One day about four or five years ago, we was sitting at the Conoco station, kicking tires
and swatting flies and discussing the state of the union, when right out in front of the
Baptist church come a big old purple school bus, had astrological signs upon it, and 35
hippies and dogs inside.
Half of them went for the courthouse lawn, and them dogs commenced on the fireplug.
The rest of them sat there staring at us, and I says, Roy, go get your flit gun.
He says, which is the hippies and which is the dogs?
I says, beats the hell out of me, Roy.
What there was was a bunch of them crispy critters, and the leader was a space cadet.
He says, Sagittarius, we has arrived.
Prepare to disembark, man.
Get the incense going and the sitar out.
We gonna camp in the city park, man.
I says, boys, let me explain the situation to you.
A, you getting me down.
And B, we got us a leash law here, and C, you in the wrong town.
You drop one string of beads in that there park, and you gonna see a whole lot of stars.
You got 15 seconds to get out of town, boys, or we gonna blow you to Mars.
Well, they all got back in the purple bus and proceeded to the city limits.
Then the telephone rang.
It was a swimming pool.
It says a mess of wild critters was in it.
So we all got into Marshall's Plymouth, which is always at the conical station.
Went flashing on down to the swimming pool to give them critters a citation.
By the time we arrived, it was too damn late.
Them critters had all had their pants down.
Them dogs was tearing the bathhouse apart, and they's after the fish in the fish pond.
I says, Roy, you get the one in the silver t-shirt, and I'll get the rest with a net.
We gonna have a jail full of naked crispy critters and a drip-dried space cadet.
You can't touch a hand, Roy.
Well, we gave them hell, but we lost the war, because them critters outnumbered us.
So they moved in and set up camp, and they lived in that purple school bus.
Six weeks later, there was nothing in town but 84 dogs in a head shop,
selling dried up weeds and sunflower seeds and astrological postcards.
Yeah, critters took over the city council, and the dogs all barked their brains out.
And the whole damn town was crispy critters, and the mayor was a space cadet.
© transcript Emily Beynon