A Colonel by Any Other Name

Colonel Davis looks like he stepped right out of the Old South; picture him as a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders. He has retired from the oil business after a long and successful career. Now he divides his time between the golf course and the coffee shop, where you can generally find him charming all the widow women. I found him there yesterday evening with his usual adoring audience.

“Hey everyone,” I said. “What’s the Colonel trying to sell y’all today?”

Colonel winked at me. “Why, Ms. Shellie,” he said. “You’re breaking this old heart.”

My fake apology earned me a grin. “That’s better,” he said. “I was telling these fine ladies about getting hauled into court last week by some crooks trying to prove that I had snookered them on one of our last business dealings.”

I was hooked in spite of myself. “What happened?”

Colonel Davis took his story up where he’d left off, describing the big courtroom packed with sharks in three piece suits. But he saved his best adjectives for the prosecutor.

“That man was lower than a snake’s belly, girls. He tried his darnedest to twist me into telling him what he wanted to hear, but you know me, I was just as determined to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

We grinned, but no one said a word.

“Then,” Colonel said, “He just got plum sarcastic. They call you ‘Colonel’ he sneered. Would you tell the court in what regiment, and in what war, pray tell, were you ever a colonel?”

Colonel Davis paused for effect. “Well, Sir” I said. “It’s like this. The ‘Colonel’ in front of my name is just like the ‘Honorable’ in front of yours. It’s purely complimentary—and it doesn’t mean a thing.”

Hugs, Shellie