Alcoholic Prose Of Fannie Patterson

Fannie Patterson, an old loud mouth drunk bitch who was the ire of small children, has finally died on Monday in what those who knew her best hope was an agonizing, painful death.  Her death was confirmed by celebrations throughout the neighborhood, with residents thrilled she is currently the devil’s problem now.  She was well beyond the shelf life at age 90.

A classified habitual snitch known to bring down the strongest of nations, she started off in humble beginnings in the lap of religious poverty of the Great Depression, earning a meager living as a barn rat catcher during her childhood.  With no siblings and a touch of polio, Ms. Patterson was able to convert her skills in high demand for meat, as the boll weevil crisis spearheaded the Great Rodent Invasion of 1935.  Locals credited her with saving the county, their church, and her family from abject starvation.  At the peak of her success she yielded over two hundred rodents weekly, garnering a citation in the Guinness Book of World Records for most rodents caught without third party aids.  A dominant pioneering force in the local food economy, Ms. Patterson’s family divested all of her earnings into their pockets while renting her to the highest bidder for the county food supply.  At the peak of her infamous crossover success there were talks of a restaurant, but unfortunately that was not to be; she was abruptly forced into retirement due to injuries sustained during an ambush of stray cats muscling in on the competition.

Former classmates say they never remembered her, and after the attack she failed to receive disability or compensation for child labor.  Her parents, quick to have extra hands in the fields for tax purposes, took her out of school and got her addicted to moonshine before Ms. Patterson was fully recuperated from her wounds and the onset of mild rabies.  After a slow start ignoring the visions, she earned her keep as an eyeball on the wagon for sharecroppers in the field.  Her ability to barely hold water to plantation owners about their workers personal life made her popular with owners and an enemy to sharecropping colleagues.

“That sow would get you under the rug if she didn’t like you.” says a former co-worker.  “Never could mind her own damn business.  And she’d take your two bits for the pleasure!”  By age twenty-five, dozens of attempts on her life were made every year from cat lover sharecroppers holding a grudge.

At age 35, Ms. Patterson was pioneering functional alcoholism, as isolationism from townspeople and unemployment made her hit the harder sauce.  Her parents were of no help to her, as they had died from watershed listeria from a bad batch of improperly pickled rat soup they left out for her.  Post World War II industrialization, corporate agricultural expansion subsequently bankrupted all regional plantation owners, leaving her religiously illiterate and unemployable.

Devoutly religious and a Bible Belt Christian from birth, missionaries eager to pray her away finagled her off to a local branch of the ministry in the urban jungles of the North and never looked back.  A temp job as a crossing guard and shelter in a halfway house got her through the lean years enough to continue drinking uninterrupted without liver failure.  Assigned to affluent areas, Ms. Patterson’s penchant for Old Thompson was influential in her spying instincts for neighborhood misdeeds, earning her a transfer to lower income neighborhoods as a slushy bothersome liaison between residents and police. 

Unmoved by threats and emboldened from piss and vinegar running through her liquor filled veins, Ms. Patterson held the mantle as neighborhood busy body for twenty years.  After tipping off the police to the biggest drug trafficking operation in the state’s history on her block, she was valiantly shot in both kneecaps and left in an abandoned building in the line of duty.  Nonetheless, she pushed through with a permanent limp and a face that seemed to improve her scowl after despite the damage.  Classified permanently disabled and of no use, she reluctantly sulked in a dilapidated house paid for by a series of federal entitlement programs no one believed she deserved.

Still drinking in her last years, Ms. Patterson got a passion for politics, being a one-woman enforcement team of parking violations, lawn crossing transgressions, jaywalking, and unlicensed constructions to houses and backyards.  She was a particularly unwelcoming force for visitors, who quickly saw her brandish the ruler measuring their tires from the curb or lacerating children’s backsides for running on the grass.

Fannie Patterson expired choking on a stack of pancakes at the Annual Veteran’s Dance, of which she was not invited.  Her mighty ruler waived as she coughed gallantly, though many believed she was being a party pooper.  Single her entire life, she is survived by no one, thank god.  Her church will leave her body by the dumpster for those paying their respects; the local university cited the corpse as unfit for donation by scientific standards.