20 October 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2896: what an embarrassment

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“You're fired! Of course you're fired – out there being filmed by Uppity Foolery Watch up close and personal, drunkenly ideating about taking Lofton County back to 1820 when you can't even take yourself to a safe place to talk foolishness among yourselves! What an embarrassment you all are! You and you ilk are the reason I'm winning in the mayor's race while not even running, because at least people know I'm not going to put them back into serfdom and slavery!”

Donald Lee Garner Jr., mayor of Big Loft, VA who didn't even want to be but was going to be in office until at least 2025 anyhow, was ticked off. His full baritone was rolling through City Hall as if there were no walls, and he was just getting warmed up, going from room to room and just firing folks live and in living color.

“We're not even giving Uppity Foolery Watch a chance to get in here – you're going out to meet them! You've got ten minutes! Here's a box! Fill it up and get out!”

And this is how City Hall was purged of the old guard. Mayor Garner had all his paperwork together, having stayed up all night. The Big Loft Bulletin had someone willing to help the mayor out with details on deep background that matched with other things he knew about – so he was firing folks for cause, on good ground.

“I dare you to fight this firing – I dare you! There's this thing called discovery! Please try me! Lofton County is going bankrupt and needs money, and there's this thing called a countersuit! Or, go sit down out of my eyesight and earshot and pray that nobody else has a reason to dig into you like I have!”

The surviving staff and administration was called on the carpet next.

“Listen, get your lives together. If you see me on Uppity Foolery Watch, I'm resigning, but I'll be elected back. I'm winning going away, and I don't even want the job but will do my duty by the people! If I see you on Uppity Foolery Watch, you're gone, and I'm not bringing you back, so forget it! We've nearly had the county burned down three times in a year, and it's time for us to get our lives together and stop being the laughingstock of the English-speaking world! Go make up with your wives or your mistresses or husbands and gigolos or all of them. Get your financial life together – don't be out here doing some foolishness because you are overextended, especially since the county may not be able to pay its bills in about a month. If you need help, let me know – I'll find it for you. But this going out and acting a fool when whole neighborhoods are burning down or falling in, police precincts are falling over, and we've got a high school insulated with cotton candy and asbestos – no. Enough is enough! This is not how we are going to represent this county, and this county seat!”

Meanwhile, the mayor's cousin, Col. H.F. Lee, was serving at the rank of captain but, with the police department under conservatorship and the city and county in crisis, the resulting power vacuum had caused him to essentially be unofficial acting chief – and the Big Loft Police Department, against all odds and all the foolishness it had been doing, was also getting its life together.

Mayor Garner had seen the men he had fired that day talking about a “Lee takeover” because he, Col. Lee, and Capt. R.E. Ludlow all had Lee-of-the-Mountain grandparents. The idea was ironic, because …

“Y'all want to turn the clock back to 1820, but you are scared of a Lee whip hand?” he roared at the screen while watching members of his inherited administration through the Uppity Foolery Watch link his cousin Hopkins Lee had sent him. “Can you fools please pick a struggle – never mind, I'll pick it for you, on behalf of my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Col. Henry 'Light-Horse' Lee! I'll show you the Lee whip hand!”

“Threw all of them out like old slaves that just couldn't work any more -- I mean he jumped into his whole Lee temper and mindset,” Col. H.F. Lee said to Capt. R.E. Ludlow about it. “I know because they came over to police headquarters wanting the mayor arrested for treating them like that, and were not prepared for the fact that the mayor had talked to the district attorney and we had warrants for the two who were talking last night, and also six others – they were in the city and county tills, big time. Now those eight are locked up and the rest are trying to get out of the county before we find something.”

“Well,” Capt. Ludlow said, “it just goes to show you: be careful what you wish for, because you might get stuck between three Lee whip hands during their so-called takeover and think you are on the wrong side of 1820, too.”

“I'm waiting for people to realize men like us will run all over men like them if the country becomes anything like the time period they love,” Col. Lee said as he shook his head.

“A few more learned today!” Capt. Ludlow said. “Progress!”

“But see, Donald was merciful,” Col. Lee said. “He did it quick enough so the press of all kinds didn't have time to converge on the scene, and he didn't have the police come get them. If the billionaires of today turn that clock back, there will be no mercy.”

“Those that want it,” Capt. Ludlow said, “may well have to learn through experience. So be it. Those who survive will have learned.”