The Cowchip Cafe: Cowchip Alabama, #3

By Norman E. Morrison

The Cowchip Cafe in Cowchip Alabama was all about good food until the day the insane space alien came for a hamburger with extra hash browns.

Disclaimer: No Space Aliens were harmed in the making of this delightful Cowchip Alabama Series tale. Any resemblance to space aliens living or dead is purely coincidental...

Cowchip/AL is an older southern city with a very strange heritage, as we learn in this humorous story. Lately influenced a great deal by the secret and sinister RYO Corporation, it never-the-less has quite a screwy history all its own.

You'll meet several of the local residents, all interesting characters, as they attempt to have their weekly coffee meetup. And everything is going just dandy until the strangely dressed alien from beyond space arrives for a hamburger with a triple order of hash browns.

It's ripping good southern style humor with a decidedly devilish twist, all served up on toasted buns, just a quarter turn out of what you expect. It's what you have come to expect from anything to do with Cowchip/AL! (Yankees love this stuff!)

You'll be mighty pleased to read and share with a pal, or the hash browns are on the Roll Your Own Corporation (RYO)

Rated PG. 48 fun packed pages. Another fine book in the Cowchip Alabama series!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Norman E. Morrison
• Release date: Jul 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9798224324453

Book preview

The Cowchip Café

The Cowchip Cafe in Cowchip Alabama was all about good food until the day the insane space alien came for a hamburger with extra hash browns.

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Cowchip, Alabama, is a small southern town located not too far south of Chickafinne Mountain ‘neath a field of stars, or so goes the description etched into the multi-cracked white marble obelisk in Jaycee Park just off the square below the courthouse. That’s the eight foot high pointy thing next to the old World War I cannon which is welded shut so the kids can’t shoot it off with firecrackers on Independence Day.

In this part of the world the sun seems to rise a little slower than in other places. Occasionally it rises not at all and the town must prime the growling old pump to sluice the sunshine in manually.

It's an odd mixture of what's new and what's old. New attitudes, old attitudes, progress versus letting things stay the way they have always been. Through it all, the four faded silver, yellow, and mildew colored traffic lights change from red to green every fifty four seconds or so, just as they did when granddad was a pup nursing on great grand mama’s breast. Or maybe that was before they had four lights. Possibly just one.

On second thought, most things really don't change in Cowchip, but don’t let that put you off a good story because Cowchip has always been just a little different, and that is being polite.

The name of the town has at least two possible origins. The Cowchip Historical Society, a social club whose register reflects the better dressed ladies of the area issued a report back during the late fifties declaring that the town had been named for old chief Watpokie's son, Cowchip, which they claimed was a genuine Creek Indian name.

The other story, the one that everyone else tells, was that early on, the pioneers got so hungry they would boil and eat cow turds.

The Night Before

By night, as seen from the Tentuck ridge which rises to meet the spine of Chickafinne Mountain northeast of town, a haze of cold fog and wood smoke lay over the sleepy little village. A short string of street lights (Some not lit because of a raid staged by BB gun crazed children some years before) led the eye to the city square and the old combination courthouse/city hall, flanked by little shops on all four sides.

Farther along, short residential streets radiated outwards, with smudgy yellow window lights illuminating the mostly turn of the century houses. Further out still were sporadic collections of post World War II homes, built to acquire money from the returning service men.

Elsewhere, Lewis Stubbs, a comparative newcomer to town, for he had settled there shortly after Korea, beat his gloved hands together, trying fruitlessly to stimulate warmth. It was he that was standing upon the side of the mountain, looking down on the town, an old 30 caliber carbine slung over his shoulder.

It was a cold February late evening, and the wind was starting to pick up. He swore to himself, wondering for the millionth time in his life what he was doing out here in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, when he could be home smoking and drinking, tending the fire.

Actually, he was hovering over a small baited clearing waiting for a deer to show. He was hunting at night, with a light, and out of season to boot.

That, and owning a cafe was what he did. Hunting, getting ready to hunt, and keeping the popular dining room open didn’t leave much time for anything else. Well, there was fishing...

Even those who despised his hunting habits gave him the grudging respect due the master. So, it was Lewis Stubbs,