Monday, Apr. 11, 1938

Bug Tussle

Nobody knows how Bug Tussle, Ala. got its name. Its 300 citizens, mostly cotton farmers, rather think it refers to their annual battle with boll weevils.

There is no post office in Bug Tussle and nobody in Bug Tussle has a telephone. Almost everybody is almost everybody else's cousin. The citizens of Bug Tussle present a united front to the world. Two months ago two postal inspectors from Birmingham arrived to ask a few questions. It took rather longer than they thought, for nobody was at all cooperative. But last week they finally arrested seven people for using the mails to defraud.

According to officials of a Northern mail-order house--which one the inspectors would not say--Bug Tussle had done them out of $6,000 worth of overalls and kitchen stoves. The citizens had done it, they said, simply by giving themselves as references for each other and nobody ever seemed to have paid for what he ordered. One of them even got his cat an A credit rating. The inspectors are afraid they will have to make some more arrests, but they think it fortunate for their case that they will be able to take the erring citizens out of Bug Tussle for trial.

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