The Bad Apple

   Brenda Rayschel Firebarn is Buzzard Beak’s Bad Apple. Everybody’s gotta have one I suppose, but I’d hold Brenda Ray (that’s what folks call her when they come face to face with her) up against the best, or worst as the case may be, of  ‘em. She’s a real pip, I tell you. Well, she’s done it again!

   “The truth just ain’t in her,” is how Mz. Anderson politely puts it. Mz. Anderson is a real sweet old lady that I swear is 110 years old. Can’t prove it. Neither can she. But I’m thinking it’s close. Anyway, back to Brenda Ray.

   Most of us here in Buzzard Beak are real familiar with the term “M.O.” – that’s Modus Operandi. Put another way, it’s when you keep doing the same thing over and over pretty much  the same way.  In Brenda Ray’s case, you can call it a D.A.M.O.  Put another way, that would be Dumb Ass Modus Operandi.

   So, Brenda Ray’s DAMO is that she joins things, like the Sunday Supper group or the Sticker Patch quilting group, and proceeds to stir up all kinds of trouble. Then she gets kicked out on her can and goes and joins something else. She’s about run out of things to join in Buzzard Beak. But one thing’s for sure, you always know where Brenda Ray is … our buzzards follow right in behind her just waiting to see what kind of destruction her wake leaves behind.

   Okay, so here she goes to the Sticker Patch meeting and proceeds to tell everybody that AniseLea, Mz. Anderson’s widowed daughter-in-law and 80 if she’s a day, stole the quilting squares she brought to the meeting from the Goodwill store in Buckhornet down the road. Now, like I said, most everybody in Buzzard Beak knows Brenda Ray’s DAMO, so nobody took her seriously EXCEPT…and there’s always that exception, isn’t there…Honey Sue, the Mayor’s old maid daughter.

   Let me say right here and now that Honey Sue is not the brightest bulb in the kitchen, but all Brenda Ray needed was one recruit. She was off and running, getting Honey Sue to call everybody in town trying to get some kind of petition up to run AniseLea out of town on a rail. Shoot, she even called The Law. He didn’t take it too seriously though because he was right in the middle of replacing street signs. Before you knew it the whole town was in a twist, everybody taking sides. Honey Sue’s walking around like she had good sense and hadn’t called her neighbor a thief; and, Brenda Ray hadn’t been seen for a week or so but was most likely choppin’ up her old t-shirts for quilting squares. See, that’s what started her off in the first place. AniseLea’s squares were prettier than anything Brenda Ray had wagged in.

   So, we’re over on The Porch all talking about this latest Big Mess and Twinkie right out of the blue says, “Anybody think to call Goodwill and see if they even have quilting squares?”  … Every now and again he does that, just comes out with something smart like that.  Rumor has it that his sisters nominated him for a membership in Mensa. He didn’t like the name of it so that was the end of that.

   So you know the end of the story, right? No quilting squares sold at the Buckhornet Goodwill now or ever. We haven’t seen Brenda Ray in about two weeks. Somebody over in Baldhead said she’d joined the fire department but we kinda doubt it…what with her last name and all. But could be…because we haven’t seen our buzzards around much either. And Mz. Anderson says she’s gonna pray for her. I asked her what bent her prayers might take regarding Brenda Ray, and she told me straight out that that was between her and the Lord. Anyway, that’s the latest from Buzzard Beak.

Ya’ll come back now, y’hear!