered out back of his wood shop,” he said. “Gotta check it out.”

“Didn’t he supply the barbecue for the Memorial Day parade and picnic?” Lucinda asked.

Everyone at the table just looked at each other.  “It was some of the best barbecue we’ve ever had,” Rusty noted. “Melted in your mouth.”

I went to the men’s room, fearing I might be sick.  If not at the latest development, then at the earlier one.  On the way back to the table, I stepped outside and checked the back of the Edsel Bermuda, just to be sure Gullwing was still in the back.