Dear 1950s Wife,
As you might imagine from its name, not much happens in our little town of Baum Fawke, Illinois. Situated in the heart of Illinois' southern third, a region known colloquially as "Little Egypt,"* our community is in fact so boring that the phrase "Stuck in Baum Fawke Egypt," as signifier for being trapped in dull parts of America originated with us!
I'd always been a city gal at heart so imagine my dismay when my much-older husband Oliver told me a few years back he was retiring from his lucrative career as corporate lawyer for one of New York's biggest firms and moving us from our $20 million cooperative apartment on Park Avenue to the family farm he grew up on just outside Baum Fawke.
Though I reminded Oliver I'm allergic to smelling hay then pleaded I just adore our penthouse view when he refused to change his mind, I certainly whistled a different tune after Oliver turned me over the lap of his ten-thousand-dollar business suit, lifted the skirt of my hundred-thousand-dollar haute couture dress, pulled down my million-dollar panties made of finest Chinese silk and encrusted with diamonds, and spanked my bottom red!
In the past couple of years, I've busied myself with redecorating our dilapidated farm house's interior while Oliver tends to home repair and getting the farm up and running. I've come to appreciate the rustic friendliness of Baum Fawke folk. But I must say that, compared to my former life attending gala champagne-and-caviar charity balls with dinners prepared by Manhattan's finest chefs, being invited to our neighbors for supper of greasy fried chicken with lard pie for desert just doesn't seem as glamorous.
And I must add that I miss the sight of our gay manservant back in the Big Apple who owes his incredible physique to countless hours lifting weights in his off-hours in our penthouse apartment's fully equipped workout room complete with lap pool and running track. Our farm worker is certainly devoted, but his scarecrow-frame doesn't provide the same charge when I look at him, especially when he takes off his shirt during a hot day to reveal his three chest hairs and back full of pimples.
So imagine how pleased I was to hear that our town of Baum Fawke would be the epicenter of an upcoming very rare total eclipse of the sun!
Carbondale, the only town of any real size in downstate Illinois' "Little Egypt" region, intended to hog the spotlight with its celebration even though we in neighboring Baum Fawke would experience one more second of total darkness. Having helped plan numerous big-time Big Apple affairs, the snotty attitude of the supposed-city of Carbondale got my competitive juices flowing.
Under my direction, we'd throw a eclipse celebration that would show those cheeky Carbondalians that we Baum Fawkers can't be bullied. After our affair, instead of saying "Stuck in Baum Fawke" for being bored the new expression would be "Pumped as Baum Fawke" for being excited!
But my plans were foiled by our town's two leading ladies, Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke, who appointed themselves head of the town committee to plan the eclipse party and vetoed all my sensible suggestions citing scripture to supposedly prove their points.
(If you listened to those two, the only acceptable evening wear for a lady is a Christian-and-fatty-friendly dress falling to mid-calf with ten-dollar flat shoes and inexpensive cosmetics bought from the Sears catalog.)
After that, I just assumed Oliver and I would go to Carbondale's afternoon eclipse activities where, as the city is site of a large state university and enrolls thousands of Chicago area students accustomed to eating things other than fried chicken or meatloaf and mash potatoes, I could also look forward to a decent restaurant meal.
But Oliver's vintage Mercedes wasn't running -- he got ripped off buying bad replacement parts from Baum Fawke's junk dealer -- and he vetoed catching a ride on the back of our farmhand's motorcycle. So we took our tractor for the two-mile ride to Mr. Fawke's farm where Baum Fawke's official solar eclipse party was held.
The eclipse took place in early afternoon, so first Oliver and I sat down with two dozen other people for a picnic lunch.
I wasn't very hungry so I just took a few bites. But Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke must have had less than their normal helpings of breakfast pork chops and pancakes, as they each ate ten pieces of fried chicken and split a lard pie between them.
The duo of dumplings were too busy feeding to talk, though I could hardly care less about those two's conversation. But after they'd spooned in their final bites of lard pie and finished arguing as to who got to lick the tray -- Mr. Fawke settled the matter by taking it away -- I couldn't help but overhear their whispered conversation about how my husband must be henpecked to let me go out dressed like a Jezebel.
Such crust! In deference to rustic tastes, I'd worn one of my least showy outfits, a basic black dress I got for bargain-basement price of ten thousand dollars with a perfectly respectable hemline. And I wasn't even wearing my tiara.
Just because Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke go about dressed in circus tents doesn't mean I and other conventionally-sized women of Baum Fawke must do the same.
If they thought I dressed like a slut, they'd probably never seen a real one. I decided to show them.
About ten seconds after the eclipse began and the black of night came to afternoon, I put my plan in action. In my black dress, no one saw me as I walked several yards in front of the viewing party, particularly as everyone's neck was craned upward staring at afternoon stars.
Back when I thought Baum Fawke would throw a decent eclipse party, I'd bought online a special lipstick for the party in a lovely shade of phosphorus. With Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke insisting on such a boring affair I hadn't even bothered to wear it
Thankfully it was still in my purse. After walking sufficiently far from the viewing party, I slipped my panties down and began. It took the whole tube and if my bottom was as large as Mrs. Baum's and Mrs. Fawke's I'd probably only cover a third of a cheek. But I had just enough to make it work.
Even from twenty yards away, I could hear viewing party spectators excitedly "oohing" and "ahhing" at the night sky and Mr. Baum, an optometrist, repeatedly warning people not to look directly at the eclipsed sun lest they go blind.
Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke talked excitedly in loud voices that the astronomical event was sign of impending Rapture and they would soon be transported to Heaven and they must make a point in the next few minutes to say goodbye to dear friends at the party not sufficiently pious who are going to Hell instead.
But after Mrs. Fawke consoled Mrs. Baum for her impending fate spending eternity without her husband as he was going to Hell for having an affair with his secretary and Mrs. Baum angrily retorted that Mr. Fawke would join him as he is a closeted homosexual who slept with his last three farmhands, the two women started shouting insults at each other. Then Mrs. Fawke shouted scripture in proof that her husband isn't really gay because his bad back prevents him from having sex lying down and that he always fucks her standing up and does the same with his farmhands, while Mrs. Baum shouted a stream of nonsense syllables that I believe certain Evangelical Christian denominations refer to as "speaking in tongues."
But after Mr. Baum and Mr. Fawke angrily shouted at their wives to shut up, they stopped screaming. There were several seconds of awkward silence. I decided my turn had come to liven the party. I turned round and lifted my skirt, but first shouted:
"Yoo Hoo. Mrs. Baum. Mrs. Fawke. Look at the bum my husband fucks!"
I guess I took things a bit too far.
Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke were certainly shocked. But not by my bottom. Instead they mistook my glowing orbs from a distance as Satan's eyes and, thinking they had been sent to Hell in the Rapture, fainted dead away.
Even from 20 yards, Oliver clearly recognized my ass. He commanded me to come quickly and dug into my purse to use my smart phone to call the Baum Fawke Volunteer Fire Department to send an ambulance to transport Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke to the Carbondale hospital.
(I'm the only person in Baum Fawke who owns a smart phone. Oliver never owned one, as he relied on his secretary to get people on the phone at work and me now that he's retired. The other Baum Fawke residents consider the contraptions the Devil's handiwork. They use rotary phones and are connected through a "party line.")
But it turned out the two fellows manning the volunteer fire hall got drunk to celebrate the eclipse and didn't answer the phone. Everyone came to the eclipse party at Mr. Fawke's farm on tractors and, at five-miles-per-hour maximum speed, the two hours it would take to get to the Carbondale hospital put Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke at risk of dying.
So Mr. Fawke hobbled to his barn as fast as his spindly arthritic legs would take him. After he returned in an off-road pickup truck, eight hardy men stepped forward to lift Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke into the bed of the vehicle and off they went.
Oliver was none too pleased with my prank. Even though I got word on my smart phone just moments after my husband and I completed the thirty-minute journey back home on our tractor that Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke were fine and needed no more than mild sedatives to be administered once they reached the hospital, Oliver decided I still needed to be punished.
Normally when I'm naughty Oliver puts me over his knee and spanks me on the bare bottom with his hand. But this time, he decided I needed more intense discipline that takes place in our woodshed.
Oliver marched me into the shed and ordered me to strip. I took off my dress, panties, stockings and heels and hung the clothes on a pegboard. Oliver retrieved the thick leather strap hanging on a nail on the wall.
He sure went to town on my backside, turning my formerly phosphorus-colored bottom a deep shade of red. I screamed and cried as Oliver beat me doing an enthusiastic rendition of "The Whipping Dance." I haven't moved my feet that fast since The Knickerbocker Society back in New York threw a disco-themed charity ball several years ago.
Once he'd throughly whipped me, Oliver ordered me to hang the strap back on the wall then kneel before him, kiss his hand and thank him for punishing me. Then Oliver lifted me up and carried me over his shoulder out of the woodshed and up the farmhouse stairs to our bedroom. He tossed me on the bed, took off his business suit and climbed aboard for three hours of fantastic makeup sex!
I thought that would be the end of it. But Oliver informed me a couple days later that, once the bruises on my backside heal, I will be taken to the Fawke farmhouse for a six-stripe caning with the Baums and Fawkes in presence.
I was surprised. So much good came out of the incident. Oliver gave me such a pounding in our three-hours of post-whipping lovemaking that we literally broke the bed. I never liked sleeping in it. The bed was old and uncomfortable and used by Oliver's parents and grandparents before them, which made me feel kind of weird having sex in it.
I've ordered a king-sized replacement made out of California redwood with state-of-the-art computerized mattress stuffed with quail feathers and in-bed quadraphonic stereo system with 40-inch-screen pop up HD TV reasonably priced at one million dollars. In meantime, Oliver and I are sleeping in camping bags in a tent set up in the living room, as the roof leaks in that location.
Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke also benefitted. While they were dozing in the emergency room under the influence of mild sedatives, their husband asked the surgeon on call to put the women under the gas and give them gastric bypass operations. The procedures went well and they should be slim-and-trim like me in no time.
But apparently I nearly spoiled Oliver's political ambitions. Baum Fawke's 95-year-old mayor is a holdover from the FDR administration and his free-spending ways with the town's tax coffers doesn't square with Oliver's economic conservatism.
Oliver cut a deal with leaders of the Baum Fawke Christian Coalition, namely the Baums and the Fawkes, that they'll support him for mayor if he lets other members of the Baum Fawke Town Council, namely Mr. Baum and Mr. Fawke, pass a resolution encouraging the counties comprising Illinois "Little Egypt" region to secede from the United States. In return, Oliver will be able to fight government waste by firing the town's sole municipal employee who doesn't do anything except sit eight hours a day in a rocking chair in front of the town hall chewing tobacco and whittling.
I thought Oliver was doing chores on our farm the day after my woodshed strapping when he actually took our tractor to visit Mr. Baum and Mr. Fawke. They agreed to continue supporting Oliver for mayor as long as he did his biblically-mandated duty of chastising me with a whipping rod for not displaying proper family values in the mooning incident.
Six stripes of the cane is nothing for me. But Oliver also insists that I apologize to Mrs. Baum and Mrs. Fawke after being whipped and I don't look forward to that.
Oliver was so hot for me prior to getting married that he didn't insist on a prenup, so I could do pretty well if we split up. What do you think. Should I file for divorce?
Good woman:
Sounds like you've a good thing going on in Baum Fawke so I'd hold off on divorce proceedings for now. But Oliver certainly owes you a weekend vacation trip to New York!
*The town of Baum Fawke, Illinois is fiction, but the city of Carbondale is real, as is the phrase "Little Egypt" for the southern third of the state. And the city is the epicenter of a very rare total eclipse of the sun passing across the United States on August 21, 2017. I hope people within viewing distance enjoy the event. Or enjoyed if reading after that date.
