RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 4
Welcome back to the official Rubbery Shrubbery (RS) blog. Here, you can catch up on the news of Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, and its citizens—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns), or Yahotties (yah-HOT-tees)—as they try to get a Major League Baseball franchise. Each episode will leave you breathless (however, please see NOTE below). To learn about Yachats, please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
Several Yachatians are collaborating to write the RS blog, but today’s entry is written again by Mr. Harrison Grutch. He continues from the previous post, describing the NAME-OUR-BASEBALL-TEAM Contest. In case you’ve forgotten, the winner will be given two season tickets to the Yachats team’s first season.
The Contest Rages!
by Harrison Grutch
Like three soggy mop heads, Bebe Broadbent, Phyllicida Thronk, and Big Forbes Crossbowe slumped on their favorite bench in front of the Yachats Post Office. (Figure 1 shows the Yachats estuary covered with live seagulls. The Yachats Post Office is just to the left of the left edge of the photo.) Usually this friendly venue lifted the spirits of our trio, but this day hearts were heavy. The NAME-OUR-TEAM Contest had worn on interminably like a genealogy recitation, and still no fearsome nickname had burst forth to claim the prize.
Figure 1. City of Yachats, just to the right of the Post Office. (Photo by Jerry Kimmel.)
Oh, plenty of entries there had been, right enough, but they just weren’t…well, here’s a few examples:
“Lovers” (why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote),
“Banana Slugs” (why men shouldn’t be allowed to vote),
“Fiddlers” (not at all fearsome).
On the other hand, the “Sasquatches” was fearsome in spades. Unfortunately, Sasquatch lawyers demanded outrageous compensation for use of their name.
On yet another hand, the “Woolly Mammunks” is a name more fearsome than tigers. Many are unfamiliar, though, with the mammoth chipmunk so well known in these parts. Native to the imaginations of Yachats and southernmost Waldport (the city eight miles north of Yachats), the woolly mammunk is said to be a shy critter, never seen in the light of day and partially extinct. But paleontologists insist the woolly mammunk isn’t one bit extinct, and what’s more, it never was.
Perhaps you’ve read Professor Rafferty McDaff’s recent best seller Tracking the Wily Woolly Mammunk. In his sensational money maker, McDaff claims the woolly mammunk does so exist, preying primarily on antelope, elk, and cougars. The professor, often cited for misusing and abusing metaphors, has appeared on many talk shows and has been featured at half-time ceremonies and coronations, where you might hear claims that the woolly mammunk’s massive wooliness is retaining heat, thus causing global warming. Some people will believe anything that isn’t nailed down.
So, you can see why our contest organizers were whimpering despite Yachats being abuzz with chatter about its new team, despite nickname suggestions avalanching upon the contest judge, Kennesaw Crater. (That is, they were avalanching upon Judge Crater during the first few days of the contest, but then a strange thing happened. Consequently, Abigail Bosonella replaced him.)
But at that very moment on the other side of town at 666 West Smelt Circle, Eudora Bixby was preparing lunch for her snoring husband, Horace. She had been happy once, but we won’t go into that now.
As she laid out sandwich fixings on her sandwich board, she sighed, thinking back to those days that we won’t go into now. She stared wistfully at the mayonnaise and perky relish. She contemplated bread.
And then she noticed, for the first time, the smelt. Dead smelt, in this case, waiting patiently to be included in the incipient sandwich. Eudora studied the sleek body and majestic profile. It stirred her heart and reminded her not one bit of Horace.
Like any other housewife, Eudora wasn’t an ordinary housewife. She had ideas. She had lived a life of inflated hopes, though, as have we all. She had garbled expectations. But as she stared at the magnificent dead lunch, it occurred to her that fearsomeness was a matter of relative size. The smelt that lay before her would be seen as ferocious by any organism of appropriate mass—say, a paramecium or a nematode. The smelt, then, qualified for the nicknaming contest.
In a wink Eudora grabbed her housecoat, slipped on her favorite fluffy pink slippers, scooped up the expired fish, and headed out the door.
NEXT TIME: Will Eudora, corpse in hand, put an end to our exciting contest? Will Horace, upon awakening, notice that What’s-Her-Name is gone? We know you’ll titter with delight when you find out. Feel free to twitter, as well, if the mood strikes you, and you should have no qualms about tittering as you twitter. Few people have.
NOTE: Please go to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page to send us attaboys for RS, or if you were not adequately breathless, please send a short note describing how short of breathless you were. We’ll save all attaboys and so forth and publish them on the day the Yachats team opens its first season in the majors.
NOTE AGAIN: Dave Baldwin and Eric Sallee are absolutely not to blame for what happens here, although many letters to the “RS Editors” have been addressed to these unfortunate souls.
When the book comes out, I want a signed copy. I’ll even pay for it.
You people are crazoids to the zth degree, and I like that in a smelt.
As the excitement mounts in Soon-to-be-world-famous-if-not-already Yachats, I can not help but feel grateful that I moved east before the Smelts organized themselves. I honestly am unsure I could have lived my quiet coastal life in proximity to such greatness. As it is I have to swallow a tranqui before even reading the latest happenings such is the thrill. Perchance this blog should come with a warning.