The Pub Series


Title:
The Pub Series ~ Story 1 Politics
Author: Rachel Stonebreaker
Email: redirect@beckyswebdesign.com
Rating: G
Characters: Frodo, Pippin, Sam, Fatty, Lotho, and Merry.
Date: 5 May 2002
Summary: The Pub Series is a group of stories set in one of the Shire's more bawdy Pubs, the 'Old Mother Red Cap'. Of course besides the old tales of the Old Mother murdering patrons who stopped in and using their blood to dye her cap (nasty business if you ask me!) there's the double entendre of a cap being referenced in a house where perhaps a little hankie panky might take place. This story is about Frodo taking the task in hand to start the younger cousins on the way to being more involved in Shire politics by getting them to work together on a proposal for flood control.
Disclaimer: I make NO money from these stories. JRRT created these wonderful creatures. His estate owns all rights. Any music referenced is obviously owned by someone else for I can't carry a tune if I had a bucket. I own my brain. I like to play with musicians and hobbits. We've been playing nicely together although the others don't know I exist. But then neither do hobbits much to my dismay as I AM a charter member of PHF Anonymous. I mean no harm to their reputations (either the hobbits or the Boggards or any other musician).
Story Notes: 'POLITICS' involves our youngest hobbits coming into their own in the Shire and facing up to the fact that mundane tasks must tackled. Pippin does eventually sing. You really ought to go check the web site I reference at the bottom of the some chapters but not this one because no ones noticed them yet.
Review notes: Reviews are nice.

Story 1 ~ Politics


Chapter 3 ~ Now, Seriously Thinking Too Hard

Well whether Frodo ever got the attention he needed when he was young, he surely got it now. Nearly everyone in the Shire had heard about that Baggins' Plan. Though in truth many agreed it would be good. Just no one wanted to bother. Pippin rolled his head to the right and opened an eye ever so slightly to catch a look at the chief plotters. Frodo was deep in conversation with Samwise Gamgee. They were both animated but quietly so, with Frodo earnest and Sam crossing his arms over his chest to emphasis some point lost on Pippin.

Not that Pip liked the lads, in that way, but he thought Frodo quite handsome still, for his age. He had the Took look, thin and tall and fair skinned. Pippin hoped he looked that good at 35, 40 how old was Frodo? My! 50 now wasn't it? Frodo was the cousin caught between generations. He was the oldest of one group and the youngest of the other. And considering how stodgy the older group was, Frodo tended to associate with the younger crowd. Who could blame him? The older lads and lasses tended to shun him as the 'lost' relation, being considered a tad odd. He'd been orphaned at 12 and shuffled between aunts and uncles before being adopted by his cousin Bilbo Baggins. He'd run wild for a number of years until he was moved from the rough country of Buckland into the comfort and security of Bag End in Hobbiton. That sort of stormy upbringing would cause just about any sane hobbit to be a touch fey. Pippin was caught between the generations, too, being the youngest of one and the oldest of the other, but in his case, he was forward, bold and loved attention, even when it was negative. Which he got, it seemed, whenever he opened his mouth. But one thing was certain, Frodo was a charmer and had a way with words. Such a quiet demeanor that most hobbits didn't know they'd been talked out of their point of view or convinced of something that just yesterday they had adamantly not supported.

Of course Pippin was too young to know any of Frodo's upbringing first hand. He heard stories from Merry who had been Frodo's best friend in Brandy Hall before Frodo was adopted out. But he HAD experienced, first hand, Frodo's ability to diffuse hot situations. It was often Frodo who talked Pippin's father, Paladin, or Baker Grubbs, or the Baggins' gardener, Old Hamfast, or even Bilbo, whom everyone called Uncle, out of punishing Pippin for the pranks that sometimes went awry.

~ End Chapter