Petrified the cops had his house surrounded Gino answered the phone on the first ring.

Let me talk to Harry, said Judge Dombroski, who Gino always called Dumbroski.

Gino obeyed.

After all, the man was a Scranton judge.

Escaped federal prisoner and former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies grabbed the phone.

You’re free, the judge said.

Harry did his happy dance.

Now the president wants a favor in return for your pardon, the judge said.

A quid go pro? So what else is new? What’s my liberty going to cost me?

The president wants you to make up rumors about Joe Biden like his peeing the bed when he was in law school and spread the dirt all over Scranton. People know you, Harry. You’ve got credibility, the judge said.

Yeah, the same people who voted for me voted for Biden, Harry Davies said.

On the other side of town, in a shabby makeshift West Side church for armed Trump supporters and assorted other fanatics, Earl Schmidt got a phone call, too.

I hear you’re looking for tickets to the inauguration, Timmy Kelly said.

Like about 100, Earl said.

I got two seats right behind Jill going for $50 a pop.

When can I pick them up?

We deliver.

Shivering with rolling waves of excitement, Timmy Kelly jumped into his new used Corvette, getting heat flashes at the mere thought of driving all over town with the top down. So what if the temperature peaked today at 34 degrees? Career change required sacrifice, especially if he expected to become mayor of his and Joe Biden’s hometown. This Kelly green Corvette exuded genuine Scranton power, privilege and authority even if it was the cheapest Corvette he could find listed on Autotrader. Still, the 1984 model with 138,000 miles on the odometer and an asking price of just $3,899 made Timmy’s point. If that goof Joe Biden can do it, anybody can do it.

Scranton Lives Matter!

Driving over to the gun church with the counterfeit inaugural tickets, Timmy started talking out loud to himself like he was giving a campaign speech.

Here’s the deal, man. Joe loves his Stingray so Timmy Kelly loves his. OK, so Joe’s Vette was a 1967 cream of the crop car. Nowadays you’d have to pay about $150,000 for one in good shape. My car’s different but Scranton Democrats will understand. What do they know anyway, especially that NEPA for Joe Facebook page gang loaded with Joey junkies and devotees. Like always, parochial Democratic Party disciples will vote me into office without even thinking.

Timmy Kelly must have watched his favorite video 100 times with then Vice President Joe Biden behind the wheel of a 1967 Stingray in a special 2015 TV segment of Jay Leno’s Garage. The way Joe gripped the wheel underhanded like a street racing fighter pilot helped Timmy polish his mannerisms to get his impression down. The way Joe showed his teeth helped Timmy smile the smile that would get him through the rest of his life. Joe told Jay his father headed up one of Delaware’s largest Chevy dealerships and gave him the car as a wedding present. That confused Timmy because he always thought Joe came from the working-class where nobody owned a new car let alone a Corvette that cost about $5,600 in 1966.

After 11 years as a chauffeur for Judge Dombroski, supported by a few extra under-the-table bucks hauling corpses as a professional pall bearer, Timmy Kelly stood ready for public office. Our man in Scranton was ready for leadership. Just like Joe.

Over at police headquarters, Casey Weatherhogg tried to persuade his 95-year-old mother, Mabel, to come home and not start any more trouble, at least not yet.

Please, Ma, he said. The magistrate told me he knows and respects our family roots and wants to release you on your own recognizance.

Screw her and the Democrats she rode in on, Mabel said.

Ma, the cops are only charging you with disorderly conduct. The judge will likely recommend community service, Casey said.

My community service is growing weed in the attic, Mabel said. I might fire up another joint at my preliminary hearing.

Aw, Ma, why would you do that?

To show Joe Biden and all his lace curtain Green Ridge lickspittles that since the country’s gone to pot, the people need to go to pot too.

If I were a congressman I’d be honored to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). Hope for a better America is anchored there.

But I’m just a senior citizen living in Joe Biden’s childhood hometown, a Scranton voter and loyal progressive who retired after decades of full-time journalism fighting racism, sexism and other rancid forms of bigotry, including Donald Trump. I will fight inequality and injustice until the day I die.

I know from experience why voters distrust government. I know why voters from both major parties often resent elected officials’ patronizing our lives and ignoring our concerns.

I also know that the Congressional Progressive Caucus must expel my congressman, Matt Cartwright, who represents the 8th Congressional District because Cartwright is not a progressive.

The CPC is comprised of nearly 100 progressive members of the U.S. House of Representatives and one U.S. Senator, according to the caucus website.

If you doubt my judgment on Democrat Cartwright’s bogus progressive credentials, try to get a straight answer about his position on any progressive policy from him or any high-ranking member of his staff. I’ve tried and failed for years – and I’m a longtime Democrat and constituent.

Our mousy man in Washington even waited until the last minute to sign on as a co-sponsor to the current article of impeachment. I asked in writing this week for answers to basic questions about why Cartwright waited so long in the wake of armed insurrection, but nobody from his office responded, not longtime local Scranton staffer Bob Morgan, Chief of Staff Hunter Ridgway or Press Secretary Melvin Felix.

A wavering company man of the worst kind, Cartwright regularly exerts more fearfulness than leadership, holding out until the last moment before making crucial decisions. Then he does what elite Democratic Party bosses tell him to do. Or, he spews double talk to draw the least amount of pushback from conservative constituents he wants to appease. Cartwright usually tries to have it both ways.

Abortion rights?

Wishy-washy.

Immigration?

Wishy-washy.

Guns?

Wishy-washy.

Gender equity?

Cartwright has donned his tuxedo and attended an elite male-only dinner for years. I regularly and publicly called out his presence at the bigoted Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick event to no avail. His staff eventually stopped responding to all my requests for answers or interviews even though Cartwright had previously appeared regularly as a guest on my Northeastern Pennsylvania news talk radio show.

Ask Cartwright hard questions about forward-looking principles and he hides. Derelict in his duty, Cartwright is just another slick lawyer slacker who takes more than he gives and gives as little as he can contribute to the already unfair fight for gender equality.

America can no longer afford wishy-washy.

I respect the increasingly deadly reality that makes congressional public service in Washington increasingly risky. That’s why progressive bravery is all the more necessary if we ever hope to expose the meek moles among us.

Cartwright’s refusal to publicly support progressive issues amounts to tacit approval of the enemy. Yet he dares call himself a progressive? And progressives welcome him to their caucus?

Check out the “Progressive Promise” on the CPC website and see how many principles inherent in that sacred promise to America Cartwright has broken. Committed progressives who take the heat and sacrifice daily should be as offended as I am by Cartwright’s opportunistic willingness to play toxic politics with our future.

Allowing Cartwright to use the caucus to make himself look good is just plain wrong. Such a key group of lawmakers as the CPC must not support his duplicitous public policy fraud. Cartwright’s legislative hustle of his own colleagues is sleazy, abusive and unacceptable.

Taking sides takes courage. We better stick with people we can count on when times get tough and tougher. Survival literally and figuratively depends on whom we can trust.

American progressives can’t trust Cartwright. Let him find safe haven elsewhere. Self-absorbed political greed has no place in a strong world of enlightened policy.

It’s time for a truly progressive Democrat, a woman, to challenge Cartwright in the next primary. It’s time for change that benefits good people upon whose backs Cartwright makes a good living with good benefits. It’s time to show Matt Cartwright the door.

Unloading all 30 rounds from his trusty AR-15 into the big screen TV video replay from the Capitol siege, Earl Schmidt calmly turned and faced the congregation that sat packed into his living room like lead bullets in a dull tactical clip.

Two dozen faithful congregants rushed to church within a half hour of Earl calling them to the emergency service to save America. Word spread fast that patriots including some from Northeastern Pennsylvania had attacked the deep state government and needed prayers.

Earl disagreed.

They needed tanks.

Shell-shocked parishioners stared in fear.

More Al-Anon than QAnon, the believers represented a motley crew of drunks, the terminally lost and mixed-up societal malcontents awaiting sentencing on a variety of county misdemeanors and the occasional felony. One particularly troubled congregant the counseling center sent over swore he dated Joe Biden’s sister, brother and mother all at the same time. The group listened with rapt attention as Earl shared the good news and the bad.

The president incited the people to do his bidding, he said. Then the president didn’t walk with the people.

Instead of the Rapture, we got the Rupture, Earl said.

Then he had an idea.

Earl asked for volunteers.

Who wants to go to the inauguration?

Every hand in the room shot toward the heavens.

Adjusting their glistening bullet crowns off which reflections of Armageddon shined, the flock then picked up their assault rifles and filed from the room in tense silence, leaving the newly anointed Prince of Fleece to plot how to turn around this unexpected setback so Trump’s abandonment benefitted him and his bride.

Meanwhile, back in the Hill section, Casey Weatherhogg had an idea of his own.

You know Joe Biden opposes legalization of marijuana, he said to his mother.

Sonofabitch, Mabel said. And where’s my COVID vaccine? I’m 95 years old, forcrissakes!

Casey taunted his dear mother, knowing full well he was pushing her into action.

You gonna let Joe Biden treat us aging potheads like that?

The all-but-empty Green Ridge bus dropped Mabel at the corner of Fisk Street and North Washington Avenue, the newly christened road now known as Joe Biden Way. The bus driver gave her a nice smile and unloaded Mabel’s lawn chair. He even set it up at the corner. Mabel thanked him and pulled the metal folding chair with rust around the green and white plastic webbing right smack snug against the new street sign pole so comfy cushy she could lean against the metal, which she did.

Pulling her Berkeley hoodie over her head and tight around her neck, she retrieved a pack of rolling papers and a sandwich baggie full of pot from her black plastic purse. Expertly, she began to craft a nice, fat, tight joint made from the finest, most potent “Hill Hippy Halcyon” she grew in the attic.

Putting a stick match to the tip, she fired up her protest.

Mabel smoked a lot of medical marijuana. But she liked her homegrown stock best. She wanted full legalization at low cost for consumers. She wanted to buy stock in a company. She wanted to get high whenever and wherever she pleased. For all she knew, Joe Biden never smoked a joint in his life so he didn’t know what he was missing.

And that homespun bastard opposed legalization.

Old People Power demanded direct action, guerrilla theater that required making an incendiary point people remembered, a candle lit in darkness that possessed the power to burn, baby, burn. Dissent in front of Joe Biden’s childhood home, though, required a special demonstration, a unique outcry for justice from a simple woman smoking a simple Scranton herb that produced a combination head and body high with the impact of a pink cotton candy pillow wallop over the head and falling into a bathtub brimming with warm chocolate pudding. Mabel’s domestic “Hill Hippie Halcyon” always did the trick.

Pulling out her cell phone, Mabel dialed 911 to turn herself in.

Come quick, she said, pot heads are attacking Joe Biden’s house.

An hour later, two heavyweight Scranton police officers approached just in time to hear the padlock click at Mabel’s waist. Mabel adjusted her purple beret, set her jaw and sucked deeper on her second joint.

That old coot just chained herself to the Joe Biden Way street sign, one cop said.

The other cop seemed miffed at his predicament.

I better get overtime if the paperwork makes me work past the shift change, he said.

Film at 11 showed a grim lieutenant sweating despite the cool weather as he sawed through thick steel links Mabel chose to secure herself to the street sign. Stoned and happy, she sang an old Negro spiritual whose lyrics she kept forgetting as she giggled hysterically each time she bumbled the song.

Right on, she said, raising a bony fist as tattooed SWAT team members picked her up chair and all, depositing her in the back of the prisoner transport van.

Right on.

In a garish courthouse office stinking of cigar smoke and loaded with cheap golf trophies, Republican Trump confidant and Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski opened former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies’ letter.

The judge quickly read the contents then nervously picked up the phone.

A woman answered.

White House switchboard, how may I help you?

Over in the Hill Section of Scranton, Casey Weatherhogg sat stoned on the couch beside his mother, Mabel. They watched CNN in silence as pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Casey stood and did some impromptu yoga postures before heading to the kitchen for some carrot sticks.

Want your medical marijuana, Ma?

And two beers, honey, Mabel said.

In West Side, Earl Schmidt, self-proclaimed pastor of the new Cathedral of the Eternal Donald, brandished a loaded AR-15 and pointed the rifle at the TV. A man wearing a blood red flag emblazoned with the name TRUMP and tied around his neck rappelled down the side of the U.S. Senate press gallery. He landed on a 200-year-old mahogany desk with a thud.

We got your back, brother, Schmidt said.

About 71 miles south on Interstate 81, behind the gate of a penitentiary near Frackville, former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies went to work at the prison carwash. With two clean wipe-down rags stuck in his back pockets of his matching khaki pants and shirt, he stood waiting for other inmates to do the soap and water wash before stepping forward to help dry the car. Strictly against the rules, of course, inmates washed the cars of certain VIP guards and other prison officers for free.

A black 1985 Cadillac with a “Scranton (heart) Biden” bumper sticker immediately caught the mayor’s eye. Harry Davies didn’t know who owned the car but nobody other than a full-blown Scranton yahoo would put a Biden bumper sticker on his car and drive it to work at a prison where you’d be asking for trouble because most staff and inmates hated Biden.

Strange as it sounds, the guards simply turned over employees’ car keys to the inmate cleaning crew. The inmates returned the keys when they finished because inmates usually obey the law in prison. Harry Davies used the Caddy’s key to pop the trunk, inserted the key back in the ignition, crawled inside and pulled the lid closed behind him. After pushing aside two cases of Keystone beer and a 12-pack of beef jerky, the mayor settled in for his ride to freedom.

Ten minutes later he felt the car move, then stop, parked in an adjacent lot to wait for the vehicle owner’s shift to end as he or she heads back home, presumably to Scranton. After a nap, Mayor Davies awakened to the sound of the driver gunning the engine. At first he thought he’d suffocate from the thick fumes swirling around his head burning his eyes, choking and gagging him. Then he realized he wasn’t inhaling most of the noxious exhaust because the toxic vapor was getting sucked out the rust holes in the big boat’s undercarriage. Mayor Davies popped his first beer and stretched out to enjoy the ride.

Looking forward to two days off, Gino wanted nothing more than peace. At about 4 p.m. on the second day, Gino headed to the Caddy’s trunk for more beer. Screaming before the lid fully opened, Gino jumped back, assuming a fighting stance like in the Kung Fu movies. Whatever wild beast found its way into the trunk now found its way out. Reeking of stale beer and strong urine, the creature struggled to sling one leg over the fender and roll out, knocking over empty beer cans and spilling pale yellow liquid on the garage floor. Gamey, with spicy dried meat on his breath, Harry Davies rose slowly in a living version of the evolutionary chart showing man’s upward climb to civilization.

Screaming now in recognition, Gino tried not to pass out.

You’re him, you’re him, you’re the mayor.

Harry Davies looked worse than the beef jerky.

I’m calling the cops, Gino said.

I wouldn’t if I was you, the mayor said.

Gino lowered his voice.

What do you want?

I beg your pardon.

I said what do you have in mind?

Pardon me.

Exasperated, Gino raised his voice.

I SAID…

No, no, said the mayor, stop repeating yourself. I’m talking about a real pardon, a presidential pardon. 

Stunned, Gino stood trembling with his heart pounding like a Led Zeppelin song in his throat.

Give me your phone, Mayor Davies said.

Who you calling?

Judge Dombroski, the mayor said.

Trump’s golfing buddy?

A grizzled Harry Davies snickered.

They’ll love me at Mar-a-Lago, he said.

Finally mustering the courage to confront Timmy Kelly face-to-face, Gino stood trembling on Woodlawn Street outside Hank’s Hoagies where they picked up take-out to eat in the car after their walk at the Little League field where Joe Biden played as a kid.

Gino bought a Hank’s Italian. Timmy got a Hank’s regular. Each hoagie on a National Bakery roll with Hank’s special sauce cost $4.25.

Your campaign slogan’s racist, Gino said, his words muffled through his mask.

Timmy only wore a mask if somebody made him put one on.

Scranton lives matter?

Black lives matter, Gino said.

But Scranton lives matter, too, right?

Black lives matter, Timmy.

Don’t all lives matter, Gino?

We’re pro-life Catholics, Timmy. Of course they do.

Then Scranton lives matter.

‘Black lives matter’ means we should pay attention to the wholesale slaughter of Black people.

Timmy smirked.

Like they’re baby seals?

Gino knew he’d lose this argument.

Mostly armed white cops kill mostly unarmed Black men, he said.

So that makes it OK for them to loot?

Most protesters don’t loot, including Black people.

You’re taking sensitivity training courses at the prison again, aren’t you, Gino?

I’m reading and watching the news more since my wife died. History teaches us a lot if we’re willing to listen. We weren’t friends with anybody Black growing up in the neighborhood, Gino said.

Yeah, you Italians were bad enough.

Gino closed his eyes like he was trying to hide from his father when he was little and being bad.

C’mon, Timmy, I’m serious.

You think Scranton voters will call me racist because I tell them their lives matter?

The Black ones will.

How many is that? Two?

Most people we know will vote for you for mayor.

Then why change my campaign slogan?

You’re twisting the meaning of the words. You’re disrespecting people of color.

Timmy raised his eyebrows in an overly dramatic fashion.

People of color?

Gino flinched like a timid boxer expecting to get hit.

That’s right, people of color.

That’s racist, Timmy said.

What’s racist?

You said people of color.

That’s what we’re supposed to call them.

Then why can’t we call them colored people?

That’s different, Timmy.

Sounds the same to me.

Like all Black people look alike?

You said it, Gino. I didn’t.

You really don’t get it, do you?

What I do get is that ever since the George Floyd riots white people are getting blamed for everything. My family never owned slaves. I’m Irish. We were slaves. White men particularly need to know we still matter. And I’m just the guy to tell them.

You sound like a Trump supporter, Gino said.

Timmy reached into the pocket of his blue sport coat, pulled out a cheap pair of aviator sunglasses he bought online, put them on and kicked into his best Joe Biden imitation.

Look, man, here’s the deal, he said.

Gino rolled his eyes.

Timmy spoke in the old-fashioned Scranton accent the way everybody’s lace-curtain Green Ridge parents sounded back when Biden was attending St. Paul’s Elementary School. They said ScranTun with a hard T instead of SranUNN the way the working-class pronounced the name of their hometown.

Listen, Timmy said. And this is no malarkey. Scranton lives matter because all lives matter especially Scranton lives because Joe Biden’s from here and we take care of our own.

Gino started to respond.

Will you shut up, man, Timmy said.

Gino gave up.

Whatever you say, Mr. President, he said.

New Year’s Day or no New Year’s Day, Mabel wanted her vaccination.

Pampered U.S. Sen. Bob Casey who lived just down the street got his shot and he’s only 60 years old, slithering his way into line ahead of her and every other vulnerable senior citizen in town. Smart-ass U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, that smirky little weasel, got the vaccine, too.

COVID or no COVID, me-first politics never changes among flunky establishment political hacks in hard coal country.

Dressed in a red K-Mart sweat suit matched with leopard print slip-on sneakers and no socks, Mabel grabbed an old-fashioned metal bottle opener from the drawer, popped the cap on a Stegmaier Gold Medal Beer and pulled up a chair to the kitchen table. Opening the yellowed scrapbook she kept since she was 12, Mabel started to read. A proud retired public librarian, Mabel knew her local history.

She knew about the Algonquin-speaking Munsee Indians (a subgroup of the Delaware) and the white settlers who entered the region in the mid-18th century. She knew the Electric City got its nickname when blood-sucking capitalists in Scranton developed America’s first electric-operated trolley system in 1886.

One of Scranton’s shrewdest elders, Mabel also knew Joe Biden’s past.

Sipping the first beer of the day while her son Casey secreted himself in the work space he created by the coal bin in the basement, Mabel paged through the thick chronicle she compiled and reviewed occasionally to remind her where she’d been. Some of those memorable times sparkled as some of her happiest times living with her mother and father in the Hill Section in the very same house where she lived after she married and gave birth to her boy, the very same house where she cared for her parents and husband until they died, the same warm home she and her son still shared.

Some of those times also broke her heart.

Polished brown oak stairs and amber floors shined almost golden in the afternoon sun. The house pulsed with character. So did Mabel. Draining her brew, she stood and went to the refrigerator for another bottle. With a snap of the wrist the cap flew into the air and bounced off the floor. Taking two long swigs, savoring the foamy, bitter taste, she licked her lips.

Mabel sure loved her lager.

But she loved equality more.

Tomorrow she would notify the Biden transition team of her request.

She already wrote the first paragraph of the email.

“I’m a nonagenarian feminist volunteering to help Joey lead the world, the nation and Scranton to a better place. That’s why I’m inviting him to accompany me to the next all-male Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner.”

Holding up a magnifying glass to a page in her scrapbook, Mabel read a Biden quote from an interview the then vice president did a few years back with a weekly Irish-American newspaper.

“Edward F. Blewett my grandmother’s father, was the first Irish Catholic state senator. He was also the co-founder of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Scranton around 1908. There is still a plaque in existence in Scranton showing he was one of the founding members,” Biden said.

Mabel knew Blewett was not the first Irish Catholic state senator in Pennsylvania. That distinction belongs to the Hon. William McSherry (McSherrystown, Adams County), 1813-1817, according to the official state Senate website. And she never met anybody who could locate the plaque Biden claimed existed in Scranton.

Mabel despised the Friendly Sons.

To this day these misogynistic misanthropes continue to inflict traditional Scranton Irish-American male chauvinism on the community. The dinner has grown each year into a must-go-to business and political event, so much so that about 1,500 tuxedo-clad sexists now gather to shovel ham, cabbage and potatoes into their fleshy gobs while swilling down drinks carried to their tables by underpaid women servers, the only females allowed into the party. Thus continues the lads’ dominant role in Scranton society where no women need apply for equal opportunity.

Mabel would show them the error of their patriarchal ways.

Time for change was long overdue, especially since Biden appeared three times over the years as the Friendly Sons’ featured dinner speaker, more than anybody who ever graced the dais with stale jokes and a heavily starched ego. Mabel pitied even the smartest, strongest women in town who feared these men and refused to confront the brazen injustice carried out by their husbands, fathers, brothers, lawmakers, judges and other elected and appointed public officials, including company men Sen. Casey and Rep. Cartwright.

Mabel long ago pegged her hometown as America’s death bed, a thick, lumpy mattress on which social evolution ends its run. Despite the city’s funeral parlor décor with pasty pallor, loyal natives loved the place. Scads of these male supremacists attended the segregationist Friendly Sons’ gala. Mabel called them pale penis people like they were some sort of alien life form that descended from outer space intent on taking over the globe. Maybe they were creatures from another planet.

Biden’s two faces might be all the proof civilization needs.

Mabel watched closely when Biden wormed his way into former President Barack Obama’s world as vice president. She knew Obama needed a back-slapping white man to pull votes from blue-collar white men like the Friendly Sons who might hesitate before voting for a Black candidate. She knew Biden often played up his phony white working-class roots on the campaign trail, especially focusing on Scranton and Pennsylvania, a battleground swing state that could determine the outcome of the presidential election.

Willing to say and do anything to become vice president, Biden said and did anything to become vice president.

Incensed when Biden swore he had an uncle who worked in the coal mines, Mabel became more livid at his lie when she saw Biden laughing on national television about how he made up the story to ingratiate himself to voters. Mabel took the insult personally because she did have family members who worked in the mines. After 45 years as a coal miner, her father died from black lung that collected anthracite dust in his lungs and formed deposits around airways called bronchioles, scarring and destroying portions of his lungs and blood vessels. Pneumoconiosis, known as black lung disease, eventually killed him.

When Biden’s overwhelmingly white middle-class cheerleaders boasted, “He’s one of us,” Mabel would sizzle with contempt and say, “No, he’s not.”

Mabel re-read the words she had pasted in her book when Biden’s mother died at 92 in 2010, and the vice president issued a statement. One sentence caught her eye and stuck in her craw.

“Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor.”

Guzzling the last of her beer, Mabel slammed the empty bottle on the table and again re-read the phrase “sense of honor.”

Yes, Joey, Mabel said. You are defined by your sense of honor.

That’s why Mabel would refuse to take no for an answer as to whether Joe Biden would be her date for the Friendly Sons’ dinner. Vaccinated and ready to shatter the banquet hall glass ceiling, Mabel and the new president would break new ground whether he liked it or not.

Mabel and Joey would attend the Paddy’s Day bash together.

And she wouldn’t wear a bra.

Lake Scranton lured Casey Weatherhogg even when it rained.

Now the weather changed.

The water froze.

Every morning back in August all you could see of Casey in the middle of the otherwise calm reservoir that provided drinking water to about 77,000 people was his bare behind, rising and falling like a hump-backed whale breezing through the open ocean. Diving and surfacing up and down across the big drink, Casey took great solace in the natural pool, a sacred substance where life began and would one day likely end. Humans are almost entirely water so, in Casey’s mind, when the world’s water turns toxic, life no longer exists.

Death prevails.

Eternal silence ensues.

Call it a day forever.

Casey always peed in the water before swimming to shore, a personal ritual that contributed part of his being, or peeing, as it were, to the body of water, the substance that provided existence in the first place. Giving back, if you will. Or, as the French philosophers say, wee wee. Stepping on land, Casey then dressed for his morning part-time job at the medical cannabis dispensary where he swept up, cleaned employee toilets and ran whatever errands his young hipster boss asked him to undertake.

Breaking for lunch at noon, Casey occasionally ate a homemade postage stamp-sized windowpane of acid with a picture stamped on the front of a multi-colored psychedelic baked potato with kaleidoscopic eyes. Casey dug spuds as his favorite vegetable and sometimes saw visions of dancing baked potatoes cavorting their way into the psyches of seekers who partook in the continuing Merry Prankster-inspired acid test of America. Over the years Casey slapped his trademark tiny hand-drawn baked potatoes on countless window pane blotter tabs of acid he cooked up and stored for a rainy day. A few thousand hits made their way to California where they are to this day considered cult classics by vegetarian trippers and others who value edible produce.

Making blotter acid gave Casey joy. But his cartoon drawings no longer sparkled. His poor little taters often looked like mashed blots rather than blotter, faded ink spots and amoeba purple haze, a scraggly mist hanging over the cold mountains of his mind. That’s why he worked feverishly to manufacture a better brand of acid to distribute more equitably to the masses, a sacred pursuit on which he spent years. Then last week, Christmas week, Casey hit big time. Untold liquid LSD doses now filled a 55-gallon stainless steel drum he bought with $739 of his pension and Social Security savings and kept in the basement laboratory he put together over the summer.

With a decent high school teaching retirement, Casey still struggled to stay sane. Like LSD itself that sometimes breaks down in direct light, Casey regularly resisted mental disintegration. Cracking up scared him so he tried to stay calm. Working to perfect the “Scranton Sunshine” he called his brand made him something of a gourmet acid aficionado and ready for the big time.

Still tripping after all these years, just last night Casey watched a strobe candle flicker madly against the walls of his room, dripping hot wax down the sides of an empty Bali Hai wine bottle he kept from Berkeley as a good luck charm. As the candle dissolved he pressed the button on an old can of shaving cream he found in the medicine cabinet until it emptied a thick white mountain of foam that covered his roll top desk top and oozed to the floor. Laughing so hard his cheeks hurt, Casey realized how insanity would own him if the drug failed to wear off or dragged him so deep he couldn’t climb out of the abyss. But he eventually regained equilibrium. The time he tripped before that he drove his van alongside three running horses led by a white stallion that raced him on the other side of a farmer’s fence. Watching their thick manes blow in the winter wind, Casey wasn’t sure if the acid had taken hold or whether he transcended the holy chemical concoction. Whinnying loudly, he was one with the galloping herd, the only time he consciously wanted to stay with the pack.

LSD isn’t for everybody but everybody can take a lesson from wanderers who open the doors to perception. Casey never advocated wholesale acid consumption for kids or pets or even adults in the 21^st Century. But the continuing corporate assault on the environment pushed Casey to action, turning him into a guerrilla eco-warrior who targeted everybody in command of the business world. That went double for politicians in cahoots with the system. Casey might not be right but he wasn’t wrong. OK, he was wrong, but that only fueled his Kamikaze sky pilot high-holy crusade to defend Mother Nature by any means necessary. Malcolm X would get it.

With a half-poached brain after all those journeys to the corners of his mind, with his brain stem parboiled but not yet completely fried, acid in the Scranton water supply made perfect sense to Casey. One final mission remained before Casey blasted into the ozone like Timothy Leary’s ashes heading into space for one last adventure at the tip of a rocket because, like the heads say, a trip is never a fall.

Especially in Scranton.

That stupid NBC television show “The Office,” set in Scranton but shot in and around LA, helped brainwash America into thinking Scranton was a happening place embodied by one memorable line from the show.

“Ain’t no party like a Scranton party.”

Casey knew better.

Goofy Joe Biden also helped indoctrinate the world about Scranton, too.

Casey would soon educate the planet about the difference between dumbass comedy and the president-elect’s hey-man silliness a truly civic-minded America didn’t really want or deserve.

If only Casey could figure out how to skinny-dip in winter. For now, he just skated nude on tissue-paper thin ice, waiting for the right time to make his move to walk on water. Tripping allowed you to walk on water all the way to Woodstock, bubbling memories that brought back three days of fun and music.

A little Scranton dysfunction (LSD) never hurt anybody.

In Casey’s world, ain’t no party like a Weatherhogg party.

A crown of bullets trumps a crown of thorns any day.

Earl Schmidt adjusted the fake gold tiara sitting snug on his head, gently touching the solid copper tips of bullets that encircled his noggin like cubic zirconia diamonds. Christ could have easily taken out those brutal Roman legionnaires if instead of a wreath of thorns he wore a wreath of armor-piercing rounds to load into a rifle and open fire before they pulled hammers out of their cloaks and started pounding nails into his hands and feet.

Earl’s new bride Zerelda sat snuggled close in the pew at their church in the Poconos, the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, also known as the Sanctuary Church.  The newlyweds met on Thanksgiving at the corner of Moosic and Meadow streets in Scranton during a pro-Trump rally. Joined by two dozen other church members, mostly natives of South Korea and Japan, they railed against communism and voter fraud. They praised Jesus and Donald Trump (not necessarily in that order) and demanded the commander-in-chief  be declared the winner in a crooked election.

Founded by two brothers who broke away from their father, Sun Myung Moon’s, Unification Church, Sanctuary believes in standing in the gap between what they determine to be good and evil. Earl saw evil everywhere he looked, even in Zerelda’s big amber eyes that made her look like one of those yellow-eyed tigers Adam and Eve kept in the Garden of Eden before Eve ate the apple and blew paradise apart forever. Earl and Zerelda would have eaten the apple before it even ripened, worms and all.

But, in a surprise move, Earl planned to break away from the church, packing up Zerelda and their meager belongings, mostly survival gear including fully automatic weapons, ammunition and cans of 13 different varieties of Spam to make the move to a new home in Scranton, just 25 miles away. If two Moonie escapees could do it, so could he.

Starting a new action church would be easy. All Earl needed was a couple-hundred-a-month in mortgage money for one of those dumps that once housed a robber coal baron and now sat empty and decrepit just waiting for demolition or a new owner. Whackers who refuse to accept Trump’s defeat would be easy pickings to recruit to the Cathedral of the Eternal Donald.

Earl Schmidt dreamed big. Together he and Zerelda would rule the universe. Or at least make enough money to retire in Atlantic City when the pandemic ended. Such lightning bolt enlightenment doesn’t happen every day.

A week later on Christmas Day Earl Schmidt stood before a packed living-room church loaded with “lost sheeple” praying for redemption. A cross between a local gun show and a high-holy hillbilly snake-handling ritual, the ill-advised and technically illegal gathering in the midst of the rapidly-spreading coronavirus brought tears to the eyes of the faithful.

Earl wept the loudest.

Zerelda also sobbed fat tears that rolled down her face and stained the front of her horizontal- stripe camouflage field jacket. She cried so hard she lost her breath. Pointing at his wife, pistol-packing Pastor Earl Schmidt spoke.

Speak to us in the tongue of the Savior, Earl said.

Zerelda inhaled and screamed the golden gospel taken from the exact capitalized words of a recent Trump tweet.

THE DEMOCRATS DUMPED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BALLOTS IN THE SWING STATES LATE IN THE EVENING. IT WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!

Devotees high on conspiracy went wild.

Hallelujah, sister! Sing it, sister! Fire in the hole, sister!

With eyes bugging out in rapture, the Right Reverend Earl Schmidt rushed to his wife’s side, knocking off her red and white Santa Claus hat equipped with a blitz action trauma (BAT) bullet headband. Wearing a tight tank top so his new hand grenade tattoos glistened red, white and blue like biceps of mass destruction, he consoled Zerelda. Again he commanded her to deliver the word. Spinning with the ease of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on the season premiere of “Dancing with the Stars,” this armed evangelical madman faced the crowd to demand additional scripture from his wife.

Who is Satan?

Zerelda answered.

Joe Biden is Satan!

Earl Schmidt went ballistic.

Where is Satan from?

From Hell!

Where is Hell?

Now Zerelda’s eyes bugged out as she wriggled like a lap dancer and hyperventilated the naked truth.

Scranton, she said.

A motley congregation of misfits, dishonorably-discharged military veterans, recovering addicts of all stripes and assorted other troubled and easily-led extremists began to chant.

Scranton!

Scranton!

Laying his hand in a healing gesture on top of his wife’s head of stringy blond hair, Earl Schmidt raised his eyes to the heavens and addressed the multitudes.

Looks like 2021’s going to be some hot new year in Hell, he said.

Grinning fiendishly, he corrected himself.

I mean Scranton.

Santa Claus is wearing a mask.

So why does Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey risk infecting his own neighborhood despite his protestations to the contrary?

Concerned for myself and others, as I always do before going out in public, I wore a black mask Wednesday as I headed out on my regular afternoon walk. At almost 70, I’m just another senior citizen in the Hill Section of Scranton trying to stay alive in this deadly age of COVID-19. Staying healthy always matters, but commitment to the common good is now crucial to survival.  

Sadly, not everyone behaves conscientiously. Too many of my neighbors, postal carriers, FedEx drivers and others who should know better recklessly flaunt their ignorance, defiance or both by refusing to wear a mask.

Bob Casey is one of the sloppiest offenders.

As I walked up North Webster Avenue at about 3:15 p.m., my powerful Hill Section neighbor stood in the street chatting amicably with a gray-haired man. They stood about two feet apart, not at all socially distant or seeming to care about risk. In his black topcoat, hypodermic-needle-thin Casey looked like a stuffy professional pall bearer.

Casey wore a thin surgical mask under his chin like one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame back when the team wore leather football helmets. Last of the legends Jim Crowley is long dead and buried near Scranton. I don’t want to join him anytime soon if I can help it. Casey, 60, shouldn’t want to run the risk of dying or killing his neighbors, either.

Casey didn’t adjust his mask as my wife and I drew closer. As I passed on the other side of the street, I tried not to inhale the stench of Casey’s brash carelessness, too close for comfort for my underlying medical conditions. Geisinger doctors have diagnosed me as suffering from hypertensive heart disease without congestive heart failure and nonischemic cardiomyopathy (HCC). Excellent health care, medication, daily exercise, a good diet and a disciplined lifestyle make me strong – as long as potential fatal disease spreaders keep their distance.

Steering clear of Hill Section feral cats fighting fleas is one thing. Worrying that my neighbor the senator might breathe on me is a different kettle of droplets entirely.

On July 2 Casey appeared with other Democratic senators in a video Casey highlighted in a Twitter message touting the civic responsibility to wear a mask.

Casey wrote: “Wearing a mask shows:

1. Compassion – the person near you could have, or care for someone with, an underlying health complication.

2. Humility – you could be asymptomatic.

3. Community – mitigating COVID helps us all. TOGETHER, we will beat this virus.”

In yet another show of humility, in a subsequent July statement released by Gov. Tom Wolf’s office, Casey said, “Public health experts continue to recommend mask-wearing in public, and ongoing research continues to support that recommendation. When you wear a mask, you are sending a clear message to others in your community that you care about them and their well-being as much as your own. I know that if we each do our part, we will beat this virus and be able to start safely rebuilding together.”

The death toll climbed.

The fight continued.

Science discovered a vaccine.

In a Dec. 20 statement, Casey said, “This morning, I received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. I will receive my second dose in approximately three weeks. I encourage all Americans, in consultation with their doctor, to get the vaccine when it becomes available to them. I will continue to press the Administration to work to ensure that all Americans can receive the vaccine in a timely manner and insist that vaccines be distributed in an equitable fashion, particularly at nursing homes where residents and workers face an acute threat from the virus.”

Equitable?

How equitable is VIP vaccine distribution when I’m more at risk than he is? And I’m willing to wait in line while those even more at risk get their shots first. Despite whatever law or privilege gives Casey special vaccine status, our local blueblood should be standing in line with the rest of us. Not only does he jump the queue, he mocks the vaccine with his own smug dangerous behavior.  

This is the same guy who says he likely already survived the coronavirus.

“My fever went away on its own by mid-April, and it was never recommended that I be tested for the virus,” he said in a published statement. “I was able to work during my illness, remotely engaging with constituents and staff and keeping a full schedule.”

Casey said the anitbody test “revealed substantial levels of COVID-19 antibody in my blood, significantly more than the amount required to qualify me as a plasma donor.”

“In an effort to help others fighting this virus, I will be making my first donation today in Taylor, Pennsylvania,” Casey said. “I encourage others who have recovered from COVID-19 to consult with their own physician to see if they may also be eligible to donate.”

“I will continue to follow the guidance of public health experts by wearing a mask in public and observing social distancing practices, and I hope that others will do the same to help slow the spread of this virus,” Casey said in the statement.

I, too, will follow the guidance of public health experts.

I, too, will continue to wear a mask in public.

And, I, too, will social distance – particularly when it comes to “Our Bobby,” an oblivious, inoculated white, male politician living the dream as a hypocrite.

No doubt about it, your honor, I am guilty as charged.

Former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies bowed his head and closed his eyes as if in deep, powerful prayer.

U.S. District Court Judge James “Big Jimmy” Flynn scowled.

You understand I will take your recent cooperation with the FBI into consideration, the judge said.

Yes, sir, your honor, sir, I sure as hell hope so.

Big Jimmy the judge banged the gavel three times, each crack louder than the last, so hard he worried he sprained his wrist and injured his normally limber vodka-pouring hand.

Order in the goddamn court, Judge Flynn said.

With his chin touching his chest, Harry Davies stood slouched and unsettled, unconsciously picking lint off his blue sport coat as the judge spit words dripping with scorn.

You also understand your status as a former Scranton mayor, if you want to call getting elected mayor of Scranton status, makes no difference in the sentence I am about to hand down.

Sir, yes, sir, sir, Harry Davies said.

Harry was ready for anything but figured Flynn ought to give him the benefit of the doubt since Harry used to play cards with the judge’s loser brother back when Harry was a Democrat before he flip-flopped and registered Republican and then switched back to Democrat again to run in the primary.

Big Jimmy Flynn grinned.

Twenty years for public corruption with no possibility of parole, he said.

Former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies’ eyes rolled back in his head faster than the spinning cherries on a classic casino slot machine. His knees buckled as he dropped, slamming his chin off the edge of the defense table on the way down. Rising from the bench, Judge Flynn stared with disdain at the unconscious convicted felon and hissed a harsh goodbye

For the record, you puke, my sentence has nothing to do with your not hiring my wife’s brother in the zoning office, either, Judge Flynn said.

When Harry Davies came to, new Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate number 76927-067-15008-067 vowed to get even with the whole goddamn system that oppressed, tortured, disrespected and stuck him in a minimum security prison camp. Not wasting any time on his second day of incarceration, Davies wrote a letter to President Donald Trump requesting a full pardon.

What better way for Trump to get even with Joe Biden than to pardon the most crooked mayor in the history of Biden’s birthplace? Check that: the most crooked mayor ever caught and imprisoned in the history of Scranton. What better way for Trump to get even than to unleash a pathological former crooked Scranton mayor to run amok in Joe Biden’s childhood heaven?

Harry mailed the letter in care of his buddy Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski, a die-hard Republican and Trump confidant. Besides, with a full pardon Harry could run for mayor again.

He could run for Congress.

Maybe even president.

Harry Davies started to feel powerful again.

If Joe Biden can win, anybody can win. If the so-called crappy kid from Scranton can pull off a presidential victory, a bona fide scrappy kid from Scranton can do likewise. Besides, after all Harry did for Scranton, the feds had the gall to indict him, convict him, sentence him and lock him up for what amounts to a life sentence. With all the phonies, bagmen, pervert priests and two-bit grifters running around just in the downtown alone, the government grabs him?

If Judge Dombroski knew what was good for him he’d come through like a champ and immediately pull the necessary strings to persuade Trump to cough up a full pardon. That old crook Dombroski would know Mayor Harry Davies had in his possession stockpiles of incriminating evidence to support a variety of crimes countless city, county, state and even federal elected and appointed officials committed during the time they corrupted every notion of public decency, citizenship and civic duty.

Who could forget that night at the county/city prayer clam bake when Judge Dombroski drank 12 lime vodkas and Mountain Dews and let that floozy red-haired hairdresser Shannon Kelly spank him with wet halusky whips? Harry Davies got video of that in living color so vivid you can see the buttery yellow marks the thick, cholesterol-rich egg noodles made on the judge’s bare behind.

And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of documented bold bribes, years of brassy kickbacks and careers made on audacious quid pro quos, bad behavior that backslapping Democratic tribal elders and their flattering flunkies in the Electric City ignore as they sing the praises of Scranton values learned at the kitchen table.

President-elect Joe Biden swears he learned everything he needed to know about life at one of those Scranton kitchen tables.

Under the table is more like it.

In the meantime, former Mayor Harry Davies had an immediate plan.

A prison break sounded good. Escape became the first order of a new day. Harry felt like a new man already.

In Scranton everything depends on how you look at it.