June 14, 2007
 
HUMOR: Letter to a Nephew
 
By Mike Harden
Scripps Howard News Service
 
News Item: A U.S. District Court has ruled that lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret has the right to file suit in Columbus, Ohio, against an international shipper who transported $538,000 worth of brassieres to a New Jersey freight yard where the underwear disappeared.
 
My Dear Nephew Mike, Monday morning, at just about the time your newspaper hit the sidewalk here in Methane, Ohio, Arley Stoops disappeared.
 
Nuisance that he is, none of us missed him much until we got a look at the story in your paper about Victoria's Secret and the half-million dollars in bras that went missing from a New Jersey freight yard before they could reach Columbus.
 
Well, none of us really ever believed Arley's story that he had stumbled upon a deal on 30,000 canary-yellow, D-cup bras on eBay.
 
He hauled them into town in an 18-wheeler in the dead of night and rented a storage unit at Earl and Wanda's U-Shove-It & Tanning Salon. Then he put an ad in the Methane Bugle announcing a rock-bottom sale on "select lingeries."
 
Well, I suppose about half of Methane's 4,600 souls are women, and I might be one of the few who didn't buy herself a heisted bra or two. If you can imagine it (and I'd just as soon not), even the 84-year-old Nutter twins, Ruth and Iny Rae, were tricked out in the Victoria's Secret Up-N-At-'Em model.
 
Anyway, after the big sale, Arley still had 27,632 unsold bras. But he is, if nothing, a persistent fella.
 
I showed up at a Methane High swim meet one day to see the whole team wearing bright yellow caps with strange-looking chin straps.
 
Arley had managed to get a contract with the school to supply swim caps, kneepads and athletic cups, all of which had been fashioned from -- you guessed it.
 
Last month's winner for originality at the Tri-County Sewing Competition was a king-size comforter whose quilt top was made from 239 yellow bra cups.
 
Arley opened a business called Twin Peaks Trampolines, do-it-yourself backyard bouncers, each done up with 400 or so stretched bras. He sold a few of the trampolines --more, at least, than his cushioned caskets for pet hamsters.
 
I believe that the most clever use of his ill-gotten product was a device he invented for the Nutters, who were forever calling the Gas-N-Go to get a jump for that old Studebaker their daddy left them after the Big War.
 
Arley told those girls that, for next to nothing, he could string together several dozen bras across the back of their carport. That way, when they returned from town, all they'd have to do is back the car in as far as that elastic would allow and then set the hand brake real tight.
 
That worked fine for a week. They'd let go of that hand brake and get launched about 40 yards out their driveway, where they'd pop the clutch just before they hit Two Pig Run.
 
That old Studebaker might be around today if they hadn't left its door open after vacuuming out the spilled Mail Pouch. Their dog, a big, slobber-happy, red-bone named Barney, jumped into the front seat and tripped the brake release.
 
The Studebaker, with Barney pawing at the steering wheel for dear life, went sailing out onto Two Pig Run, hit that ski-jump dip in the road and decapitated nine mailboxes. It was still going great guns when it smashed into the side of the Church of the Risen Lord just as the organist was practicing "Blessed Redeemer, Show Me a Sign."
 
I suppose the folks at Victoria's Secret could do us all a favor if they'd kindly come down here and repossess their stolen wares. You make sure you tell them that for me.
 
My love to all, Aunt Gracie
 
Mike Harden is a columnist at the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. E-mail mharden@dispatch.com.