Sometimes when your head is empty you just need a gentle reminder from a friend. One of my friends reminded me of the visit of my great Aunt Marion . That visit had slipped my mind entirely. I suppose it was because Great Aunt Marion was not my favorite aunt or even in the list of aunts I want to have visit me. In fact she was on the top of my “ Lord please don’t let her come” list. I don’t think anybody in the family looked forward to a
vist from her but she visited once a year anyway. I really believe she saw it as her task to see to it that for at least a day or two every member of her family was miserable.
She never gave you any warning that she was coming. If she had you might have arranged to be in Australia that day. I know I would have. She just showed up in that big black limousine that looked for all the world like a hearse. She always brought her pet scorpion and that big fat ally cat that she claimed was a purebred something or other. But I know an alley cat when I see one.
In any case, on the day I remember there she was at my front door. She was dressed in black and carried her scorpion cage in one hand and that cat in the other. She had some arm strength to hold that thing. She looked like the host of a late night horror movie and gave me that kind of feeling. But she was my aunt so I welcomed her and ushered her into the house .
That’s when the first of the terrible things happened. She put down the scorpion cage and somehow it jiggled open and the scorpion took off. Just like that it was gone. “Don’t worry” she said “ it will come back. It always does”.
The next thing you know Polly ( our parrot) was screaming. She was in the boy’s room in her cage. I rushed down to protect her but discovered the scorpion was in the guinea pig pen. There it made a terrible mistake. There were not ordinary guinea pigs. These pigs had survived my sons. A little thing like a scorpion
couldn’t hurt them. They had trampled it to death. My great aunt was furious. She loved that scorpion. She accused me of raising killer guinea pigs just to hurt her.
That’s when the next thing happened. We were living in the parsonage in Crystal Falls and our dog then was
BoBo. Now
BoBo was a very nice dog and very well behaved but he hated cats. He
didn’t care if the cat belonged to my aunt or the President he hated them all equally. And it was at this time that Betty, without thinking left him in. He went for that cat before Betty even realized she had made a mistake. Before you knew it he had aunt Marion’s cat by the tail. Well that cat pulled itself loose and jumped through the open window landing on my car, made quite a dent. Then it took off down the street and never came back. We never saw it again.
Now great aunt Marion was furious. She told me she was leaving ,was never coming back again, and I was out of the will. She also said something about what kind of horrible people they were leaving in the ministry these days but I ignored that. She took her dead scorpion and still calling for the cat she got into her hearse and drove off. We never saw her again.
You know now that I think of it I don’t have a great aunt Marion. We never had guinea pigs. I wonder where this strange memory came from.
It’s not really important . It filled a blog.
News from Pigeon Falls
-The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal.
Yesterday saw two people give their Liar’s Club stories. Mr. Warren
Woodstuck who got a 9.2 and is eliminated. The other was Mrs. Aili Sorry and this is her story:
Now if you have come today to hear a story about dragons, or whales, or fairies or any of that make believe stuff forget it. I have no time for fairy tales or elf tales either. No! I’m going to tell you how my uncle old One-Eyed Johnson lost his eye. Some of you met my uncle. He had a farm up by calumet. He’s been dead now for some twenty years but the story is still as true as when he first told it to me.
It was just after the start of World War II and Uncle One Eye was sitting in a little French cabaret eating some
tiramisu. I know it is an Italian desert but that French chef made it as well as it could be made. Besides what he was eating was not that important. For he was
transfixed by the dancer billed as the
Queen of the Nile doing the dance of the seven veils with just a
pillowcase. Boy could she move that pillowcase. You could tell from the rise in his
voice inflection and his use of some non
grammatical grunts that she was getting to him. He knew it too because despite the
microclimate control of the cabaret he felt himself getting hot. He had to find some way to get those emotions
pacified because he
hadn’t come for her but the
Swami. He needed to get the box from him before the Germans came and the
evacuation began.
It was the box of power that he wanted . The legendary box that if the rumors could be believed could change the outcome of the war.. All the preparations for this meeting had been made. There was a plane at the local airport ready to take him to England. He could not let some dancer distract him but there she was with her pillowcase. That’s when the funny looking fellow sat down next to him and said “ Le
pume de ma
tante est
sur la table”. The agreed on signal. Uncle one-eye responded “Swami.” Then he remembered the right response and said “ Non! Ma
tante est
sur la table.” . The man quickly handed him a bag and said this “ If you open the box a power will be let loose and the allies will win. But you will lose an eye”.
Before my uncle could ask anything the lights went out. Shots were fired. He found himself being pushed to the door and someone saying go.
He ran to the airport and the plane took him back to England. All the way he struggled with himself. He wanted to defeat the Germans but he liked having two eyes. What a high price to pay for victory. But then he thought of the soldiers who would loose arms and legs and lives in the battles to come and an eye
didn’t seem like such a big sacrifice.
So when they landed he sat with the War Marshal and they opened the box. There was a whooshing sound and the rest is history. The allies won the war. On opening the box a splinter flew into uncle one-eye’s eye. As predicted he lost it. The English government gave him a special glass eye with gold in the back in recognition of his sacrifice.
Now in case you think this story
isn’t true. I have here the box and inside is my uncle’s glass eye. I will pass it around. Notice the gold layer on the back of the eye unlike any other glass eye ever made.
Ail got a score of 9.6 which makes her tied for first place with three people to go.
News from Pigeon Falls
