Boomer Winfrey  

Varmint County Correspondent

When last we left our friends in Varmint County, everyone, or at least every male young enough to still have a drop of testosterone left in them, was counting the days until Saturday night’s big event at the Dead Rat Tavern, a female mud wrestling tournament with a $1,000 first prize.

The tournament was a desperate act by Dead Rat owner Corky Haig to recover the patrons he lost to rival Barney Hockmeyer’s new venture, the Rocky Topless Lounge.

You may recall that no barmaids were going topless at the Rocky Topless Lounge. The name is a play on words since the bar is located on Rocky Top Peak, or what is left of the peak since a local coal company strip-mined the top off, hence the name.

But the isolated tavern is too far off the beaten path for Sheriff Hiram Potts’ deputies, so it has become a haven for all of the county’s miscreants, misfits and mischief-makers, leaving Corky’s Dead Rat Tavern a bit short on paying customers.

To counter this trend, Corky decided to put on the mud wrestling event, figuring that the chance to watch ladies ripping each other’s clothes off in a slimy pit of liquid ooze would bring the drunks down off Rocky Top Peak, not to mention from the taverns over in Burrville, and the fishing and skiing crowd hanging out at Mud Lake Marina.

Penny Haig’s little sister, Chloe, who made a reputation for herself as a scrappy five-foot, two-inch basketball star at Varmint County High, signed up for the tournament over Penny’s objections, along with a couple of dozen other females, ranging from gangly Six-foot, two-inch Cloretta Hightower from Upper Primroy to Agnes “Gorilla” McGrew, a 200 pound pro wrestler from Burrville.

The big day arrived and with it the expected crowd of drunks, dirty old men and gamblers, offering heavy odds on Gorilla McGrew to take the trophy. Lawyer Philbert McSwine was persuaded to serve as referee since he did a little wrestling in college and added a touch of legal decorum to the proceedings. 

Despite my misgivings, your fearless reporter for the Varmint County War Whoop & Exterminator attended as well, merely to record the event for posterity.

The tournament started off tamely enough, with each contestant drawing a name from the hat to determine the pairings. Gorilla McGrew quickly flattened and pinned poor Doreen Pennywell and the crowd grew restless as it happened too fast for any clothing to get ripped or serious injury to either contestant.

Bonnie Cupp and Lula Mae Potts squared off next, and the crowd of mostly male spectators hooted and whistled as the two ladies struggled in the mud until poor Lula Mae, covered from head to toe with sticky goop and her bathing suit half torn away, was pinned until she yelled “calf rope!”

Finally, after a couple of other pairings, little Chloe Haig took the ring against Delores Duke from over in Cowpatch. Chloe was outweighed by a good 50 pounds and stood six inches shorter, but her quickness prevailed as she slipped between Delores’ legs, came up on her from behind and took her down in a headlock.

As the second round began, things were really beginning to get rowdy as many of the spectators were by now deep in their cups, yelling profanities, urging the contestants to “strip off her clothes,” and on occasion, trying to join the melee in the mud. Corky Haig quickly quelled all such attempts, and several of his cousins enforced a “hands off ” rule with help from a pair of baseball bats and Tommy “Mule” Haig’s artificial steel hand.

Fire Chief Stanley “The Torch” Aslinger, also a certified paramedic, was present to administer first aid to any injured wrestlers. “As it turned out, I had to patch up a whole lot more spectators than contestants,” Stanley later reported.

The reason for the large number of injuries among the spectators can be traced not to Corky Haig’s enforcers, but to little Chloe’s participation in the event. After managing to outwit and put down a couple of other contestants, Chloe found herself matched up in the semifinals against Gorilla McGrew.

Big sister Penny, the 6-foot 6-inch coach of the Varmint County Lady Vipers, had no intention of attending what she considered a “sleazy event not fit for decent folks.” Then she began to worry about her baby sister, fearing the diminutive Chloe would get seriously injured and big sister needed to be at hand to get her home in one piece.

Arriving late, Penny was shocked to find Chloe had survived three matches and was now tackling the odds-on favorite to win the tournament. Fearing the worst, Penny watched from a respectful distance as little Chloe proceeded to run circles around McGrew, finally landing a kick to her posterior that left the big woman sprawled facedown in the mud.

Referee McSwine rattled off the count and declared Chloe the winner of the semifinal match, but as Chloe turned her back to leave the pit, an enraged Gorilla blindsided her from behind, pushed her into the mud facedown and held her under as Chloe helplessly flapped her arms and legs.

“Somebody get that ape off my sister before she drowns!” Penny screamed as one or two spectators waded into the pit. Instead of pulling McGrew away, the drunks just laughed and staggered around, their groping hands reaching and pulling at Chloe’s clothing.

Few in Varmint County can recall the last time they saw Varmint County’s former star basketball center and current coach lose her temper. A few claimed to have been present back in the regional basketball tournament in 2002 when Penny Haig was fouled for the twenty-sixth time in a game against Burrville. The home-court ref called a foul on Penny instead when the Burrville center tried to rip out Penny’s blond hair by the roots. After the fight, Penny was ejected from the game but Burrville was unable to continue, having only two players and one assistant coach still able to stand.

That was a mere skirmish compared to what happened at the Dead Rat Tavern mud pit on this past fateful Saturday. Suffice it to say that nobody collected the $1,000 first prize as the tournament had to be canceled before the final match. Corky Haig might have been forced to refund the $5 admission fee to all of his patrons, except those who were still able to walk had fled in terror and confusion from the anger of a 6´6˝ female tornado.

Gorilla McGrew suffered no serious injuries other than a broken arm when she was lifted and tossed twenty feet into Corky Haig’s prize antique jukebox. Corky was in no shape to complain about the jukebox, since Penny tossed her uncle twenty-five feet, right through the door of an outdoor privy he kept around for “atmosphere.”

The other enforcers fared no better. Rufus Haig lost three teeth while Tommy “Mule” Haig’s artificial hand ended up, well let us just say lawyer McSwine was forced to stand without sitting in Judge Hard Time Harwell’s courtroom the following week.

The following Monday morning, Corky Haig was hobbling around the Dead Rat, trying to patch up holes in the wall, replace broken windows and figure out how to pry Pitney Hockmeyer’s dentures out of the side of his outdoor privy.

“Well, son, looks like you’ve got a mess on your hands.” Elijah “Big Poison” Haig commented as he walked in and looked around.

“Daddy, that danged Penny went crazy last Saturday and tore up the bar, ran off all my customers and sent three employees to Doc Filstrup’s emergency clinic. I’m gonna make her pay for all this damage out of her coach’s salary!”

“I don’t think so, son.”

“What do you mean? I know she’s your favorite granddaughter but weren’t no call for all that damage, and she tossed me into the privy pit.”

“Son, this is yore tavern, but who holds the deed?”

“You do, but . . . .”

“No buts about it. You let my granddaughter sign up for that danged mud rasslin’ circus of yore’n. You know how I feel about treating women with respect and you let my baby Chloe tromp around wet and half naked in front of two hundred drunks!” old Elijah replied, his voice rising with every word.

“Besides,” the old man continued, his voice dropping back to an icy calm, “you’ve got plenty of time to fix things up. I’m closing the Dead Rat for thirty days to let you and all the drunks you cater to think about the error of your ways.”

“But paw, Barney Hockmeyer will steal all my customers up to the Rocky Topless Lounge. I’ll be out of business!”

“Not hardly. Caleb Hockmeyer heard that his youngest granddaughter Georgia was tending bar up at Barney’s place. Somebody told him Barney had started letting his barmaids take their tops off, so old Caleb went up there, and sure enough, caught ‘em in the act.  He burnt the place to the ground right then and there.”

And so ends the saga of Varmint County’s “War of the Roadhouses.”  For the following month, the county’s shiftless crowd find themselves homeless as well, but that shouldn’t bother Caleb Hockmeyer and Elijah Haig. With the county’s legal taverns temporarily out of business, the two old men are seeing a brisk business at their string of moonshine stills.