This was not exactly how I'd planned to spend a warm fall weekend, but since he was footin' the bill for the schoolin' I didn't have much choice in the matter. Determined not to waste an opportunity for a good drunk, I snagged three of my buddies and we hit the beer store, then headed out to the farm where Dad was pickin' beans. The detour to the beer store had us runnin' a little late, and by the time we got there Dad had the beans runnin' over the sides of the truck.

The local elevator was full-up and wasn't takin' anything in until they could get some rail cars, so we had to make a twenty five mile run to the elevator in Auxvasse Missouri. We'd been tipped off that the Hippy Patrol had a portable scales set up on Interstate 70. Since we were several tons overweight, runnin' the back roads to the elevator was the only option. This turned out to be the highlight of the day.

After listening to the usual broken-record-parental-type dissertation about what dumb-asses we were, along with several disparaging remarks concerning our ancestry, we piled into the truck and took off down the road. About five miles from the elevator, I spotted a dead skunk basking in the opposite lane of the road. The Missouri sun had ripened the skunk very nicely. It was swollen to nearly the size of a basketball. I buzzed on past, but the seeds of evil had been sown.

We made it in to the elevator without getting arrested, and unloaded the beans with no problems. I picked up the scale receipt from the office, then we headed back towards home. The old Ford was governed down to a 65mph maximum speed, and we were doin' every bit of that and more as we headed down the hill towards that dead skunk.

The boys were too busy swillin' beers to realize what was about to happen. About a hundred yards before impact I said "Hey, look at that big dead skunk!", and swerved over just enough to squash that sucker flat with the driver's side tires. It made a real nice "splatsplat" sound when I hit it. My buddies were laughing so hard I was afraid they were going to toss their cookies in the truck, but they got calmed down eventually. The stink wasn't too noticeable as long as we were moving, but when we had to stop it was "hold your breath and pray" time.

By the time we got back to where Dad was, he was waiting with a full hopper. I pulled up next to the combine, shut the truck off, and we flew out of that thing like it was a house afire. Dad was lookin' at us like we were stupid (which we were), and then the smell hit him. It didn't take him too long to figure out why we were all rollin' on the ground laughing our asses off.

There was dead skunk splattered from the front wheelwell all the way to the back of the grain bed. Dad called us every name in the book, along with a few that I'm sure he made up on the spot. Somehow, he failed to see the humor in the situation.