Phil: Mornin’ Gus.
Gus: Mornin’ Phil.
Phil: What's it feel like to be your own ancestor?
Gus: You can tell a man’s age by countin' the rings around his eyes.
Phil: Ain't ya' get any shut eye?
Gus: Who can sleep with all that racket? Damn fool kids got one them new fangled video games. Hootin’ and hollerin’ like coyotes after a kill. Shoot, back in my day, we had real games like battleships or tiddlywinks. Kept us happy for hours and din’t use a watt o’ ‘lectricity. We knew what fun was.
Phil: Hell, when I was just a sprout, we never had all that. Game o' stick-ball was as much fun as a boy could have on a Saturday off. We’d get ourselves a high bouncer from the five and dime, find an old broom handle an’ we was in heaven. Exercise, skill, and it got us out o’ that rundown one bedroom flat the eight of us shared.
Gus: Stick-ball eh? Y'all musta been from the rich neighborhood. Shoot, we ain’t had none o’ that. Back in my day, we played dodge-rock. Only had one rock in the whole damn town so we had to share it. Course the whole town could prob’ly fit inside your fancy one bedroom. Fourteen of us lived in a piano crate with a hole cut in it. I remember one Christmas mama stole us a chicken. I can still taste that yardbird.
Phil: Oohwee! Y’all had chicken? Sounds like you was spoiled boy. My twenty three siblings and I once nearly died walkin’ 20 feet to the edge of the dirt pile we lived on just to catch a look at a real farmhouse. Heard they had a chicken but I’ll be damned if we ever saw it. When I was five I did my family proud and caught me a juicy rat. We ate for weeks. I was the youngest so Mama sewed a little pair of shorts for me outta the pelt. Only reason I survived was on account of a scrap o’ meat I found in them shorts. I think mama left it for me on purpose. Least I think it was meat.
Gus: Oh, we didn’t have the luxury of a cozy dirt pile to come home to. Shoot, a hundred and eleven of us made do in a rolled up piece o’ newspaper in the middle of the road. Ain’t et my first meal until I was eighteen years old. Yup, it was my own foot. Mama used to slice it real thin and make us sandwiches between two black gum wads. That was iffin we could scrape ‘em off the side walk. Lasted us twenty years.
Phil: Y'all had foot n' gumwad sandwiches? Oowhee! My clan o' three-hunnert woulda killed fer a bite o' real food. We chewed on our fingernails fer nutrition. lived inside a candy wrapper in a dumpster. We couldn't even afford air to breathe so we had to pass the one breath around. You folks had it good.
Gus: What the hell are you talkin’ about Phil? That’s ridiculous! Shut up!
by numbsain...back in my day we couldn't afford my day.
