A New King
Prince Leonard contemplating whether to chastise The Jimtown Department of Public Works for leaving their raft on the beach all summer.
The Jimtown Enquirer was honoured to host an inspection of our offices by the young Prince this week.
Arriving unannounced midway through an impromptu Royal tour, he bounded down from the door of the late model Tacoma opened by chauffeur Chris Chisholm and immediately set to work, nose to the ground.
Young Leonard, named in honour of the late Leonard McCarron of harbour road fame, has big paws to fill.
King Goober, his grandfather, likely still parades through the dreams of unneutered females and bylaw enforcement officers – though for different reasons.
He could smell a female in heat as far away as the Cape and would be gone.
Through the Kennedy’s corn fields, over the Mackenzie’s pastures, nose to the ground, quick to defend his Crown and kind to children.
He famously drove a black bear off a deer carcass in the rough country behind Jimtown as an old dog.
Because that’s what you do when you’re King.
He came to the defense the Jimtown Enquirer’s little old Mya when she was being bullied by larger dogs, because that’s what you do when you’re King.
In his later years he got a bit grouchy and took grim satisfaction from putting the run to the scattered intoxicated college student wandering home from the pub, but was never forced to suffer the indignity of weakness.
His passing this spring broke the heart of his chauffeur and Chisholm Castle rose the black flag of mourning on Pleasant Street.
A parade of middle aged humans conscious that their lives may have been marred by countless reasonable compromises arrived with bowed heads and bottles of whiskey or pizzas as tribute to the closest embodiment of a real man they’d ever known.
Then as winter’s misery yielded to the season of ripe blackberries and deer fattening on the wild apples of the Cape George peninsula’s forgotten farms, a new prince was chosen from the late King’s rather extensive progeny.
He has big paws to fill, for all of us.
The King is dead.
Long live the King.