Invasion of the Cloddy Smashers

Is it humanly possible for one man to track in more mud on his feet each day than Hick? Lest you think this is a rhetorical question, and sit there on your typing fingers without answering...it is not. I can't HEAR you! What's that? Somebody said, "Yes." What a wiseacre! If you said, "Yes," I must require you to provide a name, physical description, and address of the dirty (non-flying) bird who can top Hick's daily quota of dirt inside a 1600-square-foot home.

Sure, there's probably some mutant male with webbed feet for scooping, and suction-cup toes for a vacuum effect, with hair on his tootsies like velcro for clingage, his man-hooves exceeding the length of Bigfoot's so that in the future, a Sasquatch will be known as Tiny-Ped, who could achieve this level of Pig-Pennage. Until I am informed of his name and whereabouts, Hick is still the champ.

I could sweep the kitchen floor twice daily and still not have a smooth surface on which to walk without getting a stone bruise from a clod deposited by Hick's clodhoppers. If I let these zigzag lightning bolts of dried mud accumulate, we would soon find ourselves gasping in the thin air of a new summit, Mount Clodamanjaro. The topsoil of Backroads has surely been shaved down to bedrock with Hick's daily collection of dirt. He could have been a hero in dubya dubya eye eye, in that Stalag Luft III, helping the Allied prisoners make a great escape, hauling the tunnel dirt out onto the yard. He coulda been buddies with James Garner!

Hick does not see himself as a record-holder. In fact, he modestly denies his talents. He seems to think other residents deserve partial, if not ALL, the credit for this clodfest. Alas, circumstantial evidence is not in his favor. The Pony and I walk from the concrete-floored garage, onto the concrete sidewalk, up the wooden steps, across the wooden porch, and into the kitchen. No dirt on our soles. Until we get inside, of course. Where we are subjected to the mine field of topsoil fragments lolling upon the linoleum, crushing them like so many grapes under Lucy and Ethel's feet. We can't help ourselves. Like Zach Mayo in An Officer and a Gentleman, we "...got nowhere else to go!" It's not like we have shoes that fit the chair feet on my classroom furniture, and can avoid the clumps strewn like sprinkles across a confetti cake.

You're an unclean one, Mr. Hick. You've got topsoil in your sole. To measure your daily leavings, it would take a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole.

Clean up your act. And my kitchen floor. Or at least check your clodhoppers at the door.