Politics in Vinegarroon county was a rough and tumble thing at times, that's for sure. The "Big Issues" always brought out the best and the worst in people and no issue had ever been bigger than Proposition 417a, the "smoking in a public place" ordinance that some blamed fool had put on this year's ballot.

Have you ever seen two people who have been friends fist fight in public over a difference of opinion? Well, I haven't either but that doesn't mean folks don't think about it. They think about it a lot, in fact, and it leads to some pretty bad feelings all around.

Like with Babe Martin. It caused him to go crazy. So crazy, in fact, that he ran for office. County Clerk, because that was all that was left. He didn't know what a county clerk did, exactly, but it couldn't be too hard. The office was considered the personal property of Mervin Slimmler who had won election so many times in the past and at such large margins that the other party quit bothering to put anyone up against him. Until Babe came along.

Babe went out and told folks that if elected he'd smoke any darned place he chose, even the courthouse lawn. (He respected the county's historical artifacts too much to smoke inside.) That got people talking.

Some folks didn't like his attitude, especially when he told a school assembly that he'd started smoking at six, with cigarettes he'd won playing marbles with older boys, and he wasn't dead yet!

"A man's got a right to smoke just like he's got a right to burn leaves in the fall and anybody that tells you different is whatever they call a commie these days!"

That stirred the hornets' nest a little. Then Babe spent some money printing up Vote for Babe! matchbooks. Inside was his campaign slogan: Something for Everybody!

What came, came too easily. Or it came too hard.

—Farmer Ooka Brown

Over the next month Babe visited all parts of the county. He talked at churches, in front of stores, in restaurants and bars, living rooms and campgrounds. An unofficial poll, taken after hours in Skinner's Grecian Urn, a bar at a crossroads on the south slopes of Vinegarroon county, gave Babe a four to one edge on his opponent.

It was at The Cheese Patch in Nedville three days before the election that Babe's campaign came to its horrific climax. After his speech, in which he inveigled against the powers-that-be, he finished his talk, as was his habit, by lighting a super-king-sized 45-caliber unfiltered slug of a cigarette before taking questions. This disturbed a family eating lasagna at the back of the room and they began complaining loudly.

This was the moment he had been waiting for. Striding up to the table Babe looked down upon a man, his wife, and two, no three strapping sons.

"We're trying to eat here," the older man growled. "You put that thing out before I pull it out of your mouth and stick it in your eye!"

Well, nobody ever said that serving the people was going to be easy. Babe drew in a big three-quarters lung full of smoke and blew it in the guy's face. The man sat dumbfounded just long enough for Babe to begin to cough in a loud, spastic, raspy, hacking manner. Nobody in the room had ever seen a man turn blue before as Babe fell face first onto the table, banging his head and scattering lasagna and spaghetti all over everybody within a twelve foot radius. It looked like a massacre, with the tomato sauce and all.

Babe emerged with a ringing in his ears and a big black eye. He spent the rest of the campaign telling folks he'd won it fighting for their rights as a citizen and resident of the greatest county of them all, a county he was pleased, no, honored to call his home!

He lost in a landslide.