a stick
of candy.)

SIMMS: (To his children) Run on home to your mother and don't get
dirty on the way. (The two children start primly off down the street
but just out of sight one of them utters a loud cry.)

SIMMS'S CHILD: (Off stage) Papa, papa. Nunkie's trying to lick my
candy.

SIMMS: I told you to go on and leave them other children alone.

VOICE ON PORCH: (Kidding) Lum, whyn't you tend to your business.

(TOWN MARSHALL rises and shoos the children off again.)

LUM: You all varmints leave them nice chillun alone.

LIGE: (Continuing the lying on porch) Well, you all done seen so much,
but I bet you ain't never seen a snake as big as the one I saw when I
was a boy up in middle Georgia. He was so big couldn't hardly move his
self. He laid in one spot so long he growed moss on him and everybody
thought he was a log, till one day I set down on him and went to
sleep, and when I woke up that snake done crawled to Florida. (Loud
laughter.)

FRANK: (Seriously) Layin' all jokes aside though now, you all remember
that rattlesnake I killed last year was almost as big as that Georgia
snake.

VOICE: How big, you say it was, Frank?

FRANK: Maybe not quite as big as that, but jus' about fourteen feet.

VOICE: (Derisively) Gimme that lyin' snake. That snake wasn't but four
foot long when you killed him last year and you done growed him ten
feet in a year.

ANOTHER VOICE: Well, I don't know about that. Some of the snakes
around here is powerful long. I went out in my front yard yesterday
right after the rain and killed a great big ol' cottonmouth.

SIMMS: This sho is a snake town. I certainly can't raise no chickens
for 'em. They kill my little biddies jus' as fast as they hatch out.
And yes ... if I hadn't cut them weeds out of the street in front of
my parsonage, me or some of my folks woulda been snake-bit right at
our front door. (To whole crowd) Whyn't you all cut down these weeds
and clean up these streets?

HAMBO: Well, the Mayor ain't said nothin' 'bout it.

SIMMS: When the folks misbehaves in this town I think they oughta lock
'em up in a jail and make 'em work their fine out on the streets, then
these weeds would be cut down.

VOICE: How we gonna do that when we ain't got no jail?

SIMMS: Well, you sho needs a jail ... you-all needs a whole lot of
improvements round this town. I ain't never pastored no town so
way-back as this one here.

CLARK: (Who has lately emerged from the store, fanning himsel