One day the PR man told his neighbor -- Reverend Winger -- that the Syrian secret service had successfully tested a coconut bomb. It had scattered coconut milk over a 500-mile area.
Rev. Winger didn't understand the motivations or thought processes of public relations people.
The minister decided public relations people marched to a different drummer. Once the PR man tried to explain the advantages of public relations over journalism as a profession. Rev. Winger told the PR man that what he got out of the explanation was that while journalists often seek to expose untruths, public relations people sometimes earn their living by trying to turn untruths into truths. The PR was pleased the minister understood.
Another day the PR man asked his neighbor if he knew who founded public relations. The minister answered it must have been Joseph Goebbles, Hitler's minister of information.
It was a few days after that when the PR man told the minister about the coconut bomb.
He warned his neighbor that frightening new weapons of destruction were being forged in the world's vegetable, fruit and nut gardens.
Like a Biblical prophet the PR man pointed his arms skyward and intoned: "The day of the last harvest is near!"
His eyes had a wild cast. "Don't laugh it off as some kind of typographical error if you read some day about secret weapon leeks. L-e-e-k-s!" he spelled out, "not leaks!"
The minister excused myself and explained he had to weed his garden. the PR man followed his neighbor into his garden and said someone high in government had admitted leeks were the basic ingredient of a new chemical weapon. We had signed a vegetable accord with China wherein we promised not to drop it on them if they promised not to drop their "lechee nut bomb" on us, he explained. He said he knew of a top secret CIA memo stating that one lechee nut bomb exploded over the Pentagon could upset the digestive tracks of everyone within a thousand-mile radius of Washington, D.C.
The PR man came back the next day and stood at the edge of his neighbors's garden. He shouted an imaginary headline as his neighbor worked on a heat-seeking squash vine:
"Cubans to launch low-flying kumquat guided missile to trigger devastating attack of acidity on millions of Floridians."
The next day he returned. "My friend the PR man has gone off the deep end and needs religious and psychological counseling," Rev. Winger thought, as he crouched behind some Swiss chard he had planted.
The PR man thundered: "Chinese can destroy attacking planes and missiles in space with star wars lichee nut weapon."
The next morning the troubled PR man returned clad in green overalls and carrying a large sign on a stick: "Global fruit, nut and vegetable Armageddon is at hand!"
When he failed to show up the next day, the minister called the PR man's wife who explained that she and his sister Carol had taken him to a detoxification center. He had been inhaling a dust used to eradicate green tomato hornworms and had apparently overdosed.
That night the minister tried some of the hornworm dust. He fell asleep and a newspaper appeared to him in a dream. The headline screamed: "Peace riots protesting fruit, nut and vegetable weapons development crushed by police using rhubarb gas."
The next morning Rev. Winger went over to the detoxification center to see the PR man. They wouldn't let him in. He shouted a warning to the patients assembled at the windows about an impending rhubarb gas attack by local law enforcement agencies.
They applauded. Some guards came out and tried to drag the minister into the center. He escaped to the cheers of the patients by threatening to pull the pin on a tomato grenade.
The next day he called the detox center director and told him he had 30 minutes to evacuate the building. He had planted a lettuce bomb in the basement.
The authorities traced the call and took Reverend Winger to the detox center for observation. As he entered he passed the PR man who was being released.
"Finally fell off the edge, old fellow?" the PR man asked sadly.
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