Silliness Alert!
There is absolutely nothing newsworthy in today's column
The lights went out yesterday at Mullings Central. That is not a metaphor for anything. The lights really went out. The entire neighborhood went dark at about 11:00 am.
Being a guy, I immediately began playing "CIA-agent-stuck-in-a-cave-in-Afghanistan-dria."
"Breaker-breaker," (which I don't think is what CIA agents say but is what we used to say during the citizens band radio craze of the 70's) I whispered, placing my fist next to my lips like a microphone.
"No power. No coffee. Portable phones not working. Fax not operational. Broadband gone. Only a battery-powered laptop and 56kb modem for communications. Will continue to communicate until all hope lost. Will not give up the town-cave without a fight."
I practiced blinking S-O-S with my eyelids in case I was captured by someone from Bethesda who had snuck across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge while our defenses were down.
The high temperature in Old Town Afghanistan-dria, Virginia yesterday was 37. Without electricity the town-cave began to get cold. I put on the scarf I got from The Lad as a birthday present. Then I put on my official cowboy hat purchased in Santa Fe in a very, very Western-looking store. Then I went for the heavy duty stuff: My Imus sweatshirt, which is secretly made of Kevlar.
Critical systems were failing. The kitchen range is gas but ignites with a spark generator. There is a gas fireplace in the living room but I have never known how to light that. The garage door was frozen - literally - in the down position.
The Mullings Director of Standards & Practices engaged me in a fairly lengthy conversation - a cross examination, actually - as to whether it was at all possible that something I had done had caused this situation.
Problems with the Suits. I am not the first. I won't be the last. I am undaunted.
Humming the March from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" I wrapped more tightly my scarf around my neck; placed more firmly my cowboy hat upon my head; pushed up the sleeves of my Imus sweatshirt, and by SENSE OF TOUCH ALONE in the darkened garage, found the emergency door release so the MDofS&P could get her car out. It doesn't matter what happens to me. She must be allowed to escape.
The door. Went up. Presidential Medal of Freedom stuff.
I peered out of the front window of the town-cave. There were five trucks. Were these friendlies? Nah. They would have made contact. Was it some sort of al-Qaeda trick? Had someone like that goofball Richard Reid put Silly Putty in the neighborhood Christmas decs, thinking it was C-4 and caused a short circuit? Is this is what happens when you have terrorist trials at the Federal Courthouse in your town?
I put on my cammo-Salmon River jacket and my military-grade L.L. Bean gloves and crept out the front door, toward the "workmen" if, indeed, that's what they were. I blended in with my surroundings. I tried to look like just an average middle-aged man during winter in Old Town. I succeeded. They paid me no attention.
I slowed my walk, the better to overhear their plotting. Was this just a trial run? If they could take down the entire electrical grid in a two-block area of Old Town Afghanistan-dria, what was next? Arlington? Georgetown? The SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION?
I was able to decode their cryptic remarks "�blown transformer � part from Richmond � not a final solution�" A final solution? Oh, my God! This was worse than I thought!
I was just about to wade into their midst and John Wayne this little clambake once and for all when I heard the MDofS&P calling me.
"WHAH-aht?" I said in that same whiney voice boys have used since Og's mother called him to come in for dinner before her wooly mammoth stew got ice cold and it wouldn't be fit for a Neanderthal.
She asked me to stop fooling around, get in the Mullmobile, drive to Starbucks, and buy her a cup of hot coffee.
No matter. I had foiled the plot. The lights, as the song goes, came on again.
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