Boyle’s Double Take – Food at Stake

On January 4, 2020 when my Double Take writing partner, Susanne Bacon, suggested the unique photo below I was stumped. What was I going to write about? Susanne did not stage this one of a kind image. A friend of Susanne’s happened upon the actual scene in Germany and captured it with her camera. With a stroke of fun genius, Susanne titled the photo Food At Stake.

Between January 4, 2020, and February 13, 2020, I had not a single Double Take writing idea.  

It is unusual for me to suffer from writer’s block. Remember how I easily made something out of nothing with the yellow fire hydrant in this month’s Double Take? Getting skunked now would mean no Double Take for March.

In the face of this gloomy prospect, I maintained a high level of optimism. I confidently expected I would sit down with my 11”  laptop and bend the truth into a creative story. 

This morning at 7:00a, with Susanne’s photo in mind, it hit me. A story idea. A concept. Something imaginative. Something to have fun with. Something to write about. 

Starting with nothing but the single photo below, I harnessed my imagination for some creative storytelling. Some might consider my writing to be only slightly more than nothing, but it is something, none-the-less.

Step 1: Take final look at Susanne’s photo.

Step 2: Start imagining and begin writing.

Every morning I habitually step into my humanization chamber. For those not familiar with the Joe Boyle vocabulary, the humanization chamber is synonymous with the shower. If I skip my morning shower, I never come alive or wake up, and by noon, my unwashed hair makes me look like I am wearing axle grease. Many of my ideas and solutions to problems come to me during a long hot shower. I keep a waterproof tablet and a pencil that writes under water nearby, so as to never lose any ideas that shower down upon me.

This morning, my humanization chamber gifted me with just the idea I needed. 

By now, you might ask, “ After viewing the photo, where does Joe’s creative mind take him?” Please read a little further to find out. Look one more time at the photo, and then watch where my mind travels.

Do you remember Watergate, when former Republican President Richard Nixon was the target of impeachment? The impeachment effort was based on the allegation that he was involved with criminal activities including the 1972 burglary  of an office building that housed the National Democratic Committee (DNC). Additionally, Nixon was accused of trying to cover up the incident and then generating an 18 1/2 minute gap in the Nixon tapes, thereby destroying evidence. 

Now history repeats itself. Nancy Pelosi is launching her second attempt to impeach President Donald Trump. She bases her charge on what some consider “fake news.” An anonymous whistleblower stated that on numerous occasions, she witnessed President Trump at a local Washington, D.C., produce stand with his Secret Service entourage squeezing the fruit and thumping the watermelons in a rough, and rogue-like careless manner.

House Leader Pelosi is using the above photo as an eye catching promotional news image for the purpose of updating the title and thrust of the well known and historic Watergate scandal. Piggybacking off of Watergate, Pelosi is calling this new impeachment scandal, Foodgate. For President Trump, as he faces the next election there is a lot at steak. (If Mary Hammond is reading this, I offer an internal edit, …for President Trump, there is a lot at stake.)

The House ad hoc committee Pelosi is forming for Foodgate will also be tasked with investigating co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani for his alleged practice of eating bananas without paying for them, and then tossing the empty peels into the milk cooler.

Trump’s tweety*** reaction is one of disdain and a call to investigate what he calls the Criminalcrats for their own Foodgate conspiratorial crimes such as:

Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, who is promising to use tax money to give away free grapes laced with marijuana to help everyone, including illegals, get high on the United States so as to vote Trump out of office. 

Michael Bloomberg is promoting an innovative program that generates a head-tax on newborn babies to pay for fruit baskets containing Bernie Sander’s grapes. There is a catch. The populace can only get free grapes if they exchange their guns for grapes. The Grapes for Guns program is yet another backdoor way to undermine the Second Amendment.

***Trump refuses to acknowledge the correlation between the word tweet and bird as in bird brain. 

Stay tuned for late-breaking developments on Foodgate, and remember, you read it first in The Suburban Times.

Care to read Bacon’s Double Take? Click here.

Joe Boyle, author of the Suburban Times’ column “Westside Story”, and Susanne Bacon, novelist and author of the Suburban Times’ column “Across the Fence”, are sharing their thoughts about a variety of topics in their joint project of double features called “Double Take”. Comments are more than welcome, as they know that the world has more than their two angles – the more the merrier.