Author Archive for M. Toole
ALMOST, COULD HAVE AND MIGHT HAVE BEEN NEWS
The following stories have been included in this issue even though they fell inches short of qualifying as legitimate occurrences. Although the concept seems silly our editorial elders felt that the scant facts here deserved to be reported.
Escaped Prisoners Could Be Heroes to Some
(Pueblo) Convicts who successfully escape from prison could represent heroes to a twisted segment of the population. That’s what the Department of Corrections contends after apprehending three such inmates Friday. The jailbirds, who eluded authorities for three days while hiding in the Shivaree Swamps east of here were greeted with cries of “Huzzah!” as they boarded paddy wagons to take them back to their cells. Authorities here fear that the overtaxed, shell-shocked populace is having trouble distinguishing between the cops and the robbers. “They think these thugs are Robin Hoods,” said one officer who is under investigation for extortion in a non-related case.
Mushrooms Might Have Saved Life
(Ames) Eating mushrooms might have saved the life of a Placerville woman lost in the Edith Bunker National Forest for over a week in early November. Had it not been for the peanut butter sandwiches and carrot s she had brought along she might have fought off hunger with the fleshy fungi. Carefully picking edible mushrooms the unidentified lass accentuated her otherwise drab cuisine until rescuers found her on the third floor of a Chinese elm late last night.
Toole Almost Wins Senate Seat
(Washington) Journeyman scribe Melvin Toole came close to winning a senate seat yesterday although he campaigned only from his bear claw bathtub in suburban Virginia. In fact, as the details of political jousting become clear, Toole was never a serious or even legal candidate, having been born naked in Canada in 1937. Experts are convinced that Toole’s excellent showing has a lot to do with voter apathy and a sense of distance with the powers that continue to govern. The seat was a crushed velour with gargoyle trim featuring oak trim and a curious mephitis common to the notorious public restrooms of the Menshevik Period. Toole had no comment having fallen asleep during the returns.
Hopped Up Teens Just About Wreck Colona
(Montrose) Beer guzzling teens from up the street came close to sacking the tiny fishing village of Colona Wednesday. The fracas seems to have been the result of infighting over a smelling bee held in Cahone last March. The scoundrel element smashed windows, spit on the street and dodged semis. The local fire department might have been unable to keep them from the more fashionable neighborhoods of East Colona and Grog Hill Mesa.
Hurricane May Have Leveled Bingo Hall
(Grand Junction) Hurricane Rick may have been responsible for the total loss of Oil of Olathe Bingo Complex on 35298844 Road here. According to authorities the 400 mile-per-hour winds of Rick could have “hurled a two-ton whore from a well secured tuna boat” Thursday. Of course, as we all know, Hurricane Rick, and most of the killer bee population, never made it this far north. The county coroner has sighted natural causes in the disaster, either that or suicide, depending on a out-of-body skin graph experiment scheduled for the weekend.
Compiled by Suzie Compost
FARMER ACCUSED OF LEAKING AG SECRETS TO CHINESE
(Montrose) A Peach Valley agronomist is under interrogation by several federal agencies after being accused of selling agricultural secrets to the Red Chinese.
The allegations stem from fears that the Asian giant wants to shift from a rice economy to a bean economy and, according to an FBI source, emerge into a more formidable force in methane technology.
“Imagine billions of little methane burners running around with those coolie hats and water buffalo,” said one agent who has never been farther east than Kansas City.
Lawyers for the accused deny any wrongdoing took place saying that their client, H. Delbert Penrose, a lifelong resident of the Uncompahgre Valley, simply went to tea with two Chinese businessmen in Olathe on Friday. It was during that meeting that the subject of healthy beans and contour farming was discussed.
“He didn’t know he was giving away top secret data,” said one attorney. “He figured everybody knew how to raise beans and that his advice was in no way a breech in national security.”
Civil liberties interests have attempted to flank the feds by painting Penrose as a man just to the right of Paul Harvey.
“Mr. Penrose once told the entire Pea Green Grange Hall that he thought the Red Chinese were soft on Communism after soldiers failed to fire on demonstrators in Peking last month,” said an ACLU source. “Is this the kind of rhetoric one would expect from a spy?”
The suspect will be held over the weekend. The FBI has promised to water his crops until the matter is resolved.
Baseball Trivia
1. Who devised the first box score?
2. Who was the last baseball player to bat. 400 in the regular season?
3. Who pitched the only perfect game in the World Series? Who did it in the next decades against the Amazin’ Mets?
4. Who was the first player to wear a mitt?
5. Who managed the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1870?
6. What town is located at the southern end of Otsego Lake?
7. Who has the highest career batting average?
8. Where and when was the first night game played?
9. What eight teams made up the National League in 1876?
10. What were the New York Yankees first called?
11. Who established the first All-Star game? Where?
12. What city originally hosted the present Milwaukee Brewers? What was the team’s name?
13. What is a merkle?
14. Who caught Johnny VanderMeer’s back-to-back no hitters?
(HINT: Batting against Carl Hubbell he once hit into a 500-ft. double play.)
15. Who was known as “Biscuit Pants?”
16. Who was the Snake River Valley League’s strikeout king in 1907?
( HINT: He won 36 games for a hopeless American League team in 1913.)
17. What four players made up the 1957 Cincinnati infield?
18. Who was “Old Tomato Face?”
19. What is Campy Campaneris’s real first name?
20. Who made up the starting nine for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950?
21. What do un coup sur and un circuit mean on a baseball field?
22. What team was originally named The Bridegrooms?
23. What were the Houston Astros called in 1960?
24. Who enjoyed talking to the ball on the mound in the ‘70’s?
25. What American League team was once known as the Broncos?
26. Who was the President of the United States the last time the Cubs won
a World Championship?
27. What position did Lyndon La Rouche play for the 1965 Students For a Democratic Society?
28. What pitcher hurled a no-hitter in 1970 while under the influence of
LSD?
29. What is Billy Martin’s least favorite candy?
30. Name the top five all-time homerun leaders?
ANSWERS TO BASEBALL TRIVIA QUIZ
1. Henry Chadwick, Editor of the New York Clipper
2. Ted Williams
3. Don Larsen, Jim Bunning
4. Charles Waite, first baseman for the Giants in the late 1800’s
5. Harry Wright
6. Cooperstown, New York – sight of the Baseball Hall of Fame
7. Ty Cobb: .367
8. Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935
9. Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis
10. The New York Highlanders
11. Arch Ward of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago
12. The Seattle Pilots
13. A mental error on the base paths named after New York Giant outfielder, Fred Merkle
14. Ernie “Schnozz” Lombardi
15. Lou Gehrig
16. The Big Train – Walter Johnson
17. Don Hoak, Roy Mc Millan, Johnny Temple and Ted Kluzewski
18. Gabby Harnett of the Chicago Cubs
19. Dagoberto
20. Gil Hodges (1B), Jackie Robinson (2B), Pee Wee Reese (SS),
Billy Cox (3B), Roy Campenella (C), Andy Pafco (LF), Duke Snider (CF), Carl Furillo (RF), Don Newcombe (P), Preacher Roe (P). Other pitchers accepted.
21. A base hit and a home run respectively in Montreal.
22. The Dodgers
23. The Colt 45’s
24. Mark Fidrych, Detroit Tigers
25. The Cleveland Indians
26. Theodore Roosevelt was President, William Howard Taft was elected in November of that year – 1908.
27. Any reasonable answer will do here.
28. Doc Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates
29. Reggie Bars
30. Aaron, Ruth, Mays, Robinson (Frank), Killebrew
Baseball to Expand to Eleven Players
(New York) Major League Baseball has announced that it will expand on-field rosters in April so as to make the game more interesting. The decision to go from the traditional nine players to a bulked up eleven was received with mixed reviews by baseball’s loyal followers.
“A lot of us are still getting over the designated hitter clause in the American League,” said Melvin O’Toole, a Baltimore Oriole fan who lives in Washington DC. “Now they want to augment the current rosters by going to eleven players on the field.”
O’Toole said the move would further dilute the already dwindling pool of talent that now exists.
“Just so long as they don’t increase the number of pitchers used at one time,” suggested ” O’Toole. “It’s important to keep the 150-year legacy intact but with the price of a hot dog at the ball park who’s going to notice another outfielder or two?”
Actually the specific expansion will affect two newly created positions on the diamond. The first will be a logical fourth fielder who will play short center field or be pulled in to the infield to cut off the run at the plate. The second will be a super-utility player who might find himself filling the hole between first and second or backing up the catcher.
“We feel that the addition of two new positions will make the game more competitive,” said Jeb Bush, newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball. “There was far too much offense last year and the serious fan wants a return to the pitcher’s duel and the one run difference.”
Bush added that football has eleven men on the field at once and baseball has nothing to fear in embracing that numerical relationship.
Republicans in Congress are skeptical as to the move. Some say it is nothing more than another poorly disguised jobs bill aimed at employing more people on at least a seasonal basis.
“Presumably the size of the entire roster will increase” said Oral Noise (Unitarian-CA). Teams will be forced to add four players to play the two extra ones. This reeks of monopoly and we will consider anti-trust legislation to protect the integrity of professional sports.”
Television contracts and product endorsements should not be affected. – Rocky Flats
AMERICAN CABBIES FLOCKING TO MIDEAST
(Karachi, Pakistan) U.S. cab drivers are moving to the Mideast in droves according to sources here. The phenomenon, which has drastically flip-flopped the cabbie trade balance between North America and the Arab world, has yet to be explained.
Surviving social scientists in Syria and in Afghanistan say the shift comes as a result of lucrative job prospects in the oil-rich Mideast combined with the desire to experience adventure. Cynics in places as distinct as Iran and Oman say the Americans have arrived so as to avoid the growing violence in U.S. urban centers.
“There are few robberies or other acts of violence aimed at cab drivers here,” said a police chief in Tehran. “That is because we punish offenders in ways which are quick and final. Imagine a society where a thief loses a hand and a rapist loses…well…he loses too. In the United States violent criminals know they can get away easy and people like cab drivers are prime targets.”
One problem, the language barrier, does not seem too serious as stumbling block since American cab drivers have worked with Mideast drivers for decades.
“Some of the rudest drivers in New York City aren’t from the Bronx or Brooklyn. They’re from garden spots like Mecca and Alexandria. They had to learn to be rude by impersonating their Yankee counterparts. It didn’t take long. Most of our people are capable of assimilation.”
A majority of ex-patriot cabbies have some command of various Mideastern dialects from listening to co-workers in places like Philadelphia and Chicago.
“I picked up a few choice phrases and some invaluable glaring techniques working with cabbies from Istanbul to Calcutta,” said one San Francisco trained cabbie who now makes his home in Ankara, Turkey. “It’s all a matter of presence. After this experience I could probably sell real estate in Tel Aviv.”
Although pay is high, by U.S. standards, tips are all but nonexistent. Cabbies must learn to negotiate often steaming traffic peppered with livestock and carts of all description. After work most look forward to tea rather than alcoholic beverages.
“They’ve all got radios which are, by design, cranked up to an infinite decibel level,” said one Turkish sociologist conducting a study of alien work habits for a Gallipoli truck driving academy. “They all yell at each other for entertainment just like we do. It’s a simple matter of a world economy coming full circle.”– Suzie Compost
QUIET ARCHITECT OF ATOMIC BOMB PASSES
I just got the news the other day while I was in Denver. John had died. Had a heart attack and fell into the very grave he was digging for someone else. He didn’t come back out. He didn’t send invitations, announcements or lacy accessories full of regurgitated, dutiful sympathy.
All I really remember of John was lusty cigars on Sunday morning, his day off at the cemetery. My German Shepherd adored him but my relationship stopped with a smile and a hushed hello. He lived in the same house that I called home across from Bonfils Theater. In the Forties John had helped perfect the atomic bomb down in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the company town built by the Atomic Energy Commission.
A graduate of Harvard, he had probably approached bomb building with the same painstaking whole-hog intensity that earmarked his latter day trade. Each morning I heard his shovel and pick standing at attention before the sun came up. No alarm clock. No coffee pot. No morning news. He had had enough of the news.
Then he slipped off for the composed crypts of the 1970s.
Some people might be put of by the spectral nature of the work. However ghastly, it was steady. It seemed almost an ancient endeavor what with backhoes and the like employed at most other burial grounds. John came home dirty each night, took a bath, ate supper and disappeared into his wallpaper. Only on Sunday morning did he stretch out, read The Post and smoke his cigar. That’s when my tail-wagging dog visited.
As a much younger man John had gained admission into the secret fraternity of atomic scientists plotting to end the Second World War. He had moved to Los Alamos from Cambridge in 1943. The research laboratories had been set up to create a weapon that would silence Hitler and Tojo in one foul swoop.
At the time the Allies knew that the Nazis had experimented with the V1 and V2 guided rockets. There was also conjecture that German scientists were nearing the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction like the atomic and the hydrogen bomb. Hitler would use it to be sure. At a time where the war appeared to be won, men like Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi and Vannevar Bush found themselves in a race against a desperate German push that would make the Battle of the Bulge look like grandma’s birthday party.
Along with these infamous atomic scientists was my neighbor, John, who told me one time he “didn’t like Northern New Mexico because it was too damn windy”. That’s all he cared to say about his four year stint there.
As we all are aware the allies won the dreadful race which culminated in the torching of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost immediately it brought on the nuclear arms race.
In 1946 John left Los Alamos and attempted to blend back into an American society intoxicated with victory, on a treadmill to wealth and prosperity. During the Fifties he continued related research at Northwestern University and then spent a year back in Massachusetts at M.I.T. He even traveled on the lecture circuit telling his story to bomb shelter building cold war captives while they digested their salisbury steak. He even met Senator Joseph McCarthy. I think they were both from the same part of Wisconsin.
Then the walls caved in and John disappeared from view for decades, emerging in Denver with a pick on his shoulder. He dug graves all through the Seventies and into the Eighties retiring in 1986 at age 65. After about a year of leisure John returned to the necropolis as a sort of cadaverous consultant. He hung on until just the other day. – Kevin Haley
