Face Paint and the Incident At the Fellowship Fish Fry

The Setting:
First Missionary Unaffiliated Fellowship Hall & Picnic Pavilion

The Occasion:
Annual Fellowship Fish Fry Fundraiser

The Spark:
A child’s face paint design—a glittered butterfly—misinterpreted as a demonic sigil by Sister Lila Mae, who happened to be fasting, dehydrated, and sitting directly beneath a bee-attracting citronella candle.

ACT I: PEACE LIKE A RIVER CATFISH

Everything began calmly, as it does before spiritual warfare and cole slaw-based confusion.

Mabel Dean Ashcroft was clipboard-rotating casserole duty, ensuring each dish had its appropriate garnish and that no one had brought an off-color potato salad. She floated from tray to tray like a benevolent casserole inspector, murmuring, “Bless her heart, she tried” under her breath while repositioning parsley with surgical precision.

Pastor Peeler was power-blessing the hush puppies, bellowing over the fryer, “Let these golden spheres be fried in the faith and seasoned with salvation!” To which Boot Barnes grumbled, “Back in ’79, hush puppies were blessed after the fish, not before.

Maggie Sue Dillard worked the tartar station with the gravitas of anointing oil. She offered both the sweet relish blend and the spicy dill kind, depending on whether you were seeking forgiveness or revenge.

Meanwhile, Brett and Alyssa Crenshaw had set up a holistic healing booth next to the lemonade table, offering aura readings and chakra-stabilizing prayer flags, none of which had been approved by the Fish Fry Committee. Their flyer read, “Namaste and Fillet.” Alyssa wore a headband with ethically sourced sequins. Brett wore finger cymbals and occasionally punctuated his pitch with soft, uncertain beatboxing.

Coach Freddie, wearing a catfish-shaped whistle, led dodgeball in the overflow parking lot despite repeated objections that dodgeball was not a fish-related sport. He called every throw a “grit-building opportunity” and screamed, “You don’t win life sittin’!” as he flung foam balls at toddlers.

Chester Ray Blevins was issuing laminated menus and reprinting tickets for anyone who smudged theirs. He insisted they be printed on waterproof parchment and offered to staple them to lanyards “for wristband continuity.”

So far, only Clovis Strickland had voiced concern, claiming the fish had “been microchipped by NOAA” and carried latent surveillance pheromones. He handed out leaflets warning against “deep-fried infiltration” while wearing an apron made of copper mesh.

ACT II: GLITTER, GOSPEL, AND A GREAT UNVEILING

The children’s face painting booth, run by Trixie Jo Bartlett (Youth Mayor Emerita), featured only two approved designs: an American flag starburst and a butterfly. Unfortunately, her glitter reserves had spilled into the butterfly stencils, and one ambitious swirl now looked suspiciously occult when viewed from Sister Lila Mae’s side-angle beneath the citronella candle’s hazy flicker.

Lila Mae, lightheaded from her Daniel Fast and mistaking the shimmer for a fallen angel’s arrival, erupted in full deliverance mode.

“BEELZEBUB BEGONE!” she shouted, tambourine aloft and spinning like a spiritual rotor. The tambourine connected with the folding table, launching juice boxes skyward in a biblical arch. Glitter wafted like battle smoke.

The child, a startled third-grader named Zoe Ruth, dropped her hush puppy and screamed. Pastor Peeler, mid-sermonette at the hush puppy station, misread the chaos as a gluten reaction and began reciting an allergy prayer. “Lord, bind this food allergy in Your holy digestive system!”

In the panic, Doughboy Teeter’s drone (which had been livestreaming the fish fry via his Twitch channel “ByteMeSequatchie”) locked onto the chaos and auto-zoomed, blaring “PossumAlert” sirens by accident. Children scattered. Evelyn Grace Tipton dropped her piano binder. Someone yelled, “IT’S HAPPENING!”

Boot Barnes, thinking it was a test of the town’s Cold War air raid system, dove into the cole slaw vat with surprising agility. Eyewitnesses would later describe it as a “slaw baptism.”

Chester Ray began issuing emergency reprints of safety protocols, which were immediately laminated, misread, and distributed backward. Several residents believed the evacuation route led through the potato salad.

Wade Langston issued an Aesthetic Emergency Citation to the face painting booth for noncompliant glitter usage, citing subsection 4.1.7 of the Potluck Presentation Protocol.

Evelyn Grace Tipton turned her keyboard hymnal sideways and began playing a somber version of “I’ll Fly Away” in C minor, which several attendees mistook for the Rapture cue. One man tried to climb a ladder.

ACT III: DEESCALATION, DEEP FRY, AND DEEPER MEANING

Officer Kenny Joe Teeter, fresh from a nap in his cruiser, ambled up and diffused the scene with a bag of hush puppies and a philosophical musing: “If the Devil really showed up, y’all think he’d use glitter?

This question hit harder than expected.

The crowd stilled. Someone sneezed. A hush puppy was dropped in reverent silence.

Trixie Jo, now standing atop a folding chair still sticky with spilled lemonade, gave a tearful speech on the importance of creative expression in public service. “Let the record show,” she sniffed, adjusting her sash, “that sparkle is not synonymous with sin.”

The crowd applauded. Mabel Dean, seeing potential and not one to waste influence, offered her a new subcommittee: Arts & Appropriateness. Trixie accepted on the condition that rhinestones be reevaluated.

Shelley Wexler smudged the scene with goat-milk-infused sage. A swirl of smoke momentarily obscured Sister Lila Mae, who collapsed in a mixture of repentance and heat exhaustion, whispering, “The butterfly was… just a butterfly.”

Sonny Morales, already onsite with a taco cart he called an “Emergency Healing Station,” distributed tacos labeled “Divine Neutral” and gave a sermon on cilantro as a metaphor for grace.

By dusk, the fish fry resumed with minimal tremor. Sister Lila Mae issued a formal apology and accidentally blessed the condiment table. Pastor Peeler updated the Church Incident Form (now 13 pages long and printed on paper with dotted lines for dramatization).

Boot Barnes reemerged from the slaw vat to declare it “historically significant,” requested it be preserved, and offered to lead a commemorative lamination ceremony.

Resolution:

The butterfly stencil was updated with scriptural footnotes. The glitter was declared a “limited-use spiritual hazard” pending seasonal review. And the hush puppies were renamed “Harmony Bites.”

Disclaimer: The Sequatchie Crossing Dispatch is a work of fiction rooted in satire, folklore, and the uniquely combustible charm of small-town life. This story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people, events, or catfish-based spiritual warfare is purely accidental. (But if it feels familiar, we won’t argue.) Sequatchie Crossing exists only in the minds of those brave enough to imagine a town where zoning laws, casseroles, and conspiracy cassettes collide in glorious disarray.

Real Places Behind the Ruckus – From The Dunlap Directory

Real Places Behind the Ruckus – From The Dunlap Directory

Yes, this story was fictional; even the parts that weren’t true. These places? Absolutely real. Stop by, support local, and keep the Wi-Fi away from livestock:

• Cooperative Response Center
• Bella + Broach
• Dunlap Police Dept
• Highland Enterprise
• Chamber of Commerce of Dunlap
• Sanders Associates
• RiverBend Farm
• Gibson Construction Services
• George Hamilton Real Estate & Management Co.
• INPOWERD
• Standefer-Reed Funeral Home
• The Ridge
• Domino’s Pizza
• Main Street Automotive
• Signal Electric
• Sequatchie County Waste Tire Recycling Station
• Busy Bees
• Sequatchie Valley Low Cost Spay & Neuter

Real Places Behind the Ruckus – From The Dunlap Directory

At Sequatchie Crossing, we tell the stories of Sequatchie Crossing.

Please share this post with your friends, family, or business associates who may want follow the news from Sequatchie Crossing.