Let it be known that the following account may be somewhat of a true tale, but just don’t you dare ever bet your sweet virtuous posterior on it. All of the names, places, incidents, and faces have been tactfully changed, to protect both the innocent and the guilty. Beware of speaking in concern to these places, situations and people described out loud, since some hillside long shank might just saunter in on a snowy cold, dark and lonely Saturday night, and stroke that old kitty cat until the blue fireflies, the luscious juice flows, and the divine thunderclaps; right on up until she purrs like a well tuned, original, American made Chevy motor!

Once that mighty max commences, let it be known that virtually nothing else can cause him to bring it to an end, but a conclusive rise of the sun on a poor, spent man’s horizon; so heed this dire warning as you dare to read on, and do so at your own peril. I tell you all, this well endowed, Anglo-Saxon author, shall in no way be held responsible for anything resulting from the misconduct of his readers; so please do understand that single fact before you proceed onward any farther.

There once was a man who lived in an elegantly constructed clapboard shack, way across town on a residential road called Butter Butt Lane. He dreamed of being at least a shit-house lord in his derelict one horse mill town. This particular old town had once been called the Precinct Of Old Blades, since most of the people who remained there tended to appear about as ragged, and behaved as outright haggardly, as they smelled. I cannot recall exactly what it was that the town leaders finally changed the administrative district title into; but make no doubt inregard to this subject, this new name had to have been some sort of euphemism, since the big money had long since melted away, as good cake icing does on a red-hot fireside iron.

Though I have forgotten much over the years, there are a few things about this particular man known by his intimate circle as Dambo Blankenridge, that I shall never forget. However, I use the term “man” rather loosely; like the old hammer hangs inside a delicate bovine belle’s clanger-janger on a really good night, if all of my fine readers know what I mean here! I am compelled to offer a thorough explanation on this note, however, since I never could figure out if the male entity that I once bore witness to was really even human, alien, woman, beast, wimp, muff, or not.

Matter of fact, I shall never forget the day they actually crowned him King..., King O’ The Sons Of Bitches! The Sons Of Bitches were a motorcycle gang that he once deemed himself fond of riding around with. None of us could ever figure out the reason why. All that they ever did was sit around, talk lots of trash, drink quarts of beer, smoke their weight in pot, and behave like they thought that they really intimidated the other locals with their foul odor, their filthy looks, and their ridiculous insults to all that is positive in general.

There was nothing outstanding about this group of riders other than their rude obnoxious behavior and their strikingly offensive appearance; but I tell you all that I shall never forget as well, the day that he, his old lady, and his group of biker louts finally rode away over the hill, on down past the shuttered antique cotton mill, into the setting sun for good. Onlythe good Lord knows to where it is that they rode off too, or even if they are alive in our present day; but then, who is it among us left that really even cares anymore?

In a long since faded, hazy, smoke-filled, rum soaked memory..., my mind drifts far backward to the time of the local Tobacco Festival Parade. This festival event occurred around the first of November. These were truly the good ole days in old Skanksville; which come to think of it, was what the town council eventually wound up naming this specific old mill town. The former Precinct Of Old Blades became Skanksville. According to the local history, a woman named Bridget Skanks, who was the wife of a wealthy railroad baron named Bridger Skanks, was the original town founder; so the name obviously derived from that of theirs.

During the old Tobacco Festival Parade, every local wanted to own or at least rent a horse. The reason was that he could ride or pull his horse while displaying advertisements for the local businesses on either side of the horse. The going price per sign was two hundred dollars, CBBB (CB3), or cash-between-the-bimbo’s breasts as we still say, and sometimes even more. The parade went off and on, all day Friday and Saturday, so then the total became four hundred dollars cash for both sides! This was really a lot of money for doing something as simple as just pulling a horse down through the middle of town in the midst of a crowd, for about three hours time in total. This money was just enough to get the horse owner through until planting time, six or seven months later when he finally had the opportunity to work again.

The activities during the Tobacco Festival celebration were a livelyand varied bunch, I might say. Usually the competitive events began in the morning time around 09:00 and continued back to back, pausing only at the midday siesta break. We did not call it a siesta back then, it was simply “dinnertime,” but it was the same situation as the much later noted siesta.

I can vividly recall the watermelon eating contest. The person who won received an entire carton of chewing tobacco! This amounted to twenty-four foil pouches, filled with the very best brand available at the time. Usually, the favored brand was Red Man, for some reason. I cannot recall that anyone ever refused the prize, even if he did not chew; since he could always sell or trade the pouches, considering that almost everybody made use of it back in that time and place.

What really became a delight was when the tobacco in the twenty-four pouches was homemade. The pouches then were usually plastic sandwich bags, rather than foil, and there tended to be much more of it. The situation became even better when the tobacco was peach flavored and had been liberally soaked in Kentucky bourbon, or treble run peach flavored white lightning.

The activity that followed was the seed spitting contest. It was really surprising to see just how far a young girl, boy, man or woman, could spit those watermelon seeds. Many a time I have bore witness to seeds flying some thirty yards or more, and into a six-foot diameter circle! The prize was one’s choice in a box of shotgun shells, or a cardboard box of ten multicolored chicks. Either one would have been fine by me, depending on what my intention of the moment was. If I had won the chicks, that night around the twelfth striking at the pond behind the oldJ&G tobacco warehouse in the center of town, the ten chicks would have saved me twenty dollars. I will explain how later on.

Usually, the winner was a local older lady who had no use for the shells, and would always give me the chicks anyway, smiling broadly with a slightly intoxicated appearance on her face, saying with a very coarse, smoke-choked voice as she did so…

“ Well, here ya go there, love. While you are gettin’ your kicks with these chicks for the night, think about me, now, ya hear?”

“ You know that I could never forget ya, now Miss Suzy,” I would say as I grabbed the box filled with chirping chicks from underneath her right arm.

Yeah, man., now let me tell ya all about her; that was Miss Suzy Sudds. She owned a local combo soda fountain, pharmacy, malt bar and florist shop, tucked away pleasantly right there on the corner of Nelly Nance and Main street, called “Suzy’s Suds and Buds.”

In my earliest years I did not give the matter much thought, but as time passed, I commenced to examine Miss Suzy with an investigative eye geared toward more specific detail. For an older lady she really held herself up very well, to my shock and surprise; and after a few years, she did not even appear to be quite as old as she had in the past. She would always hand me the box of chicks with a very pleasant smile while saying virtually the same thing every year; except by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, she would throw in an additional line to her time-worn phrase...

“Well, where ya been a hidin’ there honey ?” she would spout through her inebriated, smoked up smile with an obviously plastic gasp? Then she would whisper lowin a way that only I could hear... “Next cold Saturday night when ya don’t have anything else to do, why don’t ya drop on by an’ come up to see me sometime, big boy.”

The year of my sixteenth birthday, I decided on a whim to take her up on the offer. Why not? I was really bored, and not much else was going on that late November night in Skanksville. I should say that there was not even a g--damn jingle bell on this particularly cold, dark, and drizzly night, much less anything else worthy of a note here; except maybe a firecracker here and there, or a distant gunshot or two from the bravest of night stalkers going after a few moonlight horn haulers from deep inside the shadows somewhere..

I didn’t have to work the following morning. If I shall recall right after so many years, this rather tight looking doxy and me only sipped homemade muscadine wine, and played poker until the wee hours of morning. I was somewhat shocked at how well the old bud pusher really held such a stacked deck when the play boiled on down to the nitty-gritty there in the midnight fire glow of her pot-bellied wood stove! I would have never guessed it, let alone come to know, had I not simply taken the chance on a whim like this.

I would have never imagined that her deck could have been so much dealt with before, that it was so rather...well worn..., yet never once slack. She really played the game fast, and she rocked her moves very hard, but with an astounding amount of talent as she tried to feel the specific detail in every single card; only accompanied in proper proportion by her sly slight of hand; so please justbe kind now in your present thoughts, and do please bless the old she-dog!

Well.., we are reminded here how one must always recall that appearances can most assuredly be.. very deceiving, to say the least. My talented card play really seemed to hold the key that got her motor running, and she purred smoothly as a half-baked puma kitten …,all the way ‘till sunrise..., with such spunk that just a simple reflection on the distant past still knocks the drool from the old dragon’s mouth, I am so compelled to tell ya here now as I pen these rather breathtaking, juice-soaked words!.

The throngs of people would make their way down from the local park, over to the J&G Tobacco warehouse for the next competitive event. This event was certainly the most treasured one, ever so dear to the hearts of those who lived to experience it. It was the old time Skanksville tobacco spitting contest! Men and women were always more than happy to take part in this grand occurrence. It always seemed to me, that those same women who won the seed spitting contest, virtually came up winning the tobacco spitting contest with what was appearing more and more to be a calculated consistency. Most of these women appeared rather thin and worn for wear, with many of them being quite much older, if not outright elderly. Only one of them was even remotely attractive when one ignored her face; but she possessed the body of a true Venus way backward in the making, that would make a courthouse Little Coot statue gasp when she strutted past.

All of the others participating in this contest would have appeared just splendid after seven or eight Budweiser's around closing time. I figure that it would not have taken but only five forher, then I could have at least looked her directly in the face. Too bad for me that the opportunity never came around for me to find out.

The only exception might have been that it was on one of those bleak cold December nights, where I was tag teamed by two horn wearing, pig-tailed vixens in the dark of moonlight in some forgotten wood stand graveyard by the local railroad tracks, then come the next morning I couldn’t recollect even one of their faces; and the one that I could faintly recollect, I wished dearly that I could simply shake out of my poor, permanently scared up mind.

My oh my, just what on earth did I do? What in the name of good grannie came over me? Oh poor, poor little me; and the many places, faces, and ruffled dress laces, that I have gotten myself into! What more might I now say after so many live long, lost years?

If the winner was a single woman, then she got to select the male of her choice from the crowd for a really rockin’ rawhide date. If the winner was male, then he had the experience of enjoying a splendid date with the local Tobacco Queen! The queen had the pleasure of selecting where it was that she and the male would go, and the local town hall paid for it all, in full! The date would usually occur on Saturday night of the following weekend.

Virtually every year about this same time, my friends and I would go frog-gigging over on Ticklenaked Branch Road the following Saturday night, and we always knew if the local Tobacco Queen and her date, got along well on the night of their outing.

Our strategy, when we discovered a strange car parked in front of theold tree enshrouded pack-house shack in-front of the slough where we hunted, was to ease up on the vehicle with the spotlight turned off, then surprise the visitors by abruptly shining it virtually into the occupant’s faces; doing so in hope that the people would ride on and leave, once we had observed the vehicle for a while to determine if it was the local sheriff in waiting for us, or not. What always amused us was when the Tobacco Queen and her date for the evening, carried on as though we were not even present!

Matter of fact, here I shall declare that they did not even miss a single blessed stroke, for holding the meat down hard enough to make the Nannie-goat choke! To our chagrin, on most of these occasions, we would wind up being the ones to hastily exit the entire area, since the risk of either them spotting us to give later identification, or the local skunk sheriff popping up to investigate, was far too great for wagering chances.

Following the tobacco spitting contest, the same crowd would gradually move on into the tobacco warehouse itself. Here would be positioned a stage, with a musical band in a performance that had driven in all the way from way out on Nantucket Island. What these folks specialized in playing was Beach Music, of course; but back in this day rather than the music of Bob Marley, it tended to be the Beatles, or Little Richard, some local band specialty that was popular, or more from the kind of musical tune that is easy for people to dance the Shag with.

As this band played along, freshly cooked pork barbeque with beans, potato salad, Coleslaw, and homemade biscuits, were being served out to the people, who were being seated atthe unpainted picnic tables lined up in rows on the inside of the rather large, but empty warehouse complex. All of this fine eating was served with one’s choice of ice tea or jet black coffee. This time was a great occasion for families to get together or to do some socializing with old friends and acquaintances whom we hadn't visited for a while.

As people gathered about, eating and listening to the music, about two-thirds of the way through, the band would pause for a while and the local politicians would take the stage, selling their favored pitch for local office to us as we finished our meals, while we all were speaking merrily among ourselves. This special event was a cherished time indeed for the entire county, to be sure about my reflection on the times.

One time Governor Ye Lire came down all the way from Bone Lick, just to speak on stage at our local seasonal festival! All of the women rushed up to hug his neck and wish him well, if not kiss him outright. Many of these women were not exactly among the most savory, but the governor did not seem to mind even one little bit, I tell you. Matter of fact, he appeared to have gotten a real kick out of doing so! Maybe there was much more here than met the eye? The local talk just went wild during this time of year.

The best time and the climax to the festival weekend was the old Festival Dance at the J&G tobacco warehouse. The former event involving the band and the politicians, lead up to the evening dance. While the local floozies were on the inside seeking out their date for the night, in the large parking lot the moonshine flowed, and the growingcontention roared.

Any matters of disagreement were solved once and for all, around back of the tobacco warehouse. Out there was a huge mud hole, where virtually all of those earlier in the verbal contest also soon became involved in a physical contest, goading the other into some perverted, macho display of violence. Virtually all of them wound up wallowing in this thick mud, consisting of fresh pig manure, smut black dirt, all mixed in with some rather dingy ditch water that we called “dragon piss,” in pleasant jest.

Things really became exciting when two screamin'-demon women, went at it inside the mud pit. Man..,oh man..., the people would just gather all around that mud pit, hoist their cups of spiked up beer high, and cheer these raging lioness couples on; who would virtually always wind up stripping each other naked to the bare bone, to the sheer delight of the entire surging, swearing, flag-waving mob!

One time the fight became so violent that the local sheriff was forced to intervene, just to forbear some sort of serious injury or possible fatality from occurring. What made it worse was to discover that one of these raging mud nymphs was the Governor’s own daughter herself, highly inebriated and all decked out in the bare flesh, just like the day that she was born; screaming, yelling, and a cussing..., just as hard as her sweetly scorned, but deliciously delicate, well-talented lips could yell! Personally, I got a real kick out of it all myself; but then again, what red-blooded American thirteen-year-old boy would not have?

One certain night, as I shall recall, there were some twenty-nine people, all just a wallowing in the mud hole out there in the cold, including a few half-naked bimbos, among the men. One man grabbed a certain midsized woman witha set of rather developed breast that stood straight out from her body, hugging her up close to him, while a drunkard in a filthy muck covered shirt confronted him with both fists raised, and his tobacco-stained teeth clenched in what appeared to be a seething anger.

“Dambo Blankenridge, I’ll kick your sorry ass from hell itself, all the way back to Texas, is what I’ll do,” he roared!

“Awe Jim,” screamed the woman, “you shut your face this very moment! Him, me, nor anybody else, don’t have any use for it out here tonight, now honey.”

“Yeah, woman? Well, I told ya not to be with the likes of him anymore. Now didn’t I? Didn’t I, now woman?,” the drunken man roared?

“Yeah? Oh yeah?,” screamed the woman back. “Well guess what, Jimmy there, it’s tough shit for you, cause Dambo ’s a coming home with me tonight. You hear me? You get that? He’s gonna be mine tonight, now. I told ya a long time ago, that it was over with between us. It’s over between us..,forever.., oh Jimmy boy. So you just gotta get over it!”

“Yeah..? Is that much so? Well, it hasn’t been so long ago that I have forgotten where it is that you live,” spouted the man suggesting a possible threat.

“Well, guess what? There are things that I never told you. When Mama died two years ago, she left me another house over on lake Maccamahaw, and the likes of you have never been there before, nor do you know anybody that has. So you can just take that and shove up where the sun doesn’t shine tonight, there, oh Jimmy boy! See if you can find some pleasure in it as ya do it,” the woman rudely shouted back to him.

“And just what in the name ofG--damned hell are you laughing at Dambo,” the dirt covered man screamed as he pointed his index finger directly at Dambo's half smiling face!

“You ain’t shit, there Blankenridge boy! You ain’t shit...! You hear me? You let me catch you around town here, boy...I’ll cut your head clean off your puny, punk-assed shoulders!”

Dambo appeared to be a worm, drenched in pig manure and mud from head to toe. He spoke only through his nose. I failed to determine if speaking in such a munked up manner was his natural tone or one borrowed from the cheap whiskey that he was obviously so full of. On this night I never got a real hard look at his physical features, since they were all covered in a thick blanket of mud, and putrid muck.

“I’ll be on my way,” he said with a noticeable shiver in his voice.

“What did you say to me, boy?” the drunkard roared. “You got something to say to me, there boy? If so, then you had better be out with it!”

“He’ll be with me,” the mud covered woman screamed whom Dambo was crouched behind, almost as if he was attempting to hide. “I told you where he was going to be tonight, you damn, dumb bozo!”

“I guess that I am going to be with her,” slurred Dambo through his nose, as he spoke to the man and pointed jest-fully toward the woman in an obvious attempt at provoking the threatening drunkard swaying as he stood before him. He laughed as though he got a thrill out of telling the man what he did, yet he appeared to be forcing it due to his suppressed fear, that he obviously thought nobody else had bothered to notice.

“Well, you can have that punk-arsed, son of a bitch,” screamed the pointing manwhile he staggered as he attempted to stand there in the middle of the huge mud pond. “And you, son-of-a-bitch, can just eat shit and die, as far as I am concerned!,” screamed the man toward Dambo.

“Well, very well, then,” Dambo almost sniveled, “I have never tried that before. Have you? Ole come on now, don’t tell us that you have, oh Mr. Elroy there.”

Dambo and the smoked up, juice slopped strumpet, tossed back their heads and roared with inebriated laughter.

“That’s Jim to you! You got that, you damn, dumb-arsed bastard,” spouted the intoxicated man as he pointed his index finger almost directly in Dambo’s very face again?

“Yeah! You tell him, there Dambo. That was a good one!” screamed the inebriated mud hole floozy.

When all of the drunken men and women finally quit wrestling and climbed out of the mud hole, the next place that they headed was toward the warehouse owner, old man, Guilful’s, pond just a few hundred yards farther back from the mud hole, and up against the woods. Inside this pond, he kept two very large pet alligators.

Another famous event that occurred at the festival every year was the dyed and fried warehouse chick toss. Every drunk in the county would come to the dance for no other reason than to participate. One of the old men, Guilful’s, workers would be standing by the door of the chick pen, loaded with hundreds of little ducklings and chicks; with the drunks forming a line, going all the way back to the tobacco warehouse door.

Young and old, man, woman, harlot, hussy, whore, saint, and deacon, would almost fight for their place in line during this age-old event. Hell, I even saw the preacher man himself there once, if it really matters enough for me to even tell it...,just as stagger stricken and stumble toed as the rest of ‘em, to bluntly tell the truth about it.

For two dollars a person could purchase a chick, and for three dollars he could buy himself a lively yellow and brown duckling. He would then walk over to the pond, and toss the chick or the ducking over the edge toward the ever hungry alligators, who appeared to be waiting very patiently. The people observing from the line literally went wild when the big bad gator snapped the poor little squeaking chick or duckling up. The more filled that the observers were with their shine-spiked Budweiser or Coors draft, then the crazier it seemed that they all became.

When the alligators finally filled..., which was seldom, virtually never but only once that I can recall..., the man had nine starved, caged raccoons and an even hungrier boa constructor who was very happy to take over the task of consuming chicks and ducklings, to the growing cheers of a drunken crowd.

The following Sunday morning was always one that could never be forgotten; for every person at the local tobacco warehouse the night before, was present there at the Baptist church in the center of town. Sinner, saint, the drunkard, the charlatan, and the con-man, were all sitting shoulder to shoulder proudly and very well dressed, right there inside the pews. All of those wallowing in the mud hole the night before were there as well. All of the many people who were once seriously at war with one another were now on much friendlier terms; appearing unto the few out-landers who were very ignorant of the local customs, as though they had never been anything else at all, but the very best of friends.

It was there that I ran into Dambo again. Hesang in the local choir, with his still slurring, raspy, tenor nasal voice sounding high above all of the others present. When he completed his duties in the choir loft, he then came down to light the altar candles before the commencement of the morning sermon. When he lit the flame it sparkled furiously, almost like a dynamite fuse; causing a nervous Dambo to first try blowing the flame out, so that he could clean the wick off before relighting it. When he attempted at puffing out the flame, the flicker of the candle suddenly raged like the flame of a blow torch, from all of the liquor fumes still yet lingering on his rancid, stomach-churning morning breath following the tobacco festival dance.

The preacher then suddenly ceased in his sermon, with a hard, angry appearance plastered all over his brightly flushed face. He quickly snapped around toward Dambo.

“Dambo Blankenridge..., I should have known better.!Oh, how I should have known better. It had to have been you, who was most certainly right there in the mud hole last night,” the preacher screamed as he gasped, and grasped the top of his half bald head with a trembling right hand. “Oh.., do shame on me! Shame, shame, on poor little me, for I should have made a better choice being in the position of pastor for this blessed church. Please forgive me, dear congregation, oh, how I beg of you.., please!”

“Well preacher,” sniveled Dambo as he smiled his wormy hungover smile. “I shall not ever lie. How would you ever have known…, unless you were right there in the mud hole with me last night?”

“Dambo !,” raged the preacher as he pointed his index finger toward him from the pulpit.

Dambo abruptly interrupted him.

“ Well let‘s do tell the truth there, ole preacherman. I saw you just standin' right there beside the muck mud, a looooking very lustfully at the mud hole doll babies. That’s right now..., I saw saw ya...! You might fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool little ole me none of the time, there ole fat feller! There’s no need to lie about it now. I in-fact saw ya..., a standin' there all wobble eyed..., and just a loookin’ ‘til ya googled out eyes seemed like they were about to pop out o’ ya old bald, chicken head there!”

“Well I -!,” snapped the preacher. Dambo immediately cut him off sharply again.

“Yeah? I know that you desperately wanted to, but you never will. I don’t know what the mud hole hump hunnies here have to say about the matter?”

“Yeah, Dambo there, you just might be about right,” four or five broadly smiling, well-dressed women spoke up and said from the congregation sitting in the choir loft behind the podium, where the preacher stood facing Dambo, who stood with his back toward the main congregation. “We all shall second the absolute fact, that he never will with any one of us.”

The congregation sitting behind Dambo rippled with a muffled giggle from all of the ladies present inside the church house.

I will never forget that Saturday night in late February of that following year. You see, old Dambo’s self-employed sewer pond riding pony was also the town Mayer! She had a strange custom that she would engage in from time to time virtually every year, like clockwork in a wonton factory. She was also the local backdoor liquor distiller, and the good town of Skanksville provided her with her own apartment, and even a steady supply of food to boot; all of this just tosay thank you for the fine services that she so artfully supplied the kind residents with.

Sometime around ten or eleven in the evening..., every year it would virtually never fail...; she would saddle up one of her parade horses, strip stark naked, strap an ammo belt and a pistol with its holster around her waist, hop on the horse, then brazenly ride away on Main Street right down through the middle of town! Usually, when called, the local sheriff, one Mr. Shacklaid Hester, would kindly take it upon himself to casually pick her up. Come the following morning the whole town would see his personal Caledonia county patrol vehicle casually parked right there behind her apartment like he thought that he was hiding from somebody or something. Every telephone inside the whole province of Hardscrabble Corner would nearly leap from its hook with the town gossip.

This time, however, the sheriff stayed comfortably at home, and the man who came to save the night was none other than ole Dambo Blankenridge himself. He even thought to bring along a brand new, crispy clean bed sheet specially intended to wrap her up in, since he well knew that she would be shivering with cold, considering all of the bared flesh being so brazenly exposed to the elements, as it was. According to the talk, both of them were spotted out on Ticklenaked Branch Road for a while, before Blankenridge paused his car behind her place to finish off what all the walloping church ladies imagined was most certainly, a truly exotic pleasure of the starlit night.

“What a fine fellow,” everybody said, “to be so considerate of a dame consumed in mental distress like that. We need many more people just like Mr. Blankenridge around here,” they would all stand around on broadstreet the following day and say.

One of the ladies dressed in her long ankle length, wine-colored dress with expensive looking ruffles of satin lace, wearing a big sun bonnet the same color, suddenly had eyes that lit up like poplar sparks in the dark of midnight.

“Well, it is very interesting that all of you should speak so fondly of Mr. Blankenridge like that. Maybe he can pass all of his positive attributes on down to our dear little children,” she said.

“Oh do tell ?” inquired the town folk with a sudden gasp, “and why exactly is it that you should say such a complimentary thing?” they all continued to inquire.

The lady then gazed at the gathered bunch over her sagging spectacles.

“You are all aware that he is chief Ka Ka instructor down at the old Wolery Family academy, aren’t you,” relayed the lady?

“Oh, do tell, now? Ever so honored and blessed are all of us by his presence,” the concerned group said with another heavy gasp!

Come Christmas time that year, when the academy let the children out for Christmas break, old Dambo went as far as to call me up, to my shock and surprise. How the rooster crowing hell did he even know me? What possessed him to call me, of all people, up? I had only spoken with him only a few times prior in the past.

Maybe it was our conversations about pleasant looking, green haired bimbos throwing elegant homemade yo yo's, with the cute little juice drippin' joules that could slurp up an entire foot-long hot dog in a single gulp, a nine inch tongue that could lick the chrome clean on the backside of a new Ford buggy bumper; and not to mention were in possession of a delicious intake that could draw golf balls throughsome ten feet of garden hose, just to make a courthouse Stars and Garters statue break out in a steaming, shivering, trembling sweat! Hell, to be honest about the matter, I never could quite figure it all out!

He proceeded to say that he wanted me to take a trip with him all the way to Acapulco Mexico, and would pay for everything! I was game since I had nothing better to do at the time, and the old doxy had just about spent her damn squeezebox out playing our time-worn game of “thrash the magic dragon” by then. When he came by to pick me up, he was driving an early bullish model of Thunderbird, complete with a drop top, a well-crafted sunroof, and a really sweet doosed up 302. I never did ask why it was that we were going to Mexico, but I did notice that the trunk was rather large on this particular model of car.

When we finally motored on across that southern border, we made our way toward a very small development that appeared to be a town straight out of the old West. People rode horses and wagons, with very few owning automobiles of any type. The roads were not even paved, only dirt and gravel, if they were lucky.

Soon we were far out of town, in a place virtually out all alone somewhere in the undeveloped woods. We finally came to pause in front of a very large field of what appeared to be delightfully tall standing hemp; you know, the kind with the nine inches, sap dripping, purple buds sticking all out from everywhere, like horns on a hyped up hoppin’ hound when he smells a cute little doe in heat.

Dambo picks up his two-way radio and speaks in Spanish fluently to myastonishment, then turns to me and tells me to watch the field of hemp ahead. Soon more than a hundred nude children from nine to twelve years of age, appearing to have been released from somewhere unseen, bolted into a complete run through the huge standing field. The large group of children ran more than a quarter mile until they arrive at an expansive colonial styled plantation complex on the other side of the field. These kids make the trip back and forth twice more, then the group finally comes to pause once more again before the large plantation estate.

Dambo picks up the two-way radio and makes a call. He carries on a conversation for three or four lines, then puts the radio down.

“Well boy, let’s ride around and go visit the owner of this house. I have something that I want to show you here, that you may well never get to see anywhere else.”

“Whose house is it ?,” I asked, trying to feign the appearance of being nonchalant.

“ I am not at liberty to reveal that information, but you are more than welcome to come by and watch the inspirational sights, regardless,” replied Dambo with an air of confidence.

We motor on around the field of what appears to be standing hemp, making our way down a narrow two-rut dirt road, until we come to pause before a massive, West Indies, colonial-style plantation mansion. Out in the yard each of the children was being scraped down by using an edged wooden scraper shaped like a short, but wide-bladed knife. The gum swelled into a large blob on the edge of the scraper, being carefully removed and placed into light green, quart-sized, rather elaborately decorated glass holders.

By the time that each of the four fancy candy jar types of glassholders had been filled, each and every child had been scraped down thoroughly from head to toe. The gum on the inside of the jars was then removed and pressed into brick-sized wooden molds, that both connected and disconnected into halves. What remained was a masonry brick sized shape consisting of tightly packed gum, gathered from what appeared to be a very large field of standing hemp.

“You see that brick looking thing there ?,” asked Dambo with a thin rubbery smile.

“ Yeah, I see it,” I replied.

“ Well that thing, as you call it, is going to net us about nine grand, and these people will pay for our trip here.”

“ What is it,” I asked?

“ You haven’t figured that out yet?” Dambo spouted as he smiled in astonishment.

“ I am not asking just to waste time talking,” I retorted.

“Well that is some of the best stew on the other side of the Rio Grande, I tell you! That is how I am going to pay my keep inside ole Skanksvile there. You didn’t think that I could make it on a poor Ka Ka instructor’s salary alone, did you? This is my sideline gig, and it works out really well for me,” Dambo spouted with a wormy smile.

We finally made it back to Skanksville during late evening in a couple of days. Our ride back, of course, occurred after gorging ourselves on some of the world’s best tequila and lounging around in one of the most exotic, bodacious booty blessed bordellos in all of Madre Magdalene’s Christendom.., all enjoyed at the complete expense of our herb wealthy hosts. Here, to my wonderful Stars And Bars amazement, we both were surrounded every hour on the hour by more bared up, bouncing, golly whopping, body rocking gazongas, than an adulterated IRScash register can count. Old Dambo told the madam of this blessed beaver mansion, that he wished he could grow a whole acre of ‘em just to lay down and wallow in! I tell you that we had every favor in at least five different flavors..; and all of it came minus worrying about the uninvited stork appearing, absolutely no crow what so ever, and with both of us only partying gallantly while totally consumed in company with the most elegant of swallows!

We paused by the bridge out on Ticklenaked Branch Road just as soon as we made back into town. In no time flat, it seemed local cars parked by the roadside, surrounding us on both sides. The shiftless youth got out in pairs, fours, and fives, sauntering toward us, but moving about briskly with a momentarily nervous kind of walk. Dambo received their requested orders through a slightly down rolled window, cut the bricks up with a straight razor, and in a New York minute he had sold out completely. He smiled politely, waved toward them all casually, then started his rebuilt souped up 302 Boss..., and we were soon moving forward along at wind speed once more again.

“See, that’s what I do on the side to make it. Just look at this green here, boy!”

He shoved the stack of bills before me as he drove along.

“That's ten thousand smackers there, old Ham Bone! Ten big ones that are all mine. But I am good... I am that kind type of person, now. I know that you rode with me, so here is ten percent for helping me out by just keeping me company. It’s hard to believe that something so easy to accomplish nets me such worth,” he said with a giddy laugh and a broad smile,as he slapped his steering wheel solidly with his right hand.

The year before, at the Halloween fest, there was the annual greased up pig catching contest. While I was there awaiting my turn, I met this somewhat attractive, scrawny young woman, somewhere around my own age. She had told me that she was one of the mud hole muck mamas and that she loved nothing more than a hardcore catfight; that is, except a hard rocking, throbbing, roll in the midnight hay barn on a clear harvest moon. She proudly informed me that she preferred it when she was near enough to the beach, that she could hear the distant waves rolling in above the sweet slapping sound of new flesh slamming in the hot pot, for gracious sake!

We dated for a while... and she was all right... I guess.., but we never could hit it off very well. She seemed to be just a bubble off plumb if anybody should ever ask me about her. Just between us, her favorite pleasure was swallowing cucumbers whole, one after another, until she would finally retch and ruminate, just to use the type of language appropriate in proper social circles to effectively describe the situation. She claimed that she actually got a high from engaging in this most bizarre activity!

I made her really angry when I asked her if she had ever considered switching to light poles. I was serious, though! My logic in regard to the matter being that the light pole, by far and away, was much more in size than the cucumber, and accomplishing the assigned task would certainly pack one hell of retching punch while knocking plenty of rumination loose in the process! Personally, I thought my conclusion and the caring suggestion made perfectly good sense; but sadly,that hollow necked bleached out blonde simply didn’t see my kind suggestion in the same shade of light that I did.

After I thought about it all for quite some time, just out of my own concern for solving her strange problem, I failed to come up with any better treatment for her ailment than allowing her to have another hearty dose of Doctor Ham Bone’s Wonderful Two Ball Tonic. It effectively cures moles, colds, fills empty holes, makes shallow throats once more elongated, and all those poor, shriveled up booties big once more again. I sure did my honest part to cure her problem...all the way down to the bleached out bone, bless her sweet strawberry soul for my saying so. In the end, though, I eventually left her to her own fate, but only in polite silence, of course.

There is much more to this story here that I simply cannot seem to figure out from this point onward... I don’t normally speak about the matter, intending to forbear on spreading gossip; so people had better read and listen hungrily the first time around...

Ole Dambo somehow heard about this poor lost strumpet that I had met at the greasy pig catching contest..., and he was just dying to meet with her. I introduced her to him...and boy did they seem to hit it off..., right from the very start, I tell you! They went together just like homemade biscuits with molasses and gator ham. I had no problem with it. Actually, I was glad that she moved on and was making a new life for herself. Her being gone took the fear in me away of hurting her feelings by breaking up with her, being that she was such an emotional wreck due to her particular breathtaking fetish, and Ihad about all that anybody could ever tolerate of her erratic exotic antics.

The strange part in this tale is that somehow, in due course of time, Dambo finally found out about her freakish habit of swallowing both cucumbers and bananas whole. One day he searched all over town for me drenched from head to toe in an ice cold sweat, with his teeth clenched so tightly that I imagined would shatter on any moment without notice, and seemingly consumed in a spectacular state of grave desperation. When he finally discovered me, he dared to ask me if I had ever personally witnessed her doing such an offbeat thing. Believe it or not, I told him the pure gospel truth about the whole matter and nothing less, since it was my obligation as his fellow man to do so. I informed him in very direct terms that most certainly, I had personally witnessed it.., and actually... she was quite proficient at performing this most exhilarating act!

For some ludicrous reason, both he and she became really angry about my answer to his proposed question. Now both of them avoid me like the plague...; imagine that, for crying out loud! What on earth did I do? I simply just gave an honest answer to his dumb question, for the love of Pete. If he did not want to hear a faultless answer, then what in addled Aunt Molly’s pig pen, pray tell, was he doing asking me that peculiar question, then?

Anyway, time passed, and I haven’t seen either Dambo or his old lady, in many a year now. I heard on the wind that they had a very heavy courtship, an expensive engagement, eventually concluding with a wedding so elegantly extravagant that it kept them heavily indebted for the next ten years ormore! Dambo could barely put food on the table because of it, according to the word from the bird on the wind.

I know too that she lead poor Dambo straight into a trap like a possum to an apple half, by conning him into upgrading his slightly less than elegant clapboard shack sittin’ high up on the ole do-do stack, way over there on Butter Butt Lane. That way, if he ever decided to back out of that marriage, she could find herself a fancy lawyer from way over in Bum Lick, and take poor ole Dambo for all that he had or could ever hope to have, at any time in the future.

Just to be honest about it now, an alimony check from a Ka Ka instructor, who was the proud owner of a slightly used clapboard shack sitting high up on a brand new do-do stack, would have surely set her up right and tight; especially since she had been thoroughly trained by her well-heeled mumsy, to pounce like scorned panther at the first true golden opportunity that presented itself. So I was informed, many among her gave some fine words of praise for her outstanding achievement, to her good measure; claiming aloud that she now stood so high up on the latter of prosperity, that she could stand flat footed and osculate a katydid’s base button!

I attempted to inform Dambo as to the fact about the matter, but he rudely slammed the door on me, adamantly rejecting my concerned message of dire warning. The buzzard inside the local grapevine informs me that they are living in this particular type of negative situation, or maybe that more specific one; but what I have already said is about all that I have to say in regard to this matter.Little flutters on the wind have told me his new love demanded that old Dambo give up mud wallowing, snot swallowing, humping watermelons, and hanging out with those buzzed up biker louts all together..., or else!

That same elegant queen buzzard of the grapevine even claims that this mud hole muck mamma told ole Dambo that if he didn't like her demand, then he could spend the rest of his life trying to bend the hammer backward and pleasure himself, by shoving it hard upward into that particular chute where the lizards never climb, as far as she was concerned; ‘cause she, practically speaking, had no real use for a limp little rye straw that she needed a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers just to jilly-jangle with, much less to use for fillin’ up hungry holes.

I simply struggle desperately only to imagine the picture myself, amid trying just to breathe in between gasping breaths. In the end, I honestly feel that this now timeworn recollection might just wind up being the death of me all together. I sure hope that they are both doing well..., wherever it is that they both are in this cruel cold world…; regardless of whether the ka ka swells upward into one or the other, or rains down upon them both in huge helping heaps!

Come Sunday morning to this very day, eleven elephantine ladies wearing the gaudiest of sunbonnets, and donned in long bell-shaped dresses that are cleverly designed to conceal the reality of their overdeveloped size; still gather all around in front of the Baptist church there in the center of town to debate what topic it is that they will discuss on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday evenings; while in secret among themselves only hoping to spread the local news, like a mudhole hump bunny spreads her succulent pink gossamer wings! Once in a blue moon, I will still hear the name of Blankenridge mentioned, though not nearly as much now as I previously did.

“Well, he sure is such a fine fellow,” they all still say with a repressed giggling grin. “If only it was that this community had many more just like him.., then the world would most surely envy us…,” said one as she leaned back her head to gaze off blankly across an adjacent freshly plowed field, and into woods beyond.

“And with glowing pride,” continued another there by her side over her voluptuously endowed bosom, “come Monday morning, the old Leghorn rooster could then stand up tall in the cow-poo, and crow; lets git it on rat nigh, sweet Sue, cock-a-doodle-do!”