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“Wee Winkie Call,” Thelma announces, giving Juanita a high five as she struts by the front desk, pointing at something Juanita needs to read on the internet machine.

Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington, is this week’s winner of the Wee Winkie Contest.

The Wee Winkie Contest was invented by Juanita many years ago when rewarding local county commissioners for their need to have their seats in the commissioner court room site exactly three inches higher than everybody else.  She still contends that they came up with that number while sitting around playing with rulers in their laps.

The award has come to be given to men who feel the need to drive pick-ups with enormous tires on them, talk loudly about how very cool they are, or display other behavior indicating that they might not be as big as they want to seem to be, if you know what I mean and you do because you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t.

Charles Alan Wilson got his wee Winkie Award for calling Senator Patty Murray’s office and talking nasty and then talking violent.

An FBI agent’s probable cause statement says Murray’s office in Seattle reported the threats, which were left on voice mail from a blocked telephone number. Agents say they traced the calls to Wilson’s home in Selah, near Yakima.

Murray’s office told the FBI it had been receiving harassing messages from the caller for months, but they became more threatening as Congress was voting on health care legislation.

Excerpts of the expletive-laced messages transcribed in court documents show the caller saying he wanted to kill the senator, and it would just take one piece of lead.

“Woo, woo, real big man,” everyone in the shop said in unison.

“Now, I know that Rush Limbaugh is going to defend this guy,” Juanita says, “and that’s just because Rush is in the Wee Winkie Hall of Fame.  We retired his number.  It, of course,was two.”

Verdelia loves that and thinks it’s funny.  Buck Pochek, two time winner last year alone, does not.

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