DUCKS....based on a true story

                        "It ain't quackers till I say so.." - R. Raphe

Once Upon A time we lived in a small town. A very small town.  It had a population  of five hundred and one . The “one” being the dog  who was given  a home at the firehall. As kids we all played with that dog. Our neighbour was  a Ms. Ducks. Her real name, by the way.

   She was a bit of a quack. She liked carving ducks to sell  in the local Saturday market. She was also the town seamstress. She made most of the  dresses for proms, or weddings.  Of course, the high school was  very small. Only 50 of us, give or take.  For prom the principal  had to invite a couple of other high schools outside of town to participate.  It was always a big deal.  

The mayor got a photographer from the big city, his wife made  snacks . Sometimes there were  donuts.  Each of the grads paid $30  a piece to get pictures. The boys   went to the big city to rent tuxedoes. Everyone  wore sneakers. Or cowboy boots.  The girls hired Ms. Ducks to make their dresses.

Ms. Ducks designed all of her fancy dresses with polka dots and a smattering of gold braid.  She always designed one for herself to wear at the market. Advertising her thriving sewing  business. 

We used to go down there, just to see what she was wearing. She always had the biggest gold braids draped across the sleeves. This past weekend she had on a  dark blue number with gold braid trickling down her sides. Had a military feel to it. Sometimes she  would march with the town’s River Cadets in the Founders day Parade. They gave her a uniform for that. She liked best to salute the podium as  she  marched by. 

Everything was going along just fine, then Ms. Ducks decided to concentrate on her  wedding dress business. She took to it like  a hunting dog searching for ducks. The girls who had prom dresses now wanted wedding dresses and Ms. Ducks  obliged. She designed a walkway through her vast fields on her property. A walkway where her brides could put on fashion shows. 

She not only invited the  families of the brides but gave an open invitation to other towns. Not many people came, though. She charged each person, even the brides in the shows,  $15  a person. They had to bring their own chairs.  The first show she may have had fifteen people.  She herself was the announcer. She wore  one of her wedding dress creations, resplendent in polka dots and gold braid. That turned out to be her theme throughout. They were all dripping with gold braid.

At the end she herself walked the  runway she had created , waving and smiling. Eventually tripping on her long tulle wedding dress. She broke her arm. It shut down her wedding dress business, which was okay cause not long after a small plane mistook the runway for the airport. It  landed in the field. To the delight of all the town children who ran to see. 

Ms. Ducks  got   fined for building a runway in the first place. No permits.  But she fell in love with the pilot and they got married the following  year. She wore one of her wedding dress creations, with the polka dots and gold braid. She insisted he wear his aviator outfit. He looked quite dashing

They opened a Duck  shop in the village where they sold  duck decoys. Ms. Ducks  never made any more wedding dresses. 

Eventually, she had to turn over all of the gold braid she’d been using to the local River Cadets who found out she’d been pilfering  braid from their storage lockers.  They only figured it  out when they saw her wedding dresses at the show.  

Ms. Ducks was charged and had to pay a fine. The judge, who was her cousin twice removed,  allowed her to keep her duck shop.  

Her new husband,  one day, flew off into the  sky to never return. Very mysterious .

Ms. Ducks  maintained  he had flown off  over the ocean, though she had never  seen the ocean, and didn’t see him leave. His plane was gone. But no one ever saw him fly off. 

Though it was noted that a plane had been sold to the scrap yard four towns over. But that was never confirmed. 

It was not long after that Ms. Ducks started sewing military uniforms for the high school theatre class production of  “ Flyboys “, a little known musical.

She never wore a wedding dress again, but she was seen to wear an aviator cap for those Saturday markets where she sold her ducks.  

Like I said, she was a bit of a quack…

 Photographs 2023