When a dummy plays dumb

EDITOR: I think I know where the Hangtown dummy went for 24 hours. It’s just speculation, but there may be more to this than the average Placerville resident knows.

The inklings of my epiphany began the morning after the Hangtown Dummy disappeared. I got up in the morning to find some Toll House cookies missing that I had baked the night before. The only person up was my 7-year-old who calmly remarked that is was not he who took the cookies — rather it must be some “dummy” who had swiped them. I later read a post announcing the “missing” Hangman dummy. “Could it be?” I thought. “Could the Hangman’s dummy have escaped his perch and made his way to my house?”

I then noticed something very interesting in the posted picture of the hangman, his hands are not bound. Later that afternoon I noticed that half of a bottle of whiskey was missing from the liquor cabinet. Upon questioning my husband, I discovered that the whiskey must have been drunk by someone else.

“Most likely that dummy,” my husband replied. As he is telling me this I noticed paint peeled from my house where it had not peeled before. “Mischievous Devil,” I remarked. I did, in fact remember something riling up the chickens last night and now I was noticing that somebody had peeled some paint from my house.

It all came together for me upon learning that the hanging man had been “returned,” because if somebody stole him, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

That hanging man has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years and it finally just caught up with him.

It occurs to me that on the night he disappeared, the hanging man probably set himself loose from his noose. Possibly being one of many sneaky late night excursions, he set about doing mischief around town and wound up at my house. While here, he snuck in, ate the Toll House cookies and drank a half a bottle of whiskey. Since he was probably sloppy drunk afterward, he went out and did who knows what to my chickens, wandered back to my porch and dumbly pulled paint from my house.

Where he went from here I do not know but this probably explains why he did not get back to his noose in time to avoid notice.

Hanging man, I’m on to you.

TAMRA GODEY
Fair Play