(Taken from “Rebus Flatbush’s Famous Fables & Folk-Tales from the American Mid-West”)
Once upon a time, there was a little feller by the name of Tomothy Crudes and he was a purty little feller too, that’s for sure. All the ladies wanted to have their wicked, wicked ways with purty little Tomothy (an’ some a’ the fellas too by gosh, but let’s not go down that manky old tunnel of troubles), but thing was that purty little Tomothy was a mite more interested in a funny old religion that was all about holdin’ tin cans in your hands so as to get yourself right in the head.
Now this funny old religion was put together a whiles back by a funny old sailor fella by the name of Elron Bubba who useta write stories about flyin’ saucies and little green fellas from outta space ‘til he figgered that that weren’t no proper way for a grown man to make a decent livin’, so he thought he’d start himself a religion on account of all the other religions didn’t have no truck with holdin’ onta tin cans and such, and they weren’t no little green fellas from outta space in ‘em either, and Elron figured there damn well oughta be.
Little green fellas and flyin’ saucies and volcanos and atom bombs, now them were the makin’s of a proper religion!
Y’see, all those other religions was abouts some silly fella from way back who got hisself nailed to a couple a’ chunks of two-by-four and were stuck out in the desert to die on a fencepost with a rosebush on his head, and by golly, that weren’t no fun to be readin’ on, Bubba reckoned, that were just plain grim and nasty.
So ol’ Bubba set himself to thinkin’, and soon enough he wrote himself a new religion and set about callin’ it The Church of Tincanology.
And many years later, long after Bubba had passed on, and when the Church of Tincanology was takin’ off somethin’ mighty powerful and popular, purty little Tomothy Crudes found out about it and reckoned it sounded like a right fine idea, yessir, and so he joined hisself up, read a whole bunch of books on it, and he held onto those tin cans somethin’ fierce and awesome and mightily impressive, until one day a buncha senior Tincanologists came up and told him he was finally right in the head.
Now, not long after that a few of the folks in Ol’ Bubba’s Church thought it might be a fine idea if purty little Tomothy gave grabbin’ them tin cans a rest for a bit and got himself a lady to grab onto instead.
You see, they figured that purty little Tomothy with his purty little face could pull some womenfolk into the Church and then they could ‘pregnate those girlies with some of the frozen spuzz from Ol’ Elron they’d been keepin’ aside so they could have ‘emselves some little Elron’s to fawn on and follow after … also, they was runnin’ real short a’ tin cans at the time, too …
Now …
Little Tomothy may have been a purty fella, but he was only about two and a half feet and one inch tall and some of those womenfolk he was hangin’ around with didn’t stay around for very long on account of how Tomothy was way more inclined to wanna play with tin cans than to take to pokin’ about their lady bits as much as they’d have liked him to …
One of these ladies, who went by the name of Nikky Pigman, why, she was as tall and pale and scrawny as Tomothy was short and dark and stumpy and even standin’on a step-ladder that little feller couldn’t so much as scratch at her lady bits, and dang if those bits of hers weren’t just itchin’ for some scratchin’ action after a whiles, so eventually she told him where he could put his tin cans in no uncertain terms and she ran off and found herself a gee-tar playin’ feller to get her bits scratched at by …
But never no mind, cause one day, Tomothy met another cute little gal by the name of Cattie Ohms, and he told her again and again and again and over and over and over all about holdin’ onta tin cans and the Church of Tincanology and Ol’ Elron Bubba ‘til her brain fair did rattle with confusion and afore she knew it she’d agreed to marry the little feller and have his babies …
But little Tomothy had himself no intention of pokin’ ‘bout her private bits, no sir, he and the Church had ‘emselves another plan altogether …
So’s one night … he waited … and he waited … and he waited, ‘til poor young Cattie had fallen fast asleep, and he went to the icebox and got himself a big old blob of Ol’ Elron Bubba’s frozen spuzz that the Church of Tincanology had given him a whiles back and which he’d kept hidden behind the turkey gizzards for just this very moment, and he put that spuzz on a turkey baster and crept toward Cattie’s sleepin’ self so’s he could stick that spuzz into Cattie where it could do what spuzz does when it’s stuck there …
But …
As little Tomothy moved himself toward Cattie, he had not noticed that some of that spuzz had melted a bit and had dripped onto the floor and just as he’d got himself real close to Cattie, he slipped on some of that melted spuzz and went scootin’ across the floor, bangin’ his head smack into the wall so hard that he bounced right back across the room and onto the sofa with such a mighty force that one of the sofa springs popped right through the ‘polstery and right into his neck where it ripped his neck innerds to red strings and blood went a-spurtin’ all over and little Tomothy Crudes done up and died right there and then.
Now, with all this commotion and hullabaloo, poor little Cattie woked herself up and then she looked over to see the tiny little body of tiny little Tomothy Crudes layin’ dead on the floor, a big ol’ turkey baster with meltin’ sailor spuzz on it still in his hands, and she realised then what he’d a-been goin’ to do to her all this time and she thanked her lucky stars that she had escaped his foul and spuzzy intentions.
And even though she survived this ordeal, from that time to this, poor little Cattie Ohms still can’t hold on so much as a tin ‘a beans without a shiver a-creepin’ up her spine.
Whiles at Christmastime, no matter how loud and how long her mama hollers at her, there ain’t no way in this world or that world or the next one that she’s gonna help out stuffin’ no goddang fuckin’ turkey.
(A slightly different version of this was previously posted on Tongues back in January 2008)
