CHAZZ: Shapleigh's Tribunal of Nanas

Last month Cousin Chazz posted his first dispatch from his travels across the state of Maine while hiding out from various authorities.  It was called KEZAR FALLS IS MAGIC, and can be read HERE.

He's back this month with a story on the unique traditions of marriage and governance still followed in Shapleigh.  

Shapleigh follows the old ways of governance; mayored by a committee of nanas, grammies, and mammies, all appointed for life, each day this court of grams meet over a glass bowl of ribbon candy to discuss who in their flock should or shouldn't marry whom.
There hasn't been a marriage in Shapleigh these ladies haven't decided on in over a hundred and fifty years, not since Hebidiah Wentworth went against the wishes of the grah-mamas to marry the fair widow Millet -- of that tragedy there is an excerpt in an old book of York County maps dated back to 1857 -- just who inked the rectangle around the old Wentworth estate is lost to history, but beside it is written this:  Hebediah Wentworth who married the widow Millet over the protestations of the Nanas that the widow, while still healthy in form and visage, held no lands or wealth, died on his wedding night when a giant ball of yarn ran him over... his considerable land holdings go to the town of Shapleigh, as the marriage to widow Millet was unconsummated.

+ My time in Shapleigh I worked shucking fennel and clipping tarragon for Will the fish butcher, who makes Shapleigh's most delectable treat, perch sausage.  Over the months I was accepted into the community.

Too well accepted actually, for there came a day when the Mimis called on me to stand before them in the Shapleigh Sitting Hall of Justice.  They wanted old Chazz to stay on, and to marry fair young Penelope Corpse.  It was an enticing proposition, any who ever saw Penelope Corpse running her skid steer in the moonlight remarked how she looked like a cross between Joan Holloway and a marmoset.  Maybe it could have worked.
But, as you know, Chazz is a ramblin man, goin from town to town with my trusty six-string, lovin and a living and a teachin and a humpin -- Chazz doesn't abide by The Man's absurd rules about street signs, and marriage, and that fooey about if you don't drink water you die -- not this desperado.  
So I did what I do, and snuck out of town on the eve of my wedding day.  I hitched a ride with a troupe of actors.  

For a week I couldn't sleep.  Admittedly I was afraid of retribution like what I suspect fell upon poor Hebediah Wentworth, but my restless nights were caused more by having to listen to those goddamn actors' improv exercises.