A Visit from the Voters
(our apologizes to Clement Clark Moore)
a look at Pottstown’s Ghost of Christmas Present…
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ Pottstown
Not a creature was stirring, not even the school board’s best known clown;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In anticipation of the new elementary school consolidation plan that soon would be there;
The Hyltonites were nestled all snug in their beds,
While nightmares of Rupert’s impending demolition danc’d in their heads,
And Frances with her trashbag, and Tom with his bike,
Were frantically trying to figure out how to save Rupert using a whopping tax hike –
When out on Chestnut Street there arose such a clatter,
Tom sprang from his unfinished Sound Off comment to see what was the matter.
Away to the window Tom flew like a flash,
Looked into his peep mirror – saw it was safe – and then threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Was making his tenant neighbors visible (he finds them so annoying you know),
When, what to Tom’s egotistical eyes should appear,
A group of happy satisfied voters, giving Tom a Bronx cheer,
With hundreds of joyful voters, jumping in the air and giving a kick,
Tom knew in a moment that they hadn’t fallen for his political postcard shtick.
More rapid than eagles his detractors they came,
And they whistled, and shouted, and call’d Tom by name:
“Your political shenanigans didn’t work this time, Tom! They didn’t work at all!,
Even though you tried your best by throwing the same lame political curve ball,”
They stood on his porch! They stood near his wall!
And Tom, as usual, belittled them, “Now go away! go away! go away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
The blissful voter’s happiness made Tom truly look so much more the bad guy;
The jovial crowd continued to fill the street, and Tom wished them to bid adieu,
Everyone came out to celebrate the closing of Rupert, telling Tom to eat poo.
And then, in a twinkling, Tom heard on the street
The shouts of every Pottstown voter calling for the removal of Tom from his school board seat.
As Tom tried to withdraw, and was turning around,
Down Chestnut Street the I.R.S. agents came with a bound:
They were all dress’d in riot gear, from their head to their feet,
And they came to arrest Tom for being a non-profit tax cheat;
Complaints from the voters were carried by the agents in a huge stack,
And it was then that Tom wished he could give the misused borough funds back.
Tom’s eyes – how they shifted! His body: how it squirmed,
His brow was so sad, for he knew it was the premature end of his school board term;
Tom’s dried little mouth was drawn up with a scowl
And the look on his face was priceless…what a howl;
The voters how he treated them with such disdain,
And they so looked forward to sending Tom back to Wyomissing on the next train;
The lies that he told about the elementary schools,
Every voter knew then and there that Tom took them all for fools.
Tom misled the public, in promotion of himself,
And the voters suffered the most…us, our neighbors and yourself;
A stroke of Tom’s pen and a grand twist of the facts,
Soon gave the voters truthful knowledge of Tom’s dastardly acts;
As the I.R.S. led Tom away, his Sound Off comment a half-finished work,
Every voter was satisfied, because they knew that indeed Tom was a jerk,
And as Tom sat in the I.R.S. van, lawyers looked through his nonprofit escrows,
And also they did investigate Tom’s money funneling of the boroughs;
The voters continued to rejoice in the street, to the I.R.S. team they did whistle,
And away the van drove, flying down the street like the down of a thistle,
But the voters heard Tom exclaim, ere the van drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
