Tall Tales And Fish-Breath
Uncle Todd was standing with his usual splayed legs stance in front of an open fridge looking for something to eat when Felicity came running downstairs holding something that looked like it’d been buried with a mammoth beneath a glacier.
It was a double-breasted knee-length coat with brass buttons and torn green lining she’d found in a trunk upstairs. She looked quizzically at him.
“Oh, that thing”, Uncle Todd said and splayed his legs some more.
“That was a skipper’s coat. The skipper of the Mary Celeste. The crew had been planning a mutiny because they’d had enough of his hair-sniffing. They’d just lowered the plank when a cigar-shaped UFO appeared vacuuming everyone up except the skipper. The forlorn skipper threw himself overboard and was swallowed by Moby Dick.
After 150 years in Moby’s gut, the skipper’s undigested coat got pooped out with the Plankto19 virus making the rounds. Reaching the surface, it floated for 10 more years until it was netted by a trawler.”
‘“Ahoy, what ‘ave we ‘ere!’” said Uncle Todd in his drunken deckhand’s voice, pinching his nose, “‘I’ll keep ye close t’ me heart!’”
“Sewn into a pocket was a woman’s locket. Each time the deckhand opened it, he would find himself in a schooner’s pump room where a salmon-haired missy stood *ironing sails in a cloud of engine steam and sardines. The deckhand treasured this coat for countless intoxicating years until his wife finally found out and threw it in the trash.”
“Wives never understand”, Uncle Todd added flatly.
“Its buttons caught a trashman’s eye who wore it ‘till he died, even requesting burial in it. T’was the only stench he could discern after 25 years.
Then one night, a graverobber, in a celibate stupor, peeled it off him…”
Uncle Todd reached for an expired yogurt.
*Author’s note: Uncle Todd affirms that ironing sails greatly increases their surface area and aerodynamics.
