WHO ME, DWI?: Now, over in the gangrenous pit of urban squalor that lies directly across the river from our happy little burg, a scandal of epic, or as epic as they bring themselves to muster over there, seems to be brewing. The city manager finds herself in a bit of a quandary due to a singularly silly indiscretion, although the local political bigwigs contend that she continues to enjoy their absolute, total, and unqualified support, at least for the time being. The exact chronology, along with most of the really pertinent facts, are a bit hard to come by right at the moment, but it would appear that the city manager attended a retirement party for the chief of the local gendarmerie and, upon leaving, managed to smash the city owned SUV she was driving into a tree. A local citizen came running out of his home to render assistance as any good citizen should in a situation like this, but by then the city manager had fled the scene in said SUV, the SUV having sustained a massive U-shaped dent in the engine block. In her wake the city manager left behind, among other things, a pile of smashed automobile glass, several pieces of miscellaneous metal, and one of her license plates, a clue that the crack team of local Sherlocks put on the case did not hesitate to follow up on.

When confronted with the overwhelming evidence against her, the city manager claimed that she swerved to miss a deer, which is plausible, given that deer are as common as rats in this neck of the woods; what a bit less plausible is her claim that she somehow managed to break three bones in her left foot while walking her dog later that night and didn’t notice this fact until the next morning. The city manager denies categorically the insinuation bandied about by some members of the local news media, several police officers, an eyewitness with perfect vision, another eyewitness with not so perfect vision but who got a great deal on his car insurance by switching to Geiko, five squirrels, one opossum, and a mob of Jehovah's Witnesses standing in a field of barley awaiting the imminent return of their Lord and Savior that she drove into the tree while under the influence of alcohol, claiming that she drank but one glass of wine at the aforementioned retirement party. The Passing Parade has no further thoughts on the subject, other than that the city manager’s dog must be the size of an elephant and that we could use a bottle of whatever it was she was drinking.