Whenever there is trouble everybody wants a cop, but this time it's a no go.
Most of the officers have gone barefoot, quit the force and started concentrating on their bunions and freshly minted buck teeth. The few still on the beat have no interest in anything except banjo lessons and laying hens.
Fights erupt in bus depots, coffee houses, temperance unions, broom closets, fast food restaurants and rodeo grounds outhouses - any place where two people can squeeze into close proximity and then start a feud (usually over one man's hog or another man's daughter).
Anybody who owns an old upright freezer - or anybody who can buy or steal one - converts it into a smokehouse. It turns out grilled meat can make your day when the wave of hillbilly virus-infected people is basically overwhelming.
In the smokehouses hillbillies love to jerk and they don't much care what. Gums are bleeding and teeth are loosening up, as the average hillbilly diet includes beef jerky, pork jerky, squirrel jerky, leather seat cushion cover jerky, boll weevil jerky and even cockroach jerky. In the trash the stench of the upstairs cafeteria was dominant from the many table scraps. The offal provides a real West Virginia atmosphere but anybody whose nose is still working properly is going to fall to their knees every time the wind changes direction.
Meanwhile the courthouse is jammed with gruff men in bib overalls, trying to get their names legally changed to "Devil Anse". Others fight everybody and you must be strong to get close enough to what is your share of the pie. Those with clear title might be in luck and end up with a loan to put towards development of their own chicken range. These things are springing up and often they are the only way to find your lipstick and apply it, or come in with me to pick up the loot.
Supremely disturbing is the development of the "Snuffy Smith Syndrome", suffered most dramatically in people living near the equatorial line. What happens is, the small men are marrying the gigantic and misshapen big girls - they make babies and the first one to show up comes out hairless and smoking a corncobb pipe. The parents are so crestfallen and so discouraged by the little tyke with the pipe that they are attempting to drown their fears in apologies.
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