Once upon a time in the Boston suburbs, there was a hapless CB radio enthusiast named Officer Randy “Mudflap” McGinty. Mudflap wasn’t a real cop, but he took his self-appointed role as the “CB Radio Enforcement Division” very seriously. His days were spent patrolling the airwaves from the driver’s seat of his rusted-out Chevy Caprice, issuing imaginary citations to truckers for improper 10-code usage.
One day, fate (or maybe just the promise of a free sandwich) delivered Mudflap into the greasy hands of Dick Bulger, Boston’s most notorious roast-beef-eating, ham-radio-talking, sleazy entrepreneur. Dick had recently decided to pivot from CB radio scams into “Bulger’s Premium Landscaping Services.” He had no idea how to trim a hedge, but that never stopped him before.
“Mudflap, my guy!” Dick bellowed, his mouth full of beef. “I got a gig for ya. My top guy just got tangled in a leaf blower accident, so I need someone who understands ‘command and control’ to run my landscaping crew. That’s you, bud.”
Mudflap adjusted his mirrored aviators. “I enforce the law, Dick, not the lawn.”
“C’mon, all you gotta do is use that fancy CB radio of yours to direct my guys while they mow. It’s like air traffic control but for dirt. And I’ll throw in unlimited roast beef.”
A few hours and three sandwiches later, Mudflap was the proud foreman of Bulger’s landscaping crew. His “command center” was a lawn chair in the back of Dick’s battered F-250, with a portable CB radio duct-taped to the dashboard. His new mission? Keep the lawnmowers moving in a coordinated fashion.
Unfortunately, Mudflap’s CB lingo didn’t translate well to the world of landscaping.
“Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, this is Lawn Enforcement Actual. We got a Code Green on Maple Street, proceed with extreme trimming.”
“Uh… what?” came the confused response from a guy holding a weed whacker.
“That means MOW, private! Get that turf on lockdown!”
It didn’t take long for chaos to unfold. The riding mower driver mistook “Code Brown” for an order to dig up an entire flower bed. The leaf blower crew, hearing “all units, full throttle!” on the radio, turned a delicate mulching job into a hurricane of debris. Meanwhile, one of the workers—sick of Mudflap’s constant shouting—set his CB radio to play static every time Mudflap tried to give an order, causing him to scream at the sky like a deranged weatherman.
Dick, seeing his business rapidly spiral into disaster, tried to intervene. “Mudflap! You’re runnin’ this like a SWAT team, not a lawn crew! Just tell ‘em to mow and go!”
“Negative, HQ, I got a rogue element in Sector Two! Somebody just decapitated a garden gnome! We need backup!”
At that moment, the mayor’s wife stepped out to inspect her newly trimmed hedges—just in time to witness a runaway riding mower crash through her prize-winning rose bushes like a scene from a bad action movie. She shrieked, the cops were called, and Mudflap—who still thought he was a real officer—tried to conduct his own arrest before the actual authorities dragged him away.
Dick sighed and lit a cigarette. “Well, guess we’re pivoting back to scammin’ truckers.”
And so, Mudflap’s career in landscaping ended as quickly as it began, his CB radio revoked, his dignity in shambles, but his stomach still full of roast beef.