Village Squire, 1980-04, Page 25McGILLICUDDY'S DIARY
Village Squire presents the exclusive
feature: the dairy of Ezekial McGillicuddy,
police chief of the village of Hamhocks,
Ontario. Well known for his courageous
battle against the forces of evil, Chief
McGillicuddy hoc agreed to give exclusive
rights to his diary to Village Squire. . . for
a princely sum of course. Each month we
publish a selection of entries from the
previous month.
MARCH 1: It's been such a nice winter. I
haven't had to dig the Cockroach out of a
snowbank once yet. 1 haven't gotten stuck.
About the only thing wrong with it is that
the parking meters haven't gotten lost in
the snow banks and 1 have to go out every
day and write a few parking tickets just to
let everybody know I'm still on the job.
It's one of those problems. You write
parking tickets and everybody gets mad at
you and if you don't, then they say you're a
bum who's stealing the taxpayers' hard
earned dollars and not doing anything. The
ideal is to give somebody else parking
tickets which means that the people who
didn't get the parking tickets can be smug
and happy that I'm on the job. The problem
is that there aren't any "somebody else's"
around. About the only way you can get
away with it is to only ticket the cars you've
never seen in town before but then the
merchants get upset because they say I'm
driving new customers away.
You can't win either way. I know I'm
going to get hell every council meeting so
now and then I usually make a point of
finding some councillor's car without
money in the meter and sticking a ticket on
the windshield, just so they can't say I'm
not on the job.
Anyway, one of the nice things about
this winter has been that there hasn't been
any problem with snowmobiles. There just
hasn't been enough snow for the boys to be
tearing around in town too much.
At least there wasn't until early this
week. We had a bit of a blow and what little
snow we had got was blowing around
pretty good. Up on Quality Row the Mayor
and some of his neighbours have planted a
nice windbreak of trees just to the west of
their property. It keeps the wind away and
gives them some privacy from the riffraff of
the rest of the town who might get to see
what it's like to have money in this town.
Anyway, the windbreak did its job all
right and it created a nice big snowdrift
about four feet deep and a block long. Well
it didn't take some of the snowmobilers
long to find it and they started a
championship racecourse. This of course
did not make the Mayor and the rest of the
muckety-mucks very happy. I guess they
tried to get hold of me to do something
about it but I was down at the Lamplighter
trying to stop a riot and I didn't get their
call.
Eventually they decided to take matters
into their own hands and went out to try to
stop the race. They nearly got run over for
their efforts. That made them really mad so
they decided to fight fire with fire. They
borrowed some snowmobiles from a
neighbour and three of them took out after
the racers. The racers I guess decided
enough was enough and took out down the
street. The mayor and his friends took out
after them.
I was just coming up to a stop Tight when
they all flashed by. They were going far
faster than the speed limit and I was just
about to go after them when a second lot of
speeders came by. 1 had a better chance to
catch this lot than the first bunch who were
already a block away so I took off. I even
used the siren for special effect (I have to
look for opportunities to use it. 1 haven't
had it on in a year and a half).
I mean how was I to know? One
snowmobile looks like any other, right?
One snowmobiler looks like any other with
the helmets and all, right? They want me to
stop speeders so I stop them, right?
Snowmobilers are about the only thing the
Cockroach goes fast enough to catch.
Ah well, I wonder if the people at the
unemployment office will understand.
MARCH 2: Cindy Lou came over today to
bring her condolences after she heard what
happened. She said she wanted to do
whatever she could to make things better.
She'd bake a cake and take it to the Mayor
and maybe he'd reconsider about wanting
to fire me for catching him speeding on a
snowmobile.
Just what 1 need. He'd end up having his
stomach pumped and be madder than ever.
I convinced her not to by eating the whole
cake myself. Now I may not have to worry
about being fired. I may not be around for
my next pay cheque anyway.
MARCH 5: Well the council meeting was
tonight and I'm still working. They gave
me a rough time but 1 survived. Actually it
was Sally Hemple of all people who saved
my bacon. The Mayor had one of his
flunkies propose a motion to fire me but
Sally opposed it. Not for my sake God
knows. It's just that if the Mayor was for
something then she was against it.
Besides, I think she heard about the
incident and wanted to embarrass the
Mayor as much as possible.
She not only got her buddies on the
council to defeat the motion but she also
started talking about the need to crack
down on these snowmobilers who tore
around town faster than the speed limits.
She also suggested there should be a
commission set up to look into rumours
she'd heard about influential citizens using
their power to get out of speeding tickets.
The mayor was madder than a hornet.
Something tells me I'm going to pay for
this from both sides.
The Mayor will be out to get me and
Sally will be out to prove that she's not
really soft on me.
I may end up overdosing myself on
Cindy's cake to escape it all.
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JII.LAGE SQUIRE/APRIL 1980 PG. 23