Skeletons In The Trunk

Hi, folks. Fred Fortune. No, that's not a picture of me in a "cooking sherry" state of mind. That's a framed sepia photograph of my great grandfather Frederick Fortune from the old country. What old country? Your guess is as good as mine. My family never talked about the old country and I never asked about it. I had other fish to fry.

Hell, I was too busy running Kool-Aid stands and collecting old pop bottles for the two cents deposit and then too busy getting sick on my dad's cigars and then chasing skirts all over Peoria, Illinois, where I did most of my skirt chasing and moving and shaking before I lost it all in Vegas. Then I began roaming the alleys of big cities like New York and Philadelphia and Chicago, and even Pittsburgh and Cleveland, before I settled down in that old, abandoned 1965 Rambler Ambassador in that alley just off Hollywood & Vine. The place I called "home" and the place that L. A. County 9-1-1 called 1965 Ambassador Way.

But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that I'm back. Again. Which means that I'm not in a "cooking sherry" state of mind or any other "state of mind". Besides, I don't like sherry. But that's all there is out here on the fourth planet, right now, to get a "buzz" from. You know, I think my great grandfather might have been Irish because when I was just a tyke I once heard him say that sherry tasted like "fairy pee". A boy never forgets shit like that. Nobody but a Mick would have the balls to say that about a leprechaun.

Now, where is that little imp, Farnsworth M. Mudd? I haven't seen him since I found those spy pics of me tending bar on the dark side of Earth's moon. OK. So, I lied about my past. What's it to ya? Whattaya gonna do about it? That's what I thought. Nothing.

Anyway, I found this vintage photograph of my great granddad in an old steamer trunk near the underground cafeteria up here. The same trunk where Farnsworth — once again playing the Benedict Arnold role — apparently found those old snapshots of me tending bar. Spy ring, my ass. Mr. Farnsworth — whose name is once again "Mud" — took those two pictures, himself, while I was setting him up with a Glenfiddich (ooooh, a single malt scotch; it tastes like French Dip and feels like Drano in your stomach but, ooooh, a single malt), a Labatt Blue for a chaser and a big bag of hillbilly pork rinds to munch on. What a pretentious combination. Little lyin' shit. No wonder he was such a damn good trader on Wall Street.