The Rascal of the Railroad Shack

The Horsefoot, with both cheeks full, chewed on and talked, “God’s biggest blessing is the grit dumpling. Not because it grows on the knob, but if a man like mine character gobbles down about fifty of them, then for a half of a year he doesn’t desire to eat any more, just like the camel with the two humps in the desert. True, those desiccated stomach gentlefolk do not eat this food; but they don’t really now what’s good for them anyway. “My grandpa told me back when, and he heard it from his great granddaddy what he knew about grit dumplings. Once upon the time, when those dog-headed Yankees broke into our state, even our nipple suckling babies have already been eating grit dumplings. We were ahead of the whole world. Those dog-headed savages knew that, although in their country not even the dogs would have eaten it, but that was because they were not so educated, even less so than our dogs. “Somehow it happened that the dog-headed ones took a town from us. Not more, just a town. Then they encouraged the lady folks to prepare them that old, traditional meal. They cooked the dumplings indeed, by the hundredfold. Our people ate dinner together with the dog-headed ones. They all stuffed themselves beyond belief. They pigged out all night around the cooking vats. At the end all the Yankees turned belly up, although the food hasn’t been poisoned. A dumpling weighed down the stomach of the Yankee General so much so that he’d got pushed into the mud up to his neck. A toothless old woman ran quickly there; cut off the Yankee general head, and the Yankees run away, anywhere where they could. Men folks haven’t even participated in the battle, they happened to be out on the field working on the corn. That’s how it’s written in the book of big deeds… “Another big Yankee Armada had heard the news of the big defeat. With great anger they descended on us to take revenge. Maybe I don’t even have to tell, but all the townsfolk have been waiting for the beastly savages with grit dumplings. The battle took place on the cannabis fields. But what a battle that was?!… There is nothing like that in the world history books. Any Yankee, who got a grit dumpling into his back, had it coming out through his stomach on the front, and between his two ears. “Nobody picked up a gun or a club if danger ever again approached the state. The soldiers only killed flies on the side of their legs, dined and wined, didn’t care about a thing. There were so many dumplings and barley gnocchi everywhere, the towns stunk from them, just as the borders between the states. “The people lived so well that they didn’t know what their legs were for. In the shady sheds they roasted pulled pork every day. People who could walk on two feet were rare. And if they met someone like that, they cooked them alive, or skinned them, and put his skin to dry in the attic of the museum. “The grit dumpling, true, it was excluded out from history as a weapon, but it remained with us as food, the grits. When they are eating well all our folks have both of their cheeks filled with it. I like it too. I’ve just gobbled up about forty pieces, thanks to that good creator above, who have created me to his own image.” So had spoken the Horsefoot. If he means me, that’s all right, I thought, I indeed resemble a little of the creator. But him, whose nose is like the leg of a boot? I don’t know from where he is getting such nonsense. I believe that in the entire watchman house nobody resembles the creator. Here is that Rosie, right away. Her belly is like a haystack. And the hag is flat on the front as a pancake, and crooked from behind like Mount Rushmore. If by human error I leave the watchman out, that’s only me again.