“Why aren’t you at Little League practice?” Dad asked Junior, when Dad walked in the door from work.

“It was called off, because we don’t have anywhere to practice at.” Junior turned back to his video game.

“What do you mean you don’t have anywhere to practice?” he demanded. Junior was concentrating on stealing a car and killing people on the TV screen and didn’t hear his father. “Hey! I said ‘what d o you mean you don’t have anywhere to practice?’”

Junior rolled his eyes and paused the game. “I mean the coach called and said there are no parks open. In fact he said I should thank you for that.”

“Thank me? What did he mean, thank me?”

“Don’t know.” Junior shrugged. He turned back to the TV and started stealing and shooting again.

Dad looked up the phone number of the coach and called him.

“Hi, this is Jeremiah LaProfette. What is happening with baseball practice? My son said something about thanking me for it.”

“You the Jeremiah guy that has been raising the fuss about the city’s layoffs?”

Gooberville had been hit hard by the economic downturn. The city manager has announced cutbacks, including a couple of police officers. Jeremiah’s brother was a cop and enlisted Jeremiah’s help in getting support to save the jobs of the cops.

In his arguments at City Council meetings and writing letters to the editor of the Gooberville Press, Jeremiah raised the specter of doom, gangs run wild in the streets, teens tearing up the city. Why were they still paying for nice parks when we will lose everything when those cops are laid off? Again and again, he questioned the need for parks and recreation in a city with three fewer cops to defend the streets.

Finally, enough was enough. The city manager, tired of hearing it, gave in. After all, the whole situation was designed by him to break the police union’s grip on the city, although he certainly never wanted that argument to go public. All the community meetings were a sham, since he really didn’t give a darn what the public thought. He had three votes on the city council, two of whom wanted to break the union also and one who did what they were told by the Mayor, so the City Manager was free to act as he pleased. But this Jeremiah was tiring him. It was time to deal with him and his following.

He called the Mayor and his buddies, then called the public works director. “Close’em down.”

“What? Fence off all the parks?” The public works director was stunned. By law, if the city closed a park, it had to fence off the playgrounds, because the city was liable for them. The city manager wanted entire parks closed off, not just the playground.

“We’re giving the people what they want. I am announcing tonight at the city council meeting that we will reinstate the three officers, but all of the parks are closing. Effective tomorrow, no playgrounds, no practice fields, no playing fields. Adult softball, Little League, girl’s softball, soccer. All of it. Close it down. We give the people what they demand.”

That summer, teens ran wild in the streets, kids broke into everything in town, having little else to do, nothing involving adult supervision. The three officers who were recalled to duty quit, after working heavy overtime with all the problems. Parents screamed at the city manager, who responded by playing tapes of the public forum section of the city council meetings.

“This is what you asked for. No parks, no recreation, so your city will be safe.”

Jeremiah cried; the head of the police union cried.