|
|
|
|
"Damn, I thought that I got eggroll with my fried gopher!" yelped the troll of Williamson Creek.The tawdry troll of Williamson creek was quite a sight to see. He ran with a song and nursed it along and was as bestranged as one could be. He had a stash of purloined Barbie dolls in his lair and was much more intelligent than the average chair.
We were running our usual Sunday morning game of Snaps underneath the Williamson Creek bridge. If everything was running up to snuff everyone got thrilled and no one got killed. No blood was spilled as knees were slapped and hands were clapped. Pidgeon Joe was sitting in as was Jenny Jinky with her toad pipe clenched and Burpus Wolfe whose chimney free-stenched.
The grey sky went away on high as our tutelage would never deny freedom to those who would buy. Burpus fanned his hands upon demand and screeched his screed while jumping up and down in the wheelbarrow where he spilled his seed. "When will they drop free toy surprises from the sky?" he queried the assemblage. We needed motivation to avoid tagging the unsuspecting suburban dwellers in their faceless tract home prisons. One drop of industrial sludge per day excreted from the passing cars was not enough to keep us firmly rooted in traditional family values.
So after our usual exchange of Sabbath pleasantries we strode up the slippery spillway to where South 1st snubs the parking lot of the Corner Snore and slipped in to make our usual round of gripes, grimaces, and grabs. "Where's my eggroll?" barked the troll as he wiped his greasy sleeves across the eyes that wouldn't grieve and the forehead that couldn't believe. "I ordered a Number 3 Fried Gopher and I always get an eggroll with my gopher!"
Sankybaby the counter clerk put on his patented oh-so-patient but unrelenting smile, which rather resembled the look of a babe in diapers straining at the stools. "Ah mister simpleton you should have checked your order as soon you pulled it out of microwave. You know we get all our deep-frozen processed fried gopher meals in fresh daily and we take no responsibility whatsoever for the contents yes but no in a sense but no...."
Sankybaby set a new record for free form heave as Jenny Jinky cracked him over the head with her bong and Pidgeon Joe threw him through the front window. "Yesbutnobutyesbutnobutyesbutno" chortled the Jinky as she inhaled a hale and hearty lunger with great gusto. "Hey no hard feelings but no" muttered Sanky as he picked himself up off of the glass strewn asphalt. "On second thought you can have my eggroll. It's been in my family many generations and is most collectible."
"Never mind the freakin' eggroll Jack!" screamed the troll. "I've been weaned on the Madison Avenue teat and nothing is as real as television." During Sanky's suborbital passage the troll had been stuffing his pockets with all sorts of goodies and loading his specially designed booster coat with all the chilled beverages that he could scam. Burpus Wolfe provided an inspired diversion for the lootladen departure of his fellow reivers with a withering "How 'bout them Cowboys?!" bellowed at halitosis ignition proximity to Sankybabys' all in one prayer-rug and lobster bib beard enshrouded face. Sanky retreated to his flaking yellow stool and returned to skillfully removing the toy surprises out of boxes of Cracker Jacks.
The air had noticeably warmed outside as we began our slow trudge back to the overpass shadow we called our clubhouse. Jinky gazed at her Range Rover illegally parked on the well manicured lawn of the nearby day care center. "Damn" she shouted, "if it had been wetter I could have dug deeper ruts in that turf!" She fired up a fresh smoke and didn't choke. Pidgeon Joe remarked "it's a high time for painting the town burnt orange." The troll piped up "its a burnt orange time for getting high" and pulled out a sheet of four way big enough to cover the infield of FishPaw field. "Just a tuck between cheek and gum" he intoned as he passed around sizeable slips of acidic inspiration.
The spraycans stood at attention as we contemplated creativity with our coolativity unflagging. As usual the troll made the first strike on the virgin slab with his Krylon Gloss Black setting the standard. It was a fourway under the freeway with us all adding our clouds of particulates to the beauteous coagulation of inspiration.
Suddenly a fierce buzzing filled the air. Four radio controlled model cars came toward us chasing a hapless corporate executive who had been dipped in molasses and then laid on a happening bed of fire ants. "Holy shit" exclaimed the troll, "first the refreshments and then the entertainrnent". Quickly bets were placed on which car would catch up to the stupid idiot and trip him up. "Holy Hemorrhoid Batman it's lucky double Zero" I snapped. "Number 23, Dukakis in a landslide" yelped Pidgeon Joe. "Sixty nine with a goat in a boat" barked Burpus Wolfe. "45 no glove no love" warbled the Jinky as we took turns throwing dirt clods at the hapless runner.
All four cars reached him at the same time. In a moment he was heeled and wheeled. The angry buzz of the cars engines reached a crescendo as they took turns rolling back and forth over his back, arms, legs, and face. Then all of a sudden there was calm.
The cars made a mechanical bow of respect in our direction and then performed an about face and quietly returned in the direction from whence they came. "That's got to be the most moving spectacle that I've seen in a long time" simpered Pidgeon Joe as he wiped tears of joy from his face with the life-sized Lee Harvey Oswald plush toy that he took everywhere he went. But that was the Pidgeon Joe show.
The rest of us were roaring with laughter at the thought of the psychically pillaged fool who was now picking himself out of the dirt. "Oooooh where does it hurt big boy?" purred the troll as he sprayed a hefty splelch of Krylon Gloss Black into the geeksters mouth, "you're on private property asshole... you're trespassing!" Jenny grabbed a handy 2 x 4 and hit the creeps backside out of the ballpark and giggled "Freak-a-boo, we don't want you." Burpus Wolfe grabbed a nearby cinder block, dropped it on the fools head and leered "don't say I never gave you a present!" We were all jumping up and down in glee, even Pidgeon Joe who since his outburst of sentimentality had joined in the merriment. "You've come into our town, we'll teach you to party down" he added. The desperate goomer who by now had caught his breath enough to scream was trying desperately to get away. "Help, help, I never did anything to you. Leave me alone!"
We agreed and walked away from John Doe. Just then a car drove off the overpass above and careened down upon the moron. We snapped our fingers as one and both the car and creep flew up to land safely on the street above us. "It's nice when the space/time continuum is Silly Putty in your hands" smirked the troll and the others chortled their agreement. "So what do we do for fun now, assume that we're in the funny pages watching Hobbes run a lawnmower over Calvin who's buried up to his neck?" offered Burpus Wolfe. "Oh how creative" mocked the Jinky, "about as joyous as having a menageatrois with the Fiji Mermaid and Rush Limbaugh". "You and your Moral Majority sex fantasies" rasped the troll. "Why don't we just watch Georgie Jr. do the hot gasoline dance with a pink ribbon tied around his genitalia to honor his father?" "Ah yes yummies for the tummy but that's the blues" offered Pidgeon Joe.
In as much as the Divine was peeling another layer off of the rind it was time for liquid refreshment. Better than sleeping with your dead wife's nightie some brisk bubbly could enliven any circumstance. Popping the tabs off a sixer of Vernors ginger ale we all drank deeply of the joyous brew with a savor that passeth all understanding. The true font of inspiration invigorated our cerebral profundi and lifted us up to where we belong. "It's road race time gang" murmured the troll. "Last one to have a hot wire is a rotten leg" shrilled the dinky as we ran up the embankment, smiles upon our faces and our auto burglary tools ready for heavy sport.
The nearest source of ready wheels was the day care center. Disdaining her Range Rover that was fully tricked out with the entire Bettie Serveert discography, the Jinky eased her way into a vintage '76 Trans Am equipped with Foghats Greatest Hits. "Not my taste" she murmured as she cranked it and the strains of "Slow Ride" creased our consciousness, "but it'll do". Pidgeon Joe found himself an innocuous camper covered with bumper stickers; the best and brightest of which urged the viewer to vote for George Clinton in 1992. It turned over easy as Joe threw it in reverse. "You'd never know I have some damn college degree" he chuckled. Burpus Wolfe thumbed his nose at all propriety, kicking in the back window of a Chevy van emblazoned with the lurid "If this van's a-shocking' don't bother gawking" and worked his way to the front where he did his stuff. "Hot damn" he exclaimed as he peeled out of the lot waving across the street at Sankybaby who was busy throwing a bushel basket full of deflowered Crackerjack toy surprises into the dumpster .
That left only me. Being the good natured soul that I am I had allowed my pals to snarf up the best and brightest of the wheels that could peel and squeal. About to give up hope and puff on some rope in order to cope I spied a "63 Plymouth Belvedere, paint job peeling, with manure stains up to the bottom of the windows, as if it had spent the last twenty years marooned in a cow pasture on some backwoods field in northern Alabama. "I quit my job blowing leaves" I yodeled as I digged my rig and the wheels squealed like a pig. Barreling into the street and almost into the parking lot of the Corner Snore I told the transfixed Sanky to add a little bar-b-que to his strict vegetarian regimen. "And go heavy on the sauce, butt mite." I think that I had got his goat as he excreted young boys feet on his fake fur coat.
The summer sun was on the run as I eased up the hill towards Ben White Boulevard. I had visited someone north of that magic dividing line once and wondered if he had a personality or just a big record collection. "You're so cooool" I muttered to myself as I hung a screwy louie onto Ben White. Just up ahead I could see my friends slipping in and out between the stupid and stout that make this country great. Sometimes precipating wrecks, sometimes garnering a hex it was quite important to me to get as much pleasure as possible out of every day of my life. No guilt allowed and no praying for deliverance from the shroud.
Right about then five cars did the almighty domino boogie ahead of me in a rather improptu conga line collision. As I was making my shattering debut as a low flying aircraft through my windshield I caught a glimpse of my meat sleeting sweet noneffete smile in the mirror. "Troll" I thought, "always live for the moment." I was going fast.
