Sleepy Eye, Minn.–Recent reports indicate that a large percentage of the workers installing telephone poles across southern Minnesota are disgruntled by a loss of alcohol that could have been easily and entirely prevented.
Shaughnessy, cook for the work crew, spent weeks brewing and distilling moonshine only to abandon the enterprise when his machinery exploded. Crewmen note that Shaughnessy was in the process of bottling the beverage and expressed disdain that he failed to grab any of these prepared bottles.
“You mean to tell me he couldn’t scramble and grab a few bottles?” one disgruntled crew member vents. “Not even a single bottle! I’ve been working hard and the only thing keeping me going was this booze, and now I don’t even have that.”
Jonathan Garvey, friend of Charles Ingalls who got him into the telephone enterprise, is more forgiving but nonetheless laments the loss.
“I know Charles here is a teetotaler, but I’ve been known to, shall we say, self-medicate,” Jonathan comments. “All this physical labor is enough to make my lower back act up, and I could use a little of that there moonshine to ease the ache. If I had been Shaughnessy, why I would have grabbed at least a couple bottles. Man’s got two hands, don’t he? You don’t need your hands to run.”
Other workers likewise bemoaned the loss, with one wailing that it was unjust that he didn’t get to eat the potatoes and now he doesn’t get to drink the liquor. Others agreed that this instance marked “a complete misuse of potatoes.”
While Charles does not support the men in their desire to consume alcohol, he does find the waste of potatoes to be a shame.
“As we all know, I’m just a farmer–a stupid, dumb farmer,” Charles comments. “Well, if there’s one thing that would really chap the hide of this farmer it would be growing potatoes knowing they just went to waste like this. It’s obscene and a complete violation of any farmer’s desire for a good crop of potatoes.”
At press time, crew men were mulling that the only thing left to do now was return to their families or something, they guess, while Charles was glad that no one got any moonshine but drinking is bad except for in the rare cases that he decides to have a drink.
