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the waning flames of the burn barrel Billy kept strategically located within eyesight of his porch, “it’s de cycling.” So cherished a tradition was the burn barrel around these parts that when Carolyn Sawchuck took her protest of the “ecologically barbarous” practice before the Swivel Village Board, Harley would have bet his pickup truck that it would never pass, but what he failed to anticipate was that Carolyn Sawchuck had done her homework and arrived waving inkjet printouts of a recent state statute outlining the environmental consequences of open burning and mandating the per-barrel fee. The motion passed on a 4–3vote and when the next round of tax bills arrived, all burn barrel owners were assessed a $25 surcharge, which Billy refused to pay on principle. Called before the board, Billy stood tall in his orange rubber clogs and insisted he would not pony up.
    â€œWell, it’s mandated,” said Vern Fosberg, the village president. “State makes us do it.”
    â€œAnd, Vern,” said Billy, “if I pull an open records request, I trust I’ll find your burn barrel registered? The one out behind your yard barn?”
    â€œThat’s an incinerator ,” said Vern, sternly. “Elevated and ventilated for a clean burn.”
    â€œThat’s a fifty-five-gallon drum stood on two concrete blocks and shot five times with a deer rifle,” said Billy, who in fact had tweaked his and Harley’s burn barrels in the identical fashion.
    â€œThe burn barrel fee is mandated ,” interjected Carolyn Sawchuck from her folding chair seat in the front row, waving a fresh sheaf of inkjet printouts for emphasis. In general, the Swivel Village Board meetings operated under only the most tenuous tenets of Robert’s Rules of Order, and this suited Billy fine, for he simply turned and said, “Yes it is, Carol.” He always called her Carol specifically because she insisted on Carolyn. “But your lease on the old water tower is not.”
    At this, Carolyn yanked her papers from the air. Among her many pet projects, Carolyn was especially dedicated to community betterment—whether the community wanted it or not. When Swivel had erected its new water tower, it slated the old one for demolition. In fact, the local scrap hauler, Margaret Magdalene “Meg” Jankowski, had submitted a salvage bid to the village board and it was on the verge of being accepted when CarolynSawchuck—at that time having been in town for only a matter of months—stormed through the door waving an e-mailed injunction (hers was an active and indignant inkjet) and declaring that in the interest of the “culture of community and the community of culture,” she had submitted the old water tower to the state landmarks commission and would henceforth be fighting for its preservation.
    Harley, being a closet sentimentalist, cherished the old tower. In contrast to the garish spheroid overlooking Clover Blossom Estates, the old tower better matched his childhood recollections of Swivel as a plain but good and decent place to live. That said, the tower came with liability headaches including drunken teenagers with spray-paint cans engaged in what was lately, even in these hinterlands, referred to as “tagging,” so he had come around to the idea of scrapping it. However, he had also come to rely on the monthly lease payment paid by the village for the privilege of keeping the tower on his land. If the old tower was demolished, these payments would cease, and with them his main means of paying off his outstanding student loan. Thus, despite his stoic’s trepidation regarding the very outspoken Carolyn Sawchuck, when she proposed—in the name of preservation—to assume the lease, he was secretly pleased.
    The village board, seeing an opportunity to wash their hands of the old tower and Carolyn Sawchuck in one fell swoop, tabled Meg Jankowski’s