You can’t tell me I’m off base on this one: I seen it with my own two true blue peepers, plain as a daylight flash in a stuck pig’s pan. Ah, apologies and salutations—I got off the block early and ruin’t the rumpus.
Handle’s ol’ Dag. Dagwood to the gross-street stompers and the revenuers, but Dag to pals. Yer a pal, ain’t’cha? Dag it is, and Dag mote it be, then.
You maybe seen the news? That blonde feller come slogging back here to ol’ Dag’s, looking fer The Rest of the Story, but he ain’t believed it any better’n anybody else’n’s.
Gold, see? Found it in the trash here, pannin’ fer lunch, the gold collected in the bottom, ‘cause it’s heavier’n water, see? Didn’t shine like gold, though in the pan. New shiny collects the same dust and grime as old busted, just starts higher up the hill. By the time it’s drifted down here, it’s all grayed and yellowed and mucky.
Blonde feller off the news, he come waded in, like I says, lookin’ fer the story. He heard, ol’ Dag got hisself a speck of gold, must’a come from somewheres. So where’s that sum, he ast? Some society swell finally swole up enough to bust?
Nah, but ol’ Dag knows. Touch a penny and cry! for Ol’ Dag knows! An’ I’ll tell ye’, like I tole that blonde feller, but it’ll cost ye’, same’s it’s costin’ him.
A’ight?
Starts with a dream. Allus starts ‘th a dream, don’it? Two dogs diverged in the yaller wood, an’ one’s’a bones and one’s’a could, thet flaet the course an’ skæn thet pferda, then thet cot en big-tit Hylda! Hoo hoo, hee hee.
Then the could’a dog waked, see, an’ et the boney dog, climbed up his ladder to the skies, 114 Broad Street, seventieth floor, he says, he says. He hangs up the shingle, says, Mister Could’a Dogs, Fancy Accountant to the Fancy Rich and Wealthy, man of health and waste, wealth and taste, rich and based, twitchin’ face, he comes out in the moon, bayin’ quaet barther’d, digging for dead horses to beat of a Saturday night.
Ol’ Dag, y’see, he sees the could’a dog, wanderin’ the streets lookin’ fer trouble, sees him dive like a Canada Goose in the puddles and whattles of the back alleys of the Howard Johnson’s out on Six Sixteen. Took the dirt road home and traded a wink and a nod fer a blind horse, ‘f’ya know what I mean, turnt his pockets out in the rainstorm, ‘f’ya know what I mean, found it hard t’ appreciate the beauty of life with his head so far in the sand, ‘f’ya know what I mean.
An’ ye don’t, that dog, he knucks to whattlin at the door o’ Hylde’s faithful, pants’n’ankles.
An’ old blondie, he turnt the corner, see, looking like the cat the drugged the canary, took ‘im to church and made a honest bidravim. Lo, tho, his truth marched on and left you looking backwards at the dust. An’ he there a’sits, y’see, lookin’ fer dogs’a’could an dogs’a’bone, rent ter shit an’ peelin’.
And there ye’ sits as well, sufficient in the knowledge that the magic of your youth died before you were born, and now you live in its corpse.
And ol’ Dag, he jus’ laughs at them as knows, and he holds his gold deep in his soul, where ye’ll ne’er it behold.
Tee hee, tee ha.