Colson: A mighty ‘WHACK’ and The Donald went down

Donald Trump took a big hit the other day in the Roaring Fork Valley.

In fact, the presumptive Republican nominee for president got himself all busted up, thanks to a young man with a baseball bat, a handy tree and a bit of rope.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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All afternoon on that Sunday, people had been wandering past, some reaching out to touch The Donald, maybe hoping he would start spouting some of the insane gibberish that passes for political speech on his campaign.

But they were disappointed. The Donald did not speak, though he seemed on the verge of saying something incredibly insensitive, nonsensical or racist at any given moment.

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He sure looked spiffy, too, in a shiny black suit, white shirt, orange face, oddly unnatural-looking yellow hair and tiny hands.

The occasion was the 97th birthday of a friend who lives in the midvalley with her son and daughter-in-law (I won’t be naming any of the participants; some eager agent from the Department of Homeland Security might read this column and freak out).

A Latina friend of the guest of honor, a lady who came up with several phantasmagorical artistic outbursts for the event, arranged to have Trump at the party, since the birthday girl is known to be possessed of a feisty temperament and proud of her Hispanic heritage.

It might have been that there was some hope the birthday girl would get a little tipsy and let Trump have it for his nasty words about her people on the campaign trail, but she held herself aloof from any of that.

I wasn’t there when he first arrived, but I got there in time to see the him sitting in the lap of the birthday girl, his arms spread wide, a goofy expression on his face.

She, however, was not too happy with this intimate contact, having been properly raised to keep her distance from wild men and fools, and she urged him along to other targets in the house party.

I caught glimpses of him as he traveled around the rooms, sitting on a sofa in the living room for a while as people giggled while walking by, hanging out on the patio while the band tuned up, seated next to the dining-room table piled high with fine food.

At one point I found him outside, perched on a metal love seat all by his lonesome, taking in the festivities and obviously feeling good.

I went over and sat next to him, thinking I could talk a little sense into him (I’d had a couple of beers by then) and maybe even get him to admit that he really had no idea what he would do if elected president and in fact really doesn’t even want the job.

But he didn’t want to chat, I guess, and sat there in silence until I left.

At one point I saw someone try to get the birthday girl to give Trump a little kiss, and she seemed ready to do so when she suddenly pushed him away with a cry, “No, no — it’s Trump!”

Finally, after sufficient quantities of drink and food had been consumed came the time all the guests had been eagerly anticipating — The Donald was about to have his moment in the sun (well, actually, it was in the shade), fulfilling the promise of his presence with a simple act of physicality.

A few of us went off into the corners of the yard to discuss the proper placement of the “stage” for all this and haggled among ourselves as to which tree would suit it best.

One was an aspen out in front of the neighbor’s house, and though we had permission to perform our little tragedy on her property, we decided it was too exposed and just a little too far a walk for some of the guests, not to mention the birthday girl.

Someone suggested we erect a makeshift scaffolding, but that seemed like too much trouble. And besides, we didn’t have any proper material at hand — two-by-fours, planking, nails, that sort of thing.

In the end we picked a tree in the backyard with a stout branch extending toward the berm that separated us from Highway 82. We only had to trim a couple of branches to make a properly cleared space.

Then we tossed the loop over the stout branch, made a slip-knot assembly and got ready.

The Donald didn’t protest, just quietly let us slip the noose around his neck.

It happened so fast I can barely recall it — the rope being yanked every which way but loose, as a young, teenage boy stepped forward with a plastic Wiffle ball bat in his hands and a blindfold over his eyes.

One mighty swing was all it took, and despite attempts to keep it out of harms way for at least a little while, The Donald’s papier-mache body exploded in a spray of arms, legs, head and candy.

The pinata, it seemed, also had been drinking.

Email at jbcolson51@gmail.com.