All story: JJ and The Fly
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JJ and The Fly

Monday 11 June 2012

 the street.
A lady with curlers in her hair and wearing bunny slippers on her feet had been driving down the street, and she saw it all happen. She tried to swerve to avoid the gooey mess all over the road, but she swerved too hard. "Swoosh! Bang! Her car crashed into a squat little red fire hydrant.

BonnnnkFWOOOOSH! The fire hydrant broke. High pressure water squirted EVERYwhere, knocking the milkman right off his feet and into the slippery, slimy, gooey mess of eggs and milk and butter.
The milkman scrambled to his feet then fell down again. He was beginning to lose ground, the blast of hydrant water was making him move faster and faster, and in a second he was slip-sliding away, on a frothy white wave of milk and eggs and butter.
"Yeeeeeeeoweeeeee," yelled the milkman, as he whizzed past J.J.'s father, doing about a zillion miles an hour, heading straight for an open manhole and a "Men At Work" sign.
The lady in the car started to open her door so she could get out and take a closer look at the damage, but all she got was really, really wet.
J.J.'s father saw the very wet lady in the curlers and bunny slippers yelling and waving her arms at the fire hydrant, and he watched the goo-covered milkman whiz down the little hill and disappear KATHUNK!, into the manhole.
"Sure are strange people around here", he said to himself.
Meanwhile, back at the Plumbottom's, Huey was tearing around on the roof his house, chasing something short that looked for all the world like a curly red haired skunk. Petunia Plumbottom was down in the yard yelling encouragement to her husband. "Hurry, Huey!", she shouted.
Huey was just about to catch the wig, or rather Pretzel, who was underneath the wig, when Pretzel suddenly made a wild leap for the top of the chimney. Just at that moment, the curly red wig finally came loose and started to slip off Pretzel's head and fall over the edge of the chimney.
Everything happened at once, Pretzel jumped back down, Huey made a valiant dive for the wig. Either he wasn't fast enough, or he was too fast, depending on how you looked at the situation once the cloud of soot finally settled. All Petunia could see was Huey's legs sticking out of the chimney, thrashing angrily in the air. "Git me OUT of here Petunia!", came a muffled yell.
"Oh my goodness," screamed Petunia. And then she fainted. Again.
J.J's Mother, who had turned up the hose water full blast and was busy washing pancake batter off the patio, heard Petunia go "KERPLOP!"
When she turned to look, the garden hose she was using slipped from her hand. It suddenly reared up on its own, like an angry snake.
Uh-oh! J.J.'s Mother knew she was in big trouble.
"Swish, Swish" went the water from the hose.
First J.J's Mother chased the hose, then the hose chased her. Next door, Mrs. Plumbottom was revived by all the screaming, yelling andswishing. Petunia Plumbottom tiptoed slowly over to the fence and peered cautiously over the top.
SPLOOSH!, the angry hose rose up and ambushed Mrs. Plumbottom, scaring her half to death and squirting her right in the face."KERPLOP!" Mrs. Plumbottom fainted. Again.
From the direction of the Plumbottom's chimney, a muffled voice called out again, "Help! Get me OUT of here Petunia!"
From beneath the street in front of J.J.'s house, a cranky milkman's voice yelled "If I ever find my way out of here, I will never EVER come back to this neighborhood".
In the distance, a voice could be heard calling, "Here Chipper!, here Chipper!"

And inside J.J's house, J.J. snored on.
Suddenly, sirens could be heard. They were coming from every direction. Down one street came a red fire truck. Down another streetcame a wrecker, and behind it came a tow truck. Behind THEM came an ambulance and a policeman and a city sewer truck.
They all stopped in front of J.J.'s house.
Flashing lights were everywhere. There were red lights and blue lights and amber lights. Uniformed men and women rushed everywhere. Some were putting a ladder up to the Plumbottom's roof. Some were putting a latter down the manhole in front of J.J.'s house; others were carrying wrenches, hammers and brooms.
The firemen finally got Huey out of the chimney and onto a stretcher. Petunia's curly red hairpiece, now covered with soot, had been stuck on his head by somebody who apparently thought the wig belonged to Mr. Plumbottom.
The people carrying Mr. Plumbottom's stretcher accidentally crashed into the ones carrying Mrs. Plumbottom's stretcher. Petunia was raving about goo-faced monsters, mutant red-haired skunks, flying fish and killer garden-hoses.
"That does it!", yelled Mr. Plumbottom. He jumped up off his stretcher and ran into his garage. A moment later he came running out with a sign in his hand. He pounded the sign post into the ground.
"You can take me away now", he said, laying back down on the stretcher.
"Huey, what does the sign say?", wailed Petunia.
"You'll find out soon enough.", he said.
Meanwhile, some of the other rescue workers had helped the yelling, red-faced milkman out of the manhole and turned the water hydrantoff so that the lady in the car would quit hollering.
Just when everything had been turned off, and everybody rescued, down the street came another police car.
Sitting in the back seat was J.J.'s father. Behind the police car came a dog-catchers truck. Peeking out of the truck's back window was Chipper.
"I blame the cat for all this", Chipper thought to himself, as the truck passed his house.
"But officer......" J.J.'s Father was saying to the policeman driving the car.
"The idea....you running around a family neighborhood half dressed", the policeman growled at J.J.'s father. "Tell it to the Judge"
J.J.'s Father saw all the commotion in front of the house. He saw the Plumbottoms being loaded into the ambulance. And then he saw the For Sale sign.
"Those are my neighbors", he said conversationally to the policeman. "They're putting their house up for sale. They just moved in. Why would they do that?. They sure were strange people. I wonder whatever happened to that odd-looking curly red haired skunk they had."
"Quiet!" snapped the policeman. He turned on his siren and roared on down the street. Right behind them in the dog-catcher truck rode Chipper, glumly wondering what was going to happen next.
Soon after the Policemen drove off with J.J.'s Father, all of the rescue trucks were also gone. It was quiet on the street J.J. lived on. Quiet, except for the "Swish, swish," of the garden hose that was still chasing J.J.'s Mother.
All of the rescue workers had been so busy saving the Plumbottoms and the milkman, and the lady in the car, that they forgot to rescue J.J.'s mother from the garden hose.
J.J.'s mother was getting tired. Fortunately she was smarter than the hose though. With one last burst of speed she raced around and around a big tree in the yard. Around and around the tree, the garden hose followed her, until it was completely wrapped around the tree trunk. Then J. J.'s Mother quickly ran over to the faucet and turned the water off. She took a deep breath. "Hmmm", she said to herself. It's awfully quiet around here. I wonder where everybody's gone?."
Pretzel was back sleeping in her favorite spot. J.J.'s Father was in jail ( he would be out as soon as he explained everything to the judge). The milkman was busy explaining to his boss how all that milk, eggs and butter had been spilled. The lady in the curlers and bunny slippers who had run into the fire hydrant, was busy explaining to the repairman who was going to fix her car, how it had come to be full of water. The Plumbottoms were sleeping comfortably in hospital beds (where they planned on staying until their house was sold).
And the fly that really had started everything was still buzzing around in the air, right over the other top of J.J's other foot.
In the kitchen, J.J.'s Mother, who was still a bit jumpy from the morning's excitement, was mixing an extra big batch of pancake batter.

The fly tickled J.J.'s toes. J.J. wiggled and squirmed and tossed and turned.
Finally J.J. kicked. His foot hit the wall.
On the OTHER side of the wall, where Pretzel the cat napped peacefully, the remaining picture quivered and then crashed to the floor, narrowly missing Pretzel's nose.
WHAMshattertinkle.
SCREEEEEEEECH! yelled Pretzel, and she shot into the air with all four feet going a mile a minute.
"Oh, no!!, wailed J.J.'s mother. Not AGAIN!!"

Meanwhile J.J. snored on.

THE END  


JJ and the Fly
by 
John C. Newby - Copyright 1998 - All Rights Reserved


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