Good Morning Donnington

The black and white Sheriff’s car came to a stop at the end of an empty curb. The entire town was still asleep, and no cars were parked yet. The door swung open and the Sheriff forced himself from the just too small confines of the car’s interior. He was nearly 6’5”, and close to 300 pounds. He called himself stocky, but he wasn’t unhealthy in fact, he could bend a tire iron nearly in half with his bare hands. He would sooner buy you a cup of coffee than write you a parking ticket. He hated writing parking tickets, but make no mistake; he took no guff from anyone at all ever. Crime usually didn’t happen in Donnington, and when it did, it was handled quickly either by the Sheriff, or by the town itself in some way or another. Donnington wasn’t like other towns in America, and he wasn’t like any other Sheriff, and for that, the people of Donnington were grateful.
He walked around the front of his car and approached the last parking meter on the street. It was the only one with a bright orange canvas out of order bag over its head making it sort of look like a torch on a long stick. It was just dark enough to obscure exactly how bright the bag was, but everyone in town remarked on it at one time or another. The Sheriff deftly removed the bag from the head of the parking meter and pushed a quarter into the slot with his big meaty, metal bending fingers. He gave the knob a few turns and as he did so it began to get lighter, and lighter, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky. When the knob reached its stops, the Sheriff released it and it swung back around to its original position. The sun brightly in the sky, and daytime in Donnington had officially begun. He could almost hear the hum of the entire populace starting to awaken all at once. He slipped the bright orange bag over the head of the parking meter and muscled himself back into his car perhaps today would be the day he’d ask the mayor for a bigger one. He drove off towards home so he could stop in on his wife one last time before he headed to the office. She wouldn’t know who he was of course her brain ravaged by dementia brought on by opening a file cabinet in the Sheriff’s office marked “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THIS CABINET TO BE OPENED”. She was adventurous, or at least used to be, and he loved that about her. He would just stop in for a second and give her a kiss on the cheek as usual maybe wipe some drool off her chin, exchange pleasantries with Marge, the lady who took care of her, and head to the diner for coffee, and town gossip.