Lightfooted Thunderbolt

Or the Last of the Narragansetts?

I have to laugh over the details of the arrest last weekend of Springfield political villain Frankie Keough. He got busted for breaking into his former second home in Rhode Island (odd how so many "public servants" in Springfield can afford second homes) to reclaim furniture he said belonged to him. Actually the house and all of its contents had been sold to a buyer weeks earlier. As you would expect from anything involving Keough, there was a bizarre twist to the crime, as reported in the Springfield Republican:

A Charlestown police report states a U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigator spotted a pickup truck in front of the house with two men inside. When the official approached, one took off into the woods and never reappeared.

The police report states Keough offered a curious story: a black male whom he had never met appeared at the remotely located property and offered to help. However, Kelly said Keough told police the good Samaritan was a Narragansett Indian who lives in the woods nearby, an associate of another local named “Thunderbolt,” with whom police are acquainted

So was the lightfooted accomplice "a black male" or a Narragansett Indian? And why run for the woods in a panic if he was just a helpful stranger? Hmmm, how much do you wanna bet, were it ever to become known (which I doubt) that we would recognize the name of Keough's accomplice?

Funny how these former Springfield power players keep surfacing near the scenes of their crimes. Anthony Ardolino sightings have become commonplace around Springfield, and flower fans have been repeatedly startled to encounter Gerry Phillips. You would think considering how publicly humiliated they were, that they would relocate to an area where they are unknown. Yet it seems they are unable to avoid revisiting the scenes of their crimes.

Once upon a time, none rode higher than Frankie Keough. In fact, people in a position to know have told me that what is commonly called "The Albano Era" would more accurately be called "The Keough Era" because it was really Keough who was calling most of the shots when Mike Albano was mayor. I'm told that hardly a morning went by when Keough did not stop into the mayor's office on his way to the homeless shelter he ran, according to the Feds, as a combination personal slush fund, free furniture store and slave labor pool. From what I've been told, Keough was not stopping in to see Albano for friendship's sake (although Frankie was the good friend of everyone who mattered in Springfield, from Richie Neal on down). Keough was there to set policy.

In the world Keough once occupied, all that mattered was who you knew, or as Frankie himself once put it, "it's all about the relationships." Now as a disgraced ex-con, he doesn't know anybody anymore, at least no one who will risk helping him publicly. In the old days, Keough could get away with just about anything, since those who were supposed to be serving as watchdogs either looked the other way or else wanted to get in on the action themselves. Keough must have thought it would never end, but thanks to the FBI, it did. Unfortunately, too many of his cohorts in city government made out like Thunderbolt the black Indian and never got caught.

But there is a rough kind of justice to the world, and a tendency for people to get what they deserve in the end. Someday everyone who destroyed Springfield will be exposed for what they are, and may that day come soon. But in Keough's case, it already has, since having lost his fake respectability, all that now remains of Frankie Keough is the essence of what he always was - a common thief.

 

Last Chance

Today was the last day to register to vote in the primary phase of the special election to replace Ted Kennedy, as seen on this UMass billboard.

Too bad there are no good candidates to vote for on the Democrat side. 

 

Jack Frost Comes Calling

Oh no, time to get out the scraper!

Jack Frost works only in white, but always creates a delicate beauty.

For the few remaining green plants, Jack Frost's art brings the kiss of death.

Jack Frost
by Gabriel Setoun

The door was shut, as doors should be,
Before you went to bed last night;
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,
And left your window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept;
And not a single word he spoke,
But pencilled o'er the panes and crept
Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills
Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;
But there are fairer things than these
His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high;
Hills and dales, and streams and fields;
And knights in armor riding by,
With nodding plumes and shining shields.

For, creeping softly underneath
The door when all the lights are out,
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,
And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.