Monday Morning Coming Down

There is a suspicious looking man with a swarthy beard and a Columbia t-shirt sitting across the coffee shop from me.  Ivy League Columbia, not Belk Columbia.  He is sitting in one of the leather chairs in an irritating lotus-like position.  I am killing time while the tire shop diagnoses the rhythmic noise in the Camry; the noise that has been been the bane of my existence for the last two weeks.  I don't do well with unnecessary noises.  This man has several books strewn about over there and if I  find out that one of them is by Paul Krugman, I will challenge him to a fist fight right here in this coffee shop. Right here in the middle of Oxford, MS.  There is a local newspaperman in here as well so it will be publicized and if they find out I am a Conservative, I may very well be vilified on MSNBC.

Oxford, MS is really a Disney Small Town Resort.  I have done quite a bit of early morning running in this "town" and I have seen the maintenance workers out in the golf carts and  the actors coming into the back gate all together early in the morning.  It is like when I sold popcorn and cokes out of a red wagon at the wrestling matches in the Old Gym in Humboldt, TN when I was about eleven or twelve.   When I first witnessed a bad guy drive up in the same car as a good guy, something inside of me died and I vowed to never trust another human being again.  It scarred me for life and I have been paranoid ever since but I took that nickel profit on each cup of coke or box of popcorn and I built it into the financial empire over which I rule today. 

I haven't been in many of the stores on the Square but I am pretty sure there is nothing but the facade on several of them.  It's like a western movie set but with  boutiques and restaurants and all the women extras inject Botox right out in the open and all the men have Justin Beiber hairstyles.  All ages, it doesn't matter.  An out of town merchant opened a store on the Square that offered quality designer dresses at very reasonable prices and he was bankrupt within six months.  An Oxonian, who is familiar with local custom, bought the store and inventory, raised the prices by 300%, hired a couple of anorexic 40 year old sorority girls with breast implants as clerks,  and now it is being franchised in college towns throughout the south and California.

The tire guy called.  They put on two new front tires and did a front brake job.  I don't think I am going to be able to handle it if I pull out and hear that noise again.  All I can say is that if I hear that noise again, I am coming back down to this coffee shop and I am going to look at those books over there and if one of them is by Paul Krugman, you will hear about it.