Vifbig (Fiction, 2006)

Vifbig


VFBG was plastered everywhere--on placards and bulletin boards, as graffiti on the sides of the old Rue Bridge that spanned the St. John River connecting Madawaska to its Canadian neighbor Edmundston, and even inside the bathroom stalls at the Fifth Street McDonald's fast food restaurant.

In early fall, Farmer St. Croix surprised Aroostook county fair goers with the arrival of his prized billy goat Jethro. The nearly moose sized behemoth amazed everyone as it easily walked away with the coveted \Best In Show\ honor.

Urban legends are not restricted to a city environment, and the story of the Madawaskan monster soon grew. Some townspeople circulated rumors concerning the goat's antecedents. Some even accused Farmer St. Croix of genetic atrocities. There was, of course, no truth to any of these stories, but it shows that the differences between city and country people are merely cosmetic.

Still the stories spread, and everywhere people gathered, they invariably spoke of the goat in four recurring words. The order never changed; \Very\ was always the first word, and \Goat\ was always the last.

But it was Grandpa Willard, after discovering the World Wide Web and becoming enarmored of the youthful abbreviations and slang that he encountered in various chatrooms, who gave the phrase its clumsy acronym. "Vfbg" became the catch phrase for a town lacking originality. But what they missed in creativity, Madawaskans made up for in enthusiasm. Soon after the Aroostook County Fair, they held the inaugural VFBG parade which went from Main to Fifth Street, past the VFBG Antique Emporium. But that wasn't all. The Madawaska Beacon, a Bi-weekly newspaper, succumbed to the avalanche of "Letters To-the-editor" and changed its name to the popular four letter acronym. It went so far as to use a photo of the gargantuan goat as its logo on its front page. The Newspaper editor prided himself on having his finger on \the pulse of the town,\ and the thought of doubling the papers subscribers assuredly had no influence in his decision.

Townswomen wore tee shirts that read, "I love my VFBG!" and the farmers who gathered for morning coffee down at the VFBG stop-and-go replaced their John Deere baseball caps with those bearing the acronym emblazoned on the front. Not surprisingly, politicians got into the mix, wearing red, white and blue VFBG campaign buttons, complete with headshots of Jethro. One candidate for Town Selectman went so far as to paste a picture of himself riding the huge goat...he won the election in a landslide.

And VFBG mania would likely have swept from the small Maine town to a place in Americana had it not been for a small boy who bypassed the acronym and spoke aloud the now altered phrase. Little Jimmy Rollins, an otherwise typical child, uttered the four words in front of his third grade classmates during Show-and-Tell at The VFBG Elementary School. He repeated the phrase as he'd heard it from his two older brothers...who in turn had overheard it from Carpenters who were building the new VFBG Townhall.

Madawaskans were shocked when they heard of the boys' profanity...and a town meeting was called where concerned parents voiced their disapproval. They'd had no idea that VFBG stood for such an immoral phrase! It was quickly decided to make it unlawful to write, publicize, announce or even speak the phrase, "Very Freaking Big Goat"...or any of its perverted versions. There was talk of confiscating the goat from Farmer St. Croix, but after he went to the ASPCA and complained, the town backed down and a compromise, that the farmer never display the goat to the public, was reached. Moral probity was restored in the small Maine border town by those whose myopic concerns failed to see the real lesson of the story.

But it's not like Jimmy was completely wrong in his pronouncement. It was, after-all, a very big goat...and one possibly deserving of such a strong epithet.