Favorites from Run That by me Again

Favorites from the newspaper column

(Archives - this page) (January 2004) (February 2004)

Just call me Big Boy  |  A cowboy's diary  |  Hopdoodle and Hardcase

Blazing a new trail  |   Tortoise and snail in a foot race

Robinson Caruso and Thursday  |  Who wants prenatal kindergarten?

A short history of the American Revolution

The Jonahs attend the Dust Bowl  |   Jungler, is that you in my tree?

The third grade goes to the zoo  |   Titanic: the true story

Al and G.W. fight for the drumstick  |   TR was a sickly lad who carried a big stick

You want that with apparitions?  |   The routine that emptied San Francisco

Armed with dangerous tiny reindeer  |   To party, or not to party?

Just call me Big Boy

Mr. Smith opened the door and looked out to see a giant shrimp.

"Hi," said the giant shrimp. "I'm a jumbo shrimp and I have come to live with you."

Mr. Smith looked at the shrimp, which was indeed jumbo, standing about 6 feet tall. It was wearing a cowboy hat and had a beer in its hand. Mr. Smith looked over his shoulder and called, "Martha, someone has answered your ad for the spare room."

The shrimp peered into the house, took a long gulp of beer, and told Mr. Smith, "I think I'm gonna like suburbia. You got a daughter or anything like that?"

"Martha!"

The shrimp pushed past Mr. Smith and into the hall just as Mrs. Smith came from the kitchen. She looked at the shrimp and said, "Oh, no, I ordered popcorn."

The shrimp shot her a wide smile and said, "There will be no more of that, doll. And hey, dude by the door with your mouth hanging open, why do you make your daughter cook for you?"

"Oh!" said Mrs. Smith as she smoothed her hair. "Well, I am actually his wife. You see we just have the one son and he's off to college."

"Noooo," said the shrimp. "You are someone's mother? Someone in college? I cannot believe this!"

"Oh, it's true," Mr. Smith said.

"Shut up," Mrs. Smith advised him. "Uh, what did you say your name was, Mr. ..."

"Ah ha ha ha," said the shrimp. "Just call me Big Boy, and we'll all be happy. Nice place you have here, Mrs. ... no, no I refuse to believe it. You've just gotta be this old guy's daughter."

Mr. Smith straightened his back while Mrs. Smith again smoothed her hair as the shrimp drained his beer and handed the bottle to Mr. Smith.

"Would you like another?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Ah ha ha ha, I would," said the shrimp. "Why don't you send your father out for a 12 pack?"

"I am not ..." Mr. Smith began.

"You are too old enough to buy beer," the shrimp told him, smiling widely at Mrs. Smith. "FDR was probably still president the last time you got carded."

Mrs. Smith giggled, then blushed.

"Now look here ..."

"Ah ha ha ha, be a good boy," the shrimp said. "Your daughter and I will inspect the spare bedroom that her ... brother, ah ha ha ha, vacated when he went off to college. By the way, where is the lad matriculating?"

"Yale," Mrs. Smith told him.

"I spent three semesters there," the shrimp said with a grin. "Wonderful place, wish I had studied harder."

Mrs. Smith giggled and said, "Herbert, go out for some beer."

"We have a case in the refrigerator," he answered.

"Ah ha ha ha, it's not my brand."

"What is your brand?"

"The one that's not in your refrigerator."

Mr. Smith sucked in his stomach and said, "I am not about to leave my wife alone with a giant, inebriated shrimp."

The shrimp drew itself up to its full height and announced, "I am not inebriated. I am not even shelled or deveined. What kind of self-respecting shrimp would go out and beer-batter itself before its time?"

Mr. Smith looked at the shrimp and answered, "You seem to be staggering."

"I have a medical condition," the shrimp told him. "An inner ear infection. I am taking medication. I should not even be here, but I desperately need a place to live, lest I be netted and ... but, if you really don't want to rent me that room I suppose I'll be off to the shrimp beds. The boats will be leaving the dock any minute and I might just as well go and flop onto a deck before they clear the docks, save us all the trouble of ..."

"Oh, my God, no!" cried Mrs. Smith. "Herbert, we can't let this happen! This poor, helpless shrimp will be ... oh, how ghastly!"

The shrimp cocked its head and rolled its eyes. Mr. Smith shook his head and said, "Dorothy, we have shrimp for dinner at least twice a week. We eat boiled shrimp nearly every night when we go to the beach. How can you ..."

"I don't know those shrimp," Mrs. Smith told him. "But I do know ... er ..."

"Big Boy, ah ha ha ha," the shrimp reminded her.

"I do know Big Boy, and I intend to rent Herbert, Jr.'s room to him to save him from the shrimpers," Mrs. Smith concluded with a firm nod of her head.

"Ah ha ha ha, you won't regret it, and neither will your brother," Big Boy told her. "By the way, how much older is he than you"

Mrs. Smith blushed. Big Boy coughed, put one of his legs to his throat, and said, "I have an awful, thirsty tickle, right here."

"There?" asked Mrs. Smith, putting her hand on his shell.

"Lower," Big Boy told her. "Ah ha ha ha, that's it, right there. Herbert, weren't you going to the liquor store? Herbert? Where are you, Herbert?

"Here," Mr. Smith told him. He was standing in the kitchen door holding a skewer and a bottle of cocktail sauce. He waved the bottle and said, "All right, Big Boy, it's mano a shrimp, no quarter, loser goes to the grill."

"Ah ha ha ha," said Big Boy, "maybe I'll just look into those new condos down by the aquarium."

"Big Boy?" Mrs. Herbert said.

"We'll always have Yale," he told her.

Copyright 2000, Robert A. Markwalter

A cowboy's diary

July 12, 1872 - We left the ranch in Texas this morning driving nearly 3,000 head of cattle. By nightfall, we had discovered our mistake and turned back to pick up whole cattle, leaving the heads to fend for themselves.

July 13 - Left the ranch again and the going is much easier, since the cattle can do their own walking. This could revolutionize trail drives.

July 26 - The road is already long and dusty and we all miss the bunkhouse. We had to leave that along the trail three days ago when Cookie refused to pull it. A cowboy's life is a hard one, but we would not trade it for any other. There are the long days on the trail, the merciless sun, the choking dust, the low pay - may have to rethink this.

July 31 - The cattle stampeded last night during a thunderstorm. Why do they always wait until it rains? We mounted up and attempted to turn the herd but were unsuccessful and so went back to bed, resting comfortably until the cattle turned themselves and stampeded through our camp. They have no manners.

August 1 - The trail boss has decided we will sing to the cattle tonight to insure that they remain calm. A great argument broke out over what to sing, about half the boys being partial to Bach, half to contemporary ditties. The cattle were spooked by the argument and stampeded. We attempted to turn them, failed, turned in, got run over, and are much discouraged at this turn of events.

August 2 - The trail boss has decided we will do Buddhist chants tonight to calm the cattle.

August 3 - Same scenario. We will give the cattle drugs.

August 4 - Busted by the DEA, but the cattle are peaceful. They are stumbling and slow, but peaceful.

August 16 - Dodge City seems an unreachable goal, but we push on. We all dream of a hot bath and some invigorating conversation at the library there.

August 17 - Dodge City seems unreachable because we have been going the wrong way. The ferry operator at the Rio Grande laughed himself nearly to death, the cattle stampeded, the feds left in disgust, and the trail boss beat himself over the head with his horse.

August 18 - We elected a new trail boss last night, the cattle naturally stampeded during the vote counting, and it looks as if we may be driving this herd indefinitely. Why do we do this? The answer came to me as I lay on the hard ground staring up at the starry sky - we are not very bright.

August 22 - We are at last heading north, Dodge City again our objective. Our new trail boss, Slim, recognizes the North Star and so points our way truly. Of course, driving cattle at night is difficult, since the cattle tend to stampede instead of being driven, but if we can figure out how to get them to stampede in a straight line we may be onto something.

August 30 - Still working on that straight line theory and so have proceeded a total of 6 miles, but the cattle will be in great shape if we run across a bovine marathon. Slim is beginning to talk to the cattle. Of course, we all talk to the cattle, but only Slim listens for their side of the conversation.

September 1 - Slim is out, Tex is in. Tex claims to know which way is north during daylight hours and so we again drive the cattle under the merciless sun.

September 6 - The cattle went on strike this morning. Nothing would move them until Tex sent Cookie out to tell them the longer we stayed here, the more steak the boys would eat, and so we are again on the trail, though negotiations continue.

September 11 - Rustlers struck the herd last night, making off with about 40 head. The boys were all for riding them down and stringing them up, but Tex pointed out they probably were from disadvantaged backgrounds and we dropped the matter.

September 12 - More rustlers. They got 100 head tonight, and we figure at this rate we will hit Dodge City with little more than the chuck wagon. But Tex has a plan: we will disguise ourselves as cattle and surprise the varmints.

September 13 - I am part of a rogue herd being driven north, having been unable to get out of my disguise when the rustlers struck. I have discovered Dusty, Drygulch, and Laredo were also taken, and we are plotting our escape.

September 14 - We had a thunderstorm last night, and I can tell you that stampeding is not easy from a cow's point of view, either. Run, run, run! And it's dark, see, and all these big, hairy, smelly things are stumbling over each other, and the dust is everywhere, and they've got these long pointy horns. But in the confusion, we were able to make our escape. Now we search for our herd.

September 18 - We are tired of eating grass and wandering aimlessly, and misfortune seems to plague us. I stepped in a prairie dog hole this morning and sprained my ankle, Dusty hooked one of his horns on a cactus and nearly broke his neck, and we fear Laredo may have sampled some locoweed.

September 22 - A party of Indians rode up to us this morning, and we thought we would be driven off to their camp. They looked us over for a few minutes, then laughed harder than the boatman at the Rio Grande. We were all mightily offended, except for Laredo, who did rope tricks. That's when the Indian ponies began to laugh, and we took the opportunity to slip away.

September 24 - The country begins to look strangely familiar to us, except for Laredo, who thinks we are in Iceland. Could the rest of us be having some collective prenatal vision of Dodge City?

September 25 - Nope, just the ranch we left in July. We ambled over a little rise, in search of green grass and a water hole, and there was the corral, the barn, the bunkhouse ... hold on! Didn't we leave the bunkhouse on the trail?

September 26 - Looks like Tex and boys didn't make Dodge City, either. Seems the cattle just kind of turned around and stampeded home, so the boys grabbed the bunkhouse when they passed it and we will try it again next year. The cattle aren't sold on that plan, but negotiations continue.

Copyright 1999, Robert A. Markwalter

Hopdoodle and Hardcase: mythology for a new millenium

Once there was a young maiden named Hopdoodle whose beauty was renowned throughout all the world, causing even the gods to go slack-jawed when she walked by. Of course Hopdoodle did not walk by very often, for her father, Hoobert Heever, was a freelance mining engineer who kept his only child at work 12 hours a day digging mines. Hopdoodle did not mind this drudgery, because she loved Hoobert Heever and also did not know any better.

One day, Hoobert had to go to Thrace to look over a job. He left Hopdoodle in charge of the mine they were digging but told her, "Do not go for a moonlight walk and get involved with some god or the other."

"Yes, father," said Hopdoodle, and the sad thing is she meant it, because she knew no better (you were listening, weren't you?). So she bent to her task, chipping away at the rocks before her with a pick until she could insert a charge of dynamite. She packed an extra large charge on this evening, hoping to get lots of tiny rocks she could spend the night loading into a little cart to haul away. Try to get your teenager today to do that sort of thing, huh?

Hopdoodle lit her fuse and ran out of the mine yelling, "Fire in the hole!" and the dynamite exploded and knocked her flat on her miner's lantern. Meanwhile, Hardcase, the god of motorcycle gangs, was riding his chopper through the forest when he, too, was knocked flat by the blast, and his bike was more or less wrapped around a tree. Hardcase was stunned, then furious, and he set out to kick in the teeth of the person who had set the blast.

He soon came upon Hopdoodle, still flat on her lantern. He stormed up to her, raised his boot, but then gazed into her face and fell hopelessly in love, as did all who saw the maiden. He lowered his foot, unfortunately planting it in her face.

This awoke Hopdoodle, who grabbed the boot and threw Hardcase to the ground, stuck a stick of dynamite in his ear, and told him, "This is a hearing test. If you can hear after this thing explodes, you pass."

Hardcase was so smitten with Hopdoodle that he said, "Yes, fair maiden. Would you like to stick dynamite in my other ear?"

Hopdoodle was enchanted by his reply, stuck a stick in his other ear, lit them, yelled, "Fire in the hole!" and ran into the mine. Hardcase followed, his heart so overwhelmed with love that he did not even take the dynamite from his ears. Well, the inevitable followed, but since this is a fable Hardcase survived, though he and Hopdoodle were trapped in the mine.

"This is a fine kettle of fish," said Hardcase.

"Fish?" asked Hopdoodle. "What would fish be?"

"Let me take you to the Casaba," Hardcase told her. "Or at least Rabbit Hash."

"Okay, but we have to get out of this mine first," she reminded him.

"You don't happen to have more dynamite?"

Indeed she did, and several blasts later the pair were again in the night air. Hardcase gazed at Hopdoodle's beauty in the moonlight and kissed her tenderly. Hardcase remembered Hoobert Heever's warning and asked, "You wouldn't happen to be a god, would you?"

"I didn't think you'd notice," blushed Hardcase.

"My father warned me against walking in the moonlight with gods," Hopdoodle told him.

"But I'm a minor god," Hardcase explained. "A really minor god. All the other gods make fun of me and let the air out of my tires."

"Tires?" asked Hopdoodle.

"We'll do Athens," Hardcase decided. "It's within walking distance."

Two days later, the pair arrived at the gates of Athens where they were greeted by Reservation, the god of travel agents, who told them, "I can get you the penthouse at the Parthenon for 100 drachma, or you can share a pigsty with the pigs for two olives."

Hardcase booked the pigsty, because he had only100 drachma to his name, then he and Hopdoodle set out to see the sights. They saw the Acropolis, the Parthenon, Plato, and lots of statues without heads. Then Hopdoodle said, "Aren't there any mines here?"

"It's about time we, er, hit the pigsty," Hardcase decided with a yawn.

"I haven't seen a mine since we got here," Hopdoodle said. "We need to find the office of the head mining engineer and ask why there aren't any mines."

"Oh, gee, I promised we would sing the pigs to sleep," explained Hardcase, casting covetous eyes at his miner.

But Hopdoodle set off in search of the head mining engineer. She inquired at the temples, at the docks, at the taverns, and even asked Plato (who was inspired to do an allegory of the mines), but could find no engineer. So she set out to dig her own mine.

"We got trouble in Athens," decided Hardcase, who would have purchased a used bike for 100 drachma and left but for his love for Hopdoodle. So he stayed while she scoured the hardware stores for tools, then joined her with pick and shovel as she began to dig.

They had thrown but two shovels full of dirt when a voice asked, "You got a permit for that?"

"Are you the god of permits?" wondered Hopdoodle.

"Nah, I'm Nitpickitros, Head Building Inspector of Athens," the head building inspector explained. "Digging without a permit is going to cost you 100 drachma."

"We could have had the penthouse at the Parthenon for that!" Hardcase told him.

"I know," explained Nitpickitros. "That's where I live."

So Hardcase paid the 100 drachma, was forever unable to replace his bike, and became the god of bunions. Hopdoodle was so grieved at being unable to dig a mine in Athens she threw herself onto Plato, who ran off with her to Nevada where they dug mines without end. Hoobert Heever went on to become an economist.

Copyright 2000, Robert A. Markwalter

Blazing a new trail

She huddled against a chicken one side and against David on the other and remembered again how he had said, "Nothing to it. I saw a map at a waterfowl refuge last spring, memorized it. We'll leave the flock and head south by a completely new route. We'll be famous!"

She looked at the chickens that surrounded them and thought, "Famous for being the only two geese to show up by accident on someone's Sunday dinner table."

The chicken next to her clucked softly in its sleep. She pecked it hard and said, "Shut up, you stinking drumstick."

The chicken squawked, the flock fell into a general clucking that grew louder and louder, and finally David woke with a start and honked, "What in the name of Browning over and under ... put a lid on it, girls."

The girls squawked louder and a light came on in the farmhouse. There was some bumbled human cursing, the farmhouse door opened, and a tall man walked mumbling toward the chicken shed.

"Don't say a word," David cautioned. "And try to make yourself invisible."

She hissed at him and sank into the chickens, remembering how easy he said it was going to be, since he had memorized the map. Maybe the map had been upside down, like everything else since they had veered away from the rear of their formation.

She remembered how he had explained it: "Every year we take the same route south, and every year the humans are waiting to shoot us. You remember Harry, George, and Grace last year? That could be us in some dog's mouth."

"But the flock," she protested. "There is safety in numbers. If some perish, the species survives."

"Baloney," he countered. "Buffalo run in herds, and look what happened to them. Cattle run in herds, and you know what humans make out of them. But your cardinals, you never see them in flocks, and they aren't on anybody's endangered species list, are they?"

She thought for a second and said, "No, but cardinals don't fly south for the winter."

"Instinct," he told her. "They haven't reached the evolutionary plateau we geese have hit, so they sit up here freezing their tail feathers while we bask in the balmy south. We're smarter as a species, and I'm smarter still."

"I just don't know," she told him.

"We'll break a new route,' he assured her. "We'll winter in a spot we have all to ourselves, no competition for food, no humans complaining when we land on their lawns. Where's your spirit of adventure?"

Huddling among the chickens she reflected that she had left her spirit of adventure in Indiana when the giant trailer truck had missed them by inches. She could still see the driver's wide eyes getting even wider as they approached his windshield, and her tail feathers were still sore where they had clipped the trailer.

After that, they had huddled in the median as traffic sped by, neither of them able to sleep amid the lights and noise. "We won't fly so low tomorrow," he told her. "We'll make Louisville by early afternoon, then follow the bypass and shoot for Birmingham." An empty beer can bounced loudly on the pavement and came to rest under his beak.

They slept late, until orange juice cartons and the ends of egg sandwiches replaced the beer cans. It was dusk when they hit Louisville and the clouds were low and the roads all looked alike. It was dark when they landed by a small lake, hungry and exhausted.

They woke to the clatter of machinery. The ground was moving. They looked to find themselves on a conveyor belt moving toward the maw of some huge metal bin.

"Fly!" he honked, and they struggled into the grimy air as the gravel they had vacated was tipped into the grinding gears of the bin.

"Where are we?" she gasped when they settled onto a spot of grass a few hundred feet from the machinery.

"On the bypass," he told her. "I think. We'll rest here, then strike south. Let's see, if the sun is on my right wing and it is morning, I am facing ... or is that the way the moss is facing?"

The noise of the machinery was broken by a familiar, flat "Boom, boom, boom!" and the dirt around them kicked up in little sprays.

"Get off of the flyway," she hissed. "They'll be waiting there for us."

"Evasive maneuvers!" he called, lifting himself off the ground and flying low and erratically. She followed. Pellets whizzed beneath them and then they were out of range.

They flew for another hour, following what he said was a river south, then settled into some reeds on a pond and fell into a fitful sleep. She awoke in a growing light when she felt something nibbling at her toes, panicked at the thought it might be a turtle, but kicked and squawked and it went away. He looked through bleary eyes at her and said, "See this moss on the reeds? We'll fly this way, south for Birmingham."

She nibbled some snails from a reed and they flew. That was four days ago. There had been the boys with the air guns, the big dog who wanted to play, the stalking cats, the night in the alley behind the Chinese restaurant where the chef had chased them with wild eyes and a meat cleaver, but there had been no Birmingham.

And finally there was this, hiding in a chicken coop, proud rulers of the flyways huddling among filthy birds who could barely lift themselves from the ground. She hissed and pecked him hard.

"Hey!" he squawked.

The human opened the door and said, "A goose? In my hen house?"

She huddled lower but the lights came on and she looked up to see the human staring down at her. She hissed. He said, "All right, all right. If you want to spend the winter in Omaha, I think the hens will share the place. They probably figure you need all the help you can get.

She hissed and pecked David again, hard.

Copyright 2000, Robert A. Markwalter