Let's bring you up to speed, which is a fairly poor choice of words, as Carl got himself in a heap of trouble by speeding. You see, Carl was cruising along as usual, two miles per hour over the speed limit, a speed he carefully chooses, figuring no cop would be chicken enough to stop him for that.

So when officer Dexter T. Flognart pulled him over, Carl sort of exploded. You might even say that he verbally climbed up one side of the officer and down the other. In fact, he never even gave officer Flognart a chance to get a word in edge-wise.

It was only when Carl got in front of the judge, that everything became all too clear. You see, Carl had not been driving in a 55 mile per hour zone when he was so smugly doing a steady 57 mph. Nope. As luck would have it, he had just entered a school zone with a 15 mph speed limit, but had not noticed the sign. So, instead of doing two miles an hour over the speed limit, he was a hefty 42 miles per hour on the hot side of the law.

Instead of throwing Carl into the slammer for a week, or nailing him with a hefty fine, the judge sentenced him to 40 hours of community service ... under the assignment of officer Dexter T. Flognart, the very man who had busted him!

We join Carl now, as he reports for the start of his community service at the local outdoor swimming pool:

Officer Flognart stood up on a milk crate and looked out over the group of 12 men, traffic offenders all. "OK, listen up you people. Swimming season will start pretty soon, so I want to see this place look like a million bucks by the end of this week. There are a lot of crummy jobs that have to be done, so I'm going to put a list of some of the better jobs up here on the bulletin board, and I'll allow you to volunteer for them as you see fit. After this, I will assign jobs not posted. So take a few minutes to study this list."

Carl wandered (what else?) over to the bulletin board and studied the list. Hmmmm. Nothing looked too promising. Scrubbing the pool. Painting the life guard shack. Cleaning all the pumps and filters. Painting the fences and gates. Fixing the roof on the life guard and maintenance shack. Clean all the equipment.

Carl turned to a big burly guy next to him. "Hi. I'm Carl. What are you here for?"
"Hullo. I'm Big George. They call me that 'cause I weigh 275 pounds. They got me for doin' 185 in a 35 mile per hour zone."

"What? A hunnert and how-much in a 35 zone? You can't be serious!"

"Serious as a dead rat. You see, I run an alcohol-burning funny car at the local drag strip, and was out one night doing some last minute testing on old highway 14. It's pretty wide and straight and you got enough room to shut down. I checked the road out ahead of time, but I never saw Officer Flognart sitting behind that Mail Pouch sign. He got me real good, and there wasn't a whole lot I could say. Hells-fire, he coulda wrote me up for 20 different violations, ya know, no mufflers, no registration, stuff like that. So I guess the speeding charge wasn't all that bad."

Carl shook his head from side to side. "Hmmm. You'd think he just woulda let you off. After all, you were just checkin' your machine out. This Flognart guy seems like a real hard-ball."

Big George scratched one of his chins. "He's pretty much a straight shooter, but he has a reputation where no one has ever beat him at his game, whether it's giving out tickets, or making people produce during community service sentences. He used to be in the Marines, ya know. And those guys are tough."

Carl bit his lower lip. "Not as tough as a Navy man, my friend. I think it's about time we teach Officer Flognart a lesson."

Big George smiled broadly. "Sounds good by me. So, which one of these jobs do we apply to, for starters?"

Carl shook his head. "None of 'em. These are all chump jobs. Let the geeks grab 'em." Big George and Carl stood back while the other men signed up for the jobs.

Officer Flognart checked over the sheet and got tight-lipped. "It appears that everyone but you two signed up for a job. That means you get the one job that's left; and that is cutting the grass."

Officer Flognart waved his arms around slowly, indicating the acres of tall green grass surrounding the pool. There was a whole lot of green land out there. "You two boys get that big lawn mower out of the shed and fire it up. You can take turns working it."

Big George and Carl went to the shed and extracted the huge old mower from a cluster of rakes, shovels, and garden hoses. It was a monster! Perhaps 25 years old, the mover had a huge flathead V-twin engine, and a gaggle of belts drove the giant four-foot rotary cutter. It had a three position gearbox - Forward, Neutral and Reverse - and the big rubber wheels were driven by a secondary set of belts.

They fired the machine up, and after emitting a black smoky cloud, and clattering like bowling balls in an empty box car, it settled down to a lumpy idle. Carl put it into gear with a grinding sound and drove it out to the grassy fields. He lowered the blade with a lever, and engaged the drive belts with another lever.

The huge mower lurched underway and started churning a swath through the knee deep grass. It was a warmish day and bugs were flying around everywhere. Up his nose. In his eyes. Sticking to his sweaty body. After a few passes, he turned the controls over to Big George.

It only took an hour or less for them to figure out that the mowing job was the bottom one on the heap. Between the bugs, the heat and the grass swirling through the air and covering them from head to foot, this was clearly misery on a high level.

Officer Flognart blew a whistle and yelled for them to take a ten minute break. Big George fixed a grassy-eyed stare on Carl. "I don't think we picked the best job available, old buddy. I think I'd rather spend the rest of my time in jail than behind that dag-blasted lawn mower."

Carl raised one eyebrow and smirked. "Not to worry, big fella. As soon as we get back out there after this break, that mower is dust! Trust me on this."

Ten minutes later, they were mowing away once again. As soon as they got out of sight, Carl stopped the machine. Big George was curious. "What are you gonna do, Carl?"

"Just watch for a minute, then pitch right in." With that, Carl started jumping up and down on the belts and twisting them around with a big stick. Big George got in the spirit of things and leapt up and down on the belts with gusto. Soon, all the belts on the mower were sagging like noodles. Carl and Big George walked back, and found Officer Flognart. "Hey, Dexter. You better get somebody to work on that machine. It won't even turn the blade or the wheels anymore."

Officer Flognart checked the mower out, agreed that it was hurting, and called the repair crew out. Carl and Big George sat around happily chewing while the crew replaced all the belts. Near the end of the day, they had everything working fine again, and the two guys headed back out to mow again.

"Now what?" asked Big George.

"Easy. We kill the machine. Just watch."

Carl got down and drained all the oil out of the engine, then moved the mower a good distance away from the evidence. He fired up the machine and starting happily mowing away.

Amazingly, the mover went for almost 15 minutes at full throttle before the engine started clattering and screeching, then made a coughing sound and stopped dead in its tracks with a loud clunking noise.

Ten minutes later, Officer Flognart was studying the silent mower. "Hmmm. Well, you boys call it a day. Looks like the repair crew has their work cut out for them."

Big George was impressed, and said so, as the two swilled down a few cold beers later on. "Smooth move, Carl! But what happens when they bring that thing back all rebuilt?"

Carl sucked the dregs out of a big mug and belched. "No problem-O! I ain't seen the machine yet that I couldn't break. Ya see, I've been off-roadin' for 40 years, and I've busted everything from dune buggies, to dirt bikes, to trucks, to all-terrain vehicles. To me, this is nothing more than another type of off-road vehicle. So all I have to do is abuse it. And believe me, this machine will go down for the count. Bet on it!"

The next morning, the mower showed up and the repair crew from the county said they had to put a fresh motor in it, as the old one had turned into a solid lump of metal.

Big George and Carl mowed for about a half hour, and then Carl pointed to a water pipe sticking out of the ground about a foot high. By leaning heavily on the bars, Carl and Big George were able to raise the front of the mower up, and then lower it down on the stout metal pipe - with the motor running at full throttle.

The sound of the blade hitting the pipe was horrendous, followed by the gut-wrenching sound of the gearbox spitting its teeth off the shafts.

A few minutes later, Officer Flognart was squatting by the machine, inspecting the mangled blade. Carl shrugged his shoulders. "Gee, sorry about that, Dexter. But there was no way we could see that pipe sticking up in the tall grass."

The crew came and took the poor machine away, and Carl and Big George got to take off early once again. But the very next morning, the repair crew showed up with a running machine once again. The crew chief had a suspicious look in his eyes.

"Don't know how you fellers managed to screw that machine up so bad. Lucky for you we had a couple of spare trannys in the shop."

Carl and Big George had to cut grass for a solid two hours, as Officer Flognart walked around the fields near them, keeping an eye on the work in progress. As soon as he headed off for lunch, Carl drove the mower over to the maintenance shed, stuffed it inside, set the throttle to full, then closed the door tightly.

The outside temperature was about 80 and soon the inside temperature of the shed got to be at least twice that. The dull roar of the motor changed pitch and heat waves could soon be seen rising off the roof of the shed. A few minutes later, a strangled sound came from the engine, and then it emitted a shriek, much like train wheels locking up on steel rails. Everything got silent, and whisps of smoke curled out of the cracks of the door.

Carl and Big George dragged the dead mower back out to the fields, parked it, and waited for Officer Flognart.

When he did, they really hammed it up. "Boy, I don't know what the heck it is with this machine, but I think you got yourself a real lemon here. I had me a International Harvester once that I couldn't keep running, no matter what I did."

Flognart gritted his teeth, said nothing, and once again called the county repair crew. They said nothing, but put out some very strange looks as they loaded the non-functioning machine in the back of a tired old flat-bed truck.

Still, somehow, the very next morning, the repair crew had the mower back, sitting there all shiny. "We never seen anything warped so bad. The barrels was banana-shaped, the valves looked like tulips and all the gaskets were melted off. It was almost like the thing was running inside an oven. But we put a whole new top end on it, and checked everything out. This thing should run for a couple a years now."

Thursday was pure misery, as Officer Flognart sat in the bed of his pickup truck in a lawn chair most of the day, watching Big George and Carl mow away. Right around two in the afternoon, he took off for lunch.

Carl let out an evil smile. "Now let's really get this machine good!"

Big George got all big-eyed. "I'm not so sure about that, Carl. We've only got one more day to work, so why push our luck?"

"It's a matter of principal, Big George. You yourself told me that nobody ever beat Dexter T. Flognart at his own game. So it falls to you and me to make him come in a distant second place."

George sighed. "OK. We'll give it one last shot and see if we can break him What do you propose?"

"Easy. First we get this thing good and hot. Then just follow my lead."

Carl put the mower into gear and headed toward the pool area. Then he put it in neutral and ran it up to full rpm for a while. He put some spit on his finger, and touched the fins; the spit sizzled!

"OK, we're ready. I'll grab the left handle; you grab the right one."

Carl guided the mower toward the pool, and with a mad look of glee on his face, pushed it in! A gut-wrenching cracking sound came from the mower, and a huge cloud of steam spiraled up to the sky. Big George and Carl tugged on the handles and dragged the heavy mower out. In minutes, it was bone dry. And deader than a moldy plank.

A half hour later, Officer Flognart showed up, and Carl started to explain the situation to him. Flognart held up his hand in protest: "Never mind. Just forget the story. You win. I don't know what the heck you've been doing to this machine, but the community simply cannot afford your community service any more. You two guys take off. And as for you, Fat Boy, I suggest that you simply leave town. I don't like losing."

Emma was surprised. "Carl! You're home early."

"Well, ya see, Officer Flognart let me off a day early. I guess because I was so community minded."

"How nice! Should we stop by and thank him?"

"Uhhh, maybe not. Let's just hit the road."