LogFAQs > #978606504

We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Gimme five bees for a quarter,' you'd say. Now where were we...oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones and they were awful hard to slice. So, if you had an onion on your belt, you were in style. And that was the important thing to a kid, to be in style. The second thing was that I had a free ferry ride across the river. 'Cause if you walked onto the ferry with an onion on your belt, they thought you were a foreigner. And foreigners didn't have to pay because they weren't Americans yet and hadn't gone through naturalization or whatever it is. So I got on the boat with my grandfather and we crossed over into Shelbyville together. And we got off and went to the theater. And I remember that there were like five or six thousand people in that theater and everybody was having a great time. Everybody was drinking Coca-Cola and smoking cigarettes, which is what you did then; if you didn't smoke or drink Coca-Cola, people thought there was something wrong with you. And, you know, it was a great time. And I remember that we sat down and there were these two guys sitting next to us. And one of them had a cowboy hat on and the other one had a straw hat on. And they had these big, thick cigars in their mouths and everybody else around them was smoking cigarettes or drinking Coca-Cola and having fun. And the guy with the cowboy hat leaned over and said, "I tell you what." He said, "This is a great show. But it ain't nothing like my wife." I don't know what he was talking about but everybody laughed and I thought that was kind of funny. But I remember the second act, when this man came out on stage. He had a cape on and a mask over his face. And he was carrying a cane. He walked up to one of the audience members, who happened to be sitting in the front row, and he tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. And he said, "Hey buddy," he said, "I'm going to need some help from you tonight." And the guy looked up at him and said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I need some help from all of you tonight." And that's when I figured out what was going on. This man, who was dressed like a superhero and had a mask over his face, was actually a villain. He wanted to kidnap all of us and take us away with him. And that's when I started wondering why he needed our help to do it. I wondered if he couldn't do it himself. I mean, why did he need us? Maybe he didn't have any powers at all. Maybe his cane wasn't made of steel and titanium like I had thought; maybe it was just a regular old wooden cane like the kind that old people use to get around. And then it hit me. This man wasn't a superhero at all. He was just an old man who needed help getting around, but he thought that if he dressed up in a cape and mask, then people would be more likely to give him a hand. I was wrong about him being a superhero. But I was right about one thing: he wasn't going to be able to save us all by himself. I looked around at my friends, who were all still staring at the man in disbelief. I knew that if we didn't do something soon, then we would all be dead. As I was thinking about what to do next, the man turned around and started walking away from us. He didn't even try to help us or save us or anything like that; he just walked away like it was no big deal. Which was when I noticed the onion on his belt, which was the style at the time, and I realized that the man was just some guy who had been walking by and decided to stop for a second and look at us. He wasn't a superhero, after all; he was just some dude with an onion on his belt, like me, as it was the style at the time. Anywho, this villain needed to be stopped, but we couldn't bust heads like we used to...