According to witnesses,
two young women had been waiting rather impatiently in line to be let in the
restaurant.When they were given the
nod, they quickly moved to seats at the counter and placed their short
orders.After the waitress headed for
the kitchen to give their orders to Ed, they both got up and went into the
toilet.The toilet was tiny.The stool and a small lavatory sink had been
shoehorned into a space barely big enough for those fixtures and one person at
a time.With the two women inside it was
difficult to even close the door.Maybe
they both had to go so bad that they thought they couldn’t hold it any longer
and the first to go could yield the seat to the other one before getting fully
dressed.Whatever was their original
plan, with urgency as the mother of invention, it was quickly scrapped. A “brilliant”
new approach was put into action.While
one young woman was on the throne, the other pulled down her pants and climbed
up to squat over the lavatory sink.She
had just started to get some blessed relief, when all hell broke loose—and the
sink—and the water pipes!Screaming at
the top of her lungs, she fell forward onto her startled companion and then rolled
against the toilet door.The door burst
open and the two water-soaked women with their pants down about their knees
came crawling out into the crowd of flabbergasted diners.Ina told Ed to go down in the basement and
shut off the pump, while she called the Town Marshall and gathered information
from the mortified women. She vowed they
would “sure as hell” be paying for the damage.The restaurant had to be closed for a couple of days while repairs were
made.The other patrons of the little restaurant
on that fateful day had some hilarious entertainment with their food. Of
course, this story was told and retold around town and all over the
county.When it got around to Bummer
Mobley on his favorite bar stool at the Old Hickory Tavern he said, “it only showed
how stupid some city girls could look when they were showing their asses out in
the country”.
The purpose
of this book, like the two previous volumes of
Brown County Stories, is to share some
of the fun and interesting things that happened when I lived in BrownCounty.Most of the stories were told to my five daughters around campfires and
at many bedtime sessions as they were growing up.After several years of story times I was once
obliged to let my youngest daughter, Abby Monroe, know that I had told her
everything I could remember or even make up.Her response was, “OK, just start over.” The various accounts of these
uncommon experiences were reinforced for Abby and her older sisters as they visited
their grandmother in Nashville, the County Seat of Brown
County.From that base, they were able
to explore the territory where the stories took place.This volume includes some stories that were
recently shared with me by friends who felt they would help to illustrate what BrownCounty was like in the good old days. They are as true as creative memories have allowed. They
also provide additional support for the maxim that truth is often stranger than fiction
About the Author
About The Author
GEORGE E. MONROE, PH.D. grew up in the town of Nashville in Brown County, Indiana.After graduating from IndianaUniversity, he returned to Nashville for three years to teach sixth grade
and serve as the local Scoutmaster.He
then moved to Chicago, continued his education, and
traveled to many places in the world.However, a part of him has always been rooted in the unique environs of
his youth.He currently lives with his
wife, Merle, in Evanston, Illinois.