Clap if you believe.
Back at the dawn of time, in another century, the very early accounts posted in this seemingly interminable record of quiet desperation were marked by the appearance of several recurring characters about whom questions were often raised.
Was there really a Wandering Joe? Richard the Shill?
Could there be Good Hubers and Bad Hubers?
Lew Bryson?
Many followers of these chronicles were understandably dubious about the existence of such creatures, who seemed so far outside normal experience. They accepted without question only The Big One & The Other One, on the theory that I just wasn’t clever enough to have created that pair out of whole cloth, and in so doing left open the possibility that there truly might be others like them, wandering loose in a world beyond the ken of ordinary folk.
It was, I have been told, an image both frightening and yet oddly appealing, there, but for the grace of God meets through the looking glass.
One of the more intriguing of those possible figments of a fertile imagination, about whom, when they dare ask, people asked nervously, was the man called Pinky, reportedly trained in the killing arts by the U.S. Government and with the skill, some said, to dispatch an opponent with that single digit for which he was named. To the relief of many, Pinky faded into the shadows early on and has gone unmentioned here as the months and years rolled on.
If such a man ever existed, and if I should happen to have met with him at Drafting Room Exton slightly less than 24 hours ago, and if, in that meeting, he should happen to have placed into my eager hands two packets of the six beer-infused truffles made for Philly Beer Week by an acclaimed chocolatier from West Chester who bears the same name as my son, then that would make for a most delightful tale, would it not, a modern day version of the mythic story of the prodigal son returned, bearing gifts to boot.
Further, should that have happened, I, a mere story-teller, would then have in my possession both an appropriate birthday gift (along with beer, of course) for said son’s upcoming celebration of his nativity and an equally appropriate gift for myself as a reward for, oh, so many things.
Such a nice story that would make.
If it happened.
