Can you picture this? I’m sittin’ at the kitchen table, it’s four thirty in the mornin’ and I’m thinkin’ up some lies to tell when all of a sudden the chair on the other side of the table moves a little — or at least I thought it moved.

Then I go back to my thinkin’ again when, this time, I’m sure that chair moved. There ain’t nobody here and it’s so quiet I can hear the frig runnin’ and the clock tickin’.

It was gettin’ me to thinkin’ of a feller who lived down in the south end of town years ago who was supposed to be able to make chairs and tables move and even dance around the room when nobody was touchin’ them.

Maybe I’ve got the same powers. He was even supposed to be able to call up the devil and chat with him.

I don’t think I would want that power. I think I can find better company than that.

Anyhow, I asked him to show me what he could do, but he kept puttin’ me off and never did show me any of his evil powers.

Then I got to thinkin’ on some of the evil doin’s I’d been involved with lately and couldn’t come up with much. Oh, I may have told a few lies at the coffee shop and I didn’t put sugar in the wife’s coffee when she tells me, “I’ll take my coffee in bed.”

And I may have stretched the truth to the IRS just a little, but as of lately, I couldn’t think of any real hard core sinnin’ I’ve done — anyway, not heavy enough to talk to the prince of gloom or make that chair across the table start movin’ around.

After about the third tremble of the chair, I picks up enough sand in my craw to peek under the table in search of logical motivation.

Sure enough, within the black shadows, a pair of yellow green eyes stare out at me, and the tar black form of Conehead, my little black pussycat, was peerin’ back at me.

Shucks, I knew it wasn’t the devil all the time. She will come about as close as anything I can think of right off hand, but she ain’t the ol’ boy himself.

Anyhow, I’ve run into several people since the waltzin’ chairs who claim to be able to speak with the higher powers. Some with the good powers and some with the evil ones.

I guess they can, but I’ll just have to take their word for it because I ain’t seen no chairs move — that is, except the one across the table.

COURTESY of Tom Runnels Publications. Copyrighted and registered by Tom Runnels and Saundra Runnels Revocable Trust. Printed in The Banner Press: June 9, 1988.