Baby Boom

I tell you, sometimes I feel like Garrison Keillor, writing these daily bursts.  Not that I have the grasp of the language or the overall mien of the legendary man from Lake Wobegone, but stuff that happens here in our town can be every bit as interesting, or odd, as what happens in that Minnesota version of Brigadoon.

Fans of Krusty the Clown will remember when he sat in the witness stand and bragged about betting on sports games, only to be told by the prosecutor that such conduct was illegal.  "Ohhh Ohhhhhhhhhhhh...." was all the clown, born Herschel Krustofsky, could say.  So did you know that it's illegal to display a lookalike bomb in a public space? 

I mean, besides movies starring Christina Aguilera and Cher?

Tiny bomb tank approaches toilet tank warily

On Monday, a guy placed a toilet outside our county courthouse.  The toilet was not hooked up to the water system, or someone surely would have used it. But it was connected to an old radio and an old cell phone, and it had a petition seeking justice for the murder of a young man out in Illinois, and some newspaper clippings, what the police termed "numerous miscellaneous notes," and so forth. 

This is not the sort of thing that one normally sees while racing to be on time for work for once, so here came the police and the bomb squad, all duded up in their protective garb, but you just know that at least one of them is wearing one of those t-shirts that says, "I am a bomb technician...If you see us running, try to keep up!!!"

It took the local gendarmerie about five minutes to figure out what was going on here, and they have arrested a man who operates a pit beef stand up the road a piece.  The man said he decorates toilets as fund-raising objets d'art but knew nothing about this instant case.   I don't know about the decorated toilets - most art lovers don't take that sort of thing sitting down - but there is nothing that says "Baltimore, hon!" like a pit beef stand.  For the benefit of our many reader in far-flung states, pit beef is what you get when you get a round roast and cook it over charcoal, then slice it up and put slices on a roll or rye bread with onion and bar-b-q sauce and horseradish.  You get a round for $20 and make 87 sandwiches out of it, each selling for $6.50.  Profit margin is high.  Customer satisfaction, the same.

It's said that the concept of getting beef and selling it on the side of the road in a wooden lean-to was inspired by The Beach Boys...remember their 1964 hit, "I Get A Round"?

Anyway, the beef salesman told a reporter he couldn't talk; he was headed to the courthouse to renounce his citizenship.

Ironically enough, he might have other business in that same courthouse soon!

And that's the news from Baltimore County, where we are flushed with excitement.  Pass the horseradish, if you will...