Smoke: The Sleuth

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good Smoke story, hasn’t it? Well, brace yourselves, because I have a good Smoke story.

A few weeks ago, MamaG got up in the middle of the night, as she couldn’t sleep (a regular occurrence in the Goldenstein home). She walked through her pitch black house to the kitchen to get a glass of water when she noticed a strange pickup parked at the gas barrel in our yard¹ (you probably want to check out that footnote). MamaG was obviously spooked, as this was between 3 and 4 a.m. and she didn’t recognize the vehicle. She crept back through the dark house to fire up ol’ Smokey G, who, I can only assume, was sound asleep and snoring like a legitimate goddamn freight train. Once she got Smoke into a lucid state, they both walked back out into the kitchen to check out the strange vehicle. There didn’t appear to be any activity or person moving about, but ol’ Guess Who wanted to go check things out and make sure there wasn’t someone out there stealing gas².

As you probably know by now, (maybe from the original Smoke Goldenstein post) Smokey G isn’t one for pajamas. One would think that he would put on pants in order to walk across his yard toward a potentially dangerous situation. One would be wrong. One might also predict that he would have the wherewithal to put on matching shoes. Again, one would be misguided. 

If you know Smoke well, you can literally picture him inching across our (very wide open) yard, in a black Carhartt hoodie and his whitie tighties, wearing two different boots (one “work”, one cowboy, if I remember correctly), carrying a shotgun.

If you don’t know Smoke well, I feel like you still don’t have a hard time with the visual.

Now, I am going to leave you with a little cliffhanger here folks. I want you to know that Smoke and MamaG (and Maude, who happened to be there for the night) are all alive and well. Nothing was taken from them, and the situation has been resolved. Which, as you may or may not have already assumed, is a whoooooooole other story.

Check back in the next few days for the conclusion to this Mayberry mystery!

-Bev

¹People have gas barrels in their yards. They’re called farmers. It’s the best thing ever, and I didn’t know how to run a real gas pump (like, at a station) very well until college. Obviously, the gas barrels are there for farm equipment (and teenage daughters driving the entire tri-county area because there’s nothing else to do… Driving. Just driving. No funny stuff…), and are not uncommon at all across the midwest. Smoke and MamaG’s house happens to be on a “highway” and the gas barrel is literally a stone’s throw away from it, so there is always the concern that greedy passerby may stop and try to smuggle some fuel. I believe this has actually happened on occasion- True? Smoke? MamaG?

²Don’t worry though, guys. It’s not like these drivers can just pull up, flip the handle, and fill their tanks. Ohhhhhh no! Smoke’s got a system out there. I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. But there’s a system, man. #SecretSwitches