... Perhaps a call for ’Temperance’ ?

The first day out that drunken ass yanked out all my hostas with a pitchfork and then set to bellowing at the draft horses until they pulled down the north wall of the stables in fright. I watched them rolling end over end down the meadow, with the section of wall they were still tethered to, that moron provoking them all the way. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief every time I saw Nut or Bolt get to his feet "Thank goodness they're okay …" and then he'd start at them, they'd rush back in fright, pulling up a section of wall, and around and down they'd go again, until they were stopped at the creek. At least I had a nice dinner planned. You know what proud creatures men are; best you let them clean up these messes on their own, but I was livid – is he ignorant or wholly, wholly evil? Maybe it was the whiskey. The hostas couldn't be recovered – what could I say? But he got Nut and Bolt back in the stable and dragged the wall back up and nailed it back on with a ball-peen hammer and roofing nails, reinforcing it with bailing twine. Maybe I'd outline his job a little more explicitly tonight and send him into town tomorrow so I could repair the wall properly, and assure poor N & B, while he wasn't around – or maybe not. I wasn't prepared for his table manners or dinner conversation at all – exasperating! He started by picking up the gravy boat and draining it into his gullet – flashback to the way he tossed back that whiskey – and then asked if I could fetch him some more soup! It didn't seem he had ever heard of a noodle clipper in his life, and he picked his back teeth with the pork knife, as if he were giving me a demonstration on what dental hygienists do. Also, Oh, oh, let's just say, 112 years of "Mind the Battenburg" down the tubes in an instant! I was quite beside myself.
He was pontificating on modern art. He had derived this subject by reflecting on the little-dutch-boy-n-girl salt and pepper shaker set on the table. Just amazing, I thought, how these cosmopolitan types sniff at the "choice" of something that was inherited and really quite serviceable, and they know everything but don't know how to DO a damn thing, and when they get the chance, they'd rather prove it than ask any questions.
I told him that while he was bucking and pitching and near ruining the clutch on my tractor towing a windfall up to the woodshed, I went around and had a look at the north wall of the stable. The masses of roofing nails were gobbed in groupings that looked like galvanized-aluminum fungus. Ha! Once all those nails are pried out, the wood was going to look like it had been gnawed away by termites. I don't know how he managed to do so much damage, so quickly, while using all the wrong tools -- his mad, nervous energy, I suppose.
I waited until he pulled the knife away from his gumline before I threw the plate at his head, a blunt strike at the temple. Ah, what now? Peace.