Dear Auntie Mac,

What sort of a stuffy town is this? While perusing the shelves of the library recently and chatting with three other patrons who I assume were from Hampton, one of them mentioned something that triggered a joke I remembered. After checking first to make sure there were no small children around since the joke was mildly dirty, I told it. Well…my small audience looked as though I’d just dropped the F-bomb in front of a group of kindergarteners, and then my pants!  After which they proceeded to hastily leave the room! I know this is New England, but just how puritanical is this place?

Sincerely,

Loves to Laugh

My Dear Neighbor:

Fortunately, Auntie Mac is not without her resources, or her agents, in town. (Some less kind residents have called them “spies” but why quibble?) She believes she is well aware of the incident of which you speak. Since I’m told that you are fairly new to town you can be forgiven for not recognizing three of the region’s most prominent members of the Junior League. And while one might cast an extremely wide net into the waters of altruism before landing a fish as civic-minded and painfully earnest as a Junior Leaguer, one is equally hard pressed to imagine her either in grubby work clothes at the transfer station cracking wise with the regulars, slugging back a shot of bourbon at Tony’s Bar, or anywhere she is not fulfilling the League’s mission of enhancing the social, cultural and political fabric of civil society. The fateful day in question saw the trio buttonholing the librarian in the garden section to ask about the proper way to once and for all eradicate unsightly vines from local telephone poles in the interest of roadway tidiness. I am told that you walked in just as the librarian suggested, a bit too lightly, that goats might do the trick, since they ate everything. To which a joke told by your great aunt Barbra, involving a farmer, a goat, an open window, an Irish judge, and the line “A good goat’ll do that,” leapt to your mind and before good sense could clap its iron hand squarely over your mouth the whole thing burst forth like that creature in the film with that lovely actress Miss Weaver, and the damage was done. Honestly, dear, this is Hampton, remember. People take their goat-related information quite seriously. Possibly try your material out on a more receptive audience first next time, say, next Sunday at coffee hour after church. It’s just a thought.

Your Auntie Mac