As I mentioned, I have the sniffles and am grouchy. Fortunately, I was afforded an opportunity to blow off some of my seething grouchiness yesterday morning.

Background: I do not generally call folks “yahoos” but the yahoos who are doing the demolition of, and debris removal at, the old courthouse apparently think they are in charge. (Ha.) They randomly put up cones across random roads that lead to the courthouse. Well. Demolished courthouse. On various random occasions, they have randomly chosen the road that I take on my way to the highway. This moves me to mumble cuss words under by breath and to back down an exceedingly long stretch of road to get to the street in the village I need to turn onto to go the other way.

Just so you get the feel for what’s happening, imagine barreling through the cotton field at 40mph, rounding the curve by the lake at about 25mph, juicing it back up to 35 or so then 40 as you pass the substation… maybe just barely taking your foot off the accelerator by Mr. Rays and BOOM! CONES IN THE ROAD.

Back up, taking care not to run into someone behind you blazing along at 40mph… .

Let me be perfectly clear about one thing. I do not mind backing up. I believe that the ability to back a pick ’em up truck on a Mississippi pothole-filled 1.5 lane road at 25mph may one day be a useful skill. (See, e.g., Zombieland and one of those NRA videos about self-defense.) That’s not the point, as you shall see.

Anyway… . By the time I’ve hit the highway my irritation has usually subsided.

What’s that?

Oh no. I’m not irritated that I have to back up– well I am. But what really irritates me is that there’s no sign: “Road closed ahead.” That’s all it would take. Right there where the road you have to take when you back up to go the other way around.

Anyway… . It was Saturday morning. I’d postponed going to pick up Mr. Big Food’s lawnmower from our local agricultural supply and machine tuneup store for a couple of days because, as I said, I have the sniffles. So it was a beautiful morning and Mr. Big Food attached the trailer to our pick up truck so we could go together to pick up the lawnmower which had had its annual tune-up.

So there we were just merrily hauling the trailer through the cotton field and ’round the lake and past Mr. Ray’s and BOOM! CONES IN THE ROAD.

This is where I draw the line.

Though I love to back up, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to back the trailer up. (Yeah, yeah. I get it on paper but I cannot do it.)

And so I commenced to cussing at the top of my voice with as much umph as my sniffly lungs could and I jumped out of the truck and moved one stupid cone. We drove through to the other side, I replaced the cone, moved onto the stop sign, and turned left. As we approached the other blockade we both got out of the truck. Me to remove a cone, Mr. Big Food to replace it as soon as I’d passed through.

And this is where it gets all Mississippi Country Mouse funny.

As I was approaching the hole in the cone wall, another pickup truck approached from the opposite direction. He scooted through the opening I’d made, then I moved through and waited for Mr. Big Food. But Mr. BIg Food didn’t come. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him standing by the window of the pickup truck chatting with the driver.

A few minutes later, I saw them shaking hands through the window. The truck drove away toward the other cone blockade and Mr. Big Food started walking toward me.

BUT! By this time the Chief Yahoo had gotten word that security had been breached. Shields up! He approached Mr. Big Food and I saw Mr. Big Food turn his back on the Chief Yahoo and keep walking but Chief Yahoo caught up with Mr. Big Food and– as Mr. Big Food later recounted– told Mr. Big Food to “Don’t do that no more.”

That exchange took place at about the same time I saw the fellow in the pickup truck come ’round the bend and so I knew he too had breached the other cone blockade.

I think Mr. Big Food, Frank (that’s the fellow in the other truck who we have actually known for some time but who we seldom see), and I behaved as true Americans. Cones. Schones.

We continued on to fetch the lawnmower at the agricultural supply and farm machine tuneup store where there was more handshaking. I vowed not to run any more cone blockades. But wouldn’t you know? By the time we got back, the cones had been replaced with orange tape across the road. Hahaha. Like that tape would stop a pickup truck. And I looked, it was at both ends of my path, too.

I did the right thing, though and did not breach the orange tape force field. Who wants to incur the wrath of Chief Yahoo twice in one day, especially when you have the sniffles?

I did notice that there were new “KEEP OUT” signs on the plastic orange mesh fence that sort of surrounds the demolished courthouse.

Hum. I wonder if someone saw Daughter C jump over the fence and take those two bricks the other evening?