Bruce would smirk if he could hear us now, thinking back to the day he first met Redheaded Round Robin  at the town’s weekly Saturday night pot luck supper. While their folks were sloshing down beer, and feedin’ on beans and brownies in the Big Hall,  the teens hung out in the rec room, a/k/a the “wreck room,” watching Three Stooges shorts on a black-and-white TV (the kind where you actually had to change the channel by turning a knob with your fingers, if you can imagine doing that). Fifteen and frisky, sly dog Bruce was instantly smitten and love-bitten . So It was only fittin’ he’d be hittin’ on the kitten while they were sittin’ and bullchittin’, but she kept knittin’ a mitten for her cat, which she named “Bruce” the very next morning.  

For the record, Stan called me a few days before I sat down to write this sophisticated literary offering and coughed up oodles of tasty verbal vittles, like that one you just read, about his two best buds. Thanks, Stan. You da man. And don’t worry, I won’t tell Bruce. (Oops,  Dang, I think I just did.)

So anyway, why did these Birchburg fellas frequent a small-town doughnut dive here in Mannville?? Well, I’ll tell ya, but first I’m gonna gobble down this chocolate cheesecake. ​A man’s gotta eat. Where’s my fork? 

(Brief pause while author consumes 530 unnecessary calories.)

Okay, so why were they huddling up here on Saturday mornings? I mean, the doughnuts had more grease than John Travolta’s hair in that 1978 movie. And the waitresses were married and always modestly attired. So what was the draw, the word? (Okay, we know Grease was the word, but what about Greece? Maybe I mythed something there. Keep reading.)

Oliver was the brains behind these Moldsters (moldy oldsters) – three men who claimed to be smarter than they looked. (Aren’t we all, Oliver.) Stan was the brawn at 5’11’, 167 pounds, with faint remnants of actual biceps, while Bruce was (God almighty!) the spiritual savant. Their apparent disdain for napkins and table manners blended in nicely with the yokels, er, locals.

You:  “C’mon, what were they up to? Spill the tea. Butter the bread. Cut the cheese. Wait, scratch the cheese, just the tea and bread, please.”

Me:  “Hey, I’m makin’ this crap up as fast as I can. I’m old too, ya know.”

Oliver, Stan, and Bruce had been ripped off for 40 bucks each by Big Brad’s daddy some 60 years earlier, when the four teens were harvesting blueberries one summer for Mr. Harrington down around Wikkey Lake (no relation to Ricki Lake, according to that Google guy.) After bending and raking all morning, the future Bad Dad had led them to a row of blueberry bushes known (to him) to be infested with maggots. The blue beauties were large and juicy, and the threes buds gulped them down like M&M’s, while Bad Dad only pretended to partake. All three got instantly sick, barfed up a bucketful, and hauled azzzz back to town, abandoning their good berries. The schmuck scooped them up, claimed the credit, and walked away with their collective $120 cash money. His family then moved to Mannville before the barf boys could exact revenge.

The scalawag had passed away years before the Moldsters reunited at an AARP fish fry in the resort town of Eegabeva. Oliver (a widower), Stan (divorced), and Bruce (never wed) became fast friends again, and rented a “party pad” together. Though they failed to lure any ladies there, they did get their jollies from swilling down bourbon and bonbons while watching Friends reruns in their official Jennifer Aniston long-sleeved T-shirts. Soon, their revenge plot was spawned and hatched.

These freaky fossils vowed to get their 120 dollars back from Bad Dad Junior’s joint – one buck at a time. That day’s visit was their eighty-seventh, and they blabbed the whole story to me, a fellow blabbermouth, after inviting me to join them because they needed a good-lookin’ feller at their table to attract the long-haired tourist ladies over at booth 7.

Doughnuts and coffee devoured, they calculated the standard tip. “$4.75 total, gentlemen.”, Oliver announced smugly. Each man gleefully dropped $1.25 onto the table – a $3.75 tip.  Saved a dollar. “That’s 87 bucks now, guys, we’re getting there.” They giggled like goofballs, then just beat it, a la Michael Jackson.

You:  “So Bad Dad’s offspring, Big Brad, DID in fact get paid for everything the schemers purchased? He didn’t lose a dime to them?”
Me:  “Yes, he certainly did, and no, he sure didn’t.”

Hmm, seems they had been unwittingly plucking the hens instead of ripping off the rooster.

That night,  six disgusted and determined members of the Modestly Attired Waitresses Movement (“MAWM”) laughingly removed 87 bucks from wallets they found on the ground right after tossing three m-old-y men – each gagged, handcuffed, and tied up tight – into the dumpster behind  Scroomey S’mores Sweet Spot. Burly owner Woody Scroomey (dunno, maybe, I believe he is single) found the Birchburg Three the next morning and beat their bony butts 50 shades of grey for trespassing and stinking up his sweet-scented trash bin. No charges were filed, and the moldsters fled Mannville, never to be seen in town again.

You:  “Oh my, but how did the waitresses know to count out exactly 87 dollars? They didn’t know the whole blueberry pickin’ story, nor would they know as a group how many doughnut days those old farts had played their goofy tip game.”

Me:  “Well, um . . .  I guess I kinda told the tourist ladies from Booth  7 about it after the guys left and well, apparently they were all waitresses from Boston on one of them “girls getaway weekends” they make movies about  . . .and it seems there’s a MAWM code of some kind that dictates sharing the blather of blabbermouth customers . . . and besides, someone  had to proofread this gibberish for me before I let normal folks like you read it!”

Sorry, fellas, my bad. But eww, take a shower, lose the T-shirts, and find something else to do on Saturday mornings!

Gotta run, got a date with a single MAWM. Hmm, now where did I put my Jennifer Aniston black leather jacket? You know, the one she designed while . . . Rachel and Ross were on a break.

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