Petrov, the Social Studies Teacher.
Sometimes something as simple as the hiring of a foreign born Social Studies Teacher can have far ranging consequences, complicated consequences like when the tenth grade daughter of a prominent town selectmen got knocked-up leading to the formation of an obvious cover story of a "very sick" aunt in New York who required convalescence care which would be provided by the selectman's daughter for roughly nine months so the family could avoid social ostracism at The Crown Point Country Club.
It was said of Petrov that he was from The Ukraine, which, as you well know, was enough to start the argument ball rolling down Skitchewaug Trail before it ended up crashing into and sinking in the quarry.
Many seasonal members of The Crown Point Country Club claimed that The Ukraine should be called simply Ukraine while others were adamant the article "The" was necessary when speaking about the breadbasket of Russia because The Ukraine refers to the borderland or edge of Russia.
In other words, it was an unnecessary and unwelcome distraction from the normal topics of interest in the teeny villages and small Southern Vermont towns which bordered, if you will, Springfield; topics such as - Well, Jane, you know how those women living up on Cherry Hill are; if they are not using eye-liner, or galavanting around wearing wigs and falsies, they are reading "The Tropic of Cancer" or some other smut, that's just how they are.
Petrov was hired as The Social Studies Teacher at the local high school and as early as the second quarter of the school year, controversy and enmity began to surface which, eventually, led to Petrov catching some lead in his gut and slowly bleeding out in the hills of Dummerston the first day of deer hunting season.
That fateful second quarter of the school year began when Petrov first advanced his claim that the historicity of Genesis was suspect and when that commie claim was combined with his claim that the local village idiot, a kid nick-named Gibby The Goon ought to be listened to because he was blessed with a great gift, then what ineluctably followed in the chain of events was not a great surprise.
Village Idiots have a long and storied history in Vermont and the towns and villages where they lived were always understanding and tolerant of The Village Idiots and their weird behavior but a highly questionable practice began to develop amongst the Quakers and progressives in Vermont to the point where one village idiot, a Mr. Patrick Leahy, was not only tolerated but respected, to such an obscene level that the normally rock-solid citizens imagined the idiot was possessed of some sort of constitutional, economic, military or spiritual wisdom and he ended-up getting elected as a United States Senator from Montpelier but most folks explained that away by noting, Well, he was born there and it's where the State Capital is, so...
OK, that detour into the detritus of democracy aside, let's pick back up the thread of the Petrov controversy.
As we already noted, the commie bastid, Petrov, had openly questioned the historicity of Genesis and onto that conflagration of such a sulphurous suggestion, he heaped upon that the coals of claiming the Village Idiot, Gibby the Grinning Goon, was blessed with the ability to divine the future because he was a natural born Haruspex.
Oncet, Petrov was driving over the North Springfield Flood Control Dam when he espied Gibby the Grinning Goon using his Dad's old Five Iron to brain the Suckers and Catfish he had hooked in the spillway of the dam.
As Petrov peered at the perplexing actions of Gibby, he noticed that the idiot stood there for quite some time staring at the results of his office - the blood and brains of the fish spilled out onto the rocks - as they slowly dried in the sun.
When the idiot finally walked up onto the road of the Dam, Petrov accosted him and asked - What did you see? What did the brains tell you about the future? - Gibby the Grinning Goon grunted, "Bad."
Just as I thought, murmured Petrov and he drove off by himself to get an ice cream cone at Spur's after the idiot refused his offer of a ride.
It was only a few months later that the good rock-ribbed sensible men of the rocky redoubt that is Southern Vermont, having learned of this infamy, decided to invite Petrov to camp for the first day of deer season.
The night before opening day, the men got Petrov gooned on Vodka as they played endless games of Pitch. To make matters worse, they woke him up early.
As they led him out into the field, sweating and suffering from a wicked hangover, he wondered why his new friends had really asked him to stand unmoving in the middle a field because, even though he had never hunted deer before, their explanation - You will be a deer lure - didn't make much sense.
Suddenly, as a few shots rang out - he felt the hot lead slamming into his gut before he heard the shots - it all began to make sense to Petrov - They don't like me - he thought as he began to bleed out.