Buckley is a sleepy hamlet of approximately 5,000 citizens, of which I am one.

It straddles state Route 410 and one rarely has to worry about police intervention unless you’re speeding past the cemetery in the wee hours of the morning or, even worse, driving while impaired.

With a smidgeon of help from his DOT technological marvel, Officer xxxx Goss, one of Buckley’s finest, has an award-winning handle on nailing hammered drivers. To be candid, it is amazing to me how many people are out there driving without a license or driving while their license is suspended, who also happen to be sloshed out of their gourd or high as a kite.

I’ll hop down off my soapbox now.

At any rate, the most enthralling event that transpires every year in this lazy little whistle stop is the Buckley Log Show, always on the last weekend of June and thanks to the fine folks putting on the show, always admission-free.

Every once in a great while, though, something unexpected happens.

Such an occurrence went down just the other evening at the Union 76 gas station. Maybe what people say about nothing worthwhile happening after midnight is true.

Approximately five minutes after the clock struck the bewitching hour Feb. 10, a moonstruck fool wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt and a red bandana around his face, sashayed into the convenience store. Brandishing a sawed-off shotgun, he waved the weapon in the general direction of the female clerk’s face and growled, “Give me a six-pack of Coors light and a carton of Camel straights and nobody gets hurt.”

I guess it didn’t dawn on the convict want-to-be, that since he was risking being charged with armed robbery he may as well have had the attendant fill a bag with every cent in the cash register.

According to the police report, the unnecessarily opinionated lady cashier told the man he was making a huge mistake.

Thank the Lord, the guy didn’t have an easily-activated psychotic temper or that young lady would have been a goner.

Your life is not worth being a hero – or a dime-store shrink for that matter.

After the lady lipped off to him, the man with a gun cooly repeated his request.

Buckley police Sgt. Tim Personius, who is assisting with the investigation of the case and has been a cop for more than a quarter of a century in Buckley,  pointed out the city has had one bank robbery (in 1925) and one homicide (2007). The recent incident, he added, marks about five times in Buckley’s long history there has been an armed robbery.

How unusual, the sergeant pondered, that the thief didn’t ask for cash….just smokes and beer.

Unfortunately, Personius said, the BPD doesn’t have much to go on because there were no witnesses and the suspect parked out of clear visual range of security cameras.

To her credit, the plucky clerk made a mental note regarding one distinct feature the shotgun-toting freak neglected to conceal. She said the robber “had just about the bluest eyes she had ever seen,” Personious reported.

I’m guessing that Johnny Dangerously flushed those blue contact lenses down the toilet long ago.