Author Archive for M. Toole

Packaging Etc.

I think I saw you
on a package
of frozen fish
pointing and smiling
with all your might.
Capped teeth and a
housewife dress hanging off
you like a designer sack.
And your hair was all cut off.
A different lady than I knew in 1970.
And the fish was nothing special.
(October 26, 2014)

Sister Sally
Sister Sally
Sister Sally
Party girl
Dirt in her ears.

Empty Norman
Floating Norman
Simple boy
—Can’t grow whiskers.

Empty Norman
and Sister Sally
run off by morning
to passion’s back alley.

They silence the puritans
With red wrinkled answers
all bankers and lawyers
and singers and dancers.
(October 26, 2014)

“Snooping pollsters! That campaign trash is tasty”

Snooping Pollsters! That campaign literature is mighty tasty

Senior Driving Law Expected to Pass

(Gunnison, CO — September 25, 2014) If pre-election indicators are correct, controversial senior citizens motor vehicle operation restrictions will be in force by January. The tougher driving laws make annual road tests mandatory for persons over 90 years of age.
The proposed test will include sight and hearing exams and reflex analysis. Persons who fail any of these tests will face suspension of driving privileges and in rare cases a short prison term. A crack appeals board, comprised of retired Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles employees, will intercede when needed, if able.
Driving tests for all residents may become more difficult too. It is anticipated that, starting in 2015 anyone who fails the written test more than 16 times must wait a full week before taking that part of the exam again.
“Competent seniors have nothing to worry about,” stressed one supporter of the possible legislation. “It’s for everyone’s protection. I am tired of trying to determine whether the senior RV driver in the left land is asleep or simply in a trance when I whiz by at 35 miles per hour.”
Other proponents of the move told The Horseshoe that the average 18-year-old, despite an estimated attention span of .034 minutes, has 900 times the reflex quotient than a driver over 80. After a pint of whiskey the coordinates begin to grow similar but the younger driver still laps the older one.
Critics of the concept are quick to cry foul, saying the idea discriminates against those found incapable of operating a wheelbarrow, golf cart, mule or canoe. They angrily add that with mass transit added to the national equation the issue would never have been on the ballot.
“If we had a decent bus system and passenger trains like most other civilized countries we could abandon this sticky issue and move on to more important confrontations like gay marriage and legal pot,” explained one irritated voter. “We don’t need any more damned infrastructure like those urban planners in Boulder always call for. We just need a bridges, highways, railways, in short a transportation system that responds to the needs of all of our citizens. There are lots of us out there who are not at all happy with the preparations that must be made just to get to church or the grocery.”
Many of them blame O’Bama.
A second citizen’s advocate group is carefully watching developments here prior to submission of a bill that would require all recreational vehicles to carefully pull over to the side of the road when it is holding up more than 36 other vehicles (the elusive square root of 6) on a state highway. This is the current law in Oregon (but numbers of delayed motorists may be lower) where drivers polled say RV operators have become far more considerate of other drivers. – Kashmir Horseshoe

Paper won’t get tax break

(Ridgway, CO — September 25, 2014) The San Juan Horseshoe has been denied non-profit status in a decision handed down by a Superior Quart here Thursday. The rather shoddy flyer has been petitioning lawmakers to bend the rules since it claims it has operated its publication as a recognized religion in Colorado since 1977.
“We are aware of a bundle of folks who are currently making in the dough and not paying a penny in tax since they are classified as a religion by state and federal government,” said an attorney for the publishing concern. “We too have rituals, and stringent beliefs, and love in our hearts and a strong moral code here at the paper,” said the lawyer who added that regular readings from the newspaper often have an impact on one’s salvation.
“The way we got it figured your chances of going to heaven with us are just as good as entering the Pearly Gates with the others,” he said.
“A bit of nonsense or a joke can have the same healing affect as a blessing in a posh cathedral or a sermon in a strip mall chapel, and it’s free.”
– St. Roscoe of Paducah

JUST A LITTLE OFF THE TOP & WATCH THE EARS

by Uncle Pahgre

“Omnibus notum tonsoribus.”
(Every barber knows that).
– Horace
“This is a man’s world.”
– James Brown

(San Juan Horseshoe September 25, 2014) Did you ever wonder where James Brown got his hair cut? Was it in some fastidious beauty salon in Atlanta or New York, or some dusty, corner barber shop along the Salkehatchie in his home state of South Carolina?
We presume he went to the barber shop — a place where those of his gender can let relax and converse in one of the few male havens not under siege by the righteous forces of political correctness.
Most of the people who pay attention to the comings and goings in this country have expressed concern over the direction it is headed. They have used terms like breakdown of traditions, social decay, moral collapse and detachment in a futile attempt to categorize just why we can’t all get along. History tells us that the ancients had similar concerns. One of the first references to barbers (barbe translates as beard in Latin) was in Rome, where barber shop was hallowed as a place of gossip and discussion.
The surviving social icons become even more important when we consider the homogenization of life and they mass-hype that is becoming inherent to our culture. We need something to hold onto. We need something constant, something real and consistent, like the corner barber shop.
Hey, we know there are plenty of these hideouts left all over the country but we also know that most of these redoubts are squarely in the path of progress. Someday all the scissors in the world will be wielded by some McDonaldlike hair cutting corporation in New York or Chicago. Straight razors will come with warnings and disclaimers. That barber that boys knew as a kid will be gone, his son selling paint at Wal-Mart. Stop.
Most males that have evolved past rudimentary stone age thinking are aware that this is not a man’s world. Why would men want it? James Brown is simply taking poetic license, isn’t he, or did he lose that too in another scrimmage with the cops?
Our only contention is that barber shops are healthy, nostalgic escapes for males. Since men make up roughly 47% of the current population, it stands to reason that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Most men would rather get a good follicle chop at the hands of a tobacco chewing ex-Marine than go under the scissors of some bimbo who doesn’t even know the Dodgers left Brooklyn. Sorry, but sometimes the truth takes no prisoners.
I remember the first time my father brought me to the barber shop on a Saturday morning and I was accepted into the inner sanctum. It was my bristly coming out party, a babe in the barber chair, my one-and-only whiskered debutante ball. No women were allowed, not even a nurse who might bandage up a sliced ear or heaven help us, an botched Adam’s Apple.
Speaking of nurses, did you know that the barber pole represents the bandages wrapped around a barber chaired patient prior to bloodletting? Barbers were surgeons before King Henry IIIV prohibited such procedures. He also forbade surgeons from barbering. For centuries barbers had to make ends meet by cutting hair and pulling teeth. Finally the law was rescinded during the reign of George II. 17th century barber, Jacques Jasmine, supplemented his income by singing to patrons. A Provencal poet, he is known as the last of the Troubadours. He is also known as the Father of Barber Shop Quartets, or at least we think so.
Saturday morning was never like this. Imagine a little kid, primed for a buzz cut, swimming in that giant revolving chair. The barber wraps tissue paper (also known as barber paper) around his neck, followed by a draping in a semi-immaculate, often pin-striped sheet. Then he looked at the dad for instructions anxiously waiting for the word buzz. Then the scissors flew. (Editor’s note: If the child in question had the devastating fortune of going to the barber shop with his mother this subtle exchange never happened and the language was sterile. The unfortunate experience was known to have led to serious psychological problems down the road.)
But in this man’s world, customers spoke freely, spit tobacco and passed wind, making no attempt to edit their colorful language. I’m sure 90% of the boys who grew up in the Fifties learned to curse in barber shops. A clandestine pile of dirty books was stored under the Popular Mechanics and the Sports Illustrated, the latter still years away from its heralded swim suit issue. Etiquette, if you weren’t shaving age, was to keep your trap shut unless someone asked you something.
Witch Hazel was in the air. Personalized shaving mugs hung from above the mirror. We even had an altruistic trimmer who would make lots of scissor noise above the heads of bald customers, whack the curly locks off wailing babies and marvel at the manly sideburns thriving in the pre-pubescent peanut gallery.
The Cincinnati Reds were on the radio and everyone smoked at least three cigars at the same time. Sure, some of the ball games were on TV but barbers hated TV since they couldn’t watch a double play unfold and administer a symmetrical flat-top at the same time without a one act taking the backseat.
The conversation between barber and customer was sacred, like the lawyer-client or priest-confessor privilege. It ran from politics to romance to cars to sports. One always knew he had made conversational strides when the barber kept talking, after the sheet was removed and the Brylcream applied.
One sullen barber, who has probably been six feet under for some time, was famous as a roustabout. He had been carrying on a romance with the bottle since his twenties. The inside joke in our barber shop was to yield to a newcomer when that barber’s chair opened up, especially if he needed a shave. Soon that straight razor looked like a wobbly guillotine, the prestigious and effective hair loss apparatus employed during the later stages of the French Revolution. Lord only help the customer who wanted his nose and ear hairs trimmed too.
In the Italian barber shops young barbers were instructed to shave everyone around the ears and neck. It was believed that this service insured the growth or healthy hair there and invited repeat business when the customer got older. That, according to our reliable source, is why so many older Italian men have tufts of hair on their necks. Ask the shoe shine boy.
From ducktails to dreadlocks barber shops have been a part of our culture since the Sumerians first invented scissors. Remember Figaro, the Barber of Seville. What about Floyd Larson, Mayberry’s main male gossip? These guys knew how to celebrate life’s small treasures. The King of Kansas City knew all about it too when he sang: …I got credit down at the grocery store and my barber tells me jokes. Try that tune the next time you check out at City Market or visit the hairstylist, the only rooster in the hen house.
– Kashmir Horseshoe

San Juan Horseshoe Recipes

(September 25, 2014)
Grandma’s Pickled Marmot Kidney Pie
YOU WILL NEED:
3 eggs with shell on
2 baby aspirin
8 cups corn meal
2 pounds marmot organs, varied
Some local dirt
16 – 18 pickles (Kosher dills work best)
3 quarts organic pickle juice
Quart Old Forester
8 packages of baseball card gum (hold the cards)

INSTRUCTIONS
Take off clothes. Carefully place all contents in a shoebox.
Shake and stir. Serve that evening semi-chilled.

Catfish Jello Salad
Directions: Take two packages of lemon or banana jello (Live dangerously and use one of each!). Cut a 4-inch opening at the end of each box. Catch 8 catfish, 5 – 6 inches long (Leopard Carp or Tomichi Blowfish may be substituted here). Filet fish and smother in Wonder breadcrumbs. Cram catfish filets into little jello containers. Shake boxes till hell won’t have it. Remove coated fish and place in organic rubber dish. Pour liquid residue into mold and hold between your knees for a full minute. Cook over hot fire for three minutes per side. Place in mold with jello and cool.
Marinade mixture with brown sugar, salt vinegar Tabasco and club soda. Cook for while.
As a special family activity take the hopefully uneaten heads of the fish and construct swell little puppets out of them with toothpicks and material from mom’s sewing basket. A resourceful young camper will soon experiment with al sorts of applications here such as fish pantomime and improvisational dance

“Here in the United States everyone hates everyone else. It’s nothing personal.”

– Muffy Hollandaise, Sociologist