Most everybody in town was whooping it up in August. Some even stayed up late to listen to Sox games on the west coast, arriving bleary eyed at the Post Office the next morning to join in the back-slapping. But not since early September, when the Sox began to crash. And certainly not later, when they burned up completely.

Bad enough the Sox disgraced themselves, but then the front office big-shots fired Manager Tito, a Belfry hero, and the natives went into a perfect funk. And, just when it looked like things couldn’t get worse, Belfry’s only Yankee fan, Gabe Brumley, vaulted back out of the closet. Everybody thought he’d been cured, but now he’s back sporting his pin-striped Yankee cap, grinning like an undertaker everywhere he goes. He’s even fastened a Yankee pennant to the antenna of his pickup and toots his horn every time he drives by Knights Store.

Nobody is more distraught about this disaster than my friend Nibber, who’s been in a full-fledged funk, refusing invitations to dinner and crying into his beers at the Sunrise. There’s just no cheering him up. “Whatever will we do?” he moaned last Saturday night as he idly pecked away at his cold and catsup-soaked meatloaf. “The flatlanders will be back in the spring, gloating like peacocks. Especially the New Yorkers. I don’t think I can stand it.”

Debbie, his waitress girlfriend, happened by at that very moment, and overheard the moaning. “You tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em most every year of your life,” she said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “Just you wait ‘til next year.”

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