Author Archive for M. Toole
Kinickin Man Creates Gettysburg Replica in Spuds
(Montrose) Melvin Toole had little to do after retiring from Colona Brothers Slaughterhouse in 1991. However, after visiting several Civil War battlegrounds the following summer, he stumbled onto an appropriate project that would keep him busy for many winters to come.
He would recreate the Battle of Gettysburg entirely out of mashed potatoes.
The replica would be in full color and to scale, with moving parts, authentic weaponry, uniforms and structures.
“The first thing I had to do was figure out where to buy the materials, you know, lots of potatoes, butter and milk,” said Toole. “Then I spent months covering the Western Slope in search of a giant mixing device.”
After a rather expensive search (Toole drinks) he found a large concrete blender at an abandoned amalgamation resource just outside of Maybell, in Northwest Colorado. The giant device, once used to churn out time-release blacktop for the Division of Transportation, would be perfect. He hauled the thing home with his diesel-powered 1945 Henway, pulled by over 400 llamas.
After talking to local agricultural co-ops Toole secured the rights to latter day potato crops, mutant wall flower cream supplies and truckloads of unused butter and margarine samples from local restaurants. He was ready to go.
“In order to maintain an air of authenticity I had predetermined that I would use grits in the Confederate mixture,” said Toole, “but then I found out that the Rebel troops under General Robert E. Lee had run out of that staple while crossing the Piedmont Plateau.” (Historical note: Here Toole is full of horse cookies. Actually most of the grit-weary troops were anxious to get up into Pennsylvania for a nice, homestyle breakfast where the corn byproduct was not served).
“Having secured the raw materials I now faced a potential engineering nightmare: How would I create the topography common to hilly South Central Pennsylvania when all I had was mountain spuds from Idaho and Colorado? Oddly enough the answer came easy. I simply added a little less butter to the recipe and flattened out about 35 tons of the mixture onto a piece of waferboard. Then, allowing it to be exposed to the elements overnight, I discarded the board and sat back in awe of my landscape.”
Building the weapons of the day from often whipped potatoes took some time but Toole went about the task with a painstaking eye for detail. At first the muzzles of the canon drooped so he shortened them a bit. Then the wheels on the artillery would not turn properly so he added skimmed milk and a bit of ground basil. The canon balls were the easiest part.
“I just rolled them in gravy and they flew through the air like the real thing,” Toole beamed. “Troops on both sides would have been surprised as one of my spud missiles could easily devastate an ammunition dump or scattered contingents of cavalry.”
In order to keep mashed potatoes earmarked for infantry separate from spuds reserved for, say, hospital corpsman or ordinance battalions, Toole used sophisticated methods of identification.
“Sometimes I added paprika or oregano to certain forces while I relied on my nose to pick out the defenders laced with garlic cloves or white pepper. In keeping with regional cuisine, I always used cayenne on the Southern troops and rosemary on the Union assemblage,” he explained.
“Probably the hardest work came when I started to paint each individual combatant, you know, the blue and the gray,” he mused. “I recall one frightening moment as I reached the final stages of painting soldiers engaged in the famous George E. Pickett’s Charge and I had run out of real milk and had to rely on the powdered variety. At the time I worried that someone would dispute the accuracy of my effort but no one seems to have noticed.”
Toole’s massive creation will be on display at the Montrose Regional Airport through the 2020.
Ready for winter?
Ready for winter?
BLUE MESA DRAINED FOR ELK SEASON
(Sapinero) Anglers and fish are reminded that the state of Colorado will once again drain Blue Mesa Reservoir for elk hunting season. According to a top secret Division of Wildlife transmission, intercepted by gorillas hiding in the green, misty mountains, the monkey business will begin October 2 and continue until all the water has been removed.
Another gov’ment brochure entitled When Fish Go to the Beach highlights plans to return the water in April or May.
“During the winter we plan to lease the water to California for a tidy profit,” said R. Melvin Toolini, architect and primate investor of the baboonish operation.
Sailors, water skiers and anyone with a line in the water is cautioned not to overstay their welcome at the popular lake. Fish, who generally handle the draining without incident are asked to have their belongings packed for the traditional trek up to Lake San Cristobal for hibernation.
Baseball belongs in the sunshine
OBITUARY: Major League Baseball. Died Oct. 29. Graveside services. Wake of American tradition, at Cooperstown, N.Y. Survivors include pro football, pro basketball, pro hockey and pro bingo. All are getting old.
Ice hockey isn’t played out in the sun. Basketball courts are abandoned in the rain. Nobody plays tennis in the wind. Why do they play the World Series in the dark, out in the cold, when all good little boys and girls should be fast asleep?
Perhaps it was the repetitious beer commercials aimed at 14 year olds that upset my sense of authenticity. Maybe it was the announcers who, sentenced to childhood in right field because they couldn’t catch a fly, wanted their big-shot day in the limelight. Nope.
It’s the dollar-bill mentality that dictates that games would be played at night instead of out in the luxurious October sunshine.
In B-grade Saturday morning Westerns, even the lowest cowpuncher knew that Indians never fought at night. Neither did the gladiators in Rome. Even Eisenhower waited until daylight to launch the Normandy Invasion.
Baseball should be a game for kids and the World Series, of all sporting events, should be played in the daytime. (Theme music: Gillette Blue Blades, I mean) If the sport truly seeks credibility it must turn away from commercialism.
Why must young baseball fans be faced with staying up past midnight to watch their teams wander into the extra innings? What about some of the rookies? Should they have to ride the bench, yawning, while the contests are concluded?
Things would certainly have been different if the World Series was played at night in the 50s. Two of the principals, Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin, might have missed all the games due to their much-maligned social agenda.
In addition, what would radio broadcasters like Wait Hoyt and Rosey Rosewell have done with all their idle day time? What about Pirate great Bill Mazeroski? Would he have stayed up late enough to take his famous series-ending poke back in 1960?
I remember back then, when the Yankees and Dodgers dominated the post-season play. Of course, in those days, if a team won its division it went to the World Series and was not forced to test its mettle against also-rans in continuous five-or-seven-game fiascoes. In those days, kids would skip school to watch the games and their parents generally turned their heads.
In the workplace, especially in the competing cities, there would be lucrative office pools and little or no work going on. New York and Los Angeles, the largest cities in the country, were at a virtual standstill in 1962. That’s the real country talking. Ain’t it grand!
Worker morale was at its highest, as it was considered patriotic to blow off work and gather around the radio or the color television to catch the action.
Dammit, baseball belongs out in the sunshine, not lurking around in the evening shadows of someone’s prime time.
In 1934, Joe “Ducky” Medwick was pelted with garbage as he attempted to play left field during the autumn classic. Rude as it may have been, it was probably great fun for the Detroit fans, who watched their team go down to defeat.
Ask yourself: If the game would have been played at night, would the Detroit faithful actually have bounced their trash off Medwick? How could they be sure it was him in the dark. Baseball would have been deprived another joyous outing, even though Medwick might have felt quite differently.
In that same series, Dizzy and Paul Dean, pitching in the sunlight, were all but untouchable. Do you think the Tigers would have done better in the dark? It’s doubtful whether any of the American Leaguers would have even detected the cowhide passing over the plate. At least the Deans, pitching in the afternoon gave the hitters a shot at it all.
In 1961, Cincinnati third baseman Gene Freese lost a foul ball in the sun. It would have been the third out, but instead the powerful Yankees capitalized on his misadventure and scored seven runs, which turned the Series around.
The Yankees went on to win in five games. In 1995, would Braves fans be so quick to engage in their mindless chop chants right out in the light where everyone could see them? We think not.
Back before TV ratings dominated baseball tradition we can imagine the American family gathering around the dinner table talking about that afternoon’s game. Today the broadcast often interrupts dinner entirely. In addition, the World Series gave the unemployed something to do during those difficult hours of reflection, and was found to provide a positive distraction from the morbid soaps, the noisy, carrot and stick game shows and the few idiot talk shows that had begun to surface.
What about crime? Even a fool can see that a fan is more likely to get mugged outside Jacob’s Field or Fulton County Stadium at 11 than at 6.
Is this crisis covered by the designated hitter clause? And if this reality isn’t frightening enough, consider that the rosin bag gets soggy at night and the UV rays from the stadium lights are harmful to one’s health.
Let’s blame Ted Turner. He’s the guy who brought the national sport to its knees by providing the massive Brave money dosages on the tube. There is no doubt he wanted the games on at night due to the ad revenues and due to the likelihood that his former wife, Jane, wanted to free up her days to hit the malls in Cleveland or Baltimore, shopping meccas to be sure.
Maybe we need government intervention, but the GOP says there are too many lefties on the mound and the Democrats seem frightened to go out into right field after dark. What about presenting the World Series in the daytime, interspersed with the McNeil-Lerner Report?
In closing, Astroturf, domes and batting gloves suck too.
-Kevin Haley
Planets shedding fur no cause for alarm
(Ouray) The seasonal shedding of fur and skin by major planets in out solar system will not jeopardize life as we know it according to astronomers at Dexter Creek Phoebus Observatory here. Saying that a slew of meteor showers and a lot of fuzz in the air may complicate respiratory maladies, star gazers assured residents and visitors that things would “return to normal” just as soon as things return to normal.
“This kind of thing happens every year but it is particularly noticeable in 2013 due to the cold weather that has plagued the Universe,” said G. Jerry Dunn, operations specialist at DCPO. “In short since the planets did no shedding in March and April there is hair everywhere in May and June.”
Dunn then went on to draw some confusing analogy between shedding planets and shedding German Shepherds.
“Shedding is the final step in repeating the natural process in outer space,” he said. “It is a serious accounting and reordering of orbits prior to the end of the world which is scheduled for December 15.”
“Watching a grand old planet like Jupiter shed its winter coat is really quite a phenomenon. The only problem is that all that hair gets into our sensitive telescopes. We’re all learning on the job. Hell, back a few years ago we didn’t even know that planets had hair,” he smiled. “We thought they were all as bald as cue balls.
– Tommy Middlefinger
