The Toast in the Machine

I remember it as though it were only 37 years ago. The great depression of ‘64 had hit us hard, and we were reduced to eating small stones and plankton. My father had been laid off down at the hydrogen plant when it was discovered that hydrogen was the most abundant element in the universe. “In nature this does not occur,” he would mutter, as he nursed his bottle of gin. To this day, I still do not know what this means.The ice clung onto our beards in screaming agony as we trudged barefoot through the snow that brutal October in Florida. We were on our way to school, and we would stop to sniff glue every three or four miles in an effort to ease the pain. The three of us, my brothers and I, had each suffered several toe amputations due to frostbite. Well, perhaps “amputation” is a bit misleading. We had chopped them off voluntarily in an effort to keep food on the table during these harsh economic times. Nevertheless, we were determined to hobble to school to obtain the education that would eventually free us from our misery. I tucked my hair lip under my sombrero and bent into the wind.The rich kids pulled up alongside us in their jalopy. They were wearing their warm coon skin coats, and their “Rolling Hills Elementary” pennant flapped proudly from the aerial. “You boys want to jump in the rumble seat?” the driver, a third grader, named Biff, asked. I released my grip on the switchblade and replied, “keen." We each took a snort from Biff’s flask of brandy as we braced ourselves against the bitter Florida Autumn. This was one rich kid that didn’t need killin’! David already had seven notches on his knife, and as long as Mom believed that the Christmas ham we had “found” was from a “pig”, everything was cool.When we arrived at school, we had to fight our way through the crowds and paparazzi. Someone had plastered a handbill to the side of the building. “Come one, come all, to the Rolling Hills Elementary School Carnival,” the placard read. We were beside ourselves, so there were six of us at that moment. We huddled around the pot bellied stove in that one room schoolhouse, and our minds ran wild with giddy anticipation. We spoke in hushed tones as we conspired to raise money to attend this “carnival”. Perhaps we could steal hubcaps, perhaps we could sell our remaining toes to Sam the butcher, perhaps we would set the carnival on fire if we could not attend, and such are the dreams of youth. But, alas, our best laid plans would come to naught as officer Flannigan, the local cop on the beat, foiled our every opportunity at fund raising.We had resigned ourselves to the fact that carnivals are for rich kids, and we were merely flotsam and jetsam in the tide of life. Johnny’s bail was set at $10,000. Johnny was eventually released on his own recognizance, and if memory serves me correct, he is still a fugitive from justice. But I digress, our spirits were very low, and the rent was due. But I digress, the rent was due, and the carnival was nigh. But I digress, the carnival was nigh, and we were poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Anticipation had turned to abject despair by the time the letter arrived. We had written to our grandmother, who lived in West Virginia, begging for funds, and she had promptly replied. We eagerly tore the package open, hoping against hope that it was not the usual confederate bills she would periodically send us. Inside, there were three crisp, shiny, newly minted dollar bills covered in a mysterious white powdery substance. “Quick,” said David, “hide it before dad buys more gin.” We washed our hands and hobbled off to the carnival as fast as our bloody stumps would carry us. We sniffed glue every three or four miles to ease the pain.The carnival was ablaze with activity. The midway was festooned with colored lights and jack-o-lanterns. Carnies and pitchmen hawked their wares to the unsuspecting marks. The beer flowed like wine as we careened recklessly through the night, spending our grandmother’s money with return-to-the-womb-like abandon. Perhaps it was the alcohol. Perhaps it was the swagger of youth. Perhaps we had found a tiny mermaid in a tuna sandwich (you do the math) but we felt that, somehow, this school carnival would change our lives forever.We staggered out of the strip show with most of our money intact. Our senses were assaulted by the sound of a farfisa and the stench of elephant dung wafting through the frozen Orlando air. We mugged a clown, but he had no money and his shoes were far too large for the likes of us. We were reeling with excitement and Pabst Blue Ribbon and very nearly missed the old hag in the corner. She was an ancient gypsy woman with one eye and even fewer teeth. She was hunched protectively over a cardboard box. She squinted up at us and grinned toothlessly as she curled one long boney finger at us in a come- hither gesture. We approached gingerly. As we got closer, the interior of the box seemed to writhe with a life of its own. We peered over the edge to discover a swarm of puppies. “One dollar” the withered crone croaked, ominously. As though hypnotized, we dug into our pockets and pooled our change. Miraculously, we had exactly one dollar between us. “I’ll eat the sales tax,” the hag screeched. She smelled of death and peanut butter. We had heard stories of what peanut butter smelled like. David’s voice quivered with fear as he stammered, “we’ll take the orange one.” “The orange one is special,” whispered the gypsy. “You must shave its head daily.” “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Johnny exclaimed in wide eyed amazement. But the gypsy merely emitted a high pitched cackle and was gone.We scurried home with our new purchase. We called the dog "Mitzy" because that was her name. Dad was furious that we had brought home another mouth to feed. “But all of the other kids have a dog,” David wailed. “All of the other kids have shoes, next you’ll want shoes too”, was Dad’s reply. We promised to feed the dog table scraps, and we pointed out that if things got too bad we could always eat the dog. “Well, I can’t argue with the Benjamin Franklin balance sheet,” Dad admitted in a gin soaked murmur. “Did you know that the opposite of comedy is gravity?” he added. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Johnny exclaimed in wide eyed amazement.We kept our promise. After a meal of stones and plankton, we would feed Mitzy small pebbles with an eye dropper. She grew quickly, and soon we could saddle her up and ride her to school. I must confess that I still feel bad about the spurs. Mitzy would periodically exhibit signs of Saint Vitus dance. She would suddenly begin hopping around on her back paws like a dog possessed--a whirling dervish, pirouetting with the grace of a ballerina. Inevitably, her dancing would degenerate into what, in our youth, we mistook to be an old soft shoe. Upon reflection, I now recognize this dancing to be a bastardized canine form of mountain clogging. Consequently, I learned to play the banjo like that kid in the movie “Deliverance.” Strangers would toss coins into our dancing dog’s food dish. Mitzy would take a long, low bow at the end of every performance, and we would gleefully scoop up the earnings and scurry off to buy more glue.Now, here is the unbelievable part. The fur on Mitzy’s hair grew one inch per day. We understood the gypsy’s instructions and we dutifully took turns lathering and shaving the dog’s head daily. When we stared transfixed into Mitzy’s coal black eyes, it was as though we were peering into the seedy underbelly of a dark and lonely West Virginia holler - a land that time forgot. Whenever we did anything mischievous in Mitzy’s presence, we would receive a scolding phone call from our grandmother, “Did you boys set the woods on fire?” “Did you boys rob that liquor store?” Did you boys kill that rich kid?” “I’ll give you an ass whippin’ if you did!” We huddled around the telephone receiver paralyzed with fear as our grandmother’s voice crackled eerily across the ancient phone lines reaching out to us from the general store which housed the only telephone in the state of West Virginia. We would glance apprehensively at the dog after such scoldings, but her genial countenance belied her canine smugness. “How can we stay mad at you,” we would say in unison as we prepared the shaving cream.One Easter, we thought that Dad was actually going to make us eat the dog. There were no stones or plankton in the house, and Dad had been eyeing Mitzy hungrily for several days. Suddenly, from behind the outhouse, Mitzy appeared with a small animal in her mouth. “Well, look’s like you boys have a huntin’ dog there,” Dad said proudly. “What kind of animal is that, Dad,” David asked bemused. It’s uh. . . er,. . . a rabbit, son, that’s a rabbit,” Dad replied as he chopped off the prehensile tail and slit open the pouch on its belly to remove the tasty baby rabbits within. We never spoke of the tire track running down the rabbit’s back.For many years we misbehaved under the watchful, stoic, hillbilly gaze of our dog, Mitzy. And, consequently, for many years we continued to receive the same eerie phone calls from West Virginia: “ass whippin, ass whippin, ass whippin!!!”(even after switching from MCI to Sprint). Often, we would frolic in a glen with our dog, fully aware that the eyes of the Mountain State were upon us. We enjoyed Mitzy’s canine companionship through 13 years of unbearable trials and tribulations. She was there throughout the broccoli famine of ‘65. She was there, in her trademark non-judgmental capacity, through our mother’s hysterical pregnancy of 1968. To this day, Mom insists that she has a son named “Paul.” When she asks about him, we reassure her by telling her that “Paul” is in the Coast Guard hunting pirates. No one had the heart to shatter Mom’s illusion by pointing out that there had been no pregnancy, it had only been gas (from the Latin: “Flatulence”). In earlier times, we would often blame our numerous misdeeds on this fictional “Paul”, of whom our Mother spoke. Be that as it may, the ringing of the ancient telephone would then shatter the night like a ball peen hammer on a champagne glass, and our grandmother’s voice would come crackling down the wire, to the Campbell’s soup can on our end of this technological wonder, and threaten “Paul” with an “ass whippin’”. Go figure, I did, and I still have the callouses to prove it.As the years unwound like so much silly string in a cuisnart, we grew weary of our childhood responsibilities, and, after much debate at a “family meeting”, we decided, right there in the trauma ward of the emergency room, to ignore the gypsy’s advice. Mitzy’s fur would now grow wild and free, not unlike steroid enhanced kudzu, on the top of her head. Although the dog was orange in color, the fur on the top of her head was jet black . Soon, we were using a can of hair spray a day on this patch of fur, in a misguided effort to keep it out of her eyes. Nevertheless, Mitzy’s head would continue to resemble a Chia Pet on Mescaline.Mitzy bought the farm in 1977, and now she is a successful cattle rancher. I’m Just kidding. She died of an accidentally self - inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The coroner ruled it a suicide, but there was no note. We were overcome with grief, and we promptly beat our swords into plowshares. We buried her beneath a tiny oak sapling, which is now a towering pine tree. Mitzy’s fur had grown wild for 10 years, and at the time of her death, my hand to God, she had a jet black beehive hairdo measuring all of two feet in height. You may fancy this part of the story an exaggeration; however, I still carry her photo in my wallet as proof.And today, as I lay dying, my body ravaged and pockmarked with festering pustules, I cock my ear to the wind whispering through the pines and can faintly hear the mournful sound of an Appalachian twang. The unmistakable sound of a woman’s voice made hoarse by generations of coal dust layered in a sedimentary fashion at the back of a depression era throat : “Asssss whiiiippiiin’, Assss whiiiippiiin’, Assss whiiippiiin’.” But when I turn my other ear to the murmuring treetops, not unlike a dog hearing its masters voice from afar, I can detect a distinct slurring sound: “In natuuuure this does not occuuuuur." I STILL do not know what this means. Please, put a sock in it, Dad; I’m fuckin’ DYIN’ over here… Jim W...2006