Not in My Bacyard!

"What?" I said, not paying a whole lot of attention. Hell, the race was on TV and my favorite guy, Morgan was running in 3rd.

Dang, 3rd place and moving up, wow. It had been years since he even got into the top 10 but I always loved to watch the guy race for some reason.

I scooted forward in my seat, feeling my own body strain as I tried to help mentally push Morgan forward. I took a pull on my beer, splashing some into my lap in my excitement.

Morgan drove down deep into the corner, going for it, just two laps to go. Another car came down too, trying to get inside. I saw the front end drift up, Morgan's car turned and backed into the wall.

"Goddam crazy dumb ass mother fucking son of a BITCH!!" I yelled, jumping to my feet.

"Dan, are you listening to me?" Mary asked.

I looked at her, she was standing with her hands on her hips, I knew what that meant.

"Uhhh...what, honey?" I asked, taking another pull on my beer.

"They are planning on building a garbage burner, right here in the middle of town."

"Garbage burner? Who? What is that all about?" I asked her, trying to look at the TV screen and her at the same time.

"Garbage burner! The County has plans to build one, right HERE!" She said, looking a little miffed.

"Oh. Well, I guess they have to do something with all of it." I headed past her into the kitchen to get another beer.

"Sit down and listen to me, we have to do something!"

"We? What are we going to do? I mean, if they want to build it...."

"Those things pollute the air, plus there will be trucks and smell, right here in our neighborhood!"

"Oh, I don't think...." Was as far as I got.

"They spew out Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, 2-3-7-8 tetraclorinated diabenzo P Dioxin!!"

"Uhhh... 2? 3? dia....what?"

"You heard me, we have to stop it."

"Mary...."

"Well, if you won't help I will do it myself!" She stormed off into the other room, picked up the phone and called someone.

Later that evening, six housewives showed up. They huddled in the living room, I sneaked off to the garage to pretend to work on something. I was busy cutting a piece of pipe when the door opened.

"We need you in here, Dan."

"OK, just a minute."

"I mean now, it's important."

Whimpering, I followed her into the living room. Mary introduced all of the women, the names went inside my head and out the other instantly.

I knew the one woman, her name was Pam. I had seen her a few times here and there, nothing close but someone I said hello to. She was at the perpetual age 39 stage, with the long flowing hair dyed several different colors, the way too young flowery outfits, and one button on her blouse too many unbuttoned all the time.

"Hello, ladies. What's up?" I gave out my best and brightest smile.

"This is our citizen's group, we are going to hold some town hall meetings, protest the burner." Mary told me.

"Oh. Well that's nice." I answered, thinking once they got to their hen party going again I could sneak back out to my garage.

"You are our chairman." Mary said flatly.

"Chairman? What? Me? I don't think...."

"We need a male figurehead, those commissioners won't listen to any of us." Mary said.

The women all nodded.

"What makes you think they would listen to me?" I asked.

"It's just the way things are, no sit down."

I sat down with a sigh. One thing about my Mary, once she gets an idea in her head I had found it was best to just humor her, otherwise....

Besides, give it a couple of days, it would all blow over and I could get back to doing what I wanted to do anyway. So I sat there in the chair pretending to listen. It really wasn't too bad since Pam was sitting on the end of the couch closest to me and her blouse was unbuttoned.

There didn't seem to be any T-shirt or nothing under there, either. Pam kept glancing my direction, smiling. I had to keep averting my eyes. Then she turned my way slightly and let her right shoulder fall forward and a tiny little breast capped with a big black nipple popped into view.

"You will do fine." Pam was saying.

"Do fine at what?" I was suddenly paying attention, I forgot all about the free peek.

"The speech." Mary said.

"Speech? What speech?"

"Haven't you been paying attention? The first meeting is tomorrow night, you are going to be the moderator."

"Moderator? Me? I don't think..."

"God damnit Dan! This is serious, pay attention!" Mary got that tone in her voice, I paid attention.

"OK. What do you want me to do?"

"Well, you will give a short talk explaining the proposal and some objections, and then we will do a question and answer session and get some ideas of what to do."

"Talk? You mean speech? Hell, I don't have a clue....."

"You will. We have all the information right here." Mary picked up some flyers and documents, handed them to me.

Groaning, I began to read them. The women sat around and chatted, busy convincing themselves the project was a terrible idea. Pam had sat back so her boob was out of sight, that helped me to concentrate.

I figured it was no big deal, we would go down to the community meeting hall. The women would show up and we would all chat, that would be it and maybe the end of it. I could get back to working on my stuff.

By the next afternoon I had read all the material, it wasn't that hard, just completely and totally boring. The County had a problem with a landfill closing, so they had contracted with a nearby major city. Some huge company from back east would build the thing, I had even looked at the plans.

It was a bit more than piling up a pile of garbage and setting it on fire. The whole deal was millions of dollars, piles of cash in environmental investment tax credits were involved.

By afternoon I had it figured out that the company would get millions in taxpayer dollars, the county would get hundreds of trucks running up and down the streets, and lord knows what kinds of pollution would come out.

Fat chance of stopping that, I thought. But what the hell, get it over with. I knew damn good and well that the only people that would show up would be the women, I could deal with that.

I started to get nervous when I saw a dozen cars in the parking lot. There were already 20 people inside when we walked in. Mary had me sit down up on the little stage, I looked out and people kept coming.

Now what in the hell? Finally the room was full, there were at least a hundred people in the room.

There was nothing to do but stand up there and open my mouth. I had a few opening lines and then all I planned to do was talk a little bit about the plans.

Thank God for my college speech classes, I thought.

I stood up.

A sea of faces looked back at me. My mouth went dry, I reached for a glass of water that Mary had thoughtfully placed right there.

"Garbage burners pollute!" I said. The microphone picked up my voice, it was louder than I expected.

"We know they do because they have to go to the Department of Environmental Quality to get PERMISSION to pollute!"

There was a spattering of applause. I hit my stride, and went on to tell of the proposal.

There was a stronger round of applause after I finished, then a long question and answer session.

Afterwards, I must have had my hand shaken no less than dozens of times, some even suggested I run for County Commissioner.

I was a bit proud of myself. Mary hugged me, we went on home.

"There were two reporters there, we will get lots of press over that I think." She told me.

I got so seriously laid that night that I was thinking maybe I should give speeches more often.

Mary even climbed on top of me the next morning, her nice round naked titties brushing against my chest. That was fun, the morning Sun was shining in the window and I cupped both of them in my hands.

"That sure went well last night." Mary said.

"Yea, I outdid myself." I grinned at her.

The local newspaper showed up the next week, we eagerly fanned through it to see what they had to say. On the fourth page there was a tiny headline, a blurb about a "small" opposition group.

That was it.

"The damn County has the press in their back pocket." Mary wailed. "Now what do we do?"

"Write letters, go picket the Commissioners office maybe?"

"That's good idea, I will get the girls together."

At the next County meeting Mary and Pam and several of the housewives stood outside with their signs as the meeting went on. The officials walked by, nodded and smiled and kept right on going.

There was no story about their protest in the next newspaper.

Next they went to the meeting itself, several stood up to talk to the commissioners. They all smiled and nodded and said thank you and that was it.

The County chairman was a white haired old guy, he had the usual constant smile on his face. I chatted with him a bit, he told me quietly that I was wasting my time, the deal was done and that was it.

"Not a damned thing you can do, Dan." He sneered at me. My jaw set a bit at that.

There was a story in the papers on the front page, it was about how the new project would bring hundreds of jobs, millions of dollars in economic development. There was even some comments about the "hard" work the commissioners had done to benefit the community.

By this time I had discovered that the company would sell the project, build it, train operators for 30 days and then leave with no recourse, taking millions in State tax credits with them.

Hell, I could figure that part out. I also figured out the part about the County Chairman owning the local concrete plant.

Mary and Pam and the other women kept right on holding meetings, but they were getting nowhere.

It was Pam that came up with the idea.

"Let's all go protest topless!" She said. I was sitting right there when she suggested it.

Yea, let's!" One of the other women said.

"I don't think I want Mary to....." Was as far as I got.

"We have to do something, they are all ignoring us!" Mary said.

"Are you serious, you want to go stand out there topless in public just to get attention?" I asked.

Mary blushed, but she shrugged.

Great. My own wife bare chested in public in front of everyone we know? I protested the idea but Mary's jaw was looking stubborn. Pam just seemed excited at the idea.

There was a couple of meetings after that, the women sat around huddled together. Pam notified the newspaper that they might want to have some reporters there, dropping some hints that it would be spectacular.

I was thinking of going somewhere to hide, but then I decided I wouldn't miss this for the world.

I also had a feeling that probably half of the half dozen women would not go through with it, although I was fairly sure that Pam and Mary would.

I did notice that our phone got very busy all of a sudden, but I had no idea what was going on, Mary refused to tell me anything.

"Just be there." Was all she would say.

The County meeting was held at the local community hall, the day dawned warm and clear. Mary spent the morning loading up all the protest signs, they even had a big banner to spread out on the meeting hall steps.

When we arrived, I watched in shock as no less that two dozen housewives climbed up on the steps and held up their signs. One of them was the wife of the local Sheriff. Glancing around at the crowd, I realized that about half of the town was there. Over to the side there were two TV cameras, too.

Mary and Pam stood side by side, they looked at each other, then back and forth at the other women.

Suddenly, almost in unison, blouses and tops came off. There were so many bare breasts of all sizes and shapes that I had no idea of where to look first. Then there was a scuffle over to the side as one man started yelling at his wife to put her shirt back on. I wasn't sure which one was his wife until she held up her arms in defiance and started jumping up and down.

Then they all started jumping up and down. Lord, what a sight!!

Cameras were going off all over the place, the commissioner chairman drove up just then. He got out and came to a stop in surprise. Then he walked over to me.

"This is silly crap, and it isn't going to work." He glared at me.

"Half the damn town is here, you just might be surprised." I told him. Then I walked up onto the stage, stood by Mary. She was blushing but her expression was one of determination.

I started to unbutton my shirt. I slid it off my shoulders, stood there for a moment. A man standing in the audience looked at me, then at the rows of women. He walked up beside me and took off his shirt, too.

"let's go for it!" I heard Pam's voice beside me, as I glanced over she dropped her slacks and stepped out of them, standing there completely naked.

Oh my God!

Mary and I looked at each other, she reached for the waistband of her skirt at the same time I reached for my jeans. The guy next to me said "Yea!" and he dropped his, too.

In seconds nearly all of us were naked, several people in the crowd walked up and stripped too. Even some in the audience took off some or all of their clothes.

Mary leaned over and whispered to me, "I would have trimmed if I knew this was going to happen."

Signs were waving, people were laughing. A chant broke out, "No Burner here, No Burner here!" Over and over.

Finally the protest died down, everyone got dressed. There were a lot of comments. The commissioners had their meeting, they voted to approve the facility. They first had one of those private "executive sessions" before coming out and taking the vote. No public comment was allowed.

"What do we do now?" Mary asked, she was unhappy that the protest had failed.

"We wait and see." I told her.

The story was the lead on two of the three statewide TV stations. They had to do a lot of blurring.

"Man, look at the size of the blur they had to use on me!" I teased Mary. She took a poke at me for that.

It was also front page on the statewide newspaper. Our phone rang off the hook. When the local paper came out, there was a big photo of everyone, including Mary and me, with strategic little black bars placed in the right places.

Mary looked at it, read the story.

"God, we really did that, didn't we?"

I laughed at that, started to reach for her. Hell, it was kind of a turnon.

Just then the phone rang. It was some guy from Greenpeace. Mary answered, then had me talk to him.

We set up a meeting, his name was Arthur. He suggested we use the citizen's initiative process, put the Garbage burner to a vote.

I had no idea how to do that.

"I do." He grinned at me.

He wrote the measure, it banned such a facility under the health and safety regulations, within two miles of any school. That meant all points in the city. Then Arthur put the women to work collecting signatures, they had no troubles at all getting them.

All they had to do was tell the men they were from the protest, every single one of them was then happy to sign the sheet.

Mary collected several dozen herself. She giggled once back home, telling me her most common request was to let them know when they held the next protest.

The measure passed with 65% of the vote, it was over.

The next Fall, I put my own name up for County Commissioner. My opponent was the same man who had been in the position for nearly two decades.

The ads he ran with a photos of me and Mary naked, little black bars strategically blocking out certain areas didn't work. Neither did the ads challenging my "morals". When he ran the ad challenging Mary's morals even I knew that was a mistake.

I got 62% of the votes in a three way race.

He did shake my hand as I accepted the position, probably because a reporter was there taking photos.

"Your wife sure has nice tits!" He sneered at me with a whisper.

"Why thank you sir, we both very much enjoy them!" I told him, as I all but crushed his hand.

On my office wall is an enlarged photo of that day, dozens of naked people including me. There are no strategic black bars in that photo. My secretary is a 60 year old lady that commented a couple of times that she wished she could have been there, I just grin at her.

I am not ashamed of it, I am proud of it.

In our County, the people do decide.