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Oh, my what a wonderful example of cooperation I witnessed last month! It was like watching a team of mules pulling a wagon. I use this commentary to bear witness to the glorious event which occurred right there kitty-corner across the driveway from me. First, let me start with a tale of a widower raising his son alone. One day, the father and son awoke to discover the satellite TV reception to be on the fritz. Not even the freebie stations would come in clearly. The father paid a monthly stipend to the local cablery so he and his son could have unfettered access to hundreds of television stations, including several pornographic ones. The father, righteously riled at the cablery for delivering shoddy television reception, stormed outside and began yelling at the heavens above, taking the Lord's name in vain, while using colorful phrases such as "fucked-up fuzzy TV reception" while threatening to rip the satellite dish perched atop his trailer out by its roots. All this early-morning noise roused even the most hungover neighbors from their slumber, and several of them stumbled out into the driveway wearing rumpled pajamas and sporting bed-head hairdos. I feared for the hollering father out there in the driveway, as a small army of trailerpark residents lurched toward him not unlike a scene from some old zombie horror flick. When the horde reached the hollering father, they did not drag him away and eat him like what would have happened in an old zombie horror flick. Instead, he was ordered by a grouchy, red-eyed Pop Feral to shut the fuck up. After it got around to everyone that the father was screaming about fuzzy, grainy TV reception, a few neighbors speculated the problem might be due to the overgrowth of branches emanating from a tree next to the trailer. The branches had grown over the roof of the trailer and covered the satellite dish. Oh, but it wasn't the reasoning ability of my hungover neighbors that tugged at my heartstrings that day. It was the teamwork that followed. The father and son decided to leave the trailer while some of his neighbors went to work removing the offending tree branches. By that time, I started getting hungry so I went into the kitchen and started frying up some eggs and sausage. By the time I got done eating breakfast and looked out the front window again, the entire tree was chopped down to a stump, and its remains was all piled up near the front of the trailer. The satellite dish had somehow become detached from the roof and as far as I know, nobody's found it yet. And the boys were diligently working together to sandpaper all the dirt and paint off the trailer down to the metal. When every speck of yellow paint was gone from the father and son's trailer, the boys fired up a Skilsaw and cut a big piece out of the middle panel, right into the living room. Then they started hauling furniture and blankets and knicknacks and whatnot out of the trailer until sunset. Then the three of them gathered up their tools and beer and headed home. About the time it got good and dark out, cop lights came twinkling into the trailer park and stopped outside the father and son's trailer, but nobody rode out in the backseat cage of any cruiser. A half hour after that, a white county van showed up and the driver got out and taped something to the kitchen window. Late that night, the father and son returned to their trailer. The son went a couple spaces down and slept on sombody's sofa. The father stood outside and yelled at the heavens above, "What the fuck is THIS?" I tell you what, it brung tears of joy to my eyes.
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