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Slack's last words #31

7/29/2020

Ah was poor, o’ course. Fact is, Ah was taymted to hold midweek services to keep them books balanced! But verra seldom did Ah yield to that taym-tation. Once or twice a month, yup. Ever’ week, nope. An Ah did it ays a public service.

Story goes that the so-called “converts” to muh cause made periodic attempts to nominate muhself fer sainthood. Ah mus point out that they never suck-ceeded. One excuse fer overlookin’ muh good works was that Ah was unda-qualyfied. By this Ah mean Ah was not a Cathlick. Ah considud joinin’ that de-nomination but then Ah foun out that many Cathlicks go to their masses on Sunday, which was muh work day. So Ah dee-sisted, in deference to their piety and the good works they oc-casionalluh per-formed. Ah knew Latin—thayt was not the problem, as muh opponence ha’ taken t’sayin’ in their slan-erous, snake-oil ways. Ah also knew logic.

“Err-go” is a Laytin wood. Ah cane use it in yer avage ordinaruh senence withou screwin’ up. Therefoe, I know Laytin. Also, French. Bone newee.

Slack's Record o' 'commplishmen' #30

7/27/2020

Ah’m also proud as can be that Ah not only re-sisted the tem-tations to join them snake-oilers, Ah also fought ’em! But not tooth-and-nail. Muh maythod was more subtler. Ah followed the tradition of muhgreat-granfathah, Orville Slack I, of muh grandfather, Orville Slack II, an of muh father, Orville Slack III, all deceased, buh learnin’ the tricks o’ the bayg-off trade. Matter o’ fact, Ah’m proud to remind folks that I lifted that tra-dition to the highes' pitch.

It was this skill that emptied the churches o’ a Sunday mornin’ and brawt the pear-ishioners o’ various de-nominational per-suasions to muh frunporch, where Ah held fowth on the evils o’ the snake-oil trade and did case-by-case analysees o’ the tricks of battlin’ that evil vo-cation. This is how Ah made muh good-got gains. Not that Ah made a pile: a hayut awn the floor can hold only so many nickels, dimes, and the oc-casional quartuh, an’ I stood well within the law by ownin’ jus a single hayut. Ah still own that hayut, which, lock its mena friens and colleagues, was o’ the ten-gallon variety.

Slack's Accomplishments #28

7/25/2020

Orville Slack IV

Mose vas presidential cannydates don’t have no record o’ ac-complishmen, leas tu speak o’. Ah’m proud ayus punch ta ’nounce that in this re-gard, Ah blong in that groupin’.

Back in Pan Handle Counta, Ah was approach on newm-rus oc-casions to run fer office awn the Bayg-Off ticket. Usin’ muh celebrated skills, Ah was able to avoid public service. Ah’m also proud as punch t’ announce that I follad the firs rule for all doctuhs: Ah did no hom. Nothin’ that went rowng was muh fault. There-fore, Ah have no need of excuses.

Muh critics will say, o’ course, that back in Pan Handle Counta nothin’ went awn. They will argya that if nothin’ went awn, nothin’ could go rowng.

Ah refuse to quibble with muh esteemed competi-tors awn this point. Ah will say, though, that somethin’ did go on back in Pan Handle Counta. We had ar share o’ snake-oil salesmen, as they was called in them days. An’ they was active.

DRiP's Platform #27

7/23/2020

From The Small Southwestern City Picayune/Advocate/Intelligencer
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From Mr. Arthur Unknown, Small Southwestern City

The next step in any campaign before the nominating convention is the creation of a platform. The DRiP is no exception. The Platform Committee, under the able leadership of Mr. Myles na Gopaleen, Jr., is pleased to announce the publication of its findings by Eleven Speed Press.

Herewith is his succinct summary of the five (5) major planks in the DRiP’s platform.

1. It is natural that the issue of voting and other rights for deceased Americans enjoys pride of place. It is the raison d’être of the DRiP’s existence.

2. It is logical that the DRiP concludes that, because parrots have cognitive abilities equal to the average American over the age of 18, they should also be granted equal rights.

3. The DRiP vows to convert all heathen operatives, here and abroad, to Evangelical Christianity.

4. As for the economy, the DRiP promises to add fifty million high-paying government jobs in the first year of its tenure. Preference will be given to newly-enfranchised, newly-robotized dead Americans and parrots with an IQ of 65 and above.

5. As for the Vietnam War, the DRiP proposes a new law requiring all textbooks to obliterate any mention of said war from their pages. And no mention or hint of this controversial event in American history should be allowed in any newspaper or talk show or magazine or campaign speech. The rationale for the DRiP position is that this non-war was started by the French.

Slack as Batchelor #29

7/22/2020

It was his father’s success that allowed him to finance his son’s seventh grade education.

Shortly thereafter, the present Slack met a charming woman called Akleema—the name, it is said, comes from one of the daughters of Adam. (See Bible, second chapter.) Akleema was a former stowaway on a ship headed from the Arabian Peninsula to Galveston. On the occasion of a series of trysts with Slack IV subsequent to a torrid romp in the dried alfalfa, she urged him to make her an honest woman. But Sarah Cohen-Slack would have none of it. As candidate Slack explained, before his unfortunate disability confounded his mental acuity, “I was forced to apply my family talent to the situation and beg off the proposed matrimony,” proudly adding, “This fact, together with my mother’s longevity, is why I have remained a bachelor to this day.”

This, then, is the brief, official account of the achievements, despite a humble background, of Mr. Orville Slack the Fourth.

A Disgruntled Creditor #26

7/21/2020

With the money he inherited from his ingenious Papa, as well as the money he earned in court after he was shot in the groin by a disgruntled creditor, Slack IV was able to purchase a small bungalow—ironically, this modest home had belonged to the creditor, who had been hanged by a righteously indignant mob consisting largely of Papa’s disciples. (Unfortunately, the papers detailing this transaction have mysteriously, perhaps surreptitiously, disappeared from the Panhandle County Courthouse.)

It was his father’s success that allowed him to finance his son’s seventh grade education.

Papa's Five-gallon Shoes #25

7/20/2020

Orville III, or “Papa,” as he was called by his adoring son, was more fortunate, undoubtedly because of his firm commitment to the Protestant work ethic, which he had heard about at a revival meeting presided over by a Baptist preacher who doubled as his (the preacher’s) mother’s secret lover. On one of his infrequent trips to Waco’s dens of iniquity, Orville the Third met and married Sarah Cohen, the candidate’s mother who, it was later learned by reading her correspondence with a former yeshiva-attending husband, was of Jewish ancestry. Ms. Cohen-Slack gave birth to Orville the Fourth on Christmas Day, prompting the mother to predict that her newborn boy would “make something of himself,” adding, after giving the matter a moment’s thought, “and I mean in a big way.” Some considered these words a prophecy of the self-fulfilling genre, citing the fact that she had come to the marriage with a small dowry, allowing Papa Slack to work himself up to a shack. It was at this point that the Slack family developed a substantial following. While still at the tin can stage of his life, Slack IV told Talia la Musa that he distinctly remembered that many of his neighbors would miss church of a Sunday morning and come over to Papa’s paint-thirsty shack to ask for his advice on how to deal with medicine pushers and other types of confidence tricksters. They would all sit around the stove and discuss the problem of evil and how to fight it. Papa’s quick mind was always “running like sixty,” as they used to say in those more languid days. His best pieces of advice would invariably cause the advisee to flip a quarter into the ten-gallon hat that abutted the tips of his (Papa’s) five-gallon shoes.

With the money he inherited from his ingenious Papa, as well as the money he earned in court after he was shot in the groin by a disgruntled creditor, Slack IV was able to purchase a small bungalow—ironically, this modest home had belonged to the creditor, who had been hanged by a righteously indignant mob consisting largely of Papa’s disciples. (Unfortunately, the papers detailing this transaction have mysteriously, perhaps surreptitiously, disappeared from the Panhandle County Courthouse.)

Sampling the New Perce Experience #24

7/19/2020

It was in this cactus-enhanced seraglio that the candidate’s father, Orville Slack III, a.k.a. Père Slack, was begotten from a pool of English/Oriental/Hispanic/Indian/black/French/faux-Mormon genes. His birthmother Matty, it was said, was a woman of industry who both believed in and implemented the American dream. Not long after her entrance into the abovementioned ménage-a-trois, she insisted that her swain improve their circumstances by moving from the foul-smelling sod hut w/ fossil-stocked basement to a shed at the center of the town that was destined to become the renowned Slackville, then in the no-man’s-land adjoining Texas and Oklahoma. How she bankrolled this exchange has yet to be ascertained. There are theories, most of them deleterious to her memory. All that is publicly known is that after giving birth to Père Slack, she skipped town with a Bible-toting circuit-riding migratory Methodist minister of the Gospel who peddled copies of the venerable Shankara’s eighth-century commentary on the Bhaghava-Gita, as well as armadillo-armored firkins of spirits, on the side. Not long after this scandalous skedaddle, it should be noted, Sacajawea II yielded to her inbred wanderlust and, one night, hopped astride the family steed, the aptly-named Rosinanta III, and, leaving father and son to fend for themselves, headed north and west to sample the Nez Perce experience.

Slack's Humble Background II, #23

7/17/2020

Slack the Second worked himself up from cave life to a sod hut, which in bygone days was considered the American equivalent of a castle. His calling was to further develop the art form he had learned from his father, the art that came to be called “begging off”—a set of techniques the candidate himself was later to perfect. After a down-on-his-luck builder had mounted a sod dwelling atop a sequestered cave strewn with ancient jawless fish (the first vertebrates, according to the venerable S. J. Gould) from the mid-Ordovician period, Slack the Second refused payment. In fact, he threatened a lawsuit on the grounds that there were several discernible bits of cactus admixed with the sod. The builder, caught in his evil ways, folded and was run out of town, leaving Slack II to live mortgage-free for the remainder of his many years. Not much is known of his first wife, Marie Antoinette du Ojibway, of the Quebec Ojibways, except that she excelled in archery and had one helluva temper. She was rumored to be profligate in her spending, which would explain the tale, now questioned by micro-historians, that Slack Junior was in no small way responsible for her hanging.

At age 18, Slack II then took up with a woman of Amerind descent. It is said that Sacajawea II was to bow-and-arrow hunting as her mother-in-law Margarita had been to bank borrowing. Her other notorious skill was the ability to guide U.S. Cavalry units through rattlesnake country—a skill, they say, that she had learned from her own great-grandmother. On one of her scouting expeditions, Sacajawea the Second came across a large band of Mormon women who had answered a Brigham Young ad and were en route to the Promised Land. From this troop of lustful, lonely ladies she bought, in exchange for a foal of the mare she was astride and as a gift for her husband, a black Frenchwoman who had inadvertently joined that jubilant posse of nubiles. At the suggestion of this woman, Matty II la Mort du Slack II, Slack IV’s grand-père (grandfather, Fr.) added another bedroom to the hut, though there is no record of how this appurtenance was financed. [Not much is known of Slack II’s second wife, Grandma Maria del Ojibway, of the Ontario Ojibways, except that she excelled in pistol-shooting and had a helluva temper to beat all.]

Slack's Humble Background I, #22

7/16/2020

From The Small Southwestern City Picayune/Advocate/Intelligencer
Feature Piece, Leticia Ladrona, J.D., Esquire

As befits a candidate for the Number Two spot on a presidential ticket, the circumstances of Mr. Orville Slack IV’s lineage and life were of a humble nature.

His great-grandfather, Orville Slack I, was born in a hayloft somewhere in the panhandle of what is now either Texas or Oklahoma. At that time the region was part of Mexico, which would explain why Mr. Slack has a goodly portion of Hispanic blood—or, to be more accurate, he had Hispanic blood before his martyrdom at the hands of mysterious and suspicious forces and his subsequent cremation. But he still drinks a shot of Corona beer every day, save Sundays, when he sips a pipkin of tequila.

The candidate’s great-grandfather, Orville Slack the First, was a semi-orphan. Upon hearing of his mistress’s pregnancy, his father, a dissolute Englishman and former British MP by the name of Jack Ackert Slack, had decamped from Panhandle County and its environs. Abandoned by her lover of three months, Orville I’s mother, a Mexican tap-dancer named Margarita, was forced to fend for herself. This fending consisted of moving to a nearby cave and living on cooked sagebrush, homemade tequila, and the occasional jackrabbit or armadillo she was able to gun down with an amazing accuracy that was then passed along to her son, and subsequently to her grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson. Legend has it that she could shoot the end of a squat cigar out of the mouth of a deputy sheriff at fifty paces. There was not a bank teller in Panhandle County—or so it is said—who did not fear Grass-Widow Slack, as she came to be known. In fact, a good part of an aspiring Panhandle County bank teller’s training came to consist of mastering the art of petitioning a Supreme Being of his or, on rare occasions her, choice.

Slack’s great-grandfather himself was born in that cave, which he continued to inhabit, save for forays on his steed Rosinante II into the countryside in quest of venison, until his demise. He was an inventor and tinkerer who became famous in that region for having come up with the idea of begging off from the con artists who seemed to appear every weekend evening at the local saloon in search of loose paychecks. Not once, it is said, was he beguiled by their evil schemes, and not just because he never saw a paycheck. For him, it was simply a matter of principle, though what principle it was that he stood by has never been determined; perhaps it was the virtue of poverty. After a youth of foraging for food and creating mayhem in a variety of venues and wandering abroad in the hills of Panhandle County and environs, he finally met a woman who could “hold her liquor” and whom he “wouldn’t kick out of bed.” This was Qi Po, whose distant ancestor, the wandering poet Li Po, received the Chinese equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize in metrical composition back in the mid-Tang dynasty of the eighth century. Qi too was a sharpshooter, and between the pair of them, Orville I and Qi, they reduced the population of antelope in the panhandle area to the status of endangered species. Qi’s recipe for sweet and sour pronghorn won State Fair blue ribbons in both Texas and Oklahoma; she tried for another in Kansas, but was denied by the Dodge County Sheriff, who smelled a rat and escorted her all the way back to Panhandle County and advised her to keep clear of his bailiwick “or else,” leaving the intent of that last phrase to her anxious curiosity. Subsequent to this episode, Qi and Orville the Original eloped to the primitive incarnation of what is currently Las Vegas, returning with a thousand dollars, which Qi had earned with a lucky twist of the wrist at an alpha model of the roulette table. On their reappearance in Pan Count, they lived in the cave of his birth, now empty due to the death of his mother Margarita from food poisoning, that poisoning having been caused by her intake of a kettle of rancid sweet and sour pronghorn. To augment their ill-got Vegas coin, they set up a mom-and-pop market catering to the illiterate crowd. Eventually Qi gave birth to a son, Orville Junior, though it was bruited about that father and son were “cut from different cloths entirely.”