...AND SOME OF HIS SONS WERE HORSES!

TUCKER'S TIN:

an Animistic Odyssey

by Rick Weaver

Henceforth, when an object passes from hand-to-hand, no matter how insignificant the object appears to eyeball, both the giver and the receiver's courses of life are altered precisely… If you down the wall long enough to permit cognizant prolonged thought to the History of any one of your possessions, you will find what I have said previously on the other side of the ellipsis is true.

-Simsim Bledsoe

I’ve been playing Tucker's Tin once-a-day since they “gave" it to me in Richmond during the final showdown at Cheap Fest IV. The festival itself flopped and floundered at Sunday's butt end when 13 of the thrifty performers perished with their deli bellies up after a freak "accident" involving a blown speaker, a sack of sandwiches, and two oversized milk jugs dragged in by the Milk Man who kept dimly mumbling to himself,

I don't deliver

and saying how one who is born in the desert is bound to get thirsty and how he wanted nothing more in his life of lactophobia to bring us his "love" (the two oversized milk jugs).

But don't get me wrong.

I don't blame the Milk Man.

To the point - once-a-day, since my tin acquisition, after a NINE A.M. rise-all watering of the tea bag and four quickfire ham-handed "hamfuls" of Banana Ham, I play Tucker's Tin while my molehill of drum shells and hardware sits, surrounded by the March Mouse's pellets, neatly and gravely unmoved in the third corner next to "the Genie".

Here's my thoughts on the matter at "ham", starting with October 27, the evening of "the Milk Man Massacre", also the evening where my din of tin begins:

OCT 27

dinit play the tin a bit - I received it. Tucker and Allen "give" me the tin by demanding Roettke "hold the beam" affixed on my slivered gown while they bopped me all the way to Backwell. Later that evening, Jerome's hairball got ahold of the tin and transmuted fluorescent bulbs into confetti shards, using the tin as a shoe-in for his sloe magic wand.

OCT 28

beginning my "gittin' to know y'all" phase. In the bizzing half-dream, I enter Red's rib pipe (is it cob? or is it cornucopia? Oh, Red, how can I cope with you?). A curl in the blowback reveals Ethel's fabled face in the resin.

Curl tells me to shut up.

Ethel speaks:

"'Cause you're a big whiner, that's why I serve you the butt ends of the home frier's expired harvest while the family feasts. I give the rest to Fromme. Figure that will put me in the race. If that won't, what will?

Still waiting for a callback from Fromme's poison control.

and then I heard my own voice, asking

'are you actually going to use this…lets just go and see.'

that's what I asked myself.

OCT 29

underserved or undersevered? The difference makes no difference when reaching forward to invert the ugly face of the Large Clay inhibitor. Large Clay City shares the same zip as the dead-and-gone Lipton Clay City. When you pass a fire hydrant fossilized in mid-shot dunking lift, you may pause then measure (with stick) the city growth. How proud one clay-clad civilian must feel when charting the city growth. To see the asphalt rise, replace the cobbler, and reduce the History to a smothered submerged sublevel called Inhibitor Clay City is an exacting thrill-precision for the self-critical civilian. We, the documentarians, follow him thoroughly with a fog lens. 'Pan to the right and see if the fog doesn't frost the same way,' I tell myself.

OCT 30

i carry you down into the Grotto of Grins. 260 feet below, the Southern Slacker and the Southeastern Savage flog the private customer with undeserved Nixon jokes. The customer is paid up to the date so the double S.S.'s don't mind doling a grotto flog. After the dole rush, the Southern Slacker leans a receipt to the private customer, also belching. The private customer pulls the 'oh, thank you…thank you so much,' bowed head routine. The Southeastern Savage erupts with kinetic irritation, throwing his baseball cap onto the dirt-and-bamboo shithouse and hollering, 'Shut up. Ethel is speaking, going on about stunned earth. Fromme ('Squeaky') lives

with Ethel. Here's your re

ceipt. Thank you…thank

you so much.'

'Is the C. Bag relocating to Savage Street?'

'Is the who doing what now?'

That's what I asked.

OCT 31

dazed, half-blooded, falsely mauled, mole-ing my way out of the grotto, at sixes and sevens, the desperate grindings of fingernails, low saturated earth, with one hand I bang on the crypt door, with the other hand I play the tin. The matador de toros comes to light and opens the door in a half-motion with his bum limb. It is at that precise moment I grasp that it is his cusped face on the T-shirt I have pinched off the 'caps of cups' taro card's root in the corm field. Ethel Ether mutters, "Much eddoe about nothing."

NOV 1

malvina or Mavina? I am wondering this about Reynolds' birth certificate while laying down the showstopper in my egg timer theater. Reynolds couldn’t even guess how I snuck a bulldog in a tub of popcorn. Grande Dame Maletilla, the watermark name crested on Mavilla's birth certificate, hopped through hoops to get into the ring and shook the certificate (Derbake) until bulldog rattled weightlessly. Ma Bell squeled 'ah well'. A ringing forever awaited those who tried their best to get through to us. Funny, because the dialtone spiked the sublevel and took me back to OCT 28.

NOV 2

deep bass tones tonight. 300hZ has a curve, halfway from my thumb to my nipple (which thumb and which nipple I dare not say). The curve, face to face with the radius, gives off a heap. Nipple to nipple with the heap, I too shed my baseball cap. The tin sings the tin pledge, wringing the words as it go:

'We pledge; we promise, we state, we say

To you our guest

Please do "come on in"

Our kitchen; our home

Worn traveler wearing snow and rain

Woven as a vest,

With our hand on tin

We welcome ye home

Now dear stranger here to stay

Brand ye swift with family crest:

Red hot tatt of tin

No more shall ya roam

Be there rain or snow

Our fire warm

and tall

as Hell

the tell-all

tatt

without

concern

wheeze whistles a

sailor's sullen

threaded

stub'

NOV 3

we're just out there poppin' tonight.

NOV 4

I hear a whimper from the molehill of drum shells and hardware. I wonder what they are so worried about. I can't think too long too often 'cause it's tide rollin' back and my tin needs a-poppin'

...then a mousey mouseye without an iris observes the tin popping dents. I am the 'dent-all' assistant, my four fingerless gloves ready to pop the Cheerwine dollop until a foam starts to state statistics of Nixon jokes in one day. The CHEERWINE FOAM does that Southeastern finger-pointing thing and power-pointing at that big ol' pie in the sky chart, a rise and fall of 300hZ *minus* why must 300hZ always "throw a curve ball" as deeply grooved as the pie chart? Why does every Elmo try to Salve face and lie about their contribution to the New Yorker? When will barking sand change its tune and choose to mewl? (startin' to worry something fierce about 'what if that Chair Boy sits back *all fast like* and smushes the doggy?')

NOV 5

instead of the usual fiddler faddling pipe poppers on a hot tin roof, I lay it down thick onto a blooper reel. Seems soluble, real easy and relaxed, but once the 'dailies' start to spin 'round the canister, I start to sweat on the hot tickering roll of the white projector. I am the projectionist, tired of spinning the millimeters on the axis of cinephiliac playback. I take a matchstick to the reel, and, easy enough, the film reel burns. Easy enough, I don't have to deal with the tin chased around the Spahn Ranch by fifty hundred Bandoleros!

…oddly enough, 'poppers', or amyl nitrites, were once known as cellulose nitrates, or, in layman's terms, flash paper, or, in lower lays of the N. American, 'movies'.

NOV 6

addled

traddled

"Contrary to popular belief, the Bandolero named Joe Popper is furious with me for none of the above. Turns out the cockeyed Popper caught wind of my false identifying foolery. I poked my eyewitness out with my finger, wagging it at the wrong batch of bad pies. Like jelly in a doughnut, Popper's stooges were the filler in the identity parade. Like Dennis the Menace in a drugstore, my poking finger was ready to point the finger at the unusual suspects, that is to say, the innocents.

"Mirror, one-way mirror on the wall, who's the guiltiest of them all?

"I knew damn well Pepper did it. But if I didn't come here for justice, what did I come here for? For a laugh! Or, at least half ah one...

"They booked 'em. Your stooges, Joe, all three of 'em: Truman, Stallion, & Heure.

"You protested:

"'Hey Coppers, you got the wrong Robbers, it was Pepper, not the Poppers. My guys are innocent as the "King of the Jews!"'

"'Yea right… innocent. You're a yuckster, Popper. Sure, in this case they might be "off the hook" (see 'Squeaky' Fromme's callback, OCT 28 -ed.), but that boneheaded Godhead is guilty as a pair of Nikes on Nick Nolte.'

"'Nick Nolte?'

"'Yes, N. Nolte as Pete Bell in the 1994 b-ball flick, Blue Chips.'

"'Never saw it, Jack.'

"'Never mind, Joe. The point is, if those guys are Kings, then I'm the Prince.'

"'Well, Jack, that would make you and me, the Prince & the Popper.'”

-Jack Par, 1994

NOV 7

The BLEDSOE family in TN is the name of the FAMILY on the TIN. There are 5000 cemeteries in BLEDSOE COUNTY, Tennessee per square inch. FINANCING the ditch of death that is RIPE for you is an UPHILL BATTLE due to the Bledsoes taking up so much of the PRIME REAL ESTATE we call the Toll Road. Even the BEST of them struggle when attempting to seal the deal on obtaining a "hole to call their own".

Everestt, exasperated, turned to me and said, "The Bledsoes, with their horny holes, breed like rabbits (and breathe like mouthbreathers). They spill more seeds into one another than Persephone's pomegranate. I can't keep up with this dyin' business no more, Rick. The Bledsoes can take mine. They will anyway. Every time I'm fixin' to nosedive six feet past Sunday, I find out the Bledsoes have snuck another Bledsoe in my death ditch. My malebolge are bulging with those bloody Bledsoes. It’s a real Pouch of Panic over here on my end of the butcher’s block.

"For instance, I toiled away in all of last night's bathing sunlessness digging my own private room without a view. When that blasted Lord of Light Shit Sun did rise, I looked down eagerly into my tomb room, only to see Leon Bledsoe on his back, with a Big Bass Billy-mouthed grin and waving his boneless hand at me, gray bodiless pupils boring into me and all, and hollering, 'HEY BOY' at me with his untempered raspbox…

"I tell you, Rick, I'm losing the plot. I've had it up to here." Then Everestt sighed like ah never heard another man sigh. "Guess it's life eternal for this old geezer. Yep, sure as my shoes ain't red, I jus' can't seem to get off a this dumptruck, this stinkin' third rock from who-gives-a-damn."

I shook, dis-stirred by Everestt's words. I had never heard such hate speeched from the mouth of any given man. I least of all expected it from Everestt, to whom I had always looked up. In complete disbelief, I thought to myself, "Everestt sure don't like the Sun. Hmmmm. How could anyone dislike the Sun? I love the Sunshine. Especially in the Summer, when things are really heating up. They should rename Summer and just call it Sunner. Or better yet, Tanner."

NOV 8

To get to the Toll Road, take the third left off the Denizen Tear Trail, follow arrows towards the Normal Park Museum Magnet School, putt past smiling John Ross Bobble Glans, bolo tie the Delta Queen, rubber bullet the Stetson Julep, make a turn of the wrist at Henpeck Ambuscade, and take a brake to save a life when you pass, with caution, the Bledsoes building blocks. Observe all local laws. The road has room to grow.

NOV 9

I worked with a BLEDSOE but not when I had the tin so now that I had the tin and the time, ever since laid off from Mattress Affair, I decided to pop in on my grumpy ex-co-worker. I must have startled her with my pop-in and tin, because she seemed surprised to see me. She made a start out of her officemax, then started sprinting down Thomas’ JERRY hall. Boy, oh boy, how we must have looked on the security cams, me: yelling "see my tin see my tin see my tin see my tin" - and she: yelling, "help help help Rick is back help help." I FINALLY caught up, and rapidfired (rapidfire = quickfire sans ham) an explanation, transcribed in the preceding six paragraphs.

After my explanation, I posed the question:

"So, do you like my tin?"

BLEDSOE informed me that she was NOT a fan of the tin. So, sorry if I look perplexed, but WHY IN THE HECK is the BLEDSOE FAMILY print living on the tin if they don't even LIKE the tin? BLEDSOE = BLEDISLOE = BLI-O = BI-LO

Bi-lo: derived from hlaw, or a hill, or hahw hahw hawh huwh (see NOV 16).

Hill: derived from cemetery, or koimeterion, or licburg, or Everestt being so sunburnt and worthless as a corm field as to be done with fun in the Sun.

here’s a lil tidbit (or tinbit, as we call it ‘round the office) of a postscript: -- I know what you’re thinking. BLEDISLOE could also = SLOE, as in, JEROME’S SLOE MAGIC WAND. Well, if you wand it that way, fine by me.

NOV 10

NOW let me name every BLEDSOE on the tin. At the very least, I shall name the BLEDSOES I can see from fifty hundred feet away with my eyes closed:

Mali Wally

The Funster of Munster

The Caliph of Mexicali (welder of The Ax of Jizzakh)

The Twerp of Antwerp

The Mad-men of Ao-men

Malvina (or Mavina?) of Manzanillo

The "Easy 'NOW’ Boys" (or) Escobedo Bedfellows

Puzi City Putz

Coy Boy of Macoya

Salamanca Nella (Malvira? Mylanta?) Alamandra

The Barstow Borrower

The Balkan Bawler

The Bristol Bristler

Scrimshaw Bin

Daphine Jaffna Gaffer Guffaw

Major Bledsoe (1994- , Chef Exec.; Cook Islands)

R. Downer Bledsoe

Garrett "Sierra" Leon

Simsim Bledsoe

THERE are more BLEDSOE clan offshoots than there are fingers in the HAND HOTEL, but the THIRTY names listed above are the MAJOR LEAGUE bledsoe ROOTS. The other excluded clan members are known, to me and me alone, as the BLEDSOE DUDS.

NOV 11

i awaken my dome from Bledsoe tin trance with teeming pleasure to discover Tucker's Tin has foam animaled from Shrinky Dink status to Jolly Green heights. What fortune- four tons of tin-fortified treat! And if the student body is not too careful, they might tin the corner of Tin Pan Alley after a plucky Saturday of party favors to bump a knobby knee right smack into the four-ton towering tin. Ouch!

NOV 12

tonight

the tin has extra body. I give it a

squeeze.

It splits.

purify the smiler

sun-kissed (not by a longshot)

bolster moistening

heeldog

buckshot.

if you're cradle

minded heeldog

I'm an ankle

gam-gawker

savage

speaks volumes

verdure moistened

freesia

stabilized the

smoothie.

escape the smoothie

and the threadbare history

of calibration

herbal

breakage.

Cree purse stems at

long-lasting clatches

moisture silking a sow ear

mend

bulge bracket reparations

daub

sow smear

strawberry streak

drip dry in accordance

pouring with a heavy jigger

frost does not come when wet

feeze

gentle over-hedging

mending bowlder rap

putt-putt-call parity

gentle

strawberry strength

ear moments sift damp

champagne

viscera

It ends.

NOV 13

purification complete, courtesy of the mysterious "strawberry vapor" that knocked on my door yesterday. I take a free breath, and settle down for another evening inside of Red's cob. At first, my tin rehearsal seems to be "top of the pops", but after three steamy hours of Lindy Poppin', things take a tin for the worst.

Romancing anxiety;

Chair Boy had sat back fast in his chair, hallucinating from the aroma of the pie on the platter and its infinite aluminum spectres.

I can only imagine.

NOV 14

after a quick pop-in with the tin, I open the Book to find a real go-getter with advert intensity has taken the liberty of adding 'new' where they'd seen fit in Lord Tinnyson's "The Newspaper-Eaters". Such spunk! The results of their enterprising embellishment (excerpt):

"A new land of new streams! some, like a new inward smoke,

New-dropping veils of thinnest new lawn, did go new;

And sue thru wavering new lights and new broke,

Ruinin'g a slew new sheet of new foam Belew suede shoes.

They knew the new gleaming slew Gin seawomb new flew the

Coop sluice the land; far oof, three new mounsoon-troupes,

Monsieur, two pinochle sluice of new aged Snus; clop, clop,

Stew sunset-flume’d; and, dew’d and, new'd with showery dross,

Up-cloot plume’d, the new canuck aboot woven totem Tonto news.

The charmed sunsuit linger’d low adown huff

In the new red Turtle; thru mountain clefts;

Hoof the doomroom far newland loom, and blew Jape June soon

Brew’d new with spume, a newish land where

All new moon things always seem’d the same!

And new with faces newpale dark faces newpale against...

So sue me; mild-new melancholy newspaper-eaters came."

NOV 15

some dumb one in the dumb room of Bledsoe Breeder Country says a thing like 'Once you pop, you can't stop' and I can hardly tolerate that kind of dumb talk. Then that same dumbskull spits a follow-up, 'Hey, Bledsoe, why don't you call your article 'The Tin and I'? Hahw hahw hawh huwh,' and I really fly right off the handle like some kind of Sam Slick in 'God's own county'.

another dumb one starts to speak Bledsoe dumb talk too but I cut him off before he can-

NOV 16

nothing now with tin seems quite the same since the Jolly Green Storm hath fallen off the money tree. "I'm in a frenzy", as only a Screamin' Jay might understate. Transmigratory thinly sums it up. I can only imagine.

NOV 17

call me Faraday the Rin-tin-tin Man. I'm living fool-proof in an "iron" curtained vault Scrooge McDuck would envy. Not a soul or fiber of static can penetrate this tin can.

I pause.

Do I detect an echo from the outside world? Then I must find the leak and plug it with the clapper...

Faraday, my beloved pet rat, invented such sieve (screen) rooms as mine. Back in the Faraday, He coined it the Static Attic. However, I refuse to be a "rat in the cage" like my dear Faraday was (rest his soul). No sir, I won't be foiled by any of that arcageic outdated farrago of Faraday. In need of something current, I've given my own name to this technique. I call it the "Winner's Circle"...

If I must leave my Tinuit igloo, I play my cards right. I've wrapped excess Tucker Tin™ around my credit card, around my business card, around my calling card, around my insurance card, around my trading card, around my shopper's card, around my taro card, around my gift card, around my trick card, around my CARD card, around my Orson Scott Card, around my memory card, around my identity card, around my library card, around my winning card, around my wild card, around my greeting card, around my E-card, around my V-card, around my phone card, around my report card, and every other laminated rectangle in my wallaby fur wallet.

This wrapping-card technique I also refer to as the "Winner's Circle".

Vignau would do the same, I

suspect.

NOV 18

BALLAD of a TIN MAN

a Jack Par adventure

call me 'the Tin Man' one more time, Popper, and I'll have you locked up, bedbunking and biting with all yer stooges.

"I'm innocent, Jack. I'm clean."

What a big surprise, I thought to myself, Another lie from Joe's mouth. Sounds about Par for that course. “Now listen bub of hubbub and Babel. I'm not going to fall for that kind of poppycock, Popper. You're about as clean as a dog bowl in a busted-up KitchenAid. I'm about as fed up with your dum-dum puns as Everestt is fed up with the Sun.

"Move along, spick-n-spam. You are a hamper to my cross-country transmigratory permanent press-ident as a permanent redsident rodent in Red's cob. I nearly lost my mlabas on NOV 15 when you money-maundered your malarky heap into my Maytag. Bag off you sodded stinker. How am I supposed to ever carry out my 'Isolationist' fantasy in Red's pipecleaner with you raunching up the Protestant pee-ewes?"

NOV 19

RED's REEF

the first of double dozens of casual tinner-space visualization exercises using Dylan McDermott, circa In the Line of Fire era, as my spirit foam animal. I can hardly translate the day's splashabout, the corral crystallizations, the cuckoo clot, the Shrinky Dink…, Dylan the purified smiler, all the while, sharing with me the big secret………the censored and sensational history of the roundabout. on loan, my pillow. the narcoleptic Scheherazade slumbers

her foot asleep

in Winkle years

it doesn't stack up

does it?

Dylan?

...Dylan?

……..

is in daybreak

there but for the grace of Red's

Cob, go I

NOV 20

salute the sadhu

cobbling along I

smuckered

and

hand-rolled function

the one good hand of Quiver unwraps the tinfoil tincture

of ternifolia

spikenard skullcap catnap

NOV 21

cat tremens

canary

in a

cold sore

craps out the noble knee.

too young to stir

Fromme’s blue

I know how I will handle this

I know now how I will best handle this

chance Ruby

Kelly book

and this time

it won’t be Nixon we hear laughing

out loud

NOV 22

at unilateral jug

‘split milk’

lever

sterling recreation

no thanks to

Faraday

Mad Jack

Pittman

the three together

knot absent accord

leaving no clues

thanks to serling

alive in red’s reef

come

out its shell

curdles

dilemma is

Red’s rocket

spoof spigot

glans

deafening and defiant

climb the fence to pole

to glance

the waltz

clatches

willow

mano

millionaire

shakes the

comfortably

seated

fair maiden Marina.

dowdle

dally me

clutch

breast

soup

nuts

brief commerce

then

fascist fantasist

props

‘set-up’

propositioning

the novel novice

the “yee-haw” sharpy from overseas

gains good

proper

fraternization

lode-in-cuss

Mister

wet stone

miso

the

smug set

from

father

Fromme’s

loaded

jellystone

parquet.

“to the gills”

to red

may I never

cease clinking in a coal mine meddler’s trapeze toast

herus tooth

cher-

oot

chic-

ory

miner for a

messianic

trapeze

act

for hire

for funday

a day far a way

Fuhrer Bich ist booking the ball

c ombat

clamberous

defeat of war

$120,000 bones

resal ovens

slder

haddle s

opinion

he’d champion nonadmit

off humilit y

Drance

did the right thing

shook off the bad gam-gawker

by moving his dirt off the wagon

towards New France.

Louis XIII was, to put it lightly,

‘vastly’ unimpressed,

by waltzing drive-by

cap

sailor man whose seven

years astern

bulbless (after public plucking);

found himself

senile in

leaky descending canoe

verloren hoop pursuit of

nubile Northwest Passage

the Passage was ready for

brief and irruptive commerce

so we were told.

it lay between

cislunar Toll Road

and

a beaver bald as Shamu

Vignau asked Drance to lend a gifted hand

sing-songing like a deaf Scot:

‘leaky canoe and Tyler too

and so can you, Drance, so can you’

who was left to applaud but Vignau himself!

CLAP CLAP CLAP “Bang-up job, Drance,

“a ‘knock-out’; “Fantasist, Drance, really

great’ Drance CLAP -Bulls-eye” . “

I waited in line for nitrous oxide

for fifteen minutes and left my

canoe door-jambing the Pacific”

like some buncombe

restless leg s s ituationalist

like a dose of

pockmarks:I

glass-eyed Glidden the St. Lawrence winner’s circle

the skim

figure O (36 - 24 - 36) 8

hm I:bulbless ruins

-can you see it now

hemorrhaging?

NOV 28

My premature winter-passage gusts me past their Azul Maya frosted windows (the wet is mopped by bonnet after the newbie's sou'wester plateaued), I must admit, is tinged with envy. Or, no, not envy at all, for I would take nothing and could add nothing to the tin's Unbroken Circle. No, not envy, but rather a sorrowful longing.

A dim radio broadcast drift of a gamelan family bouncing off the bricks as I continue my long stare: my achy window shopping. The thunderstruck kenong laconically triggers the truth serum within: my only possible joyful reincarnation could be integration / communion with family irrigation. Birth marks; hot pokers. heights of supreme unified bliss.

The lone wolf howls outside their saltbox with the Azul Maya frosted windows, longing to belong.

I drool an IV drool, not physically, but within my heart:

drip dry; contraction and flow

I have let them in to my heart. I am overwhelmed with the purity and compassion of the congenial hosts. What festive rookery! What uncommon camaraderie! All sincerity, no superficiality. An outpouring. I weep happiness, to have witnessed such a scene of undistilled familial euphoria. I weep sorrow, acutely aware of how wretched my life is; how I am unworthy, unfit to enter their seventh heaven.

Grunting stool, I turn west, away from the congregation's celebration. I resume my lusty wander through the white-packed earth, my reptilian hands and feet uncovered, reflecting the temperature.

The White Rook, my shadow, weeps with me.