November 18 2006

Well gang, there’s interesting news this week. In preparation for Thanks Giving, John Cranberry was doing a little seasonal shopping yesterday, and with a paper bag in each arm, was headed toward his car in the super market parking lot. He had a frozen turkey, stuffing mix, turnips, yams. A bunch of stuff. But he had the feeling that he had forgotten something. John was just approaching his car, when two young men stepped in front of him. One had a gun. “Give us your money.” Said the one with the gun.

  There was a policeman taking care of security about forty five feet behind him and John figured that the kid wouldn’t be dumb enough to shoot, so he silently stood there trying to think fast. Before he came to anything resembling a conclusion, the shaking gun in the kid’s hand went off and the round ricocheted off the frozen turkey. At this point, with no thought processes involved what so ever, John’s feet decided that they wanted to elsewhere, and for purposes of evasive action stepped smartly to the right preparatory to a vigorous about face, and then flight of the most inspired kind.
But the first step landed on a spot where some super market customer had left behind half of the oil from his or her drain pan.

  Feeling his equilibrium being snatched from him, John squeezed hard on his two shopping bags for support, and threw his left foot up in the air in a futile attempt to regain his balance. What with the laws of physics being what they are, John had become a whirling dervish. The frozen turkey covered with condensation shot out of the paper bag, propelled by the squeezing and centrifugal force, and struck the gunman in the face. Breaking his nose, and knocking him…well, cold as it were. The left foot that John had thrown up in the air to regain balance struck the other chap in the jaw, breaking it, and rendering him unconscious also.

  The policeman, to his credit, was running toward the confrontation immediately after the shot and saw the whole thing go down. “Sir,” said the policeman, “I’ve only seen moves like that in the movies. Where’d you learn to do stuff like that?”

“Uh, I just sort of made it up as I went along.” said John.

  “Wow!” said the policeman.

  He called an ambulance for the would be robbers, wrote up a preliminary report, and handed John’s ID back to him.

  “It was a pleasure to see you work Mr. Cranberry.”

  “That’s it!” exclaimed John.

  “What’s it?” asked the policeman.

  “Cranberries,” said John, “I forgot the cranberries.”

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary