Saturday, June 05, 2004

Goo Goo G'SPLAT!

A few years back I worked in the mighty Wisconsin North Woods at Chippewa Ranch Camp (an all-girls camp) and met a Texan.
The Texan was the width of two axe handles across his ass, and easily one of the dumber specimens in the zoo of my life.
I called him "The Walrus".

By the end of summer, he hated my guts, and had gambled his entire wage away on bartop Monte Carlo machines in a place called "Sportsman's Bar". He owed the camp two hundred dollars by the end of August. He was just an amazing beast.

On Canada Day my parents came to visit, and we were outside exhibiting our hearty Canadian spirit by standing and talking quietly and politely to one another, enjoying nature, and considering whether to go to the Rhinelander Rail Museum (we did).
The Walrus was in a jolly mood, swinging merrily on a rustic, tree-hung, swing, chatting up some pre-teen girls.
Suddenly.
A loud CRACK!.
The sound of little girls crying.
The sight of the Walrus, flat on his back, his chubby legs sticking out from the leaves of a broken tree branch now lying on the ground.

No one was hurt.

I think the girls were crying because the "old tree swing" was broken beyond repair.

My father summed up the event just as Lorne Greene might have reported it on CBC radio--
He turned to me, and in a grave tone said:
"That fat guy just broke the branch off that tree."

He sure did. Broke it real good.

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