RDP Monday: Chipper

The Jolly family grow wheat and corn under a pale blue empty sky out in the middle of Nowhere USA

No kidding, the town they live in is called Nowhere.

The Jolly family have taken pride in the fact that their family settled Nowhere back in the”  Pioneer Days ” and that over the years as Nowhere grew and other people moved to  farm Nowhere, the Jolly Family took their place as the founding family of Nowhere and if anything happened in Nowhere- from  the Easter Egg Hunt to the Harvest Festival and the 4th of July Parade,  to the lighting of the Christmas tree in their little town square, the Jolly family had a say in it.

I’m sure you are wondering if   the Jolly family lived up to their name- well, they did.

They all had round red ruddy faces and their eyes were the same pale blue color as the sky above Nowhere. They all had the same smile and when they laughed- they’d squish their eyes up and wrinkle their noses and they’d flash their big white teeth but one thing needs to be made clear.

their eyes did not smile.

Their eyes were not Jolly at all.

Nowhere is just as vast and endless as the sky above it and with not as much as a tree to break up the flatness of Nowhere, it  might look like the Earth was competing with the sky for how much space it could gobble up and swallow.

It was a strange race to anywhere  and if you lived in Nowhere you might wonder if there would ever be a winner-you might also wonder what happened to the places Nowhere reached in that race, but more likely then not you would not care.

And there is one reason one  very big reason for that.

Out behind the Jolly family home, there is a picnic table and picnic benches in the center of  the yard and next to the kitchen door is a wheel barrel that has been turned into a planter, but all of the plants in in are dead.

The plants are brittle and dry and covered with cobwebs. Sometimes a bee or a fly gets stuck in one of the webs and anyone from the Jolly Family who walk by the planter can hear the bees buzzing as they struggle to free themselves.

The buzzing can go on for days. Once a bird flew against the kitchen window, broke it’s wing and fell between the planter and the house. It’s chirped and squeaked for exactly eight days before it died.

I’m sure the Jolly family heard the bird and they’ve heard the bees and the fact is- I am sure that they like hearing those sounds.

They must have.

There are Tikki torches set up around the yard,but they’ve never been lit and there are even lawn games set up but no one has ever played them and there’s a swing set that’s covered with mold and rust.

Sometimes the wind pushes the swings back and forth and spins the seats around a little too. That is pretty much he only time they get used.

Now we come to the reason that the people who live in Nowhere USA don’t ask why  they thought that moving to Nowhere was such a great idea or why staying out in the middle of Nowhere is an even better idea and why it is that you’d let a family called Jolly who seem to enjoy the suffering of Bees and birds with broken wings organize your Christmas Parade is this-

In the Jolly’s backyard is a big shiny yellow and green wood chipper.

It’s not like the lawn games or the swing set or the picnic table, it actually is cared for, it gets used and it is so loud that if you live in Nowhere it’s all  you can hear when-

you start to wonder for as much as a second or two,  if it might not be such a good idea to leave Nowhere and go…

Anywhere.