In memory of our dear Mr John
Iron Horse: A Tale of Loco Motives
Talk to me
About…
THERE
is apparently only one other Letter from the Earth that was contained in our
archaeological dump site here in Costa Rica.
You will appreciate that we had to dig deep (sic) in the heap before
coming across this Second in the Series.
We were hopping, of course, to hear more
from Andromeda Strain and to know how his dissertation went. It’s probable we’ll never know if he ever did
publish before he perished.
But you can imagine our sheer delight when
we discovered reference to an even earlier part of the Plasticine Period written
by an undergrad student from the same university, by the name of D. Tutu
Twain.
HE refers to an ancient Arab nomad who was weary of walking through
the desert looking for a home for his people.
It is not clear whether he was seeing a mirage from being out in the
desert too long, or whether he saw the real thing.
But according to Tutu, this weary wanderer
followed the tracks of what he knew was an Iron Horse. And for some 40 days and nights, he followed
it almost to the top of a mountain, which he later named after himself ---
Mount Arafat.
D. Tutu Twain goes on to say that it
sometimes happened in those ancient times that once a man had achieved a lofty
height, a winsome wench would appear to relieve him of his treasures. Well, so it was with old Arafat.
No sooner had he tracked his prey to the
peak of the mountain when he was set upon by this wily woman who was collecting
all sorts of soon-to-be endangered animals. (You will remember her as Joan of
Ark, the business brains behind the boat her boyfriend was building.)
BUT let’s get back
on track. As it turned out, this was no
Crazy Horse. When he saw that capture
was inevitable by either Joan or Arafat, he concluded that he was at the end of
his tracks and that surrender was the only viable option open to him. He sensed that somehow Joan was more likely
to lead him to water than was Arafat. So
he allowed only her to board him. And no
horsing around about it either! I mean
that with all the huffing and puffing that went on as they struggled to reach
the pinnacle of the peak, it was a miracle they weren’t both derailed.
Old Arafat accepted his losses with as
much grace as he could muster and was last seen hunched over with his staff in
hand, hiking towards the horizon mumbling something like “I thought I could, I
thought I could.”
AT this point, Tutu’s notes become even
more fragmentary and difficult to read.
But we think he was making reference to another fabled female who had
captured a horse on the Windy Plains of Troy, although it seems that her
specimen had no real mettle to speak of.
In fact, she was, to quote Tutu exactly, “…maid (sic) almost totally of
wood.”
The only other fragment we were able to
uncover appears to be marginal notes from Tutu’s thesis advisor suggesting that
what he really needed was a kick in the caboose and an admonishment to stop
horsing around with this spoof on the hoof.
In fact, if D. Tutu Twain persisted in
this vein instead of aspiring to a higher plane, the university was prepared to
banish him forever to some gulag at the end of the Orient Express.
JOHN
OVENS
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