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FRUITCAKE TARDY, PAPER APOLOGIZES

(Ouray) The saga of the missing fruitcake goes on. It’s December and it’s still not here. Earlier today The San Juan Horseshoe made a formal apology to a hungry clientele anxiously awaiting the arrival of their sweet holiday delectables.

     According to food editors, the shipment was misplaced somewhere between the cities of Istanbul and Athens, an area frequented by free lance highwaymen but not Islamic terrorists as was first feared.

     “That was back in November,” said Melvin Toole, coordinator of the massive fruitcake landings. “We’re tired of answers, we want excuses!”

     All told the fruitcake cargo, clearly marked with large block letters spelling out USA, weighs in at about 112 tons and had originally been shipped from Damascus on November 20. After a scheduled stopover in Cyprus, where it soaked in rum for three days due to Muslim laws against the use of spirits, it crossed a slight stretch of the Mediterranean Sea landing on the Turkish mainland at Anamur. From that spot the fruitcake joined a colossal caravan and headed overland arriving in Istanbul in late November.

     “How could we lose that much of anything?” whined Toole. “The cargo was larger than many of the Greek Islands. At the present we are not discounting any possibility, including sabotage.”

     Toole has been reminded that his banter might be offensive to the millions of Arabs that currently surround him in Turkey. He has softened his approach since that time, extending a pathetic plea for the safe return of the fruitcake.

     “There are countless little children in the Free World awaiting the arrival of the heavy, spiced cake containing nuts and candied/dried fruit,” spouted Toole. “The hateful men who interrupted the shipment are nothing more than naughty.”

     A response within the Syrian embassy here suggests that little children do not generally like fruitcake especially since someone once suggested that the treat may be good for them.

     “Our operatives in the Mid East have no knowledge of the whereabouts of the cargo,” said diplomatic spokesperson Mohammed Tululah, of the Damascus Tululahs. “Maybe those horrible Kurds are building houses with the stuff!”

     Unreliable sources in Greece say the shipment was most likely high-jacked near Gallipoli and taken to Bulgaria for distribution through the black market. Eyewitnesses say they observed long trains of camels, mules and llamas crossing the Greek frontier last week but thought nothing of it until the fruitcake cargo pulled up lame.

     Toole, who has curbed his demands for a legendary Ninth Crusade “to free Asia Minor from the infidels”, told reporters Friday that unless the situation is resolved soon it could lead to all-out war by the new year.

     Back in Colorado the Horseshoe staff continues to pace up and down the darkroom floor, obsessed with the missing fruitcake. On the heels of this frustration critics within the industry are accusing the paper of making the whole thing up to gain positive publicity.

     “Publicity my eye,” quipped Toole. “We’re making it up to fill space. After 50 years of Santa, elves and reindeer you try to write yet another Christmas issue.”

     For the past two decades the paper has presented more than 20,000 families with the often unwanted confection over the Yuletide.

     “If the fruitcake is not rescued soon we will be forced to begin phase two of our Christmas plan…the distribution of 400,000 cases of canned yams. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he frowned.

– Bastardo Vehemente