We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell ‘em stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my 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. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was 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… Ah, there’s an interesting story behind that nickel. In 1957, I remember it was, I got up in the morning and made myself a piece of toast. I set the toaster to three: medium brown. You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J.D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run of the house with a big washtub and I’d just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking-bird. We’d always have walking-bird on Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we’d all watch football, which in those days was called baseball… Not many people know this, but I own the first radio in Springfield. Not much on the air then, just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. “A” he’d say; then “B.” “C” would usually follow… My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say “dickety” because the Kaiser had stolen our word“twenty”. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles. What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that’s your problem! Now, I’d like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet… Well you’re really asking two questions there. The first one takes me back to 1934. Admiral Burn had just reached the pole, only hours ahead of the Three Stooges… …and I guess he won the argument, but I walked away with the turnips. The following morning I resigned my commission with the coastguard. The next thing I knew there was civil war in Spain… Three wars back we called Sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” and we called liberty cabbage “super slaw” and back then a suitcase was known as a “Swedish lunchbox.” Of course, nobody knew that but me. Anyway, long story short… is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling. Then after World War Two, it got kinda quiet, ’til Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong, or so the comic books would have you believe. The truth lies somewhere in between. …and, that’s everything which happened in my life right up to the time I got this phone call…