The Mayor's Wives

Listen girl, you ought to see His Lordship the Mayor's new wife! Well, since they've now been married eight years I guess she's not so 'new' to him, but I've sort of lost touch with the finer points of the social life in Funky during my absence and I hadn't met her till yesterday, hence the 'new'.

About 10 years ago his 'old' wife, the one we used to call Her Ladyship the Cow, rowed out to the middle of the Inlet to dump her garbage and somehow got the electric cord of the derelict vacuum she was consigning to the briny deep entangled around her leg. She lobbed the vacuum overboard and, much to her surprise I’m sure, soon followed. They never found the body but one of the great whites doing laps in the Inlet died promptly thereafter, and since human flesh is supposed to be poisonous to sharks the coroner opened it up and found it had snacked on Her Ladyship and her Hoover and had not lived to tell the tale. Probably the only great white shark in history stuffed into a coffin and given a Christian burial!

Anyway this left His Lordship, Peter J. Pecksniff, the most eligible bachelor in town and from what I heard from Mama at the time there was quite a competition among the single girls as to who would land him.

Dot was one of the cooks up at the Ballyhack Logging Camp no. 3. She was a lower Mainland girl who’d been lured up to Funky by the camp bookkeeper. When he was caught doctoring the books a few weeks later and fired she was stranded without a ride home from the party. She couldn't actually cook, and she was, well (to be frank), a little sharp and scrawny to appeal to the red-blooded boys up in camp. She came down to Funky and opened up a typing service, Hiz 'onor eventually needed a letter typed and the rest is history.

Anyway, she takes her position a bit seriously and is the self-appointed social trend-setter in Funky, (i.e. she thinks she's one of the Kennedy wives'.) Well, since I'm back from "outside" she's decided I may have social 'possibilities' and thus I have been invited to tea this coming Friday. I’ll try not to disgrace myself! Will let you know how it goes.

Zelda