Column: Tales from Exit 22

Frank sold insurance for one of the biggest insurance companies. It was so big that it was named the Biggest Insurance Company.

He went from house to house selling accident policies. It was hard at first, like climbing a ladder that was leaning towards him, but he became good at it. The policies covered people for the accidental loss of limbs — even the loss of a head, unless it was due to falling in love.

Frank was given a list of prospects on which to call. One day, he pulled into a rural driveway so muddy that he was unable to travel it by car. Determined to make a sale, Frank got of the car and walked to the house. He knocked on the door. A lady answered it and he asked if she had all of the insurance she needed. The lady didn’t care for insurance men. She hit Frank over the head with a broom and turned her dogs loose on him. He ran for his life and was bitten several times before he was able to climb a tree to safety. It was hours before the dogs lost interest and wandered away. One of the mutts carried off one of Frank’s shoes. Frank descended from the tree. He was bruised and bloody as he hoofed it, missing a shoe, through ankle-deep mud to his car. Inside the car, he pulled his prospect list from his pocket, and behind the woman’s name, he wrote, “Doubtful.”

Frank didn’t sell much insurance after that. He couldn’t say why, but he had lost his focus. That troubled him. One day, he stopped by the park, searching for answers in a familiar place. Frank lived nearby and had played there as a boy. There was a swing set, a teeter-totter, a slide and a puker. The puker was an undersized merry-go-round; a simple rotating circular platform. It had bars for handles that children clutched while spinning. It was child-powered and aptly named, able to spin fast enough to make Frank ill more than once.

Frank decided he was too old for playground equipment, so he took up sitting on the old army cannon in the park. He had no idea where the cannon came from. It had been there all his life. Each day, when he should have been selling insurance, Frank sat on that cannon. It was like a think tank only different. Frank was one of 11 children. His father told him that a man with 11 children was more contented than a billionaire. That was because a man with a billion dollars wanted more. Frank wasn’t contented. He lost his job and let himself go. He rarely bathed. No one wanted to be downwind from him.

It was Ann Teak, owner of the Junk Shoppe and director of the city’s tourism bureau, who expressed her concerns to Mayor Cleopatrick. Ann felt that having a grubby guy sitting on a cannon was the opposite of a tourist attraction.

He may be an old gray mayor with an overfed look, but Cleopatrick is a politician who believes it’s better to do something wrong than to do nothing. He assured Ann that he would handle it and he did. He offered the cannon sitter a job. The job would be to polish the cannon. Frank was doing a bit of that with the seat of his pants anyway. Cleopatrick made plans to pay Frank from the funds in the city’s beautification program.

Frank took the mayor up on the offer. He’d always wanted a government job. To everyone’s delight and Ann Teak’s surprise, Frank was a natural at the cannon-polishing business. That cannon gleamed like no other. Visitors came to see the shiny artillery piece. The mayor and the city council held a press conference where Frank signed a formal contract, documenting the agreement between the city and the high-caliber cannon cleaner.

Things went well for several years. Then one day, Frank came into Cleopatrick’s office and told the mayor that he had decided not to renew his contract with the city.

The mayor asked if there was a problem and if there was anything the city could do to make Frank happy. The sparkling cannon and Frank had become somewhat famous and were definitely tourist attractions.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Frank. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I’m just not cut out for politics. I’m going to buy my own cannon and go into business for myself.”

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.