"A Short History of a Small Place" [.]

[fiefoe]

Time marches on, and the book winds down. One would like to think that there will always be plenty of 'engaging calamities' in store for the citizens of Neely.

Fittingly, I've been using a Monkey Year phonecard as a bookmark for it.

As Daddy sees it -

• Naturally everybody gaped at her straightaway since everybody had warmed up their gaping muscles previously, and Daddy said the harnessed energy of all those jaws dropping open at once could have electrocuted an elephant.
• The reverend... soared to new and rarefied heights of tediousness... Daddy said it was the most appropriate burial prayer he'd ever heard since we all died a little listening to it.
  
• Now the Neely Masseys, ... are adequately chinful people, but each one of them can catch rainwater in his ears without ever tilting his head. Daddy says there is probably some jackrabbit in the family somewhere.
  
• (At Mr. Britches, the monkey's well-attended funeral,) Daddy said everybody who is nobody was there.
  
• The world isn't ever the same place it used to be. It's a disagreeable and unfortunate fact, but Louis, it is a fact.