The Key West Citizen

Wilbur Peeble Does Something Different In '51

By HAL BOYLE

NEW YORK (—Wilbur Peeble is the kind of guy who puts everything off to the last minute. Looking up from his evening paper in surprise, he said to his wife:

'Why, it's New Year's Eve tonight, Trellis Mae! And we haven't made any plans. What would you like to do, honey?'

'What would you like to do?' she parried.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Wilbur. 'Let's do something different for a change.'

'You want to do something different for a change?' she mused. 'Well, let's see. Remember when college boys across the country were swallowing goldfish? At a New Year's Eve party that year you went to the icebox and tried to swallow a three-pound trout.'

Wilbur said nothing, but coughed a little. The mere memory of that episode always made his throat feel sore.

'I will skip over the New Year's Eve of 1947, when you picked that fight with the policeman,' said Trellis Mae. 'Let's take 1948. H-m-m-m. We went to a night club and you loaned $20 to a total stranger from Keokuk, and we ended up walking home because you didn't have taxi fare.'

Wilbur flushed and chomped noisily on his breakfast toast.

'In 1949 we went to your boss's house,' continued his wife, 'and you did that tight rope walking act of yours across the top of the sofa. Everybody laughed . . . but the boss didn't laugh when you fell off and broke the floor lamp.'

Wilbur put down his fork. He no longer felt hungry.

'And last year,' came the pitiless voice of his wife, 'we had a party here. You invited a dozen people I never heard of, and you arrived four hours late yourself with a fellow you met at a bar and felt sorry for because he was alone.'

'I don't remember him at all,' mumbled Wilbur.

'Of course, you do,' prodded Trellis Mae. 'He was the gentleman who kept throwing firecrackers because he said New Year's Eve always gave him a Fourth of July feeling.'

'How did I know he had firecrackers in his pocket?' said Wilbur. 'Anyway, why do you always have to put everything down in a little black book? It isn't fair.'

Trellis Mae closed the book.

'All right,' she said. 'I just wanted to refresh your memory. You said you wanted to do something different this year. Well, what'll it be? Shall we go to the zoo and shoot a polar bear?'

Wilbur walked over and pecked her on the cheek.

'Aw,' he said. 'let's just stay home tonight all by ourselves, Trellis Mae, and watch the new year come in together.'

'That'll be a real change, my dear,' said his wife, and gave him a warm kiss and sent him off to work. Then she pulled out her little black book and wrote a single word in it:

'Victory!'