Vermont Life
Not a few men have asked ABS, Is it true that Mount Mansfield was named after Jane Mansfield?
No, pretend interlocutor, although one can see why you'd ask that question.
Here is photo of Jane Mansfield and a tense Sophia Loren, obviously concerned over what might happen if the girls broke free and came for her;
Breathes there a man who does not remember the special issue of Popular Mechanics that detailed the story of the seven scientists at The Jet Propulsion Lab who developed a bra capable of restraining Mansfield's aggressive Breasticles.
Well, ABS can not speak for everyone in the state, but in Springfield, we always found things to do once the truant officers and the parole officers had gone home for the day.
One of the things we did, while waiting for Ethyl Alcohol to open the Duck Inn * for the 1 PM to 1 AM Happy Hour, was to sneak up on the eerily Simian Faced Taxi Driver, Monkey Jarvis, and stuff an M-80 into his Taxi's tailpipe.
Oncet, a man who did not love Cat Dancing, or any other woman, visited Springfield and, years later, began producing side tables that looked quite a bit like Monkey Jarvis who, to be fair to Monkey, was a bit taller than the table.
Springfield was known as The Machine Tool Town and its citizens were forever telling visitors, You know, our production of tools and what not was of such high quality that Hitler had us high up on a list of American cities to bomb.
Now you might say - Well, that's an odd thing to brag about, that an insane evil man planned to bomb you into oblivion - but you weren't born there and you have no idea what it was like to be a sports fan in Springfield and to root for the Cosmos football team against say, Brattleboro, and watch them lose 63-7 and the best that one could say after that game was, Well, it was closer than last year's game.
That happened on such a regular basis that many young men secretly wished Hitler had bombed the town so they would not be alive to witness such humiliation every fall.
But back to what the folks of Springfield used to do to while away their lives.
Not a few of them would hang out at Druff's Barber Shop and trade quips with the owner, Daniel, who, truth be told, was of an exceptionally pacific nature.
He was in business there for over twenty years and he heard more stupid jokes and puns about his name than the number of quality machine tooled parts produced at Jones and Lamson and Gear Shaper combined.
There was one man, though, whom Dan hated to see walk into his Barber Shop, a bald man whose name you would not recognise but who owned a home that had a central vacuum system long before any normal person even owned a bedroom Air Conditioned Unit.
This man, in addition to being an irksome individual, was bald. He liked to go to Druff's early on a football Saturday, when the Cosmos were going to lose to Bellows Falls at home, and ask Dan to Throw a hot towel on my head. I'm gonna take a short nap before I go and pick up the Missus for the game and them maybe go to Idlenot afterwords to get an Awful-Awful. Man o man, T'Hell was your Daddy thinking naming you Dan?
That was when Dan abruptly reached his end and sliced the bald man's throat with a straight razor.
Dan later spent the rest of his life in The Marble Valley Correctional Facility making lovely Duck Lamps after a Judge refused to sentence him to death: Look, I don't agree with what he did but what he did was a spur of the moment thing, a crime of passion if you will; besides, I knew the guy he kilt. He was a dick.
*
Here is a photo of the old Duck Inn on Clinton Street in Springfield. It is now closed but many small American towns of the early twenty first century had created similar cute names for a local inn; names such as The Wee Blew Inn in Venice, Florida, The Mushroom Cloud Nine in Frenchman's Flat, Nevada where the Government tested Atomic Bombs and, of course, The Good Moaning America Bar and Brothel in Las Vegas, the place that had that famous sign hanging over the Urinals You have to hand it to the blind prostitutes.
This song had not yet been created but wouldn't it have been perfect for The Duck Inn back in the day?