Call him an aspirant of the Amish, more like dust in the wind, you will hardly even realize he is there until it's too late. Hank Edgar, a fourth generation strawberry farmer from the upper peninsula of Michigan, or a Yooper as people would say at the local farmers market, had never seen a bad day, but that's most likely because he had never seen anything at all in his whole life. Not only was Hank the blindest strawberry farmer in all of Cupholder County (everything in Michigan comes back to the automobile industry, right?), but he was also the bestest strawberry farmer in all of Cupholder County as well as the neighboring counties, Roadkill County, All Wheel Drive County and Global Warming County, the darkest of all the counties that make up Michigan's beautiful upper peninsula. Hank was blinder than a bat, smarter than a whip and quicker than Batman's whip (that's the Batmobile for you non superhero enthusiasts out there). If you ever tried to cross him, you would be hearing about it at the buffet line of every Fourth of July annual pancake breakfast hosted by the Cupholder Firehouse in conjunction with the local chapter of the Lion's Share Club for the rest of time until Global Warming County becomes an unfortunate reality and it turns into Global Warming Globe. You see, Hank's vision may have been all so cruelly usurped from him by the Sims gods when they were animating his character but that doesn't mean he isn't a proud cardholder of the gift of gab. Rumor has it that he once told a story so captivating that it caused the bus driver to nearly swerve off the thoroughfare in anticipation of the next beat in the plot. That one was a story about the time that he drove a neighboring farmer to the brink of insanity through a series of mind-numbing events that created a corn maze of confusion for Teddy Boston, the second best farmer in all of the car-related counties in Michigan, not just those Yoopers up there in the Yoop. Hank and Teddy had a bitter rivalry that dated all the way back to their little league days when Teddy brushed Hank back with some chin music one too many times (probably Motown if we are going to stay on course), causing the brash youngin' to charge the mound with his Louisville Slugger regretfully in tow...Hank would go on to spend a handful of nights in the Cupholder Juvenile Delinquent Center, a windowless facility on the edge of town, kitty corner to the Walmart, with a lobby containing several ping pong tables, a smattering of old school Pac-Man arcade games and a shuffleboard table sitting by its lonesome in the corner with a healthy sized colony of dust mites and skull and crossbones images graffitied into the side of it. Instead of threatening his enemy with a twenty three ounce aluminum bashing stick, this time Hank Inception'd Teddy's life with his cunning wit, which he had gradually gained after having the C for captain stitched into his competitive chess jacket for almost a baker's dozen years that he wears while competing for the Cupholder Check Mates in the Michigan Yoop Amateur Chess Society (or the MYACS if you are anyone who knows anyone at an organic coffee shop/fruit stand/farmers market with both coffee and fruit available in the Yoop or Tobey Maguire from that movie with the chess), a highly secret and exclusive society on par with the Stonecutters from that Simpsons episode with the Stonecutters. But yeah, Hank basically just took a torch to all four of Teddy's fields of fresh, ripe strawberries at like 3 am after going twelve rounds with a handle of Johnnie Walker and getting knocked out before the final bell...have you ever smelt a burnt strawberry? It smells worse than death itself; it's like if you tossed some garlic on a pile of old socks that were sitting below Carrot Top while he got a haircut (Carrot Top's barber is probably one of the most revered barbers in the Hollywood barber community which is otherwise known as the HBC if you make organic coffee at a farmers market in the Yoop). Turns out that blind people can be real jerks sometimes too.
Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon
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