A Fish Tale

A Fish Tale

The monthly get-together of the Westside Women’s Gardening and Gin Rummy Club (light on the gardening, a little too heavy on the gin and rum) assembled in the diner’s banquet room.

Today had been scheduled as a walking tour of the member’s gardens, but torrential rains of the past twenty-four hours drowned that plan.

The platinum blonde waitress with the lop-sided smile served them all fresh garden salads.

Hazel Hamhocker promptly pushed hers aside. Coming across as the hard-nosed linebacker that she once was, Hazel growled that any plate with less than sixteen ounces of oozing red meat couldn’t be considered a meal.

Club president Minerva “MinnieMo” Moyamensing called the meeting to order. She entertained a motion to dispense with reading of the minutes, treasurer’s report, old, new and any other business so they could proceed directly to rumors and gossip.

The topic of gossip was fish. Specifically, why hard-nosed Fish Warden Gil Finley would allow, and even aid and abet, a bunch of teenagers to fish up at the lake without a license .

As Art Flump had related to Minnie on their last date, new biology teacher Floozy VaVoom was eager to make an impression with the school board by saving money on classroom supplies. Exuding her many delightful and obvious womanly charms she had lured the bachelor trout trooper into granting a one-day special exemption so that her students could angle for their dissection projects.

Miss VaVoom informed the class that whatever they caught was what they would dissect. Every student had managed to land a perch, bluegill, or catfish, except for third year sophomore Shelly Bugscuttle. Shelly’s haul was an old leather boot.

Back in the classroom everyone else got right to the heart of the matter, while Shelly examined her sole.