Found this short story I wrote in an old journal.

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Mr. & Mrs. Eldred Whipple of Grand Oak Falls, Nebraska saw the flashing banner while checking their e-mail.

Be on a Reality TV Show!

Eldred clicked it by accident, and then six new browser windows opened in quick succession. He blinked at the flurry.

Myrtle fetched her reading glasses. Eldred turned on the desk lamp. They squinted at all the rules and regulations.

Winners Flown First-Class to Hollywood, CA!

They couldn’t print the forms so Myrtle copied them, word-for-word, on the Underwood typewriter. Then she and Eldred sat around the old iron stove and asked each other the questions. The forms were eighteen pages long. The questions were designed to tell the producers what type of people they were, and whether they’d be interesting to watch on TV.

How long have you and your partner lived together?

“Do we count the years I was out in Korea?” Eldred said.
“I think probably,” Mildred replied.

What is the most difficult thing you and your partner have accomplished together?

“Filling out this damn form,” Eldred snorted.

Myrtle wrote their answers in the blanks in her careful, looping script.

“Go ahead and finish mine,” Eldred said, shrugging into his slippers and heading off to bed.

What one thing would you change about your partner?

Myrtle’s pen hovered over Eldred’s form.

“I wish she let me help out more around the house,” she wrote.

**

They came in from chores a few nights later and Myrtle noticed that the forms were still sitting on the kitchen table.

“When does it have to be postmarked?” she asked Eldred.

They raced into town in the old truck. The post office was almost closed. George Simmons had just shut off the porch light.

Eldred blocked the front door with his truck.

“Eldred, you old sumbitch,” George said.

He took the envelope from Eldred’s hand and tossed it behind the counter, towards the mail bin. Then he bolted the front door, took up Lenny’s leash and led the old hound to the truck.

**

There was no response from Hollywood in the next day’s mail, nor the next.

Eldred and Myrtle watched network television every night after chores. Excited announcers promised the new season of reality television, new twists and fresh ideas for America’s viewing enjoyment.

Myrtle looked up from her cross-stitch. “Isn’t that the one we applied to?”

The announcer promised that “you’ve never seen reality as extreme as this.” He said it was “the ultimate in reality competition.” He said there would be roadkill eating, bikini marathons and the hourly elimination of contestants. He said it was a reality show without the cumbersome trappings of reality.

The Whipples were very excited.

“You’d think we’d have heard something by now,” Myrtle said.
“That’s how these things work,” Eldred said. “They’ll probably show up on the porch any day now, cameras and all that, and then we’ll be on TV.”

Myrtle started wearing her hair in curls all the time, even when doing chores.

**

The first episode was a two-hour special that aired on a Tuesday night. The Whipples weren’t on it.

George Simmons found the Whipples’ application sitting on the floor behind the mail bin. He didn’t tell them. He didn’t want them to know what an incompetent postmaster he was.

He set the envelope on a shelf back with the dry goods and stared at it through his entire lunch, every day, one hand idly scratching Lenny’s head. Lenny didn’t judge him.

**

Incredibly, the Communist Chinese attacked Grand Oak Falls, Nebraska.

They dropped paratroopers into cornfields by the thousands. Their plan was to start in the center and spread outwards, like chocolate syrup in a glass of milk.

Every one an only child, every one armed to the gills, every one bent on corporeal destruction without regard for individual self-preservation. They began by burning the wheat fields.

The sky bronzed with ash. The Whipples woke to an apocalypse.

Eldred pulled on suspenders and straightened his bowtie. Myrtle hurriedly pulled the curlers from her hair, tossing them anywhere.

George Simmons was reading Page 14 of Myrtle’s application for his own pleasure when he heard a thronging. He looked up. Pulled up his pants and exited the bathroom. Stepped on Lenny’s tail. Lenny turned his arthritic neck and bit George in the calf.

The Communists had overrun the store. The dry goods were gone. The wet goods were wet. The walls had collapsed into the street.

The town was aflame.

Regimented ranks of AK-47 muzzles marched over the cornstalks. Eldred and Myrtle stood proudly on their front porch. Napalm rained on their livestock. Burning flesh filled their lungs.

“It’s a shame, in a way,” Eldred said.
“Shh,” Myrtle said.
“Take me three weeks to rebuild that shed,” Eldred said.
“We’re going to be on TV,” Myrtle said.

The Communists arrived at the Whipples’ front porch.

“Would you like some juice or milk before we begin?” Myrtle asked them.

The Communists in the front ranks traded a glance.

“Don’t mind her. Welcome to Grand Oak Falls,” Eldred said. “So, what do we do?”
Myrtle leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “I think our reactions are what make good TV,” she said.

Eldred nodded. He took three steps down the front porch, socked a Communist in the jaw, wrenched the AK-47 from his grip and mowed down a dozen of the suckers before they piled on him like linebackers.

Myrtle grinned. Her cheeks glowed. They’d probably use this footage in the promos.

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This was something that I wrote to submit to McSweeney’s, but it wasn’t accepted. Now you get to enjoy it right here. It’s a pretty niche thing but hopefully some of you will like it.
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PREXY PUNCTURED
Honest Abe Caught Lying (In State)

Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot last night, during a perf of ‘Our American Cousin’ at Ford’s hardtop in Washington, D.C. Actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth fled the scene after pulling the plug on the prexy.

Tophat was enjoying the milestone one-thousandth bow by thesp Laura Keene in the Tom Taylor-penned laffer. Booth entered the aud undetected and made his way to Lincoln’s private box, where he fired one shot to the head that ankled the politico.

Major Henry Rathbone of Albany grappled with the assass but was knifed for his trouble. Booth leapt to the stage but caught one hoof on a flag, taking a hard fall. Witnesses report he cried “Sic semper tyrannis” before mounting an oater waiting outside. Latin chirp is state motto of Virginia.

Lincoln was taken across the lane to Peterson’s boarder, where for nine hours he kept up a snoozer before finally doornailing. Docs drained Tophat’s thinker-fluids through the night, but the Emancipator shuffled off the coil at 7:22 a.m.

State Sec’y William Seward was attacked at home on same night by Lewis Powell, though the 3rd-in-liner breathed through the event. Stabber Powell failed to finish off the sec’y and sliced through five present before fleeing. Solons say the the plot was part of an umbrella pact to pinkslip the prexyship.

Army topper Ulysses Grant was skedded to join Lincoln for the perf but nixed.

Gov’t has tapped veepee Andrew Johnson to assume prexy powers.

***

BEANTOWN DRINKS DEEP
‘Sons’ Liberate 45 Tons

‘Sons of Liberty’ helmer Samuel Adams led a ragtag crew to Griffin’s Wharf late last night, where the Indian-garbed creepers hoofed aboard a trio of British merch-haulers and dumped 90,000 lbs. of East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor.

England has enjoyed socko tax revs on merch in the 13 cols since the Stamp Act of 1765. Beantown trader John Hancock’s evasive maneuvers around Old World rev streams meant boffo biz for the goodsman, but the competish made choppy waters for O.W. merchants. Notably, British tea distrib East India Co. faced a major downturn in all sectors and appealed to London for bailout.

Meanwhile, crix of the Kingery have decried the lack of U.S. reps across the pond. British lawbuilders have imposed their payola scheme on the cols without inviting the R-pronouncers to rest their cheeks in Parliam.

The resulting Tea Act led to the recent seizure of Hancock’s bizfloater by Redcoat coin-counters and led to confabs around the cols mulling takeover bids against the Kingery. Adams and other indie tubthumpers have called for the ouster of East India Co. execs and whipped up a series of powwows rallying plebes to their position.

Said kettle boiled over last night with the wharf walkon. Vessels HMS Dartmouth, HMS Beaver and HMS Eleanour were overboarded of product worth a cume of £10K.

Expat Benjamin Franklin has offered to cover the East India Co.’s nuts.

***

PILGRIMS, INK
Plymouth Pact ‘May’ Flower

New World scribe William Bradford reports that 41 settlers have inked a deal for a ‘civill body politick’ in Cape Cod. Previously set up with the London Co., tyro citybuilders declined to re-up with the English land distrib and instead are hanging their own shingle as the Plymouth Co. So-called ‘Mayflower Compact’ calls for ‘just & equall lawes’ and will be helmed by John Carver.

Floaters eyeballed Provincetown before making land at Plymouth. Praisers cite ‘abundance of firewood and fresh water’ as keys in the decision. Buckleshoes’ current slate calls for first settlement to preem in the Virginia Colony by 4Q ‘20. Sources claim the Ps will also continue to use the Georgian Calendar.

Jamestown topper John Smith called the Plymouth pondhoppers ‘bloody wankers’ and wished them ‘luck surviving the winter.’

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I should hasten to add that this drawing of Rabbi & Socrates that I found in an old sketchbook is a “latter-day” edition — it dates from 2000, a good three or four years after the original Rabbi & Socrates adventures. I remember drawing this as a sort of “fond look back.” I hope I can find some of the originals.

This particular piece, I believe, was drawn to accompany a Rabbi & Socrates children’s book manuscript (which never got very far along). However, I’m better at keeping track of old writing than old drawings. Here’s Chapter 1 from The Extraordinary Journeys of Rabbi & Socrates, written in 2000.

***

1 : Gregory

“I hate it when they fight.”

Gregory Elliott flopped onto his bed, the covers still undone from this morning, and buried an eleven-year-old head deep into a pillow. It was rather stifling, and smelled just faintly of shampoo and sweat, but it covered his ears and muffled the shouting that faded into his room from down the hall. He twisted about and dug his fists a little into the pillowcase, but the sounds were still there.

“I’ll just have to talk to myself to drown them out,” he said for no reason other than to say it. “It’s the only thing that works, really.”

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