Fears

We got this new electronic sign down at the bank. Everyday they put facts (world, sports, entertainment, etc.), cute little sayings, and a few advertisements up for us to view as we get our banking done. Yesterday they had a little quote from a comedian who claimed while a lot of people had a fear of heights, he had a fear of widths. Got me to thinking about Dervon Catchwear, a guy who runs a one-man farm over on the other side of the lake. Dervon had, and I'm not sure you would call it a fear as much as a dread, of widths. If he had had his way the walk to town would be a mile shorter and while he was proud of his property he would just as soon have had the distance shrunk to accommodate a shorter walk to survey his land. When his wife wanted to buy a king size bed he put his foot down and said he had enough trouble finding her in the bed they had. He wore  his clothes and shoes too tight and that made him limp a little and gave him the appearance of Ichabod Crane.
Well, he was cured. What happened was this guy came to town giving rides in a hot air balloon. Cleaveron Wheeler dared Dervon to go up and Dervon accepted the dare. He claimed he had absolutely no fear of heights. This wasn't the case. As he was floating a few hundred feet above Harper Lake an unexpected stiff breeze sent him and the pilot drifting off course and they found themselves in the next county and on their way to the coast and the Gulf of Mexico. When the balloon operator saw the waters ahead he managed to get the balloon down in a field just south of Poplarville. Cleaveron was following them in his car with his youngest son looking up and acting as navigator. They all got back to Harper safely. Dervon claims he is now afraid of heights and to a high degree. His fear of widths has diminished as far as we can see in his everyday actions. And his wife got her new bed.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle