Radio Verté presents A Hooga by Corey Zimmerman.
Misery Guts Act 2
Summer of 1915. The Great War is looming on the Eastern Front. The first fighter plane takes off
against the wind. People eat about as much lard as they do hog. Friday nights are for player pianos.
And many Americans still hoof it everywhere on foot, meandering along as slow as molasses in
January. While up in Detroit, Henry Ford has got one hell of a flame under his ass.
Smack dab between St. Louis and Chicago, snug in the arms of the mighty Mississippi
and the Illinois rivers. The Spoon River Valley is carved by trickling waters like a hot knife to
butter. It thatched quill of maize rye and a vast stretch of Indian grass known as Big Blue, growing
wild and free. Now it's been said that Big Blue grows so tall and robust that a man on horseback
can see but an arm's length before his own face. But on sweet occasion, begging to prove we ain't
all a bunch of country bumpkins I suppose, the rich soil has been known to sprout greatness with
vision beyond such nose length, beyond leaves of grass, amongst the plains spoken, librettos soaring
high above with tireless wings, crying out against thy blindness. And by any look, with a dash of
grace and a thick slathering of fat, the leaves may vary from green to burgundy to a dried up brown,
the seed head course with three spikelets resembling a turkey foot, a booger if you catch one in the
heel. And it's no secret that larger than life skies come a dime a dozen about the heartland,
the wild blue yonder tending to make a big thing of it, stretching out all entitled like about the
generous stretch of American girth. It is a beautiful and pastoral land with yawning pastures
of grazing cattle. Where all a man needs is a good dog and a shotgun, and more often than not,
down-to-earth folk remain just that, salt. Sunflowers, lilies, buzzing insects,
butterflies, birds, and leaves in a radiant glow. The three-story five-bedroom victorian
behind the broad sugar maple is painted pearly white, elegant yet moral and sentimental,
charmed with a rocking chair veranda that wraps tight like a belt about a bloated man's gut,
providing shade and lemonade on long summer days, giving off the pretense someone's bringing home
the whole damn hog. Getting your foot in the door, you'll feel right at home amongst peacock feathers
and paisley, old gold, terracotta, olive drab or khaki, red and yellow embellishments, and threads
of Japanese gold that accent the times. The walls, pasted with warm patterned hues of purple and sage,
raise 16 feet into the foyer. At the foot of an open staircase, oak floors bordered in cherry
with a Greek key pattern reflect the colorful rays pouring in through the stained glass trance.
Old photographs of bygone folks hanging straight on their nails,
wet collodial plates of shadowed figures with shifty eyes unable to stay focused for the 22nd
exposure. The fireplace mantle is lined with a few of 1915's best sellers,
the Valley of Fear, the Good Soldier, and of human bondage.
About the matching dining room set carved heavy and overstuffed, fresh flowers fill a vase,
large floor-to-ceiling windows allow a cool breeze, and crystal chandeliers sparkle.
A Tiffany lamp stands in one corner, a mahogany grandfather clock in the other,
chasing the ever-fleeting moment.
The sun rises upon a tranquil world, and beams down upon the peaceful village like a benediction.
And so on, long modernized.
The sun rises upon a tranquil world, and beams down upon the peaceful village like a benediction,
and so on, long modernized, deconstructed, and destructed, for a new, nihilistic approach
as we approach that looming war curdling on the horizon.
As I stare out my bedroom window, overlooking the oaks and maples of the high part of town,
my father's voice rattles up through the floorboards.
Oscar, get down here!
Meanwhile, gracing the kitchen with the waves of her chestnut hair, worn in a prominent
side part, fringe nearly touching the brow, lobes exposed, her flesh as warm as ivory,
my mother is a contemporary woman, dazzling, easy on the eyes, flared skirt creeping up
the calf further each year.
Dutifully, she beats orange juice into a bowl of eggs, and saws carefully through a loaf
of bread, mindful not to slice open her finger, before dropping two slices of life into an
electric toaster, 1200 watts.
In fat sizzles, the scent absorbing into the threads of morning, the clock on the hot point
automatic range reads 728 a.m.
Better get a move on, she says as I pull out my chair.
Dog killings baffle police, my father, a sandy skinned man with slender, clean cut, dark
brown hair, slick back to the left, a blue surged suit with thin legs allowing him to
easily cross one over the other.
The world, I tell ya.
Scorning, reviling, and deriding through a pair of round wire rim glasses, Federal Reserve
Act signed into law by President Wilson.
Just who in the hell does he think he is?
He's gonna get an egg to the face.
You're working against the clock, dear, says my mother.
I hate school, I say, pouting, cheek full of bacon.
Why do we have to go to school in the summer anyhow?
The way it's always been, dear, she says.
A toe head, here I sit.
Oscar Clyde Olson, age 12.
A little gentleman wrapped in Robin's Egg Blue, Mihai socks, knickers, wheat skin, hazel
eyes, rosy cheeks, full of soggy, undercooked bacon before a sorry excuse of a carbon-rimmed
egg.
Anyhow, you love to read, she says, slicing a banana right down the middle.
No one likes me at school, I say, because it's true.
I'd cried when Jimmy slugged me in the eye.
14, living on a fixed income of violence.
And I'd cried in front of the whole damned lot.
And everyone laughed and threw apples at me.
Even called me a bookworm.
Which I suppose is no surprise to anyone.
And Andy, handsy Andy.
He tripped me.
And hell if I didn't fall flat on my face right in front of Susan of all people.
Oh, sweet Susie.
I can't bear the thought of his grimy hands all over her.
Now that I think of it, during that late spring snow, Tim Tim, the cops kid, well he stole
my jacket.
And I came down with a fever.
But hell, I didn't mind.
I got to stay home from school sipping on chicken soup all day.
My father even brought me sherbert in bed.
Ice cream never asks questions, he says.
Ice cream understands.
Boy will he be a hard act to follow.
An income poop's gone off the deep end this time.
Hell, we're already hanging in a balancing act.
Unable to come to terms with the day's news, as always.
Pant legs bristling as they always do.
Tingling with the electricity of the times.
It's just not on, I tell ya.
A damn central bank will serve only a handful of financiers at the expense of the small
banks.
The fool's gonna wreck the economy with inflation.
Boy if I could give him an earful.
He's throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I tell ya.
What's inflation?
I ask.
Who's gonna select the board after all?
Hell, we're handing it all over to the feds.
Like a bike tire, I ask.
They're gonna run us into the ground, I tell ya.
It's a goddamn cacostocracy.
What's a cacostory?
I ask.
Unable to wrap my tongue around the tongue twister of a word.
Now one of my father's favorite hobbies was throwing his vocabulary around small town
folks unable to wrap their minds about his ivy-choked education.
You see my father studied at Knox College.
Along with the likes of John Puford, Egerley Masters, and Eugene Field, the poet of childhood.
Bullfrogs and bellyaches if you ask me.
My father continues.
A government run by idiots and dimwits is what it is.
Damn thieves.
Somewhat unable to keep a lid on it.
Static filling the air.
I tuck my neck to the left and watch as flamboyant gestures, like a curious dog.
I might dare say there's something about his hands.
They are manicured, graceful, somewhat womanly.
On the other hand, my mother's hands are scarred and blistered from ongoing experimentation
with housewifery.
No better than crooks, he tells me.
Out for blood.
Hell, the mob is more organized than Uncle Sam.
And no less honest.
Paper crinkling, exclamations, another rhetorical question.
Did you know bank robbers stole an equal amount the government took last year in taxes?
To the dollar.
Expletive.
Incompetent idiots can't even pave the goddamn roads with all that cash.
Slide in an orange omelet from a heavily smoking pan to his plate.
Quit your cursing, Mr. Olsen, my mother said, fiddling sticks of her own.
Such is life.
Besides, you got yourself a brand new car, mister.
Easy for you to say, says my father, dropping the paper to his lap to inspect his eggs.
Using his fork to examine the blackened underskirt of the beat up jalopy.
Oscar, why don't you play ball with the boys after school?
She says, you've been lying around with your nose in grandpa's books all week.
You must stay as fit as a fiddle.
Typhoid is going around.
Typhoid is always going around.
Sawing down the middle of his rubber omelet.
You know, honey, we can afford help.
We do have a maid's quarters after all.
So why not put it to good use?
Butler's quarters too.
The other boys hate me, I say, yoke bleeding out.
Join the scouts, she says.
I hear they as I scrunch my nose as my father interrupts.
Reading is good for the boy.
You don't want to be a nymph can poop, do you son?
And besides, you certainly are one to talk, Miss Olsen.
You have your snout in a book of your own every time I turn the corner.
Reaching for the maple syrup.
I tell you what, when I get home from work, we can toss a few.
And leaning in with a whisper, or go get his sherbert.
Hands pressed to her hips.
That's right, you could use some fresh air yourself, mister.
Nonsense.
Feeling finer than frog hair, he says.
Right as rain.
Sweetening his fatty bacon with glistening syrup.
Scraping char from the skillet before dropping the whole crime scene into the trash bin.
Lord knows you spend too much time in that dusty bank vault anyhow, says my mother.
Laugh in stock.
He's off his trolley, I tell you.
As he stands to toss the tribune with a glance at the smoking trash.
Honey, you're gonna burn down the house.