A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

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Ferguson
Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate
Posts: 2447
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 5:26 am
Title: Fergie the Unjust
Location: I'm in the hick-land playing the spoons

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

Post by Ferguson »

Yes, even the topic is a pun. I can't bring myself to apologize for this.

So if you've ever been around chat often enough you will have probably seen a lot of us telling old stories we found to be amusing so why not have a thread and get everyone in on nice stories that might just be a little bit special? We've all got them, after all.

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To start us off I'll toss out one of my favourites that has been taken to being called the Ballad of Ray Button. Names have been changed to protect both the innocent, the guilty, and the embarrassing.

So, the town where I am currently working in is also the town I went to school in and it is quite small, around 1000 people. Just out of town there was a man, Ray Button, living with his girlfriend. Now Ray here had been to prison twice (supposedly for murder) and had been released both of these times. So for the story, please keep this in mind.

The sheriff's department receives a call from the girlfriend. It would seem that she and Ray are having a bit of a domestic dispute...and he has taken her false leg and has hidden it under the sofa where she can't get to it and left. So, our Sheriff drives out there, cannot find Ray but gets under the sofa to retrieve this leg. While doing so he suddenly feels what turns out to be the wrong end of a shotgun to his back but now at least he's found Ray.

(Another thing to keep in mind at this point in the story. Ray Button is *old*, at least into his 90s.)

There is a fight, supposedly even gunfire but in the end the Sheriff ends up hogtied in the middle of the floor, his radio, gun, and keys stolen, and Ray leaves in the police car. The girlfriend still does not have her leg.

So Ray drives on into the town and stops near the main square and walks into the court house, down the steps to the dispatch office where the dispatcher and the DA from a neighbouring town are. He seems to think it a good part of his plan to shout at them and wave the Sheriff’s gun about, getting the DA on the floor and causing the dispatcher to run back to her office and basically start smacking the phone. He then leaves and goes to sit on the square and have a bit of a think.

The dispatcher's smacking manages to get into contact with the telephone company across town where she gives them the cryptic, panicked message of 'kaillou, kaillou!' and hangs up.

Ray, meanwhile, has struck up on something. He has stolen a police car and that is fairly noticeable so he has decided that new wheels are in order and, wouldn't you know it, there's Mr. Gamet getting into his just off of the lot new truck. So, without further ado, Ray walks across the square, puts the gun he still has to Mr. Gamet's back and tells him to get into the truck and gets in himself, flooring it to the highway north.

Meanwhile, back at the girlfriend's house, the mailman has arrived and, upon hearing this pitiful cry of 'Danny, help me!' from the Sheriff, comes into the house, unties the Sheriff, gets the girlfriend's leg out from under the sofa and they all load up in his mailcart. (It's even one of those 35 mile per hour tops puttputt vans, truly the vehicle of heroes)

So, the phone company, after having their moment of deliberation and utter confusion, realize what the dispatcher was trying to tell them: Call Lou, the deputy. Whether the phone company did or the dispatcher finally managed it I'm not certain but Lou the Deputy is called in and, when the mail truck of victory manages to roll into town the facts of this event start to fall together. Most importantly, we figure out what the dispute at the beginning of the story was about; Ray's daughter had been committing fraud involving his checking account...so he decided to kill her, since, apparently, he is also dying of cancer and figures he might as well, and was going to go drive to Des Moines to do this. So, considering the head start that Ray has earned himself, the Iowa patrol is alerted and the manhunt begins.

A while later, well into the backroads in Iowa, Mr. Gamet has a suggestion for Ray:

"You know, I've got jumper cables in the back. You could just, I don't know, tie me up and leave me in a field?"

Ray's response?

"...no, you'll get too cold."

Soon enough a highway patrolman sees Mr. Gamet's truck, sees the county the plates are from, and decides to trail him. This, of course, does not escape the notice of Ray and when he attempts to go off road in through the fields the officer must have been fairly certain this was the person in question.

The problem with Ray's off-road's jaunt was that there was a fairly large creek coming up, nothing you could have Dukes of Hazzard yourself over so he had to get back on the road so the Iowa state patrol, proving they were a good deal more competent than my town's department, set up a roadblock ahead. Ray apparently looked to Mr. Gamet when he realized he was going to be trapped and this conversation took place:

"LIVE OR DIE, LIVE OR DIE?!"

"Um...live?"

So Ray stops the truck in front of the road block, gets out, and promptly falls over passed out. Mr. Gamet is brought back into town where, after giving his statement to the police, shows up at the license bureau to tell the woman there all about this and that is who I got the story from.

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So come on out and share other amusing stories that have nothing to do with anything but are still fun nevertheless.
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