100 Not Out

Local man Elbert Dickyleg turns 100 on June 25^th. His family in the hope of cashing in on the old geezer, is planning a secret celebration in his honour at the nursing home where he has lived for the past 40 years. Well, it was a secret. Hopefully he won’t be reading this until after the event. His eyesight isn’t so good so maybe if they just hide his glasses until the 26^th he will be none the wiser. They have ordered a Dora The Explorer bouncy castle and an up and coming young mc/rapper/comedian by the name of F. YoMomma from the local art collective to be the compere. The day promises to full of surprises for Elbert and his friends in the Chateau Requiem Home for Unwanted Relatives and the day will end with a mud wrestling competition between the male care nurses who work there.

I first met Elbert on Monday when I stopped by the home with a donation of old Hustler magazines that I no longer needed. I had torn out many of the better pictures and at some point, probably while very drunk, had drawn crude images of genitalia and written disjointed sentences like "Cunt fuck ice cream...." in felt tip pen over many of the pages that remained. As I’m always thinking of those less fortunate than myself, I had decided to give them to people who needed them more than I.

As I passed a high backed wing chair in the TV lounge (which strangely did not appear to have a TV in it) my arm was grabbed by gnarled bony fingers and I was pulled down into the chair opposite. It was Elbert and he immediately began to regale me with tales of his youth. I didn't want to appear rude and the old lad seemed like he needed someone to talk to so I listened. I was amazed by the story he told and I feel it only deserving of a man of his years that someone should document his story for posterity, after all, if I don’t do it, who will?

Here it is, to the best of my recollection. I may have added some bits here and there to spice it up a bit because he was quite hard to understand at times and would whisper softly to himself now and again. Hopefully it is an accurate account of days gone by.

“We used to ride the box cars on the trains into Dodge City, me and my brother Sarah. He would be in one box car with the cows and I would be in the next with the horses and the elephants, big buggers they were, shat turds like big, giant round things. It used to get real lonely on those box cars and I used to watch my brother Emily having his way with the dairy cows through the cracks in the side of the car. The hours used to fly by and before we knew it we would be in Alasky digging for clams in the frozen dirt. People said we were crazy to be digging for clams in Alasky as everybody and their three legged mule knew that all the best clam digging was to be had in South Dakota but we had been there and never saw a clam not never. Sometimes we would get off the train in the outskirts of a big city like Chicagy and find us a hobo jungle where we could have a good time and my brother Sissy would sell his mouth for a few cents so’s we could by us some vittles. I never did it cause I didn’t care for the taste of other men’s manfat, just my own or my brother Hannah’s if I was hungry enough. Sometimes we couldn’t afford any food so we would have to steal a turnip from the onion vendor outside the moving picture house. A rare treat was a raw parsnip and if we made it back to the hobo jungle without eating it we would throw it into the big pot of hobo soup that the other hobo’s would be cooking up. If we didn’t have a cabbage we would throw in a boot for flavour or one of the elephant turds we had been saving for a rainy day, the worst thing about them was the bits of grass that would get stuck ‘twixt my wooden teeth. I had to have wooden teeth cause all my real ‘uns were stolen by Injuns when the box car was hijacked one time by the suckacoq tribe outside of Dreadlock City. Anyways I took good care of my wooden teeth I did, I would polish them twice a day, sometimes three or four times if I got tired of watching my brother Zsa Zsa having coyeetus with them darn dairy cows. I can still hear his screams of pleasure, mostly at night when the lights go out, he has the room next door to me see y’see. I bang on the wall to tell him to stop but he’s deafer than a deaf matchstick salesman so he is. I’m going to outlive him, we joke about it sometimes. We laugh and laugh until the big nurse comes and punches us and then we stop, or I do, my brother Agnes just keeps laughing. He’s madder than a toasted banana he is. Anyways after the war, we joined the navy as a ships female impersonators cause women weren’t allowed on ships in them days. Bad luck y’see. So they would take hobo’s off the street, men of little morals they called us and would use for the cooking and all the womanly duties like cleaning and sexual acts. We were sailing round the Cape of Halibut one time when we passed the wreckage of a ship and in the wreckage was a young lad with a violin that had no strings. We rescued him and learned from his sign language that he had been raised by sea otters and couldn’t talk although he could play air violin like a riot. When we got back to shore we sold him to a circus man for $20 which was a kings ransom back then. Soon after we deserted and went back to a life of riding the box cars and having our way with animals. It was a different time back then sonny, but we were…….”

Elbert had drifted off and I spied my chance to escape, leaving the box of Hustlers at his feet. I can think of no one more deserving. Happy 100^th Birthday Elbert, you old roisterdoister you. Keep on rockin’ my man!

Elbert "Weather Ear" Dickyleg
Man of The World